Professional development of interdisciplinary environmental scholars

Abstract

The need is urgent to build capacity in the environmental community, and the interdisciplinary approach is one of the most promising avenues to accomplish this. The environmental studies and sciences program movement can ably lead this effort. Based on a workshop at the second annual meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) in 2010, we look at barriers to interdisciplinarity in academia, including the cultural, historical, and institutional context of disciplinary scholarship. It is within this context that interdisciplinarians must fight for identity, recognition, roles, legitimacy, and standing. Teaching, research, service, publishing, competing for funding, and meeting reappointment/promotion/tenure evaluation criteria can all pose unique difficulties for interdisciplinary scholars. We offer advice to those seeking professional interdisciplinary education, including finding the right program and advisor, developing skills, designing and completing the dissertation, and establishing a professional network. We also offer advice on securing a job-setting the stage while still in graduate school and highlighting interdisciplinary strengths in the application and interview process. We also offer advice on career advancement, such as clarifying one's expertise and its significance, setting and fulfilling tenure-track benchmarks, adapting the career trajectory to capitalize on an interdisciplinary career, clarifying with one's institution the criteria for advancement, and preparing the tenure portfolio. Finally, we offer an introduction to interdisciplinarity as an explicit, systematic approach in concept and framework that rests on a higher order means of organizing knowledge and action, with a focus on integration. AESS is emerging as an organization to assist professionals by assembling a supportive community of environmental educators, researchers, and problem solvers, by clarifying and promoting standards for successful interdisciplinarity in the classroom and in the field, and by offering advice and support on career issues for both up-and-coming professionals and established faculty and practitioners.

Graduate students navigating social-ecological research: insights from the Long-Term Ecological Research Network

“…But it makes it very hard to get it funded because depending on who's reading the proposals, they have a lot of different perspectives on what this actually means." This sentiment echoes those of a working group on the professional development of interdisciplinary environmental scholars organized by the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences in 2010, suggesting that challenges with diverse sets of reviewers for interdisciplinary proposals are pervasive beyond graduate students in the LTER Network (Clark et al 2011). …”

Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research: Challenges and Solutions

“…When composing essays, interdisciplinary faculty need to be careful to use knowledge, methods, language etc. crossing disciplines, and make sure to suggest reviewers who are "broadly familiar with relevant multiple literatures" and have an "interdisciplinary orientation" [1,9].…”

“…have to be mastered. Yet, considering the scope of the projects, interdisciplinary researchers are often encouraged to pay attention to the breadth of integration and to reduce the complexity of the argument and supporting materials, which, as a result, leads to the fact that the editors of the magazines may think these studies are not deep or strong enough [1]. Besides, because of the crossing-boundary feature, the research results of interdisciplinary faulty cannot completely fit the scope of many journals or academic magazines, making it more difficult to get published compared with those focusing on one discipline.…”

“…Studies show that more interdisciplinary research happened through "ad hoc teams" (53%) than the disciplined research (40%), less lone research (18%) than disciplined ones (40%) [1]. This "ad hoc teams" research mode requires more management skills and is more demanding.…”

“…However, it was not until the criticizing of the disciplinary mode's limit of producing too much "fragmentation of knowledge" and constraining the "appearance and career success of a relatively large number of interdisciplinary scientists" around the 1970s that higher education institutions had long been structured and formed by the departmental culture where researchers have seldom communication across disciplinary boundaries [1]. Recognizing the promise of interdisciplinary approaches in education, research universities in large numbers launched a campaign of breaking the department barriers, which has transformed the university campus culture, brought about changes in administration level, faculty's professional development, and student cultivation.…”