The Role of Transacademic Interface Managers in Transformational Sustainability Research and Education

Abstract

Working towards sustainable solutions requires involving professionals and stakeholders from all sectors of society into research and teaching. This often presents a challenge to scholars at universities, as they lack capacity and time needed for negotiating different agendas, languages, competencies, and cultures among faculty, students, and stakeholders. Management approaches and quality criteria have been developed to cope with this challenge, including concepts of boundary organizations, transdisciplinary research, transition management, and interface management. However, few of these concepts present comprehensive proposals how to facilitate research with stakeholder participation while creating educational opportunities along the lifecycle of a project. The article focuses on the position of a transacademic interface manager (TIM) supporting participatory sustainability research and education efforts. We conceptualize the task portfolio of a TIM; outline the capacities a TIM needs to possess in order to successfully operate; and propose an educational approach for how to train students in becoming a TIM. For this, we review the existing literature on TIMs and present insights from empirical sustainability research and educational projects that involved TIMs in different functions. The article provides practical guidance to universities on how to organize these critical endeavors more effectively and to offer students an additional career perspective.

Utilizing international networks for accelerating research and learning in transformational sustainability science

“…Such a coordinator would foster organizational learning across the network and maintain a network 'memory'-providing information, facilitate collaborative arrangements, do trouble shooting, if necessary, and evaluate success and failure of collaborative efforts. Considering the inter-and transdisciplinary nature of almost all empirical sustainability projects, such a coordinator might benefit from specific training on how to facilitate collaboration at several interfaces (e.g., between disciplines or between scientists and stakeholders) (Brundiers et al 2013).…”

“…It departs from sustainability science as outlined by (Kates et al 2001) that calls for descriptiveanalytical knowledge on origin, structure, and functioning of sustainability problems to advance understanding of resilience and vulnerability in social-ecological systems. In transformational sustainability science, actionable knowledge is generated on solutions that alleviate the symptoms or change the underlying causal structures of sustainability problems (Wiek et al 2012;Brundiers et al 2013). To achieve these objectives, universities are increasingly engaged in multistakeholder, transdisciplinary efforts to catalyze sustainability transformation Trencher et al 2014a).…”

Special Issue—Pedagogy for Education for Sustainability in Higher Education

“…Since EfS/ESD pedagogy focuses on students and their engagement with issues and interactions outside of the class-room, an individual teacher/academic may need support to implement the curriculum. The contribution of Brundiers Wiek and Kay [6] specifically considers the need for a "transacademic interface manager" to support those participatory education efforts that are frequently an identifying feature of sustainability education and research. Their article, they say "provides practical guidance to universities on how to organize these critical endeavors more effectively" [6] (p. 4614), and intriguingly suggests that the idea of these managers can "offer students an additional career perspective" [6] (p. 4614) For those considering the potential benefits of establishing a transacademic interface manager role, or developing curriculum to develop related capabilities in graduates, Brundiers, Wiek and Kay [6] provide a rich description of the role and its development.…”

Learning and teaching in the regional learning environment : enabling students and teachers to cross boundaries in multi-stakeholder practices

“…A second target for future research lies in the professionalization of both teachers and stakeholders, who also need support to be able to effectively work in universitycommunity partnerships (Brundiers et al, 2013). A focus group discussion on effective student-stakeholder support, held with 14 RLE teachers after the closure of the eight studied RLEs (February 2016), showed that teachers were mainly occupied with organisational aspects of school-stakeholder collaboration, and showed yet limited openness for the further development of actual student-stakeholder support.…”

“…Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2015). However, studies contributing to this debate only pay oblique attention to what is required from teachers to perform in university-community collaborative practices (Brundiers et al, 2013;Stauffacher et al, 2006). Until the date, a systematic identification of roles and tasks that teachers fulfil in a university-community collaborative learning environment, and the competencies that teachers should master to carry out these tasks, has not been done.…”