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Disasters are becoming more frequent as the global climate changes, and recovery efforts require the cooperation and collaboration of experts and community members across disciplines. The DRRM program, funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT), is an interdisciplinary graduate program that brings together faculty and graduate students from across the university to develop new, transdisciplinary ways of solving disaster-related issues. The core team includes faculty from business, engineering, education, science, and urban planning fields. The overall objective of the program is to create a community of practice amongst the graduate students and faculty to improve understanding and support proactive decision-making related to disasters and disaster management. The specific educational objectives of the program are (1) context mastery and community building, (2) transdisciplinary integration and professional development, and (3) transdisciplinary research. The program’s educational research and assessment activities include program development, trainee learning and development, programmatic educational research, and institutional transformation. The program is now in its fourth year of student enrollment. Core courses on interdisciplinary research methods in disaster resilience are in place, engaging students in domain-specific research related to natural hazards, resilience, and recovery, and in methods of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to courses, the program offers a range of professional development opportunities through seminars and workshops. Since the program’s inception, the core team has expanded both the numbers of faculty and students and the range of academic disciplines involved in the program, including individuals from additional science and engineering fields as well as those from natural resources and the social sciences. At the same time, the breadth of disciplines and the constraints of individual academic programs have posed substantial structural challenges in engaging students in the process of building interdisciplinary research identities and in building the infrastructure needed to sustain the program past the end of the grant. Our poster and paper will identify major program accomplishments, but also draw on interviews with students to examine the structural challenges and potential solution paths associated with a program of this breadth. Critical opportunities for sustainability and engagement have emerged through integration with a larger university-level center as well as through increased flexibility in program requirements and additional mechanisms for student and faculty collaboration.
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How do faculty partner while teaching interdisciplinary CS+X courses: models and experiences
As Computer science (CS) plays an increasingly significant role in many other disciplines, it is crucial for us as CS educators to create authentic interdisciplinary learning experiences for students. To better inform the design of such learning experiences, we sought to catalogue how faculty from both CS and other disciplines are currently collaborating to create such experiences. Specifically, this paper describes knowledge-seeking activities carried out through designing and implementing a workshop program that brought together twenty-four faculty with experience in partnered teaching of CS+X courses. The goal is to take the initial steps towards preparing and supporting CS faculty to create interdisciplinary CS+X courses through partnerships with faculty in other disciplines, in order to spur interdisciplinary thinking in students.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1642251
- PAR ID:
- 10047126
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of computing sciences in colleges
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1937-4763
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 24-33
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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