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1. Critical Connections: Transdisciplinary Capacity and Youth Engagement for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries and Coastal Communities

   https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2025.136  

   Koch, Emi; Chuenpagdee, Ratana (January 2025, Oceanography)

   As the global push for sustainable development intensifies, public and private actors in fisheries and ocean management are encouraged to support United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, “Life Below Water.” For those involved in small-scale fisheries (SSF), the emphasis must shift toward “life above water” (Jentoft, 2019), reflecting the complex social, cultural, and heritage values that define these communities. To create lasting SSF sustainability, programs must be inclusive and community-driven. This shift requires transdisciplinary capacity building and youth engagement, fostering experience sharing and collaboration for transformation. Initiatives like Too Big To Ignore and Coast 2 Coast take this approach, focusing on relationship building, shared responsibility, and inclusive engagement to shape meaningful, grounded change. 

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2. A Decade of Incorporating Social Sciences in the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research Project (IMBeR): Much Done, Much to Do?

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.662350  

   van Putten, Ingrid; Kelly, Rachel; Cavanagh, Rachel D.; Murphy, Eugene J.; Breckwoldt, Annette; Brodie, Stephanie; Cvitanovic, Christopher; Dickey-Collas, Mark; Maddison, Lisa; Melbourne-Thomas, Jess; et al (June 2021, Frontiers in Marine Science)

   null (Ed.)

   Successful management and mitigation of marine challenges depends on cooperation and knowledge sharing which often occurs across culturally diverse geographic regions. Global ocean science collaboration is therefore essential for developing global solutions. Building effective global research networks that can enable collaboration also need to ensure inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches to tackle complex marine socio-ecological challenges. To understand the contribution of interdisciplinary global research networks to solving these complex challenges, we use the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR) project as a case study. We investigated the diversity and characteristics of 1,827 scientists from 11 global regions who were attendees at different IMBeR global science engagement opportunities since 2009. We also determined the role of social science engagement in natural science based regional programmes (using key informants) and identified the potential for enhanced collaboration in the future. Event attendees were predominantly from western Europe, North America, and East Asia. But overall, in the global network, there was growing participation by females, students and early career researchers, and social scientists, thus assisting in moving toward interdisciplinarity in IMBeR research. The mainly natural science oriented regional programmes showed mixed success in engaging and collaborating with social scientists. This was mostly attributed to the largely natural science (i.e., biological, physical) goals and agendas of the programmes, and the lack of institutional support and push to initiate connections with social science. Recognising that social science research may not be relevant to all the aims and activities of all regional programmes, all researchers however, recognised the (potential) benefits of interdisciplinarity, which included broadening scientists’ understanding and perspectives, developing connections and interlinkages, and making science more useful. Pathways to achieve progress in regional programmes fell into four groups: specific funding, events to come together, within-programme-reflections, and social science champions. Future research programmes should have a strategic plan to be truly interdisciplinary, engaging natural and social sciences, as well as aiding early career professionals to actively engage in such programmes. 

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3. Building a Sustainable University-Wide Interdisciplinary Graduate Program to Address Disasters

   Paretti, M.C.; Deters, J.; Webb, M.; Menon, M. (July 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   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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4. Moving Toward Transdisciplinary Learning Around Topics of Convergence: Is it really Possible in Higher Education Today?

   Strimel, G.; Pruim, D.; Briller, S.; Martinez, R.; Lucas, D.; Kelley, T.; Sohn, J. (June 2023, Review directory American Society for Engineering Education)

   There have been numerous demands for enhancements in the way undergraduate learning occurs today, especially at a time when the value of higher education continues to be called into question (The Boyer 2030 Commission, 2022). One type of demand has been for the increased integration of subjects/disciplines around relevant issues/topics—with a more recent trend of seeking transdisciplinary learning experiences for students (Sheets, 2016; American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2019). Transdisciplinary learning can be viewed as the holistic way of working equally across disciplines to transcend their own disciplinary boundaries to form new conceptual understandings as well as develop new ways in which to address complex topics or challenges (Ertas, Maxwell, Rainey, & Tanik, 2003; Park & Son, 2010). This transdisciplinary approach can be important as humanity’s problems are not typically discipline specific and require the convergence of competencies to lead to innovative thinking across fields of study. However, higher education continues to be siloed which makes the authentic teaching of converging topics, such as innovation, human-technology interactions, climate concerns, or harnessing the data revolution, organizationally difficult (Birx, 2019; Serdyukov, 2017). For example, working across a university’s academic units to collaboratively teach, or co-teach, around topics of convergence are likely to be rejected by the university systems that have been built upon longstanding traditions. While disciplinary expertise is necessary and one of higher education’s strengths, the structures and academic rigidity that come along with the disciplinary silos can prevent modifications/improvements to the roles of academic units/disciplines that could better prepare students for the future of both work and learning. The balancing of disciplinary structure with transdisciplinary approaches to solving problems and learning is a challenge that must be persistently addressed. These institutional challenges will only continue to limit universities seeking toward scaling transdisciplinary programs and experimenting with novel ways to enhance the value of higher education for students and society. This then restricts innovations to teaching and also hinders the sharing of important practices across disciplines. To address these concerns, a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education project team, which is the topic of this paper, has set the goal of developing/implementing/testing an authentically transdisciplinary, and scalable educational model in an effort to help guide the transformation of traditional undergraduate learning to span academics silos. This educational model, referred to as the Mission, Meaning, Making (M3) program, is specifically focused on teaching the crosscutting practices of innovation by a) implementing co-teaching and co-learning from faculty and students across different academic units/colleges as well as b) offering learning experiences spanning multiple semesters that immerse students in a community that can nourish both their learning and innovative ideas. As a collaborative initiative, the M3 program is designed to synergize key strengths of an institution’s engineering/technology, liberal arts, and business colleges/units to create a transformative undergraduate experience focused on the pursuit of innovation—one that reaches the broader campus community, regardless of students’ backgrounds or majors. Throughout the development of this model, research was conducted to help identify institutional barriers toward creating such a cross-college program at a research-intensive public university along with uncovering ways in which to address these barriers. While data can show how students value and enjoy transdisciplinary experiences, universities are not likely to be structured in a way to support these educational initiatives and they will face challenges throughout their lifespan. These challenges can result from administration turnover whereas mutual agreements across colleges may then vanish, continued disputes over academic territory, and challenges over resource allotments. Essentially, there may be little to no incentives for academic departments to engage in transdisciplinary programming within the existing structures of higher education. However, some insights and practices have emerged from this research project that can be useful in moving toward transdisciplinary learning around topics of convergence. Accordingly, the paper will highlight features of an educational model that spans disciplines along with the workarounds to current institutional barriers. This paper will also provide lessons learned related to 1) the potential pitfalls with educational programming becoming “un-disciplinary” rather than transdisciplinary, 2) ways in which to incentivize departments/faculty to engage in transdisciplinary efforts, and 3) new structures within higher education that can be used to help faculty/students/staff to more easily converge to increase access to learning across academic boundaries. 

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5. How Does Strategic Communication Shape Transdisciplinary Collaboration? A Focus on Definitions, Audience, Expertise, and Ethical Praxis

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.831727  

   McGreavy, Bridie; Haynal, Kaitlyn; Smith-Mayo, Jennifer; Reilly-Moman, Jessica; Kinnison, Michael T.; Ranco, Darren; Leslie, Heather M. (February 2022, Frontiers in Communication)

   Transdisciplinary collaboration offers great potential for meaningfully addressing complex problems related to climate change and social inequities. Communication shapes transdisciplinary collaboration in myriad ways, and interdisciplinary and rhetorical approaches to communication can help identify these influences as well as strategies to transform inequitable communication patterns. In this paper, we share results from an engaged and ethnographic research project focused on strategic communication in a large-scale transdisciplinary collaboration to develop environmental-DNA (eDNA) science for coastal resilience. In this context, definitions of eDNA, perspectives about communication, and constructions of audience and expertise shape the ways in which collaborators co-produce knowledge across disciplines and with diverse partners. Identifying relationships among strategic communication, knowledge co-production, and power enables the development of strategic collaborative practices, including asking questions as a means to identify and negotiate differences in definitions of eDNA and using participatory methods and anti-oppressive data management platforms for ethical praxis. 

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