Development of an interdisciplinary approach within an academic setting to address complex social and environmental issues

The project presents a new and unique analysis of how specific metrics developed to evaluate interdisciplinary research contributed to the interdisciplinarity of one academic team’s efforts. Evaluation metrics used to assess the interdisciplinarity of the team included (1) the number of participants and disciplines (2) early collaboration and time provisions for team development (3) shared decision making and team alignment, (4) communication and mutual understandings and (5) institutional support. The metric used to evaluate the interdisciplinarity of the research approach included (6) the degree of discipline integration used in the research approach. The methods and processes of team development and the products of the interdisciplinary work were used to evaluate and summarize the team’s efforts. Interdisciplinary research is based upon a conceptual model that integrates theoretical frameworks from multiple disciplines to solve complex problems. Since the 1970’s, an interdisciplinary research approach has been extensively used in a variety of applications in numerous fields of study and settings, including academia. One of the most imperative aspects to the success of future interdisciplinary work is evaluation of the factors that contribute to interdisciplinarity of team processes and research approaches, as this type of evaluation can highlight conditions which enable teams to work productively together to produce sound interdisciplinary research approaches in order to provide useful information for other similar interdisciplinary endeavors. As part of the project conducted at the California State University Chico, Center for Water and the Environment, an interdisciplinary team formed to develop a research approach to address social and environmental issues of northern California. The team’s interdisciplinary approach was summarized into a proposal which was submitted to the National Science Foundation, Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program in December of 2010. This project report evaluates that overall process and the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary approach.