Oceanography and Interdisciplinary Education: Fostering Fluidity

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Oceanography and Interdisciplinary
EducationFostering Fluidity

• Stephanie Pfirman
• Barnard College
• Environmental Science Department

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• If you think of disciplines as organs, true
  interdisciplinarity
• is something like blood.
• It flows. It is a liquid. It is not contained.
• There is no inside and outside.
• Alice Gottlieb, professor of medicine and
  director, Clinical Research Center at the Robert
  Wood Johnson, Medical School
• from Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research,
  2004, Committee on Science, Engineering, and
  Public Policy (COSEPUP) Convocation

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Ocean Circulation
Animation by Jack Cook
http//www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/
abruptclimate_joyce_keigwin.html
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OceanographyMotive and Opportunity

• Global system
• Not isolated circulation/recirculation with
  memory
• Local analysis, global implications, and vice
  versa
• Observations linked with models, and vice versa
• Interdisciplinary exposure
• Biological, physical, chemical, geological
• Problem-based

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Oceanography, cont

• Sea going experience common logistical platform
• Live and work together
• Other fields on board, and are in fact required
  to interpret data

                                                  
                                                  
      Captain A.D. Colburn, right, crew member
Bill Dunn, and others wield their ice mallets on
Knorr's foredeck during the Labrador Sea cruise.
(Photo by George Tupper, WHOI)
At the heart of interdisciplinarity is
communicationthe conversations, connections, and
combinations that bring new insights to virtually
every kind of scientist and engineer. COSEPUP
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Interdisciplinarity

• Common complex problem
• Culture of bringing disciplines together to solve
  it
• Often place based
• Logistics
• Common access to data, resources, language,
  methodology
• Frequent face-to-face interaction
• Shared experiences
• Learning to trust each other through reliable
  participation

• Individual characteristics
• Appreciation for value of other fields -- open to
  new ideas
• Able to transfer from one context to another
• Collaborative
• Exploratory
• Institutional characteristics
• Reward and promotion structure
• Career trajectory
• Peer and top down support

e.g. Rhoten 2004
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Interdisciplinarity and Academia
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COSEPUP Are there impediments to IDR at your
current institution?
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Perceived Risk to Careers

• Graduate Students
• Reported that interdisciplinary activities have
  adverse effects on their careers, but they are
  convinced of its value
• Interdisciplinary Researchers
• About 30 percent reported that their
  interdisciplinary affiliations had not helped or
  had hindered their careers

Research by Rhoten on Biocomplexity Awardees
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Joint-Appointment, Junior, Tenure-Track Hires

• Even if the chairs are committed and all
  agreements are put in writing, what happens to
  the junior hire when the chairs rotate off?
• Burden on junior hire to figure out how the units
  will get along
• When the hire is sponsored by another source
  (grant, center, or co-funded by another
  department) the department does not feel
  responsible for them in the way that they do when
  they have to decide whether or not to invest
  their resources into this person from the outset
• If they were really good enough, they would have
  been hired the regular way

You dont adopt a child to sort through whether
or not you want a marriage Art Small, III
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Women, Minorities and InterdisciplinaryPromise
and Peril
A study by the Research Assessment Group in the
United Kingdom found a striking gender difference
at the high end in the number of intersecting
research fields http//www.evaluation.co.uk/librar
y/id/gender.htm

• Students
• Women are more likely to major in Environmental
  Science and Environmental Studies
• Researchers
• Women are more likely to work on highly
  interdisciplinary research at least in the UK
• Faculty
• Are told to be more interdisciplinary and add
  topics with more societal relevance to attract
  and retain women and minorities

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Characteristics for Disciplinary vs.
Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Science?

• Disciplinary
• Quantitative
• Tough
• Self-driven
• Independent
• Assertive
• Self-promoting, take credit for successes
• Careerist
• Risky science within the mainstream/consensus
  science
• Focused, task oriented
• Quick to publish, get ideas out
• Productive
• Competitive
• Command-and-control leadership (e.g. lab
  hierarchy)

• Collaborative, Interdisciplinary
• Relational, qualitative
• Friendly, nice
• Concerned about others and their welfare
• Helping
• Socially sensitive, listening
• Communal
• Less careerist
• Interdisciplinary science
• Multitasking
• Synthetic
• Not competitive
• Consensus oriented, democratic leadership

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What Can We Do?
Pfirman et al., Chronicle Feb 11

• Make departmental and review structures more
  fluid, less dependent on disciplinary approval
• Align rewards, evaluation promotion with
  interdisciplinary goals
• Develop new procedures for handling
  interdisciplinary scholars
• When asked Do you have the process for
  interdisciplinary hires and promotion codified?
  16 of the Council of Environmental Deans and
  Directors responses were yes, and another 21
  said that codification is underway (out of 19
  responses)
• FAQ Recognize and confront systemic issues so
  that the review committee does not see this
  particular candidate as weak, just because these
  issues are raised

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Can we also educate our colleagues to be more
like oceanographers?
Live and learn together, from each other, about
the place that you are moving through
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COSEPUP If you could recommend one action that
educators could take that would best facilitate
interdisciplinary research, what action would
that be?
Motive and Opportunity?
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River Summer 2005Environmental Consortium of
Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities

• 36 volunteers participated
• 15 Teachers Learners
• 16 Teachers only
• 12 Learners only
• 22 Institutions
• Bard College NASA-GISS
• Barnard College Pace University
• Colgate University Polytechnic University
• College of Mount Saint Vincent Rensselaer
  Polytechnic Institute
• Darrin Freshwater Institute Rivers and
  Estuaries Center
• Fordham University Riverside Park Fund
• Hamilton College Sarah Lawrence college
• Institute of Ecosystem Studies SUNY-Ulster
• Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory The College of
  New Rochelle
• Manhattan College The College of Saint Rose
• Marist College Vassar College

Led by Stephanie Pfirman WHOI/MIT 1985, Tim Kenna
WHOI/MIT 2001, and John Cronin, Pace Academy for
the Environment
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Multi-disciplinary teams of professors worked
together in 2005 to create interdisciplinary
programs for 2006

• Watershed framework
• State-of-the-art pedagogy
• Environmental sampling
• Salt front movement and estuarine circulation
• Sediment coring and grab samples
• Plankton and fish tows
• Writing from place as an articulating and
  observing tool
• Drawing as an integrating theme and observing tool

Liz Kujawinski MIT/WHOI 2000
Supported by the Teagle Foundation
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Disciplinary Contributions

• Science (48)
• Geoscience
• Ecology
• Geography
• Humanities (30)
• Art
• History
• Anthropology
• Law
• Built Environment (22)
• Economics
• Engineering

Researchers and faculty members desiring to work
on interdisciplinary research, education, and
training projects should immerse themselves in
the languages, cultures, and knowledge of their
collaborators in IDR. COSEPUP
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Upper Hudson Leg

• Seeing the Catskills through the Hudson River
  School
• Elizabeth Hutchinson, Barnard College
• Environmental Compliance and Enforcement
• Lee Paddock, Pace University
• Contaminants and Zebra Mussels
• Sandra Neirzwicki-Bauer, RPI
• Writing the Hudson
• Susan Fox-Rogers, Bard
• Fisheries Biology
• Brian Jenson, The College of Saint Rose
• The New Political Economy of the Hudson River
  Valley
• Ted Eismeier, Hamilton College
• CTD Sampling
• Tim Kenna, LDEO

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Hudson River School of Painting
Above Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, Biology, RPI
Above Barnard Art Historian Elizabeth Hutchinson
making a camera lucida at the head of
Katerskill Falls, a site favored by Hudson River
School painters. Lee Paddock, Pace Law School
(behind) and Ted Eismer, Hamilton College
Political Science (to the right), try their hand
at sketching.
http//www.masterworksartgallery.com/Cole-Thomas/C
ole-Thomas-Falls-of-Kaaterskill.html
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Filtering, Seining, Grab Samples, Otter Trawls
Disciplines have discovered common interests,
such as how to relate wholes to parts, macro
processes to micro behavior, and global to
local. COSEPUP
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Opportunities for WHOI

• Address faculty in the middle
• Leveraging and sustained impact of teaching the
  professors
• Exposure to new ideas and resources
• Change the curriculum
• Foster an interdisciplinary cadre
• Elevate standing and understanding of
  science-based interdisciplinary education and
  research
• Change the culture
• Will lead to change in structure, hopefully