Shamir, M., & Hutchinson, S., & Hock, G., & Hansen, R., & Aguilar, J., & Hendricks, N., & Parameswaran, P., & Sanderson, M., & Cors, R., & Derby, M. (2022, August), Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40956

\bibitem{asee_peer_40956}
  Shamir, M., \& Hutchinson, S., \& Hock, G., \& Hansen, R., \& Aguilar, J., \& Hendricks, N., \& Parameswaran, P., \& Sanderson, M., \& Cors, R., \& Derby, M. (2022, August), \emph{Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--40956

Mirit Shamir, Stacy Hutchinson, Gaea Hock, Ryan Hansen, Jonathan Aguilar, Nathan Hendricks, Prathap Parameswaran, Matthew Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, and Melanie Derby.  "Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/40956 Internet.  02 Jun, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_40956}
  Mirit Shamir, Stacy Hutchinson, Gaea Hock, Ryan Hansen, Jonathan Aguilar, Nathan Hendricks, Prathap Parameswaran, Matthew Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, and Melanie Derby.
  "Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/40956 Internet.  02 Jun, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_40956
author = "Mirit Shamir, Stacy Hutchinson, Gaea Hock, Ryan Hansen, Jonathan Aguilar, Nathan Hendricks, Prathap Parameswaran, Matthew Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, and Melanie Derby"
title = "Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/40956}
number = {10.18260/1-2--40956}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Compared to undergraduate capstone courses, there are limited discussions about interdisciplinary
capstone requirements, structures, challenges, and experiences for graduate students. This paper
will detail the interdisciplinary NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Capstone course structure that
can be beneficial to the implementation of an interdisciplinary capstone course at the graduate
level. The NRT capstone is a two-credit course, and part of the NRT program at our university.
The NRT prepares master’s and doctoral students from engineering and social sciences to solve
the grand challenges of creating resilient food, energy, and water (FEW) systems in rural
communities. Resilience/sustainability problems are complex and often require professionals with
different expertise and backgrounds to work as a team to generate an emergent solution; thus, an
interdisciplinary curriculum provides students with the skills needed to work in an interdisciplinary
environment.

The NRT Capstone Course is a project-based, cross-listed course that has been developed and cotaught
by faculty from the Colleges of Engineering, Agriculture, and Arts and Sciences at our
university. The NRT Capstone curriculum builds on knowledge students gained from a
prerequisite interdisciplinary course about system thinking, called Integrated FEW Systems. In the
capstone, students work on an interdisciplinary team based on their research interests. Teams are
formed with students from at least two disciplines. In spring 2021, we had three teams, and each
team was comprised of five or six M.S. and/or Ph.D. students.

The course format, team teaching strategies, and grading structures encouraged an interdisciplinary
approach to investigating their research question(s). Students attended faculty-guided lectures
designed to provide training in communication, team collaboration, research, and final research
product preparation. Course grades were project-based and included individual assignments and
team assignments. Student teams were charged with writing an interdisciplinary conference or
journal article. Teams developed an outline, and received written and verbal feedback from faculty
after submission, identified an appropriate target journal, and wrote a draft research paper. At least
two faculty members served as mentors to each team. To complement the teamwork, students
individually wrote a literature review relevant to the interdisciplinary research topic. Teams
incorporated the individual literature reviews into the team research paper. Student teams also met
for 50-minute workdays every other week where they collaborated with their team members on
the final research product. Teams presented their final research products during the course’s final
exam block; presentations were in person, masked and distanced, with some faculty attending
virtually.

The products of the first NRT Capstone class, taught in spring 2021, included one team’s
interdisciplinary journal paper, recently published in a Frontiers journal. Following the course,
another team is working on finalizing their paper to be submitted to a different Frontiers journal.
The third team is restructuring its research findings to present their outcomes and is a work in
progress. Feedback through an end-of-course survey highlighted that what students valued most
about their Capstone Course experience was real, hands-on interdisciplinary teamwork. Their
feedback also provided ideas for fine-tuning future course activities.
AU  - Mirit Shamir
AU  - Stacy Hutchinson
AU  - Gaea Hock
AU  - Ryan Hansen
AU  - Jonathan Aguilar
AU  - Nathan Hendricks
AU  - Prathap Parameswaran
AU  - Matthew Sanderson
AU  - Rebecca Cors
AU  - Melanie Derby
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Development of a graduate-level capstone course for interdisciplinary researchers: design approaches and lessons learned
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/40956
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--40956
ER  -