Understanding Faculty Perspectives of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs

Maya Menon; Marie C. Paretti; Margaret Webb

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 9
Tagged Division: Faculty Development Division (FDD)
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--44537
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/44537
Download Count: 298

Paper Authors

biography

Maya Menon Virginia Tech orcid.org/0000-0003-3515-6614

visit author page

Maya Menon is a PhD candidate in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She completed her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University and graduate degree in Robotics and Automation from Amrita University. Her research focuses on understanding how engineering education can empower young engineers to work toward a sustainable future, including interdisciplinary engineering education and faculty decision-making.

visit author page

biography

Marie C. Paretti Virginia Tech orcid.org/0000-0002-2202-6928

visit author page

Marie C. Paretti is a Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she directs the Virginia Tech Engineering Communications Center (VTECC). Her research focuses on communication, collaboration, and identity in engineering.

visit author page

biography

Margaret Webb Virginia Tech

visit author page

Margaret (Maggie) Webb is a master's and Ph.D. student in sustainable land development (civil engineering) and engineering education, respectively, at Virginia Tech. She graduated with her mechanical engineering degree from Rice University and worked for ExxonMobil as a subsea engineer and as a high school STEM teacher in a Houston charter school before starting grad school. Her research interests include supporting the needs of displaced engineering students, understanding the supports and barriers to educational continuity for engineers in a disaster context, and preparing engineering students interdisciplinarity to address disasters in their work. She works as a graduate research assistant for the Virginia Tech Disaster Resilience and Risk Management interdisciplinary graduate program, as well as for the VT Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies.

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

The need for and value of scholars thinking across boundaries have resulted in a growing movement in interdisciplinary graduate programs. Such programs challenge students and faculty to think beyond their disciplinary expertise and work on complex problems that require perspectives from multiple disciplines. Despite the rise of these interdisciplinary programs, the disciplinary silos that persist in university settings create several structural barriers that hinder interdisciplinary programs from achieving their full potential; these include conflicts in policies, procedures, and budget models across disciplines. While several of these conflicts have been explored by researchers in the early 2000s, the persistence of the challenges coupled with the urgency of interdisciplinary work to address global challenges warrant renewed attention to these issues. In particular, despite the challenges, faculty continue to engage in interdisciplinary graduate education, but limited research has explored what accounts for this engagement. To that end, this paper explores the perspectives of faculty recently facilitating an interdisciplinary graduate certificate program at a large, public land-grant university to understand faculty decisions-making related to interdisciplinary education.

To explore this issue, we use Lattuca and Pollard’s model of faculty decision-making to analyze semi-structured interviews with five faculty members of a current NSF-funded interdisciplinary graduate program. The framework describes the three influences of faculty decision-making: individual, such as values and beliefs; internal, such as departmental culture and supports; and external, such as job markets and national priorities. This framework provides a lens to understand how these influences positively and negatively affected their decisions to facilitate the program.

We find that with six participants, the data was saturated to indicate the limited university-level support given to faculty. Lack of time and recognition of efforts within individual disciplines or departments were consistently reported and reveal the need for incentive structures aligned with interdisciplinary values within academic institutions - a barrier that has remained constant for more than a decade. In contrast, what influenced the faculty to continue in the program was predominately the individual value for the area and the intrinsic motivation to support the success of interdisciplinary graduate students and their research. This dynamic places the onus of curricular change on faculty alone and risks their burnout. The results indicate that, consistent with past findings, faculty need to be better supported through their respective departments and institutions for sustaining interdisciplinary graduate programs, and that additional work is needed to fully understand the role of more indirect factors of academic environments impact faculty decision-making.

Citation
Format

Menon, M., & Paretti, M. C., & Webb, M. (2023, June), Understanding Faculty Perspectives of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44537

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The need for and value of scholars thinking across boundaries have resulted in a growing movement in interdisciplinary graduate programs. Such programs challenge students and faculty to think beyond their disciplinary expertise and work on complex problems that require perspectives from multiple disciplines. Despite the rise of these interdisciplinary programs, the disciplinary silos that persist in university settings create several structural barriers that hinder interdisciplinary programs from achieving their full potential; these include conflicts in policies, procedures, and budget models across disciplines. While several of these conflicts have been explored by researchers in the early 2000s, the persistence of the challenges coupled with the urgency of interdisciplinary work to address global challenges warrant renewed attention to these issues. In particular, despite the challenges, faculty continue to engage in interdisciplinary graduate education, but limited research has explored what accounts for this engagement.  To that end, this paper explores the perspectives of faculty recently facilitating an interdisciplinary graduate certificate program at a large, public land-grant university to understand faculty decisions-making related to interdisciplinary education. 

To explore this issue, we use Lattuca and Pollard’s model of faculty decision-making to analyze semi-structured interviews with five faculty members of a current NSF-funded interdisciplinary graduate program. The framework describes the three influences of faculty decision-making: individual, such as values and beliefs; internal, such as departmental culture and supports; and external, such as job markets and national priorities. This framework provides a lens to understand how these influences positively and negatively affected their decisions to facilitate the program.

We find that with six participants, the data was saturated to indicate the limited university-level support given to faculty. Lack of time and recognition of efforts within individual disciplines or departments were consistently reported and reveal the need for incentive structures aligned with interdisciplinary values within academic institutions - a barrier that has remained constant for more than a decade. In contrast, what influenced the faculty to continue in the program was predominately the individual value for the area and the intrinsic motivation to support the success of interdisciplinary graduate students and their research. This dynamic places the onus of curricular change on faculty alone and risks their burnout. The results indicate that, consistent with past findings, faculty need to be better supported through their respective departments and institutions for sustaining interdisciplinary graduate programs, and that additional work is needed to fully understand the role of more indirect factors of academic environments impact faculty decision-making.

AU  - Maya Menon
AU  - Marie C. Paretti
AU  - Margaret Webb
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Understanding Faculty Perspectives of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/44537
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--44537
ER  -