Is Interdisciplinary in Research *Really* Valued?
It’s a brave new world for Assistant Professors, Graduate Students, Post-docs, and grant-seekers these days. Traditional disciplinary boundaries are blurred and, in many cases, disappearing as modern scholarship becomes increasingly collaborative and cooperative. Many would argue that collaboration and interdisciplinary (ID) approaches are unavoidable as academic research expands, adapts, and evolves to remain vital and relevant in an increasingly connected, digitized, and resource-conscious world. Institutions of higher education and agencies that support their research are responding to this sea change to varying degrees. Some of the changes are progressive and positive, but there’s an elephant in the room.
Hiring practices and faculty searches at many institutions of higher education already acknowledge this shift, actively seeking incoming faculty who are multi-disciplinary themselves in their training, teaching, and service interests. For many incoming faculty, the silos that defined training and teaching in the sciences, for example, 15 or 20 twenty years ago have given way to team-based approaches to graduate training, postdoctoral mentoring, teaching, and field and laboratory-based research. Some types of research funding are now, in fact, predicated on the existence of collaboration, and demonstration of the viability and vigor of the collaborative team approach is a critical aspect of succeeding in the application process. These are good things in the sense that they create networks of investigators who provide different and complementary views of a problem, and have great potential for formulating theories and amassing bodies of data that answer important questions and, potentially, speed up the development of solutions to, for example, complex health, environmental, social and political challenges.
Teaching and curriculum development increasingly reflects an ID approach as well. For example, at our institution, humanities, social science, and life and health science faculty are developing new research questions, courses, and curricula that provide true cutting-edge educational and training experiences for our students. Many courses involve community service activities. In addition, teaching and service activities that cross boundaries and mix community engagement with professional and academic activities help to connect faculty with the populations they serve on and beyond the campus. This is all good, right?
Enter the elephant. 
Universities are sending very mixed messages to faculty on where collaborative and ID work fits in their progression through the reappointment, tenure, and promotion (RTP) systems that literally make or break their careers as Professors. Not surprisingly, many institutions of higher education remain behind the curve in reinforcing and rewarding ID scholarship, teaching, and service, in RTP criteria, RTP reviews, and, most importantly, in outcomes of RTP processes. Many universities show that they support and encourage ID research, teaching and scholarship, for example, by providing administrative and financial support for such activities through internal grants and centers. When the time comes for RTP reviews, however, faculty engaged in significant amounts of collaborative and ID work find themselves in the position of essentially defending their activities. This is because many existing RTP criteria are designed for traditional fields as they were defined at the first half of the last century in terms of publication venues that are valued and the manner in which external reviewers are chosen. ID and collaborative work, especially research, are seen as an aberration that requires justification, additional documentation, and assurance that the collaborative or ID approach was entirely necessary in for the activity in question. Indeed, the degree to which this message is unequivocally delivered varies somewhat, but as a general rule, a Google search of web-accessible RTP criteria for many science departments and other units that are not explicitly ID in nature, returns RTP criteria that require significant justification of ID work. Examples of the types of validation required for multi-authored and ID work include but are not limited to:
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detailed descriptions of the individual contributions of all collaborators on a multi-authored or ID project
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explicit justification of why a collaboration or ID approach was necessary for a project
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description of the candidate’s individual research, funding, or scholarship, and
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assurance that ID or collaborative work does not interfere with the candidate’s individual activities
Clearly, part of the purpose of these guidelines is to assure that candidates are, in fact, making substantial and relevant contributions in research and scholarship, and when more than one individual is involved in a research or teaching endeavor, there can be concern that participation and responsibility for the project is not spread equally. It could be argued, however, that it may be possible to measure this variable in a more supportive, positive, and meaningful way. For example, the definitions of contributions to the field can be expanded beyond the traditional disciplinary divisions and the journals associated with them for generations. Instead, equal weight can be given to relatively new but high quality venues dedicated to ID research. Additionally, changes in the manner in which external reviewers are chosen needs to occur. Departments should make attempts to seek out respective scholars actively engaged in ID work themselves, even if these individuals are housed outside of traditional department homes in other institutions. Finally, the development of innovative ID courses that require team teaching to bring in multiple perspectives should be rewarded rather than being viewed as an attempt by the candidate to reduce their teaching load by half a course a year.
Importantly, valuing ID and collaborative work, even, and perhaps especially, among pre-tenure faculty, has garnered significant support from several respected groups in higher education, supporting the development of specific RTP policies and review criteria that equal value to ID, collaborative, and solitary publications and work, rather than requiring special justification of non-solitary activities. This sentiment is well-articulated in a 2005 National Research Council report on fostering “independence” in emerging scientists:
“An “independent investigator” is one who enjoys independence of thought—the freedom to define the problem of interest and/or to choose or develop the best strategies and approaches to address that problem. Under this definition, an independent scientist may work alone, as the intellectual leader of a research group, or as a member of a consortium of investigators each contributing distinct expertise. Specifically, we do not intend “independence” to mean necessarily “isolated” or “solitary,” or to imply “self-sustaining” or “separately funded.”- (Bridges to Independence: Fostering the Independence of New Investigators in Biomedical Research, National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005)
This definition is fundamentally different than the definition of independence that is used in many RTP documents which are based on the way we conducted research 20+ years ago. It is certainly different from the definition used, formally and informally, by review committees in many universities. The traditional definition is of a solitary, funded, scholar, recognized in his or her own rite as a contributor to the discipline. ID and collaborative work are discouraged, at least in the early career phases, in this definition, with the admonition that for tenure, one “has to prove one’s independence”. Once tenure has been attained, collaborations and ID work become more acceptable, in accord with the mandate to tenured faculty members to increase their reputations, influence, and notoriety in preparation for promotion to Full Professor. In the days when collaboration meant considerable travel, working “for” another faculty member on a project for which they are funded, or addressing a research question from a risky or thoroughly untested standpoint, this definition made more sense. It could be argued that in a world without the digital, data, and real-time communication and knowledge access capabilities of today, engaging in collaboration or an ID project was much riskier, and had the real possibility of diverting a pre-tenure faculty member’s attention, resources, and focus. Embarking on such a project under such circumstances might, in fact, have been indicative of a lack of judgment on the candidate’s part, which, in the case of a pre-tenure review, would not bode well for an upcoming tenure decision.
Today, however, the world is a very different place, and it is entirely possible for faculty to collaborate, cross disciplines and time-zones, and get the on-demand data and communication they need to develop highly functional, innovative, and well-grounded collaborative and ID projects. Doing this successfully can be a career-building centerpiece for some of our most innovative, committed, and promising faculty, a fact that has been explicitly recognized by major research funders including NIH and NSF. As institutions, we strive to recruit the brightest, most promising faculty, many of whom are doing wonderful ID work. It’s time for us to meet them halfway by creating RTP criteria and systems that reward this new definition of independence.
Tags: coaching, faculty, interdisciplinary, tenure and promotion