Abstract
Interdisciplinarity is heralded as a relatively new educational and research paradigm that can effectively address complex problems at disciplinary boundaries. Yet little is known about the extent to which interdisciplinarity has penetrated higher education, nor about how students and program administrators view its usefulness. Through a case study of one field, urban planning, we assessed the extent to which graduate students and program administrators understand and support interdisciplinarity in the departments. We also assessed the extent to which specific factors might affect levels of support. Our survey results suggest differing attitudes between students and administrators and diverse opinions as to whether interdisciplinarity provides a practicable approach to addressing societal challenges. We offer a model for fostering interdisciplinarity and developing empirical evaluations of programs.
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Acknowledgements
The research was supported by a graduate research assistantship by Portland State University. We also wish to thank the graduate students and chairs who participated in our survey, and those in Portland State University’s Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (NSF #0966376) who provided inspiration for developing empirical assessments of interdisciplinary approaches to graduate education.
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Shandas, V., Brown, S.E. An Empirical Assessment of Interdisciplinarity: Perspectives from Graduate Students and Program Administrators. Innov High Educ 41, 411–423 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-016-9362-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-016-9362-y