Examining the Integration of Equity and Interdisciplinarity in the Policies of Innovative Graduate Training Programs

The complicated challenges of the 21st century, such as facing climate change and adapting to rapidly changing technology, cannot be answered by individual disciplines; they are simply too complex. Scientists, citizens, and stakeholders from multiple areas must work together to develop innovative ways to solve these challenges. Consequently, there have been a growing number of graduate programs designed to train scientists as interdisciplinary researchers.

At the same time, many universities are working actively to make many graduate programs more equitable for historically marginalized people in STEM. Some research suggests that these two goals (interdisciplinarity and equity) can be linked. One argument is that interdisciplinary science is sometimes seen as having more potential to tackle justice-oriented real-world problems, because it can integrate social science and humanities fields concerned with ethics.

However, research also suggests that interdisciplinary scholars face more barriers to professional success, because universities are often not well set-up for interdisciplinary work—thus, actually practicing as an interdisciplinary scholar may lead to more inequitable outcomes. This project aims to serve the national interest by exploring these assumptions and complexities in programs funded by the National Science Foundation that are intended to train interdisciplinary scholars in equitable ways.

As the grand challenges of the 21st century become more complex, national priorities for STEM education are shifting toward developing interdisciplinary scholars through new graduate training program initiatives. There is a simultaneously call for broadening participation for historically marginalized people in STEM and for creating more equitable education structures.

These two are often implicitly linked, as interdisciplinary ways of knowing are seen as having potential to tackle justice-oriented real-world problems and engage marginalized students in STEM. However, there are also drawbacks, as interdisciplinary scholars face more barriers to professional success, such as having fewer research publications, facing challenges in the tenure and promotion process, and experiencing struggles for identity and recognition, all of which may be amplified when considered within the intersectional experience of marginalized scholars.

Thus, there is a need for a robust examination of these complexities to connect interdisciplinarity and equity. Deepening our understanding of this connection and how it is instantiated within policies and practices is crucial to create educational programs that foster equitable learning environments. This qualitative project will examine the following research questions: (1) How is the connection between interdisciplinarity and equity currently conceptualized in the research literature on STEM graduate training? (2) How do supports or challenges for interdisciplinarity provide leverage (or further obstacles) for equity in interdisciplinary graduate training programs’ policies and structures?

To answer RQ1, a meta-synthesis will identify themes in the current literature body on equity in interdisciplinary training to make recommendations for best practices. These findings will be used to inform the analysis and development of RQ2, in which a policy analysis of interdisciplinary graduate training programs will be conducted through document analysis and interviews with stakeholders, to understand how equitable practices are or are not created through policy and institutional structures, and to understand the experiences of stakeholders within those systems.

The project will build the PI’s capacity in conducting research on equity in STEM and on institutional policies. The project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.