What follows is a lengthy exposition on your query about interdisciplinary research. It's a topic that has begun to occupy as much of my mind and time as any of my research projects. Here are State there are relatively few barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration. We have a history of facilitating this kind of approach and I'll spell out how below. Nonetheless, there are barriers, some past and some still in effect, and I'll outline those, too. I've been invited to visit about a half-dozen institutions in the past 18-24 months expressly to advise on how to establish and promote interdisciplinary programs, and how to deal with pitfalls. I'll also send you a news article from The Scientist that attempted to answer your questions specifically a couple of years ago. Working across disciplines at PSU 1. Programs in place. We have several PhD programs called "Interdepartmental Graduate Programs" (IDGPs), for example in Ecology, Plant Physiology, Genetics, and Animal Physiology. The students' degrees take the name of the program, and the faculty is drawn from any department. The programs offer their own courses and use existing courses in departments to make up their unique curricula. Faculty participate voluntarily, without any particular compensation on the part of their home departments. In fact, the Programs don't have their own assistantships, so grad student support comes from home depts of participating faculty. These programs facilitate interdiscplinary research mainly by making connections among the faculty, making them aware on each other via joint participation in program activities (commitees, student advising, seminars, etc.). It's also incredibly easy to establish a "center" for anything you want here, even if it's er, intangible. Just as long as it doesn't cost money up front. 2. We have a new "Life Sciences Consortium" that operates similarly to the IDGPs, but has invented about a dozen less traditional graduate programs (e.g., one I founded, "Ecological and Molecular Plant Physiology"). It does offer grad student support, and the dozen degree programs share curricular elements (e.g., science ethics courses, a problem-based learning approach). These are intended to be radical, and some do have peculiar curricula, but some (like EMPP) are really elaborations on an existing theme (Plant Physiology). Again, faculty volunteer participation, and are recruited from a wide range of departments (14 for EMPP). These are intended to formalize and continue the approaches pioneered in our training grants.... As an example of spinoff results, I'm serving on search committees for a molecular plant evolutionary biologist (Biology Dept) and a molecular plant pathologist (Plant Path dept), which I would not have done before when I was invisible in the Entomology Dept. The committee members are now colleagues and accessible to me for research collaboration (as long as I'm not a goof on their committees!). 3. We have been very successful with training grants, especially in the plant sciences. We now have 3 or 4, most of which have nearly identical faculties. These REQUIRE research and advising collaboration among faculty (e.g., two or more advisors from different subdisciplines for each student). Participation is again voluntary, but here the faculty see tangible rewards: student support, sometimes supply and equipment money, postdocs. As co-PI on one of these, I've doled out nearly $200,000 in equipment support to participating labs, and still have $95,000 to pass around. That gets faculty participation! NSF REQUIRES multisciplinary approaches for most training grants. 4. There are few paper barriers to collaboration among departments or colleges. I just submitted a proposal to NSF with a colleague from the College of Engineering on it as Co-PI and the only additional burden of this was visiting the Engineering Dean's office for a signature. I've never encountered difficulty with this, even though the indirect cost will go primarily or entirely to one department (the lead PI's). We even decide who will be lead PI on the basis of who gets the best deal on indirect cost return, etc. For example, my college (Ag) waves all grad student tuition obtained on a grant and returns it to the PI for research, which is a deal most other colleges here can't beat. 5. Largely as historical accident, we've had a series of Grad School Deans and Vice Presidents for Research who value interdisciplinary work. Thus they tend to go to bat for such efforts. There's nothing like that kind of help when you need it. Schmoozing with them is important to success (our current VP for Research was originally the dean overseeing the IDGPs) 6. Money talks here. They would NEVER tell you to send the money back, no matter how you got it (almost). Hence, if you believe in the value of interdisciplinary approaches, and can convince reviewers, you can overcome suspicion by making it work. Our success with interdisciplinary training grants forced the XSU administration to pay attention, and the new LSC initiative is intended to continue the (obviously successful,in their terms) trend. XSU has committed $10 million and 50 new faculty lines to new interdisciplinary initiatives in the biological sciences. I can't emphasize enough the importance of leading the way with successful granting. Barriers, here and elsewhere 1. Insecurity. Most scientists - even those who say otherwise - feel safer keeping their heads down and sticking to the narrow approach that has made them successful. It is INCREDIBLY difficult to put together a critical mass of people who agree with your own statement about the value of interdisciplinarity. As a special workshop convened by NSF last year found (I can send you our report), interdisciplinarity is an attitude or a culture more than a scientific method or approach. It's not the majority one. It's not even a very popular one, believe me. Most people are too risk-aversive to try it out. I find that I can only get such people into it by guaranteeing them something tangible - a postdoc, equipment, whatever - so they can see participation as having a sure payoff now or in the future (when they go back to their old ways and use their new machine). We are having a TERRIBLE time recruiting postdocs to our training grants because we demand trying new approaches and it's already too late to convince a new PhD of the value of this. I have been shocked and disappointed to find this out. 2, Greed. Related to the above, participation of even great people is hard to get unless you give them something tangible. Successful people ask "why should I do extra work for some philosophical reason, when I'm doing fine now?" This is especially true of those who see themselves as interdisciplinary already. I find that the majority of 'participants' only really get into it if they think they'll get something. Long experience has taught me to count on a core of people who are committed, and to treat the others as valuable resources I'll have to pay for in some way. Another disappointment in human nature. 3. Time. Related to the above, for many participants the question "why do more?" is a valid one. Successful people are often extremely busy. Even if committed to an idea, we all have tough choices to make. This makes it really difficult to sign up that member of the National Academy who'd draw better students for everyone or look great on a proposal. Our training grants and IDGPs add to my teaching load, doubling it much of the time. Not everyone has the freedom willingness to slice investment so many ways. My publication rate has dropped WAY off since I got into program development. But everything must be accomplished initially by faculty inititiative and it can eat you alive. You can't trust even supportive administrators to know what to do ("Power makes stupid" - Neitzsche). 4. Territoriality. In our institution, deans are extremely powerful. Department heads are appointed by the deans, and work for them. Since there are no formal payback agreements, these administrators must be willing to share their faculty's time and their physical resources if interdisciplinary programs are to exist. They don't particularly like this; they are extremely protective of their territories because they fear losing ground. Their mindset is to resist allowing their faculty to spend time on 'outside' activities. This is a valid point for some faculty or resources, not for all (see 'Time' above). Since deans and dept heads have veto power over most interdisciplinary activities, they are our major hurdle. I am constantly promoting, preaching, proselytizing, demonstrating...the value of interdisciplinary approaches. Fortunately, we recently acquired a new university President who agrees, so the "party line" (to which middle administrators must be loyal) is on my side for now. Our college STILL tells incoming faculty not to collaborate (much) until they get tenure, and STILL evaluates progress on the basis of first- and sole- authored products. Interdisciplinarity and collaboration are attitudes that are not held by the majority. Yesterday, my training grant Co-PI discovered that the Biology Dept. was letting researchers from other depts use their greenhouses. She was angry, because she needs better/more space and figured Biology would never let her have any (she's in Plant Pathology, different college). Territories! 5. Institutional structure. Related to territories... Some institutions have arcane, difficult-to-negotiate paper trails for granting across units. Sharing indirect costs is a big issue for some. I just visited XX, where I learned that the PI's department receives the great majority of a grant's indirect cost recovery, so that grants are seen as supporting the department's efforts. At State, my department gets almost none of my overhead, and because I have many grants, my department head sees me as a BURDEN on the department! He constantly complains that I create secretarial work, etc. etc., and so I've instituted the policy of writing many dept'l costs into grants. CRAZY! In this, he's bucking the higher administration's view that grants are good (they get 90% of the overhead), so he's between a rock and a hard place. Naturally, he's concerned about where the money is going. At some institutions, you have to negotiate some kind of split of overhead return among participating depts. Some institutions can't figure out how to deal with promotion and tenure for people who collaborate or work in more than one field. When I got tenure, I had to provide a detailed explanation of authorship for each of my publications, as though my contribution were worth less because others had worked with me. The value of my grants is divided by the number of PIs when my college is figuring out how much I've brought in. These kinds of structural barriers work against interdisciplinarity. The personal side. I'm presently uncertain whether it's worth developing institutional structures to promote interdisciplinarity, or whether the smart thing to do is to let it become obviously ascendent so even deans get the point. I have no trouble developing interdisciplinary projects, obtaining collaborators, or training my students to be interdisciplinary. I really really believe that the old academic discipline structure is no longer relevant to good science (count the number of NAS members who work with insects AND are in Entomology departments...). But the costs of altering institutions are great, especially if you don't want to go into administration. The smarter thing might be to set as powerful an example as possible, with major research (and training?) success, publicizing the interdisciplinary nature of it, and letting it sink in. I mentioned that my publication rate has suffered. I have gotten tangible benefits from program development, e.g., stuff and students from the training grants, improved student applicants for the new programs, etc. BUT my department (entomology) considers me a 'traitor'. I spend "too much time outside the department" pursuing goals that "aren't entomological" and are "intended to benefit myself, not my department". My dept. head told me that I'm not supportive enough of my entomology colleagues, and that I'm an "ivory tower academic, and there's no place for that here". So, I'm presently looking for places that want an ivory tower academic who thinks that old disciplinary boundaries are doomed and has been successful in conventional terms via this unconventional approach. Hope this helps. ------------------------------ David, I might point out that Western Michigan has just instituted a multidisciplinary Environmenal Sciences program (or something like that), and that Tulane is struggling against institutional barriers to do the same. David Karowe at the former, and Julie Whitbeck at the latter can give details, I'm sure. Yale, the Univ. of Illinois, and a few others "solved" this problem by subdividing units further, separating "organismal" from "biochemical/ molecular" approaches in different departments or colleges or whatever. That's really ignorant, I think. ------------------------------ I've been meaning to respond to your inquiry of a few days ago regarding interdisciplinary research. But, with finals and my departure for Costa Rica this evening I haven't been able to give the thought to my reply that I would like. It's a topic that I think about a lot given that I've spent the past two years in an interdisciplinary department, Environmental Studies at UCSC. Having done my degrees in biology departments I had no idea how complicated interdisciplinary was, particularly from the standpoint of graduate and undergraduate education. I presume that your inquiry is at least partially motivated by the conservation biology program at University of Maryland. It takes a lot more than incentives to make it work. At any rate, I will write a detailed reply while I'm in the field and have more time to think. I would be interested to hear what others have to say. Despite working with some great people who are very committed to interdisciplinary work, we have a long way to go.