Community Resilience, Centralized Leadership & Multi-Sectoral
program (TOP) to promote interdisciplinary and new transformative learning models. The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs was awarded a TOP grant in 2018 and is establishing a new curriculum-focused on pandemic preparedness and biosecurity. This effort is already bringing together like-minded faculty and students from political sciences, microbiology, engineering, veterinary sciences, public health, and numerous other disciplines to learn and work together. It is allowing the Scowcroft Institute to train the next generation of pandemic experts and provide leadership for much needed transformational learning models.
3) Provide more grant funding for interdisciplinary research.
Some concern has been raised about the difficulty with establishing a standardized evaluation system for interdisciplinary research, but this challenge can be overcome by creating interdisciplinary review panels. With interdisciplinary panels, portions of publications and projects could be evaluated by experts in those specific areas, which would provide a full picture of the quality and value of the work.
As we discussed in this section, there is bias among reviewers toward single-disciplinary research. This bias makes it difficult for important interdisciplinary projects to get the funding they need. Funding institutions, such as NSF and NIH, should encourage interdisciplinary research by providing grant opportunities that require interdisciplinary teams and projects. This would provide an avenue for funding interdisciplinary research, and it could also serve to encourage researchers who have previously been hesitate, to engage in cross-disciplinary, applied work.
2) Encourage interdisciplinary research in the next generation. The traditional graduate school model often discourages students from pursuing interdisciplinary education and research. Many of the societal challenges today, however, require multi-sectoral solutions, including pandemic preparedness. Faculty must do more to promote interdisciplinary education and research, but the siloed structure of academia inhibits faculty and creates the feeling for students that they will not be able to build a successful career if they cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. While some universities are working to change this, more must be done to encourage faculty to promote, and for students to pursue, interdisciplinary work. Texas A&M University has recognized this problem and initiated an internal Tier-One educational grant
32
Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs