Description: Convergence has been at the heart of recent efforts to encourage crossdisciplinary synthesis within several programs funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The Growing Convergence Research (GCR) program, in particular, encourages investigators to “intentionally bring together their research team and develop a convergent culture of discovery and communication,” noting this as key to success (GCR program page, 2024). In this webinar we will explore “convergence culture” through findings from a pilot study aimed at understanding how awardees conceptualize and operationalize convergence in their projects. This two-stage study involved interviews with investigators from awarded NSF GCR projects (2020-2023), followed by a survey. Interviews centered on four themes: 1) how investigators see their project as convergence research, 2) what is being done to create the conditions needed to support convergence (practices and processes), 3) how convergence is being measured, and 4) what is needed for a convergence research project and team to be successful. The survey utilized findings from the interviews and adapted existing measures to examine and assess the collaborative processes involved in convergence research and participant attitudes toward convergence research. This study was part of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) Center’s work with the GCR Program (NSF Award #2119916) conducting structured dialogue-based workshops with newly funded GCR teams.

Speaker: Marisa A. Rinkus - Michigan State University

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Description: This panel will explore the challenges of validly and reliably measuring the impact of convergence research on graduate students. Panelists will consider what defines research convergence, how to measure the impact of convergence research, and areas for future research in the assessment of convergence research environments.

Speakers:

• M. Gail Jones - North Carolina State University

• Daniel Laxman - Arizona State University

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Description: What system factors set team science up for success? What factors, if left to chance, can jeopardize the effectiveness and outcomes of collaborative teams? These questions have fueled Rebecca's passion and inspired her research, teaching, and service over many years. In the seminar, she will describe five key system factors that support collaboration along with a comprehensive framework that she employs to: 1) evaluate overall project readiness for team science; 2) cultivate conditions for generative, productive, and fun team-based cycles of inquiry; and 3) to assess the relationship between collaboration, project outputs, and the attainment of long-term desired outcomes. Seminar participants will have an opportunity to make sense of the materials and ideas with one another, and to brainstorm how these approaches might be tailored to support the work that they do in their own unique setting. The seminar will include case examples that demonstrate how the factors and framework can be used to study the process and effects of collaboration in a range of contexts, including K12 education, and the health, human, and social service sectors. Rebecca is eager to learn from you, and to hear how you think about fostering a thriving environment for team science!

Speaker: Rebecca Woodland - University of Massachusetts-Amherst

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Description: Convergence Research (CR) is gaining prominence as a research, development, and innovation strategy to address research and societal challenges. However, there are many questions regarding what defines research as “convergent” and how its success is assessed in terms of implementation and outcomes. This webinar presents what we learned about CR through an exploratory study conducted in 2020-2021. We discuss what the literature and practitioners say about CR regarding 1) What it is, 2) How it is practiced, 3) What we need to understand it better, and 4) How to define and assess success. Using data collected through a combination of methods—literature reviews, bibliometrics, and interviews—we offer a definition that highlights the unique features of CR as a complex, multi-level system-of-systems that has emerged from and merged extant research traditions, specifically traditions involving the subsystems of collaboration, inquiry, and context.  We use insights from this scan to identify paths for empirical exploration of how CR functions at the individual, team, and institutional levels. Most critically, we raise questions about potential criteria for determining the success of what has been accomplished. We end with audience participation in discussing the relevance of our findings for the INTEREACH Community.

Speakers:

• Joy Frechtling - Westat

• Lisa Christen Gajary - Caspian Strategy & Analytics, LLC and The Ohio State University

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Description: Team Science Professionals (TSP)—educators, scholars, and practitioners of Team Science—currently lack a clearly defined training and career pathway. This webinar will focus on the TSP Digital Badge Initiative, an effort by the newly formed Association for Clinical & Translational Science (ACTS) TSP Special Interest Group to provide one such pathway by establishing the first national credential in Team Science. This national credential will include trainings and interventions that are tied to existing Team Science competency frameworks, allowing for dissemination of the latest evidence-based practices in Team Science. There are also plans to incorporate a mentorship model, where mentors meet with aspiring professionals to review their portfolio of materials, ideally fostering new collaborations for TSP across the Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium. As we are still in the early days of this Digital Badge Initiative, we look forward to hearing suggestions and ideas from the broader INTEREACH community.

Presenter

• Patrick Kelly - University of Wisconsin - Madison

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Description: This month's panel will highlight two European perspectives on professional development for Arrows and the development - and recognition - of careers in interdisciplinary integration. Our panelists will share personal journeys, institutional support examples, and insights into challenges and opportunities in formalizing integrator roles. 

Panelists

• Anne Salmi - University of Oulu, Finland

• Stephanie Briers - ETH Zurich

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Description: Research to address complex societal issues requires teams of people with a variety of skills, expertise, and ways of knowing to work in collaboration with one another. Courses and programs are emerging across the globe to foster the knowledge required to connect people and ideas, convene teams to address complex problems, and converge around critical challenges. This panel will present three different efforts to develop collaboration skills in the classroom that are needed for effective team research engagement while also addressing employers’ most sought-after employee competency requirements. Panelists will discuss specific examples of both undergraduate and graduate classes, participate in a self-moderated panel discussion, and foster a broader conversation with session participants.

We encourage participants to bring their own tools, resources and ideas to discuss with the group so we can create a folder of shared resources.

Panelists

• Vicky Klima - Appalachian State University

• Katie Plaisance - University of Waterloo

• Pips Veazey - University of Maine

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Description: This month’s panelists will discuss their experiences as postdocs at an NSF-funded convergence research center, the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability Center (STEPS Center). They will begin with a brief overview of how their previous experiences with interdisciplinary research shaped their interest in and capacity for conducting convergence research. The presentation will focus on describing a set of shared challenges as well as the benefits of engaging in “arrow” work in this context. They will conclude with an open discussion with seminar attendees on suggested best practices and potential career paths for convergence postdocs.

Panelists:

• Kimberly Bourne, Appalachian State University,

• Alison Deviney, North Carolina State University

• Ashton Merck, North Carolina State University

Description: According to an article in Inside Higher Ed, the term "alt-ac" was coined in 2010 and has been used in a variety of contexts to describe different positions across academic institutions.  What does alt-ac mean for professional Arrow careers outside of academia?  The first part of this panel will provide a brief overview of how "alt-ac" positions have been framed in various contexts.  Then, each panelist will describe organizations they have created (two businesses and one non-profit), the conditions that gave rise to those organizations, what they do, and how they have changed over time.  The session will include time for questions and discussion of the myriad of fulfilling Arrow roles outside academic contexts.

Panelists

• Anne Heberger Marino - Lean-to Collaborations

• Hannah Love - Divergent Science

• Kennan Salinero - ReImagine Science

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Description: In this panel we describe our experiences as traditional tenure-track faculty members pursuing transdisciplinary team-based research.  We discuss some of the common themes experienced in these types of positions including:  the promises and perils of joint appointments; dealing with academic branding while having an interdisciplinary degree; interdisciplinary departments or research centers as academic homes; and being transdisciplinary in a discipline-based department.

Panelists

• Jeni Cross - Colorado State University

• Stephen Fiore - University of Central Florida

• Holly Hapke - University of California - Irvine

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Description: In this installment of our series, we look at Arrows in Academia, focusing on roles outside of traditional tenure track positions, especially those that are embedded in - and that function to - enable effective transdisciplinary team-based research. Our four panelists will describe their roles as Arrows in Academia and the career trajectories that led them there, along with how their roles came into being at their respective institutions.

Panelists

• Gemma Jiang - Colorado State University

• Marisa Rinkus - Michigan State University

• Stephanie E. Vasko - Michigan State University

• Kristine Glauber - Duke University

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Description: What would it mean if the emerging integration profession fostered by INTEREACH was based on an academic discipline or field? The session will start with a short pre-recorded talk by Professor Gabriele Bammer describing Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) as such a discipline. Following this, two panelists, Dr. Christine Hendren and Dr. Bethany Laursen – who both use i2S to describe what they do – will provide their perspectives and how they have used i2S in “Being the Arrow” and developing their careers.

Presenter & Panelists:

• Gabriele Bammer - Australian National University

• Bethany Laursen - University of Michigan

• Christine Ogilvie Hendren - Appalachian State University

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Description: We kick off the “I want to be a professional Arrow” series by looking back to where we started as a community of practice, exploring the current interests and needs of our growing community, and introducing our intentions for the coming year. This will be a great opportunity for those new to INTEREACH to learn about its history and connect with others in the community, and those who are seasoned members of the CoP will have the chance to explore new opportunities within our growing community.  

Hosts: The INTEREACH Leadership Team (Christine Hendren, Appalachian State University and Kristine Glauber & Amalia Turner, Duke University)

Description: Part 1 in our Series Surfacing and Spanning in Collaborative Knowledge Making: Too often scholars get stuck in the practices of their disciplines and (a) integrate others' results into the literature reviews, or (b) compare or comment on differences in the discussion. What other types linking to or linking back could be possible? The obvious one is a cross-disciplinary literature review. What other ways can scholars build on, or integrate findings. Can we imagine, create, and test new data analytical practices? Stepping outside of how research is traditionally done may generate new pathways of understanding. 

Speaker: Joann Keyton - Distinguished Professor Emerita of Communication, North Carolina State University

Description: The overall goal of this webinar is to share a suite of interventions guided by the complexity leadership framework. All the interventions have been field tested in different convergence research teams and fall under the umbrella of “adaptive spaces”. Adaptive spaces form the basis for an emergent model of comprehensive, long-term team science support for multi-year, multi-institute, and multi-million-dollar convergence science projects. Although this emergent model was  developed primarily in the context of three National Science Foundation funded convergence research projects, we believe the experiences and lessons are applicable to other science teams of different scales and funding sources. 

Participants of the webinar will learn specific techniques to hold adaptive spaces, such as holding ideation workshops to support new idea generation, hosting conversation spaces to develop affective relationships, delivering collaboration capacity building workshops based on team needs identified through observations and interviews, and designing and facilitating annual whole-team, in-person retreats. 

Speaker: Gemma Jiang, PhD, Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, Colorado State University.

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Session Description: This session will introduce Convergence Research efforts within STEPS (Science and TEchnologies for Phosphorus Sustainability), an NSF Science and Technology Center funded in October of 2020. STEPS is a convergence research community of diverse researchers who address the complex challenges in phosphorus sustainability - at once a limited, critical nutrient and a harmful, overabundant pollutant - by integrating disciplinary contributions across the physical, life, social, and economic sciences. During the multiple years that led up to the funding of this 8 university, 30+ investigator Center with as many self-identified disciplinary backgrounds, project leaders intentionally included Team Science and convergence expertise within the team, and welcomed evidence-based methods for collaboration and convergence into the fabric of the planning and the culture. Examples include the incorporation of named Boundary Objects, collaboration planning best practices, group commitment to epistemic humility, interdependence, and knowledge co-creation. In this session, three researchers and practitioners from the Center will share our approaches, our plans to research ourselves, and welcome insight and feedback from the INTEREACH community. 

Speakers:

• Christine Ogilvie Hendren, Ph.D., Director, Research Institute for Environment, Energy and Economics and Professor of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Appalachian State University

• Anna-Maria Marshall, Ph.D., Associate Professor Sociology and Law, Gender and Women's Studies, and Global Studies Programs and Courses at University of Illinois

• Gail Jones, Ph.D., Alumni Distinguished Professor of STEM Education at North Carolina State University and a Senior Fellow at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation

Description: This interactive session will present an introduction to user experience design (UXD) & user experience research (UXR) and to key topics in these fields. We will discuss how team science practitioners and researchers can integrate UXR and UXD both into their work and into growing their own web presence. Finally, I will also touch on my own UX career path and offer ways that UX is an exciting career option for members of the Intereach community. Throughout the session, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on, practice, and discuss different aspects of UX.

Speaker: Stephanie E. Vasko, Ph.D., Senior UX Researcher with MESH Research, and Managing Director for the Center for Interdisciplinarity at Michigan State University

Session Description: Society spends a lot of time talking about how to get started.  There are all sorts of sexy words to describe how to make an entrance like: kick-off meetings, launch your career, the grand opening and more!  “How to make a graceful exit” is much more complicated. Exits are just as important as the entrance.  It’s important to feel a sense of closure and that your time was well-spent.  It’s even more complicated when you hope participants learned from the experience because literature has found that learning is codified through reflection.  Crafting a reflective, graceful exit activity can be a challenge to facilitate. In this session, we will discuss the importance of a grateful exit, provide different exit strategies, and we will model different closure activities. Join us to learn about the Art & Science of Adjourning!

Presenters:

• Anne Heberger Marino, Founder, Lean-to Collaborations, LLC

• Hannah Love, Co-Founder Divergent Science LLC

• Alyssa Stephens, Founder, Cactus Consulting LLC

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Session Description: Why is changing organizational culture challenging?  Join us for an interactive session as we explore this question and share creative and research-based strategies and techniques to shift and change organizational culture. Conversations and breakout sessions will be focused on the many facets of organizational culture and how to approach change as a facilitator through the lenses of co-creation, accountability, and productivity.  

Presenters:

• Ellen R. Fisher, Ph.D.. Vice President for Research, University of New Mexico

• Ellyn M. Dickmann, Ph.D., Researcher/Consultant, Dickmann and Associates, LLC
  

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Session Description: Collaborations between academic and community partners have enormous potential to create change, but in practice they can feel like “missed connections.” Many groups enter collaborations with positive intentions to involve community groups and stakeholders, but fail to truly establish equal partnerships. What does it mean to balance and integrate research and community priorities, and what does shared leadership look like in practice? Join us as we discuss strategies to help you foster your “happily ever after.”

Presenters:

• Alyssa Stephens - Cactus Consulting

• Courtney Ngai - Empower Consulting

Description: As scientists, facilitators, and educators, many of us have worked to educate (and re-educate) ourselves about the systems of injustice and inequity shaping the spaces we live and work. But how do we go beyond to become more equitable and inclusive facilitators? Join the presenters to learn their best practices and key insights gained and refined through their own journeys to facilitate more equitably and inclusively. And, leave with 20 small but practical strategies to incorporate into your facilitation practices, proven to make a meaningful difference for others. Group input and crowdsourcing is encouraged in this session to garner even more ideas and strategies to reduce harm and increase belonging as intentional facilitators.

Speakers:

• Sarah Stephens - Senior Program Coordinator of Community Engagement & Staff Development at Colorado State University

• Megan Jones - Research Scientist at Colorado State University

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Session Description: The complexity of today’s most urgent societal challenges is transforming how scientists do their work, requiring both intellectual and interpersonal collaboration. Facilitation is a professional practice-based form of expertise that supports group members to do their best thinking. Yet previous examinations of facilitation in scientific settings have not adequately recognized how the nature of scientific teamwork requires a distinct approach to facilitating scientific teams. This talk presents work-in-progress to articulate the value and practice of science facilitation. First, we present our proposed definition for science facilitation and a simple framework for understanding the components of scientific facilitation expertise. Second, we describe how science facilitation is developed through reflection. Third, we explain how scientific facilitation could be more widely incorporated into research by describing three pathways to expand the use of facilitation theory and techniques in collaborative scientific research: developing facilitation skills among scientists leading teams, using broadly-trained facilitators, and hiring specialized science facilitators. We discuss the pros and cons of each path and suggest criteria for selecting the right approach for a given project.

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Presenters:

• Megan Jones - Research Scientist, Colorado State University

• Amanda Cravens - Research Social Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

Session Description: Learn from two innovative professionals who integrate playful and mindful facilitation into their workshops, retreats, meetings, and coaching sessions. Their techniques and tools subtly and explicitly encourage playfulness and mindfulness in teambuilding and collaboration leading to greater sense of belonging, awareness, and direction for individuals, teams, and groups. Join Anne and Sarah for this delightful theoretical and interactive hour to elevate your own wellbeing and practice- and learn how to extend your experience to others.

Presenters

• Anne Heberger-Marino, Lean-to Collaborations, LLC

• Sarah Stephens, Senior Program Coordinator of Staff Development & Community Engagement, Colorado State University

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Session Description: A lot of people say that they are “facilitators,” but what is facilitation, and who are facilitators? During this interactive workshop, the co-facilitators will present literature from facilitation and Science of Team Science (SciTS). They will provide tools and ideas to help your team engage in productive conversations, boost creativity, create new knowledge, and bring joy to group processes. Participants will leave the workshop with a basic understanding of facilitation theory and practical ideas that they can apply to their scientific teams, lab, classroom, and work groups. We hope you’ll join us for part ONE of the Intereach series on facilitation!

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Presenters:

• Hannah Love, PhD - Founder Divergent Science, LLC

• Courtney Ngai, PhD - Empowered Consulting, LLC

This presentation is part of a larger effort to provide an overview of the characteristics and roles filled by a Program Coordinator (PC). As a central administrator, a PC is responsible for a wide variety of programmatic tasks requiring them to be flexible and “change hats” throughout the day. As such, a PC relies on key characteristics and skills essential to run the program, which includes creative duties (like design and innovation), driving change (through predicting and implementing changes), and building community. Our goal is to provide insight into this exceptional role by providing a sample of the associated responsibilities, but also to describe the characteristics one should look for when hiring for this position. Although widely used as a job title in academia, the role of PC is often not well-defined and rarely matches the job description; therefore, it is important to recognize the challenges and opportunities these roles present to both programs and the individuals who fill them. This talk is from the perspectives of PCs who operate National Science Foundation Research Traineeship programs, but the experiences in finding the place and space to be interdisciplinary and build sustainable programming are applicable to any academic or research program.

Presenters:

• Nicole Scott - Iowa State University

• Sara Mata - Oklahoma University

• Jyothi Kumar - Michigan State University

• Toccara Houston - Georgia Tech University

• Kristin Brethova - Indiana University

Session Description: Reflexivity about how boundary spanning teams conduct their work is essential for increasing its quality and being ready for next steps. Helpful reflexivity requires wisdom and skill in unlocking our hidden assumptions, bodily knowledge, and moral imagination. These tools can help. Be sure to bring your Field Notebook with you and pull up our growing inventory of tools presented in this series.

• Tool 1: Evaluation Criteria for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research, presented by Antonietta Di Giulio. The tool is a comprehensive set of questions with instructions that can be used to evaluate a project's inter- and transdisciplinary quality, contributing to reflexivity and readiness for the next step. A participative implementation of the tool can also contribute to team cohesion.

  • Presenter: Dr. Antonietta Di Giulio is a senior researcher at the University of Basel, Program Man-Society-Environment (MGU). She leads the Research Group Inter-/Transdisciplinarity. Her research interests include theory and methodology of inter- and transdisciplinary research and teaching, quality of life and sustainable development, sustainable consumption.

• Tool 2: Model the Metaphor, presented by Margot Greenlee. Model the Metaphor is a creative process that helps team members better understand their perspectives, creative capacity, and overall readiness. Useful during onboarding and periodic assessments, the method serves as a way to reflect on what has been accomplished and what lies ahead.

  • Presenter: Choreographer Margot Greenlee, Artistic Director of BodyWise Dance, applies creative research methods in order to understand topics as far-reaching as sky science and the human genome. She collaborates with people of all ages, abilities and cultures, supporting the formation and growth of inclusive teams. Follow Margot and team @BodyWiseDance.

Session Description: Integrating different ways of knowing can provide transformative insights into the complex problems that research teams often engage. But knowledge integration is hard! What does it even look like? What tangible steps can we take? These tools give us two snapshots. Be sure to bring your Field Notebook with you and pull up our growing inventory of tools presented in this series.

• Tool 1: The Give & Take Matrix, presented by Sibylle Studer and Michael Stauffacher. The Give & Take Matrix charts knowledge sharing pairs between participants or parts of a research project. It aids knowledge integration by showing which pieces of knowledge can be shared between which subprojects. It can also aid conflict transformation by showing how everyone will contribute to the effort.

  • Presenters: Dr. Sibylle Studer is Head of Project Methods at the Network for Transdisciplinary Research (td-net), responsible for the td-net toolbox, and currently engaged in the development of the SHAPE-ID Toolkit (launch in June 21). Her background includes inter- and transdisciplinary research, policy studies, & evaluations with a focus on energy research and nonprofit management. Follow td-net @tdnetCH. Professor Michael Stauffacher holds a doctorate in sociology and co-directs the Transdisciplinarity Lab at ETH Zurich. Within the Swiss Academies, he is a member of the board of the "Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences" and sits on the steering committee of the Sustainability Research Initiative and on the Energy Commission. Follow him @Michael_Stauff.

• Tool 2: Argument Standard Form, presented by Bethany Laursen. Argument Standard Form is a logically-ordered list of the main reasons (a.k.a. premises) to believe something (a.k.a. the conclusion) is true. Anyone’s perspective can contribute a premise or part of one, so the tool shows how different knowledges can be integrated through logic-based reasoning. It is also good for evaluating knowledge integration to see if it makes sense and includes all relevant perspectives

  • Presenter: Bethany K. Laursen is both an independent consultant with Laursen Evaluation & Design, LLC and Assistant Dean of the Graduate School at Michigan State University. She studies knowledge integration and tools that help us do it better. Bethany is a member of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative. Follow her @bklaursen.