CHALLENGES TO TRAINING SUSTAINABILITY SCIENTISTS

Friday  Morning Topics:  Graduate Instruction in Sustainability Science

The group brainstormed questions they wanted to discuss, wrote them on slips of paper and put them in a box.  Moderator Nathan Coutsoubos, from UAF, grouped the questions.  People selected the cluster of questions they wished to discuss during two sessions of informal, round-table break-out conversations.  The questions served as guidelines only, and often discussions went in unanticipated directions. Conclusions of the discussions were presented to the entire group on summary slides.

A.  Epistemology Amongst the Interdisciplinarians - presentation and notes

1. Mapping epistemologies:  confronting fundamental worldviews across disciplines.
2. Social sciences (and humanities?) in sustainability science.
3. How to integrate systems perspective of natural sciences with the unpredictability of human agency in a common conceptual framework?

B.  Global and International Opportunities

[This discussion was cancelled]

1. Global perspectives and integration for graduate study.
2. International internships:  how to find place, project, and people?

C.  Student Preparation, Publishing, Graduation, and Selling Ourselves – presentation and notes

1. In two sentences, how do we explain sustainability to a skeptical stakeholder?
2. How do we position ourselves to be competitive for academic positions after graduation?
3. Balancing breadth and depth:  are prelims and quals not enough?
4. Publishing interdisciplinary work.

D.  Skills for Interdisciplinarians – presentation and notes

[note – this topic produced two sets of conclusions, one focused on the overall topic, and one on question #1]

1. Should we create interdisciplinary teams or interdisciplinary individuals? – presentation and notes
2. Problem-based approach to an interdisciplinary experience:  interdisciplinary toolboxes.

E.  Interdisciplinary Studies, Theory, and the Home Discipline – presentation and notes

1. How can we write and learn to write interdisciplinary theory?  How to produce a dissertation drawing on multiple disciplines which a multidisciplinary audience can understand and approve?
2. Communication and expectations between IGERT and the home discipline.
3. Quantitative methods for qualitative studies.

F.  Activism, Pedagogy, Responsibilities – presentation and notes

1. Activism and the academy:  can graduate students do it?
2. Pedagogy of IGERTs:  different educational and mentorship styles.
3. Same or different responsibilities than discipline-based graduate studies?

G.  Modelers and Sustainability Science – presentation

1. How best to integrate technical, modeling, and/or computational people into sustainability / resilience science?

H.  Integrating Non-scientific Knowledge - presentation and notes

1. Integrating indigenous knowledge and epistemologies with “western” sciences.
2. Training students in multiple ways of knowing.

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