2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Faculty researchers have long been siloed into their own areas of research expertise, such that collaborations often occur with researchers in the same or adjacent fields. Yet, the challenges facing the world require solutions that do not exist within one disciplinary silo and require creative solutions that reach across the boundaries of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) disciplines. One way creativity is sparked is through interdisciplinary collaborations. When conflicting perspectives on a given topic are presented, people seek to overcome these conflicts and through this process, creative solutions can emerge. However, interdisciplinary collaborations are often complicated due to differences regarding disciplinary languages, lack of interdisciplinary training, lack of incentives for faculty to participate in interdisciplinary research, and other factors. Therefore, we sought to understand how early career faculty researchers could overcome these challenges and benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations in order to be well-positioned to meet the demands of society’s grand challenges.

Using a case study methodology, we explored how faculty researchers from disparate disciplines built interdisciplinary collaborations. Cohorts of 3-5 faculty researchers from a variety of STEAM disciplines, including engineering, science, education, and the arts, were grouped together and tasked with a series of challenges. These challenges included presenting in an interactive way at a science museum, designing a hackathon challenge for high school students, and/or presenting at a science pub. The cohort members worked together to find the similarities between their disciplines to create coherent presentations in each of these events. To support their collaboration, we provided each cohort with a theme (energy, space, movement, or elements) that they could use to motivate the convergence of their disparate disciplines. Interviews were conducted before and after each event with each participant. Transcripts were analyzed longitudinally to understand the process of interdisciplinary collaboration and how the cohorts converged over time. Our analysis focused on the strategies cohorts used, their motivations for collaboration, their identities as researchers, and their desire to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations throughout their career.

The results presented in this paper are a set of recommendations and tips for early career STEAM faculty researchers to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations. Recommendations are based on common themes that emerged across cohorts from the longitudinal case study analysis, such as the impact of incorporating an arts discipline in STEM, overcoming imposter syndrome, and using storytelling techniques to communicate across disciplines. The results provide implications for early career faculty researchers interested in bridging the divide between STEAM disciplines to develop creative solutions to the world’s grand challenges and provide a baseline for future research on interdisciplinary STEAM collaborations.