{"id":9757,"date":"2014-01-13T04:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=9757"},"modified":"2014-01-13T04:00:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T09:00:11","slug":"nothing-is-hard-only-new-navigating-interdisciplinary-graduate-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vzbmt5sl65q.c.updraftclone.com\/esablog\/2014\/01\/13\/nothing-is-hard-only-new-navigating-interdisciplinary-graduate-research\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nothing is hard, only new” – navigating interdisciplinary graduate research"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this guest post<\/strong>, Kellen Marshall shares the realistic barriers of interdisciplinary work as a doctoral student.<\/h4>\n

Marshall is a native Chicagoan and current doctoral candidate of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology<\/a> at the University of Illinois at Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0She is also the Director of the George Washington Carver Research Station at Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago\u2019s south side. Kellen\u00a0has used her passion for the field of ecology to connect communities of color to conversations surrounding urban ecosystems. She was the host of the first environmental show on WVON Chicago 1690 AM called \u201cLiving Healthy, Living Green\u201d as well as previous owner of Roots & Shoots Organic Gardening. Her research interests are within urban ecosystems, with strong ties to the discipline of environmental justice through studying ecosystem services of green infrastructure. Kellen\u00a0has been a leader in the SEEDS<\/a> program, has participated within ESA in various roles, and is a former recipient of the Graduate Student Policy Award<\/a>. Tweet to her @greenkels<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kellen<\/a>When I entered graduate school I had no clue that already I possessed a multidisciplinary perspective.\u00a0 I now see it as both a gift and a curse.\u00a0 The gift is that I enjoy working at the crossroads between urban ecology and environmental justice or \u201cEJ\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the latter discipline is also associated with advocacy or activism.\u00a0 EJ is both a social movement and active area of research<\/a> that explores unequal distribution of environmental burdens on poor communities and communities of color. Environmental inequities and racism has tremendous implications for the sustainability of natural systems and ecosystem services.<\/p>\n

Thus one barrier I faced in my interdisciplinary work was maintaining objectivity.\u00a0 Staying away from what I knew to be true, or what I believed to be true, through my personal experiences as a woman of color in Chicago was a challenge, to say the least. I was misinterpreting my worldview, and I had to step away from allowing my life experience answer my questions and make room for Kellen, the scientist, to investigate.\u00a0 This separation did not cause me to question my perspective, it forced me to find the boundaries of existing interdisciplinary research and extend those boundaries through engaging in what we consider to be action ecology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I felt a deep charge to connect the social benefits of studying ecosystem services, EJ, and segregation patterns and this biased my research immensely.\u00a0 My co-advisor and committee member, Emily Minor, pushed me to let the research tell the story. She explained to me that I can\u2019t already have the answer before I begin my research. I can\u2019t design my project to support what I want to see.<\/p>\n

At risk was my ability to learn how science supports the generation of knowledge, and tradeoffs between decisions.\u00a0 At risk, was abandoning a hypothesis-driven approach to exploring people and nature.\u00a0 At risk, was my own growth as an ecologist, and my professional ability to communicate unbiased data and even the playing field between two very historically contentious disciplines.<\/p>\n

It is not my role as a scientist to say what is right or what is wrong. It is my job as the scientist to provide the facts\u00a0\u2014 facts that have shown themselves to be supported through an unbiased, hypothesis-driven approach. For some interdisciplinary scientists this line of thought is second nature. However, as a first year doctoral student it escaped me. It has taken me almost half a decade to really understand.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of interdisciplinary research in graduate school is becoming bilingual, developing your ability to communicate within your field, but also across fields.\u00a0 Building a robust and diverse community of research professionals has benefited me in this area tremendously.\u00a0 In a sense, the interdisciplinary movement reminds me of the cart before the horse. For example, the framework for funding sources that would support cross-discipline research appears to be unpredictable at some level. You can have a project that, on the one hand, fits the general submission requirements, and on the other hand doesn\u2019t completely win over one or more reviewers.\u00a0 In this instance, the reviewer could be unfamiliar with your discipline or find error in how you are adapting concepts, methods and analysis from another discipline. Also, there may be some discrepancy on what the reviewer finds to be interdisciplinary in comparison to what I the student find interdisciplinary. An example of such are comments from a recent proposal I submitted:<\/p>\n

Reviewer 1: \u201cThis proposed project is truly multi- disciplinary in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviewer 2:\u201d This is a solid proposal, but too narrow to be funded by an interdisciplinary award. If the applicant wanted to make this proposal interdisciplinary, one would have to incorporate the study of social aspects.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the reality of interdisciplinary research. It seems as if everyone has a different definition of what is and is not multidisciplinary. \u00a0While this is a barrier that is inherent in research, I would like to call attention to the significance of it for young scientists at the doctoral training level.\u00a0 While interdisciplinary research is promoted, it can feel like a dead end to a graduate student, as funding and publishing is already highly competitive. Essentially, it becomes unattractive and time consuming, and we run the risk of being perceived as underproductive, when in reality we are doing what science is supposed to do: explore new ways of thinking, asking, and doing.<\/p>\n

We as researchers, I believe, are moving into a realm of science that is acknowledging the complexity of connections between fields. As I interpret this, we are willing as researchers to allow flexibility within our disciplines, which will result in novel sub-disciplines\u00a0\u2014 an evolution of thought, so to speak. I guess all I am saying is that this is hard, lol.\u00a0 But a professor once told me that \u201cnothing is hard, only new\u201d. That\u2019s really what we should keep in mind. Interdisciplinary science the way we are applying it in our research generation is relatively new, it\u2019s exciting, and it will be challenging, yet it will generate a community of professionals that are employable in academia (Col\u00f3n-Rivera et al, 2013) and other areas, and those professionals will bring the objectivity of research-based inquiry into other fields.<\/p>\n