Building capacity through interdisciplinary graduate collaboration

作者：Olivia del Giorgio, Morgan A. Crowley, Luci Lu, Kerstin Schreiber · 发表于：Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1002/fee.2267 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration

As graduate students, and despite having vastly different backgrounds, we share a common goal: topositively impact society by producing actionable, social–ecological science. Making the leap from student to impactful researcher, however, was harder than we had each anticipated. While our undergraduate training predominantly consisted of classroom lectures about what is already known, graduate school has – at least for us so far – focused on investigating what is unknown and figuring out how to make it known. The identity shift from student to researcher has centered on learning how to question, which has in turn relied heavily on developing and maintaining confidence in our skills, capabilities, and original ideas. Although navigating this shift has been arduous and lonely at times, we have benefited greatly from participating in an interdisciplinary graduate collaboration, which has empowered us as graduate researchers. People arrive at graduate school with a variety of skills and knowledge gained from their different professional, academic, and cultural experiences. Given their diverse backgrounds, some students are better prepared for certain aspects of graduate school than others. But, be that as it may, many face an identity crisis that makes it challenging to contribute to impactful science, which may be particularly acute for those coming directly from undergraduate studies. This sense of crisis stems from graduate students aiming to be the scholarly equivalent of an E...