A Rough Guide to Interdisciplinarity: Graduate Student Perspectives

N and social scientists addressing complex ecological problems increasingly recognize the value of one another’s research, and often seek multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary approaches to investigate real-world issues. A multidisciplinary approach involves researchers from two or more disciplines working collaboratively on a common problem, without modifying disciplinary approaches or developing synthetic conceptual frameworks. An interdisciplinary approach involves the use of an innovative conceptual framework to synthesize and modify two or more disciplinary approaches to deal with a research problem. Finally, a transdisciplinary approach involves nonacademic practitioners working with academics to identify, research, and develop solutions to real-world problems (Tress et al. 2003). Interdisciplinarity, in particular, is heralded as an educational paradigm that can meet the ecological challenges of the coming century (Palmer et al. 2005). The challenge is to develop collaborative partnerships among researchers to explore the complexity of human–nature interactions (Grimm et al. 2000). Interdisciplinary education exposes students to research in multiple disciplines, trains them in collaborative methods through team research, and promotes new forms of communication and collaboration among disciplines. The goal of interdisciplinary education is to develop new researchers and educators in “science at the leading edge” to effectively address pressing societal and environmental problems (Leshner 2004). Interdisciplinary, and now transdisciplinary, research and training are often part of university mission statements and course curricula, and are explicitly