Febuary 9th: Boundary Spanning Tools for Research Teams, Session 2: Team Cohesion

Click here to view the February 9th INTEREACH Webinar, the second installment in our Spring 2021 series on Boundary Spanning Tools for Research Teams. In this episode we are introduced to two (2) tools for building team cohesion, presented by Anne Heberger Marino and Merel van Goch & Iris van der Tuin. To start us off, Anne Heberger Marino, Founder of Lean-to Collaborations, a consultancy focused on creating conditions for highly effective collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, shares a tool called Four Levels of Listening, developed by Otto Scharmer and MIT’s Presencing Institute. This tool is designed to help individuals and groups build awareness of how they listen to each other; that effective listening is a widely recognized competency for Team Science practitioners speaks to the importance of implementing this framework in both our daily personal and professional activities.  

 Next, Dr van Goch, Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University, and Dr van der Tuin, Professor of Theory of Cultural Inquiry at Utrecht University and Director of its School of Liberal Arts, present their tool “The Pressure Cooker”. This tool, which was originally developed by our presenters for a conference on interdisciplinary education, is based on Repko & Szostak’s 2020 book Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. The Pressure Cooker tool introduces participants/students to the challenges of interdisciplinary research by guiding them through a 10-step, process that includes 1) Setting up the research, by defining the problem 2) Establishing the disciplinary foundation, by studying the defining elements of the relevant disciplines and 3) Integrating the disciplinary elements by identifying conflicts and common ground. The process is designed to be accomplished in 90 minutes, however, a useful feature of this tool is that is highly adaptable for different conditions, including for this webinar. 

Relevant links shared in this webinar: 

1. Inventory of Boundary Spanning Tools 

1. Download the DIY Boundary Spanning Field Notebook 

1. Breakout session case study 

January 12th: Spring Webinar Series Kickoff: Overview of Boundary Spanning Tools for Team Research

Click here to view the January 12th webinar featuring Bethany K. Laursen, PhD, Assistant Dean, Michigan State University, Graduate School. In this webinar, Dr Laursen provides a background and general principles of tools and tool use, especially in cross-disciplinary research settings. This webinar sets the stage for the next 4 monthly webinars in the series “Boundary Spanning Tools for Team Research”, an idea that she conceptualized for INTEREACH. For this webinar series, Dr Laursen also created a “DIY Boundary Spanning Field Notebook” to facilitate a collaborative, co-learning practice for learning and implementing the tools (8 in total) that will be shared in this series. You can still get your copy at this link! She then covers 5 principles of tool suitability, stressing their importance in implementing these abstract concepts into practice: 1. Systems, 2. Systems of Systems, 3. Four Basic Features, 4. Affordances, 5. Eudainomics (the proposed study and practice of what generally makes a tool contribute to the Good Life).

December 8th: Editorial Facilitation in Team Science: A proposed intervention to incentivize and reward collaborative, reproducible, open research

The December 8th webinar featured Sarah Greene, CEO and Founder of Rapid Science, a non-profit organization that develops tools and processes to promote collaboration as a means of accelerating discovery (due to confidentiality agreements, this content cannot be made available on the web). In this webinar, Ms Greene laid out the motivations, programs and tools implemented by Rapid Science to begin to address systemic problems of the scientific establishment associated with hyper-competition. She discussed the 4 components of the work of Rapid Science in accelerating innovation and translation: (1) advocacy for mandates from funding agencies for the conduct of open, transparent research, (2) creating tools for collaborating, (3) facilitating team interactions, and (4) the re-imaging and creation of incentives and rewards for collaborating. She proposed a new professional role of “Editorial Facilitator” (EF), who would promote team sharing and internal peer review of incremental findings, null results, and insights within a scientific consortium. From these discussions the EF would create a continually updated “Collaborative Review” citing the team’s early results in the context of the field’s latest published evidence.

November 10th: Adapting and designing interdisciplinary training programs to prioritize (and excel because of) diversity, equity and inclusion

Click here to view the November 10th webinar featuring Nicole Motzer, Assistant Director for Interdisciplinary Science, at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. In this webinar, Dr Motzer shares her process, motivations and outcomes in developing a graduate interdisciplinary training program that prioritizes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in socio-environmental synthesis research. She makes the case that DEI is a foundational and required component for conducting complex, interdisciplinary science aimed at addressing society’s most pressing needs. She then describes how to workshop was designed (and subsequently adapted for a virtual platform), and conducted. She finally ends with some lessons learned and recommendations, followed by a Q&A session. The training schedule for DEI in S-E Synthesis workshop, and an example request for proposals are provided at this link.

October 13th: Understanding How to Use 3D Team Leadership

Click here to view the October 13th webinar featuring Bradley Kirkman, Professor Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. In this webinar, Dr Kirkman gives us a high level overview from his book, 3D Team Leadership, which was born out of a recognition that books about Team Management were written about what he terms “yesterday’s teams”. He describes the characteristics of “today’s teams” as being highly dynamic in terms of interdependence, membership and duration of existence, for example, and addresses some of the challenges that today’s team leaders face in balancing the needs of the individual team members and the team as a whole. In this engaging and at times humorous webinar, Dr Kirkman shares with us the importance of focus (e.g. what to focus on, and when), and how to do so, when leading teams in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world. The powerpoint slides and, a Team Charter used with MBA students are both available.

September 8th: Writing Management Plans for Team Science Proposals

Click here to view the September 8th webinar featuring Alan Paul, Founder of Giant Angstrom Partners, based in Los Angeles, USA. In this webinar, Alan delves into what is needed to create successful grant applications for large US-government funded convergence projects, particularly focusing with a particular focus on NSF proposals, although the lessons are more broadly useful across other funding agencies, including those outside the US. The slide deck from the workshop is available (PDF 5MB) at this link. The webinar focused on two challenges for convergent research teams: 1) turning researchers into leaders and 2) telling a compelling story of how the team will pull off the project. For the first challenge, Alan shares his model for different leadership requirements for disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. This is followed by a discussion of methods and tools for creating and sharing meaning within the team. The second challenge focused on budget, governance, training, incentives, infrastructure and evaluation.  

August 11th: Leading Engaging Virtual Meetings

Click here to view the August 11th webinar featuring Dr Amy Climer, CEO/Founder, Climer Consulting. In this lively and informative installment, Amy shares and demonstrates techniques to deliver high-quality virtual meetings. She uses Zoom and other tools to engage the audience, and build sustained participation throughout the entire webinar, and shares strategies that you can readily and seamlessly integrate into your own meetings to facilitate productive and equitable discussion among all your meeting participants. Even the most experienced virtual facilitators will learn something from this video!

If you'd like to connect with Dr. Amy Climer, you can reach out to her at https://climerconsulting.com.

Global efforts in developing and promoting a new profession of integration experts and expertise in inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborative research.

July 14th: Global efforts in developing and promoting a new profession of integration experts and expertise in inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborative research.

Click here to view the July 14th webinar featuring Drs Sabine Hoffmann, Christine Ogilvie Hendren, Kristine Glauber, Julie Thompson Klein, Tobias Buser and Gabriele Bammer. In this webinar, we aim to coalesce a working group which will develop and execute a set of shared goals within the aim of professionalization for knowledge integration professionals. We are first presented with a landscape of global professional groups working towards the development and promotion of a named role within the academy for knowledge integration professionals, including INTEREACH, the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research and Education, and the work of Gabriele Bammer in developing the field of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S). The presenters describe the scaffolding of practitioner roles within an inter- and trans-disciplinary research endeavor, and expound upon that of Interdisciplinary Executive Scientist, describing competencies, functions, and placement within the academy. Notes from this discussion can be found at this link, which capture a proposal of working group activities. If you are interested in participating in the global working group on professionalization, please contact the organizers by emailing intereach@duke.edu.

Understanding and Managing Different Intellectual Personalities on Scientific Teams

January 14th: Understanding and Managing Different Intellectual Personalities on Scientific Teams 

Click here to view the January 14th webinar featuring Kevin Weinfurt, Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Weinfurt is also Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University Medical Center and a faculty member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute; Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience; and a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for the Study of Medical Humanities and Bioethics. Drawing on earlier work from American psychologist and philosopher William James, Dr. Weinfurt defines and discusses intellectual personalities and their potential impact on science teams. For each personality type, Dr. Weinfurt offers strategies for understanding and working with groups that contain extreme versions of these types. 

November 12th: Careers in Team Science Facilitation: Creating the Container for Successful Collaboration

Click here to view the November 12th webinar featuring Carrie Kappell, Independent Facilitator and Consultant at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). In this webinar Dr Kappell shares her personal history and path towards being an independent consultant and interdisciplinary facilitator, and some common anecdotal themes teased from personal narratives from other colleagues. Through this network of colleagues, she has been able to distill a broad overview of how institutes are employing and engaging interdisciplinary facilitators and the various business models used to support them. Dr Kappell also shares some resources for training and opportunities.