From the book: Strategies for Team Science Success (pp.477-488)
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Whether the context for knowledge production and innovation is the set of major research universities, system of government agencies and federal laboratories, or the research and development efforts of industry, boundary-spanning and transdisciplinary collaborative engagement is essential in addressing the complex scientific and technological challenges that confront society. Effective transdisciplinary collaboration, however, requires an optimally configured institutional framework as well as an academic culture conducive to innovation. Despite broad consensus regarding the imperative for transdisciplinarity, however, disciplinary acculturation continues to shape successive generations of scientists, scholars, and practitioners while the traditional correlation between disciplines and departments persists as the basis for academic organization. This chapter thus examines aspects of the accommodation of transdisciplinarity within the set of American research universities relevant to the advancement of team science and offers a case study of the restructuring of academic organization undertaken to advance transdisciplinary collaboration at Arizona State University.
About the author:
Dr. Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in July 2002 and has spearheaded ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformative evolution into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
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Photo and text courtesy: Dr. Michael M. Crow and Arizona State University.
