Book excerpt: Strategies for successful team science (pp.477-488)
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Whether the context for knowledge production and innovation is the ensemble of large research universities, the system of government agencies and federal laboratories, or the research and development efforts of industry, a commitment to cross-disciplinary and cross-border collaboration is essential to meeting the complex scientific and technological challenges facing society. Effective transdisciplinary collaboration, however, requires an optimal institutional framework and a university culture conducive to innovation. Despite a broad consensus on the imperative of transdisciplinarity, disciplinary acculturation continues to shape successive generations of scientists, researchers and practitioners, while the traditional correlation between disciplines and departments persists as the basis of university organization. This chapter therefore examines aspects of the adaptation of transdisciplinarity across American research universities that are relevant to the advancement of team science, and offers a case study of the restructuring of university organization undertaken to promote transdisciplinary collaboration at Arizona State University.
About the author:
Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy specialist and higher education leader. He became Arizona's sixteenth president State University in July 2002, and has spearheaded ASU's rapid and revolutionary evolution into one of the world's leading public metropolitan research universities. As a model of the “new American university”, ASU demonstrates global excellence, inclusivity representative of America's ethnic and socio-economic diversity, and consequent societal impact.
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Photo and text courtesy of Dr. Michael M. Crow and Arizona State University.
