Social Science Research Council

As a result of organizational and epistemological changes in knowledge production and accompanying structural and professional shifts in the labor market, efforts are underway to reform graduate education and training programs in ways that prepare students for new models of scientific research and new modes of scientific employment. Together, these contextual changes and reform efforts have led to the development and diffusion of what we call “innovative, interdisciplinary, and integrative” – or I3 – approaches to graduate education and training. Such I3 programs seek to: (a) ground students in the fundamentals of their own fields as well as expose them to several subfields of science and engineering; (b) develop students’ technical proficiencies as well as their abilities to communicate complex ideas and to work well in teams; and, (c) prepare students to engage the diverse publics concerned with science and technology in ways that shape policy and inform practice in various sectors and contexts.

Despite the enthusiastic calls and sizeable investments to promote I3 graduate education and training, however, there has been very little generalizable empirical investigation of the conditions, processes, and outcomes of these programs. While individual programs are assessing their work as they go, there has been no formulation of the causal relationships by which these programs can be understood, let alone assessed. Thus, at the same time that I3 programs could be the proper training grounds for new modes of scientific research and new models of scientific employment, we currently do not have the tools or theories to determine if they are. The aim of this program is to develop and deploy such tools and theories.

This study is being funded by the National Science Foundation Division of Research, Evaluation and Communication with additional funds coming from the Division of Graduate Education and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.