I love the intersection of the engineering and anthropological approaches! In order to address global environmental issues, it will require interdisciplinary teams like this one; this approach is quite inspiring.

Meghan, We think anthropology and engineering are a natural fit to work together when focused on addressing environmental issues and this is a great example. Thanks for your comments!

Hello Lance,

Thank you for your comment and for taking the time to watch our video! Coral reefs, like many ecological systems, are impacted by so many factors that are environmentally, culturally, and socially constructed. One of the central hypotheses that we had at the beginning of our project was to determine if there was a way to use technology to improve monitoring before and after a coral reef restoration site was outplanted. We theorized that there may be some form of technological adoption hesitation from restoration practitioners. However, through our interviews and research on the different policies that govern restorations, we discovered that it was more complex than stakeholders being uncomfortable with utilizing different tools and metrics for monitoring. We just finished collecting data and are currently analyzing it. A finding that is emerging is that practitioners are excited and willing to use new instruments to help them reach their monitoring goals. However, funding and limited resource availability are central factors in determining if the can incorporate them.

Thanks Kris-An. Good to find out that technology adoption is not an issue.  And funding, I'm sure for all of us in this forum, is typically one of the top, if not the top, limiter.  Hoping to see more investments into healthy oceans.  Keep up the great work!

Hello Lydia, 

Thanks for taking the time to watch our video, it is always good to hear from another NRT participant! There have certainly been many lessons learned from this interdisciplinary project, but one of the first ones that came to mind however is taking the time to develop a common cross-disciplinary language. Coming from our respective disciplines, we have all developed field-specific jargon that has become second nature to use, and we forget that other fields sometimes might not be familiar with that jargon. Co-building that common language is an on-going exercise that takes time and concerted effort to create, but we have found that putting in the work to lay that foundation early on enables your group to formulate better research questions and helps foster creative synergy during the data collection and analysis portions of the project. 

Hi Barry, 

Thanks for your comment! As an academic engineer, I have too often seen amazing technological innovations which fail to launch and actually become implemented, not because the idea was lacking, but because the developer did not appropriately consider the end-user for which the innovation was created for. Through the work I have done with Strong Coasts, I believe that working with social scientists has made me a better engineer because it has taught me to ask different questions and consider different components of a problem, which ultimately leads to the development of more feasible, implementable, and sustainable solutions. I know as an engineer, I tend to learn by doing, so to introduce this approach I would recommend to just start practicing, jump in and try to start co-solving problems together, because it's ultimately an iterative learning process for everyone. In working in our interdisciplinary team, we work as co-leads over the project as a whole, but also recognize that we have different sets of skills and expertise, so we try to honor each other's skillsets and let the other lead when their experience takes president. 

Hi Margie, 

Thanks for your comment! You are very correct, learning to operate through a common vocabulary has definitely been an important component of this project, and certainly a continuing one as we are still learning how to best work and communicate with one another! The strategy I felt worked the best for bridging this gap is simply to practice. Shortly after Strong Coasts was formed, we met once a week and practiced working through theoretical problems together as an interdisciplinary team. We tried mapping problems out on the whiteboard together and when someone said something that the other discipline didn't understand, we paused and took the time to allow for an in-depth explanation and follow up questions. These practice sessions also created space for respectful disagreements and debates on how the different disciplines may approach a problem, which ultimately allowed for us to learn a little more about the opposite discipline. Over the course of the semester, these exercises not only helped us build a common language through which to approach problems, but also developed cross-disciplinary trust that we were then able to take into the field and start tacking real-world problems with. 

What a great practice! Do you offer this type of cross-disciplinary interaction in a course? I believe a course like this would be incredibly beneficial for graduate students. Thank you for sharing!

Margie, We also developed a graduate seminar called Systems Thinking at the FEWS Nexus, which brought together students from Engineering, Anthropology, Biology, Urban Planning, and Marine Sciences. Students discuss readings from all the disciplines and worked in teams combining the disciplines all semester. The culminating project was a "challenge grant" proposal to carry out interdisciplinary team-based research in one of our four field sites. We all learned a lot!

That is impressive! Thanks for sharing. 

As a socio-environmental scientist I don't see many spaces that are working in truly interdisciplinary spaces. This project, however, is doing some amazing work. 

Hello Troy –

Thank you for the question. Yes, we collaborate with K-12 educators and understand wholeheartedly the benefits, not only for youth and future scientists, but our fellows also get so much out of it and really enjoy it. In fact, three of our graduate fellows and I just did a virtual presentation for a local middle school on Earth Day in April 2021. The fellows presented details on their current projects, which exposed the students to real-world issues, the steps to setting up a research project, working with local communities most affected by the issue, finding innovative solutions, and so much more. I gave an overview of the importance of working across disciplines, whole systems-thinking, and community-engaged research. The feedback was great, and the middle schoolers and teachers seem quite interested in inviting our group back. Our fellows gained presentation skills and learned a bit about presenting science to different audiences. One extraordinary advantage to working in the virtual world right now for our group is access to online collaborations such as this. Our program includes marine science master’s students from the University of the Virgin Islands and one UVI fellow was able to join us for this event, which most likely would not have been possible if all in-person! So I think that was cool for the young middle school students to see our shared-learning and network branching out across the ocean. We look forward to more opportunities like this and, hopefully, some will take place in person soon with a hybrid component combining both campuses. Thanks!

Thanks Kristin for sharing your thoughts!

Hi Susan, 

Thanks for your comment! The students in our program take several systems thinking courses, all of which are co-listed in the participating departments: 

1. Systems Thinking at the Food, Energy, Water Nexus: discuss FEWS problems and learn theoretical foundations of system dynamics modeling. 

2. Complex Systems Modeling: applied modeling course in python and Vensim where students learn to model complex systems and populate models with data.

3. Food. Energy, Water Systems Field course: this is a summer course where students have the opportunity to travel internationally to a Caribbean coastal community and participate in community-engaged FEWS research and practice systems thinking skills. 

The courses used a combination of anthropological and environmental engineering peer-reviewed articles, as well as sections from the following textbooks: 

• Meadows, D.H., Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Wright, D. (editor). 2008: Sustainability Institute. Chelsea Green Publishing Company.
• Sterman, J.D., Business dynamics: systems thinking and modeling for a complex world. 2000: Irwin/McGraw-Hill Boston.
• Sayama, H., Introduction to the modeling and analysis of complex systems. 2015. Open
SUNY textbook. • Ford, A., Modeling the environment. 2nd edition. 2010. Island Press.
• Forrester, J., Principles of Systems. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications, 1968. ISBN: 978-1883823412.

Best, 

Michelle 

Hi Susan, 

In addition to the resources that Michelle provided, we also received training on the importance of incorporating a holistic approach in the models we generate using systems thinking, specifically on how to perform meaningful community engagement. Some of the resources we used to accomplish this were: 

* Dewalt and Dewalt. 2010. Participant Observation A Guide for Fieldworkers, Ch. 8: Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation

* Ogden et al. 2013. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

*Wali, Alaka, ed. 2006. Collaborative research- A practical introduction to participatory action research (PAR) for communities and scholars. Booklet produced by The Field Museum Center for Cultural Understanding and Change

-Kris-An

Daniel, great question! I think relationships is the key word here in bridging disciplines for research as well as grad training: consistent community-building for faculty and students that focuses on collaboration and creativity as well as supporting each other have been the most important. 

Hi Daniel - I agree with Rebecca that relationships are key and I will just add what Michelle Platz discussed in previous post above about working together to sift through different ways to communicate so learning is balanced. Keeping an open mind to a different perspective while not being afraid to ask for more information when you don't understand is an important skill we try to instill in our program and I think should be part of the so many disciplines. Interdisciplinary teamwork has much to do with supporting others so learning and growth are not stalled. This mindset seems to be growing among academia, industries, organizations, etc, thankfully!

Thanks Rebecca and Heather for the insight!