Interdisciplinarity among Academic Scientists: Individual and Organizational Factors Fang Xiao 139 Pages Directed by Dr. Julia E. Melkers Drawing on a wide variety of social science theories, this study investigates the effects of tenure system, university climate for interdisciplinary research (IDR), gender, and industry experience on academic scientists’ engagement in IDR in different disciplines. Using survey and bibliometric data, two dependent variables are generated to measure production aspects of IDR: the self-reported percentage of IDR papers which is from researchers’ own estimate of their IDR papers responding to one survey question, and the calculated percentage of IDR papers which is a combination of two bibliometric indicators of scientists’ borrowing and boundary crossing activities. Results find that our conventional wisdom about the effects of some individual and organizational factors on scientists’ propensity to engage in IDR is outdated, and their effects depend on the disciplinary contexts. These findings suggest science policy makers, funding agencies and university administrators to keep fresh and informed about scientists’ research activities and underlying context and take full into account of distinct characteristics of different disciplines when they make or reform policies to encourage IDR work.

This study identified perceived structural and instructional critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming at the middle school. Through interviews with principals and teachers, data was collected on critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming in areas such as the formation of teams and the implementation of interdisciplinary teaming as a process with specific functions, both structural and instructional in nature. The critical attributes identified in this study were associated with the results from two earlier studies on interdisciplinary teaming conducted by Hackmann et al. (2002) and Valentine et al. (1993). Additionally, this study gathered data from participants on the perceived benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary teaming. Using purposeful sampling, principals and teacher participants were selected from a school district located in a metropolitan city in Texas. There were a total of 13 middle schools in the school district and five schools were selected for participation in the study. From the five middle schools, ten participants were surveyed and interviewed for this study; five principals and five teachers. The researcher conducted interviews over the telephone with each of the participants. Data collected from the interviews were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings indicated that critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming, identified earlier by Hackmann et al. (2002) and Valentine et al. (1993), were generally associated with results from the current research. The critical attributes were developed from the following categories: Team characteristics, team membership, team planning time, and curriculum design practices. The second part of the study described perceived benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary teaming. In general, participants identified more benefits than challenges. Specifically, participants found interdisciplinary teaming to be beneficial in the areas of relationships, instruction, and parent communication. Challenges in the implementation of interdisciplinary teaming were described by both groups of participants. Implications for school officials who are trying to maintain interdisciplinary teaming in the face of budgetary constraints will necessitate a balanced look at effectiveness and efficiency. Further inquiry into an important relationship between interdisciplinary teaming and student achievement is also necessary. This study identified perceived structural and instructional critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming at the middle school. Through interviews with principals and teachers, data was collected on critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming in areas such as the formation of teams and the implementation of interdisciplinary teaming as a process with specific functions, both structural and instructional in nature. The critical attributes identified in this study were associated with the results from two earlier studies on interdisciplinary teaming conducted by Hackmann et al. (2002) and Valentine et al. (1993). Additionally, this study gathered data from participants on the perceived benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary teaming. Using purposeful sampling, principals and teacher participants were selected from a school district located in a metropolitan city in Texas. There were a total of 13 middle schools in the school district and five schools were selected for participation in the study. From the five middle schools, ten participants were surveyed and interviewed for this study; five principals and five teachers. The researcher conducted interviews over the telephone with each of the participants. Data collected from the interviews were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings indicated that critical attributes of interdisciplinary teaming, identified earlier by Hackmann et al. (2002) and Valentine et al. (1993), were generally associated with results from the current research. The critical attributes were developed from the following categories: Team characteristics, team membership, team planning time, and curriculum design practices. The second part of the study described perceived benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary teaming. In general, participants identified more benefits than challenges. Specifically, participants found interdisciplinary teaming to be beneficial in the areas of relationships, instruction, and parent communication. Challenges in the implementation of interdisciplinary teaming were described by both groups of participants. Implications for school officials who are trying to maintain interdisciplinary teaming in the face of budgetary constraints will necessitate a balanced look at effectiveness and efficiency. Further inquiry into an important relationship between interdisciplinary teaming and student achievement is also necessary. / text

The gender gap in American college attendance has grown over four decades (see for example, Sax, 2008). The National Center for Educational Statistics noted that women received 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees conferred in 2009-2010. Furthermore, women engage in college opportunities inside and outside the classroom at greater rates than men. Engagement opportunities connect students to their college environment, support student learning, and contribute to student persistence (see for example, Astin, 1993). However, little research is available that focuses on which specific co-curricular opportunities men and women choose and any gender differences in engagement that exist within those programs (Sax, 2008). Many colleges offer interdisciplinary programs as a co-curricular student engagement option. Interdisciplinary studies allow students to study broad topics from many disciplinary perspectives and synthesize the various methods and theories for an often better understanding of the topic at hand (Newell, 1992). However, there is a paucity of research regarding gender differences in students who choose to pursue interdisciplinary programs. The purpose of the study was to investigate why male students choose or choose not to get involved in a specific interdisciplinary program at a large research institution in the southwestern United States. Moreover, the study examined the perceptions of administrators regarding male student involvement and their strategies to recruit male students. The study design was qualitative, and interviews of students and program administrators were the primary data source. The researcher employed two conceptual frameworks in the study: Terenzini and Reason's (2005) college experience model and Harris' (2010) model of the meanings college men make of masculinities. Key findings of the study indicated that there was a gender imbalance in student engagement in the interdisciplinary program. Furthermore, male students interested in the interdisciplinary program eschewed masculine norms both in their co-curricular pursuits and their academic interests. The study contributes to the field of student affairs by focusing on a research gap in male student engagement in interdisciplinary programs. By examining engagement experiences through the lens of male gender identity, the study provides rich data and offers strategies to student affairs practitioners. / text

The university art museum can make a significant contribution to the academic and cultural life of the parent institution. While there are many roles of art museums within institutions of higher education, there is a common thread -- the conviction that interdisciplinary exhibitions and programs expand the relevance of the art museum within the academic community. In this study, I examine interdisciplinary collaborations between the university art museum and faculty from diverse academic disciplines at American institutions of higher education. What relationships, if any, exist between academic programs and art museums at universities? What institutional structures are keys and barriers to successful collaboration between the university art museum and academic programs? What factors determine the success of interdisciplinary collaboration between the university art museum and diverse academic programs? In order to fully explore the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, qualitative analysis of current initiatives at university art museums throughout the United States was necessary. The conceptual framework of interdisciplinary exhibitions and programs is thus established. Secondly, case studies examine the organizational culture of the institutions and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Virginia Art Museum, the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art of Art at the University of Richmond, and the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College. As well, my professional experience, through a retrospective account of projects at the Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College, provides insights into both the potential and process of interdisciplinary collaboration. While I am mindful that this informs my conviction that interdisciplinarity and collaborative practice is essential to the university art museum, the partiality that existed at the onset of the study was recognized and subjected to a rigorous research and methodology that imparts validity and authenticity to this inquiry. While the “publish or perish” convention of the academy supports discipline-specific research and individual publication, I contend that the university art museum must engage in interdisciplinary dialogue through which perceptions are changed and new meanings are unveiled while respecting the integrity of the disciplines involved. This study of institution-wide interdisciplinary collaboration between university art museums and the academic institutions of which they are part reveals what is being done through innovative exhibitions and programming to promote the interconnectedness of ideas and issues. Collaboration with diverse academic disciplines reaffirms the traditional expectations of the museum of investigation, inquiry, and intellectual challenge. Purposive exhibitions grounded in collaboration between academic disciplines can generate debate, critique, and conversation. In doing so, the university art museum is an indispensable component of the university’s mission and asserts its relevance to the institution and its role in the educational experience through collaboration between the university’s academic programs and the university art museum.

Interdisciplinary cooperation among people trained in technical and economic fields has been identified as an important success factor in new venture teams. However, empirical findings also indicate that individuals often refuse to engage in close and trustful relationships with representatives of other disciplines. Thus the question arises whether education programs on interdisciplinary cooperation may be suitable to prepare students for future activities in multifunctional business start-up teams. In this study, we investigate the psychological effects of an interdisciplinary business planning course held at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration with the intention of promoting cooperation between technology-oriented professionals and business management students. The findings show that this course experience changes the students' attitudinal beliefs with respect to representatives of the technical discipline by reducing stereotypical assumptions. At the same time, the course fosters awareness of the challenges involved in cross-disciplinary cooperation. The more students communicate with their technical counterparts and the more they familiarize themselves with the technical aspects of the project, the stronger these effects become.(author's abstract)

This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach that analyzes and compares the film scoring processes of Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer in characterizing the fictional hero Batman in film. This is accomplished by applying Classical Hollywood film scoring principles from the golden age of cinema, Juan Chattah's pragmatic and semiotic typologies regarding musical metaphoric expression, and psychology. This amalgamation demonstrates how the aforementioned film composers consider varying structural aspects of their music, i.e., formal design, melodic contour, harmonic gestures, and cadential formulas, in (re)creating and establishing their individual artistic trademarks on a comic book character within canonical and non-canonical storylines. The study includes soundtracks from Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. The result is an analysis that: 1) enhances what little is known about the music for these films; 2) allows for the recognition of the film scoring creative process behind film sequelization; 3) enhances musical and psychological interpretations of the Batman character; and 4) offers an expansion of Chattah's metaphorical typologies.

Children with Down syndrome (DS) display language deficits in expressive and receptive skills beyond what is predicted by nonlingusitic cognitive skills. Clinically, a ubiquitous presumption is that vocabulary taught in one modality will generalize incidentally to the other, untreated modality. Five children with DS (four male, one female, ages 3;6-5;1) were each taught three orthogonal sets of receptive and expressive vocabulary within a multiple probe single subject design. During each probe condition, vocabulary knowledge for trained and untrained modalities was probed. Cross modal generalization probes for all five children indicated moderate transfer from expressive modality to receptive and relatively low receptive generalization to the expressive modality. These results support expressive vocabulary interventions for children with DS provided that clinicians systematically test for generalization to receptive knowledge. Conversely, receptive vocabulary training is much less likely to generalize across modality

This research has a primary focus on the middle school setting and how schools, students, and art educators might benefit from an interdisciplinary art curriculum. In this thesis I outline how cross-curricular inclusions in art lessons have the potential to be a fantastic advocacy tool for fine arts departments. I also investigate the differences between interdisciplinary inclusions in the visual art classroom and arts integrated school models as well as the beneficial relationship that can exist between these two pedagogical approaches. Additionally, I examine through literary review and curriculum development, some of the positive and negative influence in academic subject areas and more importantly art disciplines. My final and primary aim in examining various methods of cross-curricular inclusion is to shed light upon the immense potential for student development via dynamic interdisciplinary art curriculum.

Drawing on a wide variety of social science theories, this study investigates the effects of tenure system, university climate for interdisciplinary research (IDR), gender, and industry experience on academic scientists’ engagement in IDR in different disciplines. Using survey and bibliometric data, two dependent variables are generated to measure production aspects of IDR: the self-reported percentage of IDR papers which is from researchers’ own estimate of their IDR papers responding to one survey question, and the calculated percentage of IDR papers which is a combination of two bibliometric indicators of scientists’ borrowing and boundary crossing activities. Results find that our conventional wisdom about the effects of some individual and organizational factors on scientists’ propensity to engage in IDR is outdated, and their effects depend on the disciplinary contexts. These findings suggest science policy makers, funding agencies and university administrators to keep fresh and informed about scientists’ research activities and underlying context and take full into account of distinct characteristics of different disciplines when they make or reform policies to encourage IDR work.

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH IN THE ART EDUCATION CURRICULUM By Terri L. Suraco Under the Direction of Melody Milbrandt ABSTRACT This study investigates how interdisciplinary lessons are taught in an art education classroom. The teaching strategies used are: Integrated models, the use of "Big Ideas" (Jacobs, 1989, 2003), the use of constructivist methods (Freedman, 2003; Brooks and Brooks, 1999; Milbrandt, 2004), and the use of essential question inquiry (Erickson, 1998; Mallery, 2000) and teacher collaboration (Jacobs, 2005; Erickson, 1998; NAEA, 2005). I am the only participant in an autoethnographical study. In the Literature Review: Why arts integration is important is explored. Positives and negatives of teaching integrated disciplines are addressed. I include four units from my interdisciplinary curriculum in art education and observations with teaching reflections from the units taught in elementary and middle school. The models that are described are: Parallel Disciplines, Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Integrated (Jacobs, 1989, 2005: Mallery, 2000;). The study results reveal how interdisciplinary teaching can be implemented in an art education classroom. IDEX WORDS: Thesis, Interdisciplinary, Integrated, Art Education, Big Ideas