Building an Interdisciplinary Research Program Involving Undergraduate Students: A Bridge for Students to Scientific Inq

1. Building an Interdisciplinary Research Program Involving Undergraduate Students: A Bridge for Students to Scientific Inquiry in the 21st Century Thomas Bultman, Moses Lee and Christopher Barney Hope College

2. Future of America’s ProsperityWarning Signals “A serious deficit of scientists and engineers,” leading to “evaporating dominance.” Former NASA head wrote in September 2001 Atlantic Monthly. “We are not training enough American scientists and engineers to retain our prosperity…” An American Scientist editorial in 2001 asserts. Nobel Prizes - 1960-1990s US dominated, no more. 2004, US basic research (Physical Rev in Physics) down from 61% worldwide (in 1983) to 29%. Patents also down to 52% for US. 2001, Hart-Rudman US commission on National Security report. “The inadequacies of our system of research and education pose a greater threat to US national security over the next 25 years than any potential conventional war that we might imagine.” PhDs in engineering 2003 - 59% gone to foreign students. Post September 11, 2001 this situation has become very challenging.PhDs in engineering 2003 - 59% gone to foreign students. Post September 11, 2001 this situation has become very challenging.

3. A Rapidly Changing World IT - frictionless communications State of the art facilities - in developing countries SHEER VOLUMES OF PEOPLE IN INDIA AND CHINA Friedman - flat is on balance a good thing. What will be the impact on our politics to economy and technology? Bookshelf: The Untied States of America No, that's not a misprint. The book is called The Untied States of America, and the author is Juan Enriquez, a CEO of a life sciences research firm and a former fellow at Harvard's Center for International Affairs. We take national boundaries for granted, Enriquez says, and yet they often change. And of course he's right. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union look a lot different on the map now than they did 20 years ago; the United Nations has something like four times as many members as it did in 1960. In the Americas, it is seemingly different. Boundaries in North America and South America haven't changed, he says, since 1910. Actually, that's slightly wrong. Newfoundland, a separate dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, was absorbed into the Dominion of Canada in 1949 after the Newfoundland government went broke. But that only makes Enriquez's point stronger. advertisement Web Extras Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications — including the Economist and the New York Times. More from Michael Barone Every two years in revising The Almanac of American Politics, I have to deal with the politics of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, all of which send nonvoting delegates to Congress (the resident commissioner—misleading title—of Puerto Rico is the only member of the House with a four-year term). I have been fascinated with those at the margins of United States nationality. Also, I have been following in the Alaska and Hawaii write-ups the treatment, legally and politically, of Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Enriquez mentions all these and notes that the anomalies—Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship only by virtue of an act of Congress passed in 1917, and Congress could reverse that at any time—might produce an "untying" of the United States. He mentions briefly the demand for Native Hawaiian sovereignty. That's before Congress; a vote on Sen. Daniel Akaka's bill for sovereignty was promised for September in the Senate but was set aside after Hurricane Katrina. "A bad idea whose time has come," I wrote in this space in August. Enriquez also touches on the question of Hispanic separateness in the United States. He makes another mistake here, writing that Hispanic immigration was blocked before the 1965 immigration act; actually, there were no limits on intra-Americas immigration before then. There was just very little immigration from that quarter, the notable exception being the huge migration from Puerto Rico in the 1950s and early 1960s. Enriquez does a good job of raising interesting questions. He describes how Canada could be divided up into three countries that would resemble, demographically and economically, Australia, Finland, and New Zealand, and how Mexico could be divided up into four countries that would resemble Poland, Chile, Tunisia, and Ecuador. The regions are as follows: Australia = Ontario and western Canada Finland = Quebec (but is Quebec Hydro Nokia?) New Zealand = the maritime provinces Poland = Central Mexico Chile = Northern Mexico Tunisia = Maya Mexico Ecuador = Southern Mexico All interesting stuff. But I think Enriquez tends to downplay the negative aspects of "untying." Does it really make sense to encourage some large number of the residents of Hawaii (almost none of them of purely Native Hawaiian descent) to think of themselves as Polynesians instead of Americans? Do Lower 48 Indian reservations do as good a job of allowing people of aboriginal descent to choose the degree of assimilation they want as the Alaska Native corporations? (My answers: no and no.) And what is the empirical evidence about whether the people the Census Bureau classifies as Hispanics want a degree of separateness in the United States? Enriquez also lards up the book with some silly talk about how religious fundamentalists are preventing people from learning (I'd look at the teacher unions and education schools instead) and writes that the standards of living of ordinary Americans have deteriorated over the past 40 years (I guess all those DVDs and all that air conditioning that people have now and didn't have 40 years ago don't count). All that is evidence that he's spent too much time in Cambridge and not enough in getting around the rest of the country. Enriquez's book will enrage some readers in another way. It is written not in conventional sentences and paragraphs but in sentence fragments, asides, and statistics all presented in different typefaces and font sizes. I found this not irritating but refreshing. It struck me that it would have been hard to compose a book in this way with precomputer technology, but it must be easy to do it on your laptop now. It's a good way to raise interesting questions, as Enriquez has done. A thought-provoking and sometimes thoughtful book. The author sounds an alarm with a call for carefulness: Academically, Politically, and Economically. The new world is exciting but you can get trampled if you don't keep up, wise sane advice from the author. A visit to Bangalore in India, silicon valley, an IT base made Thomas Friedman aware of global marketplace and how the world had become connected. Quite obvious, Indian Entrepreneurs can manage all his work from Bangalore and help him out for the documentary of Discovery channel that he was doing. Friedman, packed with action in the book mentions of the tutors who were the heads of the IBM and Microsoft of India: Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and Vivek Paul of Wipro. The immense potentials of the global world is portrayed in the book, changes from economy to politics to technology. A good pick.IT - frictionless communications State of the art facilities - in developing countries SHEER VOLUMES OF PEOPLE IN INDIA AND CHINA Friedman - flat is on balance a good thing. What will be the impact on our politics to economy and technology? Bookshelf: The Untied States of America No, that's not a misprint. The book is called The Untied States of America, and the author is Juan Enriquez, a CEO of a life sciences research firm and a former fellow at Harvard's Center for International Affairs. We take national boundaries for granted, Enriquez says, and yet they often change. And of course he's right. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union look a lot different on the map now than they did 20 years ago; the United Nations has something like four times as many members as it did in 1960. In the Americas, it is seemingly different. Boundaries in North America and South America haven't changed, he says, since 1910. Actually, that's slightly wrong. Newfoundland, a separate dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, was absorbed into the Dominion of Canada in 1949 after the Newfoundland government went broke. But that only makes Enriquez's point stronger. advertisement Web Extras Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications — including the Economist and the New York Times. More from Michael Barone Every two years in revising The Almanac of American Politics, I have to deal with the politics of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, all of which send nonvoting delegates to Congress (the resident commissioner—misleading title—of Puerto Rico is the only member of the House with a four-year term). I have been fascinated with those at the margins of United States nationality. Also, I have been following in the Alaska and Hawaii write-ups the treatment, legally and politically, of Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Enriquez mentions all these and notes that the anomalies—Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship only by virtue of an act of Congress passed in 1917, and Congress could reverse that at any time—might produce an "untying" of the United States. He mentions briefly the demand for Native Hawaiian sovereignty. That's before Congress; a vote on Sen. Daniel Akaka's bill for sovereignty was promised for September in the Senate but was set aside after Hurricane Katrina. "A bad idea whose time has come," I wrote in this space in August. Enriquez also touches on the question of Hispanic separateness in the United States. He makes another mistake here, writing that Hispanic immigration was blocked before the 1965 immigration act; actually, there were no limits on intra-Americas immigration before then. There was just very little immigration from that quarter, the notable exception being the huge migration from Puerto Rico in the 1950s and early 1960s. Enriquez does a good job of raising interesting questions. He describes how Canada could be divided up into three countries that would resemble, demographically and economically, Australia, Finland, and New Zealand, and how Mexico could be divided up into four countries that would resemble Poland, Chile, Tunisia, and Ecuador. The regions are as follows: Australia = Ontario and western Canada Finland = Quebec (but is Quebec Hydro Nokia?) New Zealand = the maritime provinces Poland = Central Mexico Chile = Northern Mexico Tunisia = Maya Mexico Ecuador = Southern Mexico All interesting stuff. But I think Enriquez tends to downplay the negative aspects of "untying." Does it really make sense to encourage some large number of the residents of Hawaii (almost none of them of purely Native Hawaiian descent) to think of themselves as Polynesians instead of Americans? Do Lower 48 Indian reservations do as good a job of allowing people of aboriginal descent to choose the degree of assimilation they want as the Alaska Native corporations? (My answers: no and no.) And what is the empirical evidence about whether the people the Census Bureau classifies as Hispanics want a degree of separateness in the United States? Enriquez also lards up the book with some silly talk about how religious fundamentalists are preventing people from learning (I'd look at the teacher unions and education schools instead) and writes that the standards of living of ordinary Americans have deteriorated over the past 40 years (I guess all those DVDs and all that air conditioning that people have now and didn't have 40 years ago don't count). All that is evidence that he's spent too much time in Cambridge and not enough in getting around the rest of the country. Enriquez's book will enrage some readers in another way. It is written not in conventional sentences and paragraphs but in sentence fragments, asides, and statistics all presented in different typefaces and font sizes. I found this not irritating but refreshing. It struck me that it would have been hard to compose a book in this way with precomputer technology, but it must be easy to do it on your laptop now. It's a good way to raise interesting questions, as Enriquez has done. A thought-provoking and sometimes thoughtful book. The author sounds an alarm with a call for carefulness: Academically, Politically, and Economically. The new world is exciting but you can get trampled if you don't keep up, wise sane advice from the author. A visit to Bangalore in India, silicon valley, an IT base made Thomas Friedman aware of global marketplace and how the world had become connected. Quite obvious, Indian Entrepreneurs can manage all his work from Bangalore and help him out for the documentary of Discovery channel that he was doing. Friedman, packed with action in the book mentions of the tutors who were the heads of the IBM and Microsoft of India: Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and Vivek Paul of Wipro. The immense potentials of the global world is portrayed in the book, changes from economy to politics to technology. A good pick.

4. Innovate America, 2004 Innovation is diffusing at an ever increasing rate. Innovation is increasingly multidisciplinary and technologically complex. Innovation is collaborative. Innovation is creative. Innovation is global. A Challenge for the Education Sector Innovation diffuses rapidly….55 years to have 1/4 people to own cars in US, 35 yrs telephone, 22 years radio, 13 yrs cell phone, 7 years WWW. Creative - same old same old is no longer good enough!Innovation diffuses rapidly….55 years to have 1/4 people to own cars in US, 35 yrs telephone, 22 years radio, 13 yrs cell phone, 7 years WWW. Creative - same old same old is no longer good enough!

5. Science is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in response to the complex problems within our society

6. These problems require investigators working together within teams.This requires scientists who are grounded in a specific discipline and are able to effectively communicate with colleagues from other disciplines.

7. Interdisciplinary Research: a Centerpiece of our Research and Educational Program Joint – chem/bio (2) and GES/Chem Schaap – faculty located around commonly used instruments rather than by departments: molecular biologists w/ biochemists and organic chemists, analytical chemists w/ ecologists and environmental geologists HHMI – supporting joint faculty interdisciplinary research with undergraduates and insertion of interdisciplinary case studies/modules into our introductory science coursesJoint – chem/bio (2) and GES/Chem Schaap – faculty located around commonly used instruments rather than by departments: molecular biologists w/ biochemists and organic chemists, analytical chemists w/ ecologists and environmental geologists HHMI – supporting joint faculty interdisciplinary research with undergraduates and insertion of interdisciplinary case studies/modules into our introductory science courses

8. Private and public agencies recognize the need for training in interdisciplinary research Add – BIO2010 report Add – BIO2010 report

9. Breaking Down Barriers Mentoring – venue through which IR can be promoted Div-wide – cel luncheon, annual celebration, social Tenure – how to recognize interdisciplinary work. Do both faculty get full credit? Is it good science? Requires competent, broadly trained peers to evaluate a tenure folder. Tenure – how to recognize interdisciplinary work. Do both faculty get full credit? Is it good science? Requires competent, broadly trained peers to evaluate a tenure folder. Mentoring – venue through which IR can be promoted Div-wide – cel luncheon, annual celebration, social Tenure – how to recognize interdisciplinary work. Do both faculty get full credit? Is it good science? Requires competent, broadly trained peers to evaluate a tenure folder. Tenure – how to recognize interdisciplinary work. Do both faculty get full credit? Is it good science? Requires competent, broadly trained peers to evaluate a tenure folder.

10. Assessment – survey on student impressions

11. Most difficult aspect of interdisciplinary research Summary – hard to master new fields, communicationSummary – hard to master new fields, communication

12. What are the advantages of interdisciplinary research? New approaches, new knowledge Social aspect New approaches, new knowledge Social aspect

13. Advantages for Faculty New approaches, new knowledge Social aspect New approaches, new knowledge Social aspect

14. Activities that helped form bridges - Faculty

15. Discussion Questions