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Metric Chart: Percent of Contracts and Grants Proposals That Are Interdisciplinary. 2023 Goal: 15% increase. 2017 fiscal year baseline: 26.0%. 2018 fiscal year progress: 28.4%. 2019 fiscal year progress: 30.4%. 2020 fiscal year progress: 30.4%. 2023 fiscal year goal: 29.9%.
Tactics
Create infrastructure to promote and support interdisciplinarity
Growing our interdisciplinary activities requires new policies, programs, governance, programming, assessment and reinforcement structures that will be developed by a new university-wide, faculty-led, council responsible for promoting interdisciplinary research, teaching and learning activities.
Increase the overall level of interdisciplinary research and teaching
The goal to increase interdisciplinary research and teaching activities is born in the belief that innovation and new discoveries are found by juxtaposing research, methods, and insights from different fields onto each other.
Recognize and reward interdisciplinary activity
The value proposition and expectations of growing interdisciplinarity require changes in long-standing traditions for program governance and evaluations of faculty contributions that are deemed valuable for tenure, promotion and merit pay.
Activities and Accomplishments
- The number of students enrolled in interdisciplinary degree programs (e.g., Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences; Neuroscience; Interdisciplinary Social Sciences) continues to expand and new interdisciplinary degrees are being developed (e.g., Data Science).
- The Collaborative Collision program continues to demonstrate the University’s commitment to facilitating the development of cross-disciplinary and cross-sector teams. The program evolved to conclude with a live multimedia pitch competition in which teams have an opportunity to receive up to $100,000 to launch their projects. The Office of Research Development (ORD) recently hosted its 18th Collaborative Collision, and third in the 2.0 revision – previous topics have included Resiliency, Health, Climate Solutions, and Rural Innovation.
- A task force is implementing FSU’s plans for a Health Data Sciences Institute, which will leverage strengths across the behavioral, health, and social sciences in order to support large-scale research projects.
Outcomes