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The Future is Florida State: Strategic Plan 2017-2022
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 University is continuing the Collaborative Collision program that brings researchers from different disciplines to work together on one topic. The program now features two events per semester and offers substantial seed funding to encourage follow-up after initial encounters. The FSU Office of Research Development (ORD) recently hosted its 12th Collaborative Collision event, a virtual networking event that connected faculty members from a variety of disciplines to collaborate on interdisciplinary research regarding anti-racism, equity and inclusion.
- 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