Interdisciplinary Strategies as Transformative Change in Higher Education
Institutions of higher education are increasingly called upon to produce collaborative, interdisciplinary knowledge (i.e., National Science Foundation 2004; Pfirman et al. 2005; Rhoten 2003). As a result, disciplinary concentrations of faculty members, students, and knowledge are no longer the de facto norm for colleges and universities. One impetus for this growth has been the priority placed on interdisciplinary activities by federal funding agencies in the United States. These activities include large-scale research programs, innovative graduate curricula, and undergraduate training courses. "Current research is often characterized by integrative and interdisciplinary approaches," the National Science Foundation (2004) noted in a call for proposals. "The goal of [our programs] is to build a well-educated and skilled workforce for these cutting-edge interdisciplinary areas that are primed to drive economic growth in coming decades".
Moreover, the purpose of interdisciplinary programs is to encourage interaction, learning, and research across disciplinary boundaries that have traditionally divided the university (Klein 1990; Newell 2001). In response to demands for interdisciplinary activity, higher education institutions have undertaken innovative, transformational change efforts (Clark 1998; Eckel and Kezar 2003; Kogan 2000).
In this article, I examine interdisciplinary activity in higher education as a form of transformative change. Using data collected through case studies of 21 research universities in the United States, I reviewed the efforts institutions are undertaking to meet the growing demand for interdisciplinary activities. To do so, I adopted the framework of transformational change advanced by Eckel and Kezar (2003), who noted that such change requires senior administrative support, collaborative leadership, flexible vision, faculty and staff development, and visible action. Transformational change alters the way an institution operates as well as the way its members view the organization. The two research questions which guided this study were as follow. 1) For this subset of institutions, what change strategies are utilized by administrators to support interdisciplinary work on campus? 2) To what extent do efforts to facilitate interdisciplinary change extend across the institution? I begin by providing an overview of transformational change with an emphasis on how such efforts can be utilized to facilitate interdisciplinary initiatives. Then I summarize the research study, utilizing case study data to illustrate how universities use the organizational strategies identified by Eckel and Kezar to bring interdisciplinary transformation to the institution. I conclude with implications for collaborative activities in higher education.
Degrees of Change in Higher Education
The literature on organizational behavior and higher education highlights the deliberate nature of successful change. As March (1981) argued, "Organizations are continually changing, routinely, easily, and responsively, but change within organizations cannot be arbitrarily controlled" (p. 563).
Regardless of how change in higher education has been conceptualized, research on organizations has typically relied on a shared definition of institutions. The goal of interdisciplinary work, which can be termed interdisciplinarity, is "to integrate knowledge or modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to produce a cognitive advancement... in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means" (Boix Mansilla and Duraising 2007, p. 219).
Not only does interdisciplinarity entail the involvement of multiple disciplines, but the disciplines are also integrated in pursuit of an overarching question or topic (Holley 2009; Klein 1990). As compared to multidisciplinarity, which features an additive approach towards the disciplines, or crossdisciplinarity, which uses the cognitive tools from one discipline to answer questions in another, interdisciplinarity is achieved through the active integration of concepts, ideas, or knowledge from normally distinct fields of study. The process of integration required for interdisciplinary work can run afoul in several ways. For example, Rhoten (2003) highlighted the challenge of achieving an interdisciplinary consensus. Scholars bring different disciplinary standards to an assessment of validity and outcomes, which can cause conflict regarding interdisciplinary collaboration. A related challenge is the development of an interdisciplinary language. Language that has a specific meaning in one discipline may have an entirely different meaning in another, requiring attention to achieving mutual understanding (Miller and Boix Mansilla 2004). In addition, since the departmental structure is commonly associated with the allocation of financial resources, interdisciplinary projects may require different sources of fiscal support in order to be successful (Sa 2008).
Interdisciplinary change is frequently associated with technological innovation and financial incentives (Smith and McCann 2001). The development of interdisciplinary programs is also related to the capacity and propensity of the organization to support new fields (Brint et al. 2009a). Interdisciplinary initiatives are regularly used as a means to incorporate social concerns and global consciousness within an institution, particularly when such issues are not seen as compatible with the existing disciplinary structure. Programs in environmental studies, global health, and gender studies as well as alternative first-year learning experiences are examples of interdisciplinary programs that transcend the boundaries of the disciplines (Brint et al. 2009a, b).
Change efforts related to organizations have acquired numerous labels, including organizational change, innovation, adaptation, and strategic change (Hage 1999; Kezar 2001). For this study, I considered how one type of institutional behavior in higher education (interdisciplinary initiatives) can be considered transformational change. Transformational change exhibits unique characteristics that differentiate such efforts from other types of organizational behavior. In particular, as Eckel and Kezar (2003) noted, transformational change is pervasive, intentional, occurs over a period of time, has a strong influence on institutional culture, and "affects those underlying assumptions that tell an institution what is important; what to do, why, and how; and what to produce" (p. 33).
Instead of solitary adjustments to pedagogy or curriculum or isolated change within a specific program or department, transformational change impacts how members of the organization view themselves and the work in which they are engaged. This type of change produces a "major overhaul of the organization's structure and strategy" (Bess and Dee 2008, p. 796). It is important to note that transformational change supports the historical purpose and mission of the organization. Institutions continue to be defined by an emphasis on teaching, research, and service; but change efforts allow the institution to reach these goals in a more efficient and dynamic way (Eckel and Kezar, p. 17).
It is important to reiterate that transformational change occurs over time through efforts to alter the structural and cultural frameworks that hold the institution together. Such efforts do not occur easily, nor are they always successful. Eckel and Kezar (2003) identified five core strategies essential to transformational change efforts, including senior administrative support, collaborative leadership, flexible vision, faculty and staff development, and visible action. Senior administrators provide the resources necessary to change, and they can also convey a shift in institutional priorities through their language and behavior. Collaborative leadership brings together individuals from across the campus, even those who do not hold formal positions of authority. By encouraging members of the campus community to become involved in transformational change, ownership of the initiative spreads well beyond the senior administration. Flexible vision determines a defined plan for action while acknowledging the possibilities of unforeseen opportunities. Faculty and staff development conveys the clear commitment by the organization to support the change efforts while visible action provides evidence that change is occurring over an extended period of time. Cumulatively, these strategies indicate the necessity of communicating the need for change consistently and throughout the organization as well as introducing change efforts in all elements of the organization. I used these examples of transformational change as a guide to consider the degree of structural and cultural change brought about by interdisciplinary initiatives.
The Study
For this project, I conducted qualitative case study analyses of programs at 21 research universities in the U.S. The objective for such research is to "investigate a contextualized contemporary phenomenon within specific boundaries" (Hatch 2002, p. 30). The study was descriptive and exploratory, well-suited for qualitative methods. The purpose of the study was to examine interdisciplinary activity in higher education as a form of transformative change.
Sample
The institutions that were included in the study were those classified as research universities with very high research activity (RU/VH) by themost recent Carnegie Classification. The initial review of such institutions yielded 96 universities. I restricted my analyses to those institutions that had received at least $300 million in federal research funding in 2004 (Walters 2006). This criterion reduced the number of institutions to 21, half of which are private institutions. A gap of at least $20 million existed between those institutions above this amount and those below; moreover, the institutions which received at least $300 million in federal research funding were tightly clustered, making them well-defined for study. All but one of these institutions are members of the American Association of Universities. The selected institutions served as the units of analysis.
Data and Data Analysis
The primary sources of the data collected were institutional documents including strategic plans, campus master plans, annual reports, speeches by key administrators, press releases, campus newspapers, and promotional materials. I supplemented this data with a review of external media resources such as local newspapers and trade publications. Documents provided important insight into the processes and goals valued by the institution (Altheide et al. 2008; Patton 1990). The strength of document analysis is the understanding of experiences from the perspectives of selected institutional stakeholders. These document types were selected for their ability to provide insight into ongoing institutional projects, as opposed to more static, formal artifacts such as the academic catalogue or the faculty handbook.
In this project I focused on the rhetoric of interdisciplinary transformational change. This rhetoric was at times connected to tangible practices carried out by the institution such as the development of new administrative offices or the construction of interdisciplinary facilities. Yet rhetoric is also visionary in nature, defining those areas which the institution hopes to expand or strengthen. The data presented here highlight institutional aspirations related to interdisciplinarity and the significance given to such initiatives by campus leaders. This perspective offers insight into how an elite group of universities conceptualizes the idea of interdisciplinary change.
The trustworthiness of the analytic process was ensured through data triangulation, where the use of multiple data sources encouraged awareness of alternative interpretations. In addition, I employed peer review of the data, utilizing feedback from a colleague not involved in the research project to confirm the interpretation of data (Merriam 1998).
Conclusion
As the international demand for interdisciplinary, collaborative knowledge increases, universities and colleges are challenged to support such practices within a traditional disciplinary model. In considering transformational change efforts in higher education, scholars should focus on how institutions pursue change in order to access external resources such as grant funding. In particular, the question of how institutions balance internal resources to pursue external rewards is of relevance. The institutions in this analysis represent a subset of U.S. higher education with the ability to devote financial resources to interdisciplinary work. Even such actions, however, required the pursuit of interdisciplinary endeavors over other forms of activities.
Several conclusions can be presented from the results of the analysis presented here. First, while all universities in this study acknowledged the importance of interdisciplinarity, successful change seems to be facilitated by pursuing interdisciplinary interests in a manner that supports other institutional priorities. The evidence suggests that change strategies are best implemented as part of the specific characteristics and priorities of each campus. The acquisition of additional campus space at UNC Chapel Hill, for example, or development of a new strategic plan at the University of Pennsylvania allowed the institutions to align interdisciplinary strategies with other campus activities. This argument supports the conclusions of organizational theorists (Clark 1998; Keup et al. 2001) and existing research on interdisciplinary change (Sa 2008), which argue for the relationship between change efforts with the underlying assumptions that give meaning to institutional behavior. Finally, the implementation of change was accomplished through both structural and cultural efforts. The analysis demonstrated that implementing interdisciplinary initiatives is accomplished through changes in how institutional work is organized; the facilities in which the work is carried out; and concurrent shifts in the language, behavior, and artifacts used to refer to such endeavors.