Stanford Today Edition: March/April, 1998 Section: Features: The Paradox of Multidisciplinary Programs WWW: The Paradox of Multidisciplinary Programs
By Richard Zare
Universities are traditionally organized into departments. Such organization is more than a quaint academic custom - it evolved for solid reasons. A department provides a home for scholars with similar interests and backgrounds, somewhat like a family. It keeps the truth and determines the future directions of a field. A department is also the natural teaching unit, particularly at the undergraduate level. Indeed, to be a faculty member in a university and not a department member is usually to be a marginalized university citizen - lost, homeless and likely alienated.
I can attest to this fact from some personal experience. In the late 1960s, I was on the faculty of the University of Colorado as an assistant professor with an untenured position supported equally by the physics and chemistry departments there. It was a most disagreeable situation - I received twice as many committee assignments but each department regarded me as the spy from the other department. When it came time for a tenure decision, it was not clear which department, if either, really felt I was one of theirs. On the boundaries of two disciplines, I did not have a family of my own.
Despite this focus on and within disciplines, it is easy to recognize that some of the most interesting intellectual challenges we confront today occur at the boundaries of disciplines or cut across two or more disciplines. We need multidisciplinary efforts to tackle some very tough but important problems. Too often, thinking restricted along departmental lines is thinking limited to separate, distinct boxes when the solution can be found only by thinking "outside the box."
One simple example will illustrate the power of interdisciplinary efforts. Here I point with pride to the announcement of possible life on Mars. This effort required scientists to endure harsh conditions to find the meteorite in Antarctica, and then a team of people in chemistry, biology, mineralogy, paleontology and physics to conduct studies. And, as the debate about the meaning of the rock rages on, more and more contributions across disciplinary lines keep the dialogue moving in a healthy manner.
Support structures for such multidisciplinary efforts are just being built. The National Science Foundation recognizes that many exciting advances in science cross disciplinary boundaries. Although the foundation is organized around disciplines, much as universities are, several new programs cross those lines and greatly benefit science.
Two examples of multidisciplinary efforts are the creation of an Astrobiology Institute by NASA and the announcement by NSF of a program called Life in Extreme Environments, which touches upon the origins of life and under what conditions life can be sustained. Born in the excitement following the discovery of possible life on Mars, these initiatives include biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy, and researchers studying such diverse areas as the oceans or polar regions of our Earth as well as other planets. The multidisciplinary study of microbial life forms and the extreme environments in which they exist on Earth tells us about the very nature of life itself. Discovering how life can sustain itself in extreme conditions and while under stress can tell us how the Earth's ecosystems can adapt and adjust to the influence of people. All this has surprisingly practical applications - from discovering or engineering bacteria that can clean up hazardous spills to creating life forms that can advance farming and increase crop yields.
A key to the success of such efforts is vision and leadership: Someone must be in charge and take ownership, even if many others are involved. To look back at my early faculty days, had it been determined from the start that I belonged to one of the departments, though the input from the other department was vital, I would not have been quite so "homeless" when the time came for the tenure decision.
Not all research needs to be multidisciplinary, of course. But the paradox is how to allow such multidisciplinary activities to flourish while preserving the strength of our departments. Only the existence of healthy disciplines and strong leadership makes possible meaningful multidisciplinary studies. We cannot let the strength of our departments diminish while we seek important cooperative models. ST
Richard Zare is chairman of the National Science Board and Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University.
Robert Weisberg is the Edwin E. Huddleson Jr. Professor of Law and Vice Provost for Faculty Relations. Susan is a medical social worker in the Department of Radiation Oncology.