Identity Trajectories of Faculty Members through Interdisciplinary STEAM Collaboration Paired with Public Communication
Abstract
:1. Introduction and Background
1.1. Project Background
1.2. Identity
1.3. Conceptual Framework
2. Methods
2.1. Recruitment and Participants
2.2. Communication Training
2.3. Data Collection
2.4. Data Analysis
2.5. Limitations
3. Results
3.1. Intellectual Strand: Expanding Means of Intellectual Communication and Dominant Identities
“We didn’t overdo it with a PowerPoint, but we still need some visual other than just your face in most of these cases… But I think that the way that we set it up as almost like a live interview session where we interviewed each other instead of just talking at the crowd, I thought that was a nice twist and a different way of thinking about how to present who we are, what we do.”—Amy (Movement Cohort)
“I realized that it [adjusting your content] is also for those [community] audiences, tailoring the type and topic of content that you are putting out there. And then I felt like a lot of attracting those audiences was as much looking at the fairly broad umbrella and applications of the work I do and asking, ‘which part of this is possibly going to be interesting to my audience?’ And then creating some things around that.”—Kacey (Energy Cohort)
“I see the same behavior in college classes where students are far more engaged when they can relate their learnings to their day-to-day experiences. I realized that this is also a way of making them more interactive in class. I keep enhancing my slides with pictures of real-world examples.”—Alena (Energy Cohort)
“I like the research part where the teaching was involved in outreach. I mean, I like to be a mentor. So, I also take mentorship courses. I have a postdoc. I have graduate students. Over the summer I have five undergrads on an undergrad research project because that’s in the end what’s important to me.”—Jakob (Elements Cohort)
“I remember after that [Science Museum Exhibit] presentation, talking to my mom and I was like, ‘Mom, I’ve got some new ways to help you think about my research. And what it is that I do and to explain it’… So yeah, I think that it has definitely taught me how to better communicate and just get in a completely different way, maybe not even using some of the words that I would usually use. It made me very much think creatively out-of-the-box at the [Science Museum Exhibit]. So, I think that is very useful in my communication, especially with people like my family that just are interested, but only because it’s me, not because they’re interested in my work.”—Maria (Space)
“I think that it was mostly about how to communicate with others which I guess is relevant to me also as a researcher. I think the perspective that I gained is about how to make sure that people understand the connections, not just jumping into maybe the result, but explaining how it came to be.”—Lesley (Elements Cohort)
3.2. Institutional Strand: Engagement with Institutional Resources
“Learning how to communicate better, and I definitely feel like that was one of the major valuable aspects of this program for me, both in a very specific sense thinking back to [Science Museum Trainer] trainings at [Science Museum] and these kinds of formal trainings that we received. And there’s elements of those trainings that I continue to use in both my teaching and just interacting with people, little tricks and things like that.”—Mark (Space Cohort)
3.3. Networking Strand: Expanding Opportunities and Possibilities
“I do think that one thing I’ve learned is that in order to reach for collaborations far outside my discipline, I have to be willing to be more flexible with what I consider my “research interests.” While the project strayed rather far from my specific interests at the midpoint, it helped build connections that we ultimately harnessed in the final presentation, which I was able to bring back much closer to my own research areas and interests while still incorporating our common theme.”—Kacey (Energy Cohort)
“This is one of the very rare opportunities for me to reach out to other people who are doing entirely different things in their daily research and to attack the problem that has a common interest among all participants. That is very new and very refreshing and very rewarding.”—Jerry (Space Cohort)
“I think that this project set us up for success to collaborate because there was so much interaction and there was so much push for learning about each other, learn about each other and watch each other teach other things and get engaged this way. It’s taught me some things that I wish that I could do and so I’m thinking in the future about how I’m going to go about establishing collaborations for work.”—Maria (Space Cohort)
“I think, not only is it interesting, but it’s just extremely sort of strategic and mutually beneficial for us to be looking for these ways in which creative disciplines and scientific ones can combine. Because I just feel like art can be the megaphone for research. And these kinds of cross disciplinary projects allow, yes, they allow us as artists to get a wider audience. I feel like they allow scientists to reach a wider audience and to be louder and more interesting in their messaging, perhaps.”—Doug (Elements Cohort)
4. Discussion and Implications
5. Conclusions and Future Work
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Event | Event Description | Participant Engagement |
---|---|---|
Science Museum Exhibit | An adult 21 + event in which attendees explore the museum and stop by exhibit tables at their leisure | At tables, cohort members would engage with the attendees by providing an activity to teach the public about an application of their research. |
High School Hackathon | A high school hackathon that gives students an opportunity to learn about computer science | Cohort participants created an integrated, interdisciplinary challenge for hackathon attendees, served as mentors to student teams throughout the day, and judged the final products. |
Community Art Walk | A community event in the form of a gallery walk that showcases art, theater, food, science, and other exhibits | Cohort participants gave an informal talk about their research. |
Science Pub | A monthly event that invites scientists to present their research to the public to improve science literacy | Cohort participants gave an online presentation to a community audience about their research topics. |
Cohort Theme | # Members | Pseudonyms | Timeframe | # Events (Type) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Energy | 3 | Alena Jack Kacey | January 2019–October 2019 | 5 (All in-person) |
Space | 5 | Andrew Jerry Maria Mark Mitchell | September 2019–April 2021 (Interrupted by COVID) | 4 (2 in-person; 2 virtual) |
Movement | 4 | Amy David James Todd | December 2019–February 2021 (Interrupted by COVID) | 4 (2 in-person; 2 virtual) |
Elements | 4 | Doug Jakob Lesley Sean | February 2021–June 2021 | 3 (All virtual) |
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Desing, R.M.; Pelan, R.; Kajfez, R.L.; Wallwey, C.; Clark, A.M.; Gopalakrishnan, S. Identity Trajectories of Faculty Members through Interdisciplinary STEAM Collaboration Paired with Public Communication. Educ. Sci. 2024, 14, 454. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050454
Desing RM, Pelan R, Kajfez RL, Wallwey C, Clark AM, Gopalakrishnan S. Identity Trajectories of Faculty Members through Interdisciplinary STEAM Collaboration Paired with Public Communication. Education Sciences. 2024; 14(5):454. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050454
Chicago/Turabian StyleDesing, Renee M., Renee Pelan, Rachel L. Kajfez, Cassie Wallwey, Abigail M. Clark, and Sathya Gopalakrishnan. 2024. "Identity Trajectories of Faculty Members through Interdisciplinary STEAM Collaboration Paired with Public Communication" Education Sciences 14, no. 5: 454. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050454
APA StyleDesing, R. M., Pelan, R., Kajfez, R. L., Wallwey, C., Clark, A. M., & Gopalakrishnan, S. (2024). Identity Trajectories of Faculty Members through Interdisciplinary STEAM Collaboration Paired with Public Communication. Education Sciences, 14(5), 454. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050454