Shared place and space: a comparison of two interdisciplinary graduate programs

Interdisciplinary training has an important role to play in environmental research, but what aspects of interdisciplinary training are most helpful for graduate students as they seek to define themselves as interdisciplinary environmental scholars? In this paper, we compare two environmentally related NSF IGERT programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that were similar in their research focus but very different in their approach to training. One program required shared coursework, while the other required research in a shared geographical area in Yunnan, China. Our results suggest that the formal structure of interdisciplinary training programs may be less important than providing students with opportunities to interact with people from other disciplines, both intellectually and in practice. However, differences between the programs did impact participants’ approach to interdisciplinarity. Our findings also highlight the importance of professional training to ensure that all trainees are able to take advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities.