Achievement

New EIGER Evaluation Director (and Co-PI) Dr. Maura Borrego and her research assistants have studied the impact of disciplinary departments and reward structures on faculty and graduate students. (a) They interviewed IGERT students at three different universities and found that ‘peripheral’ students whose advisors were less active in the interdisciplinary area were at greatest risk for receiving conflicting messages about the value of interdisciplinary research. (b) They observed two faculty teams writing interdisciplinary research proposals for two years and found that departmental devaluation of collaborative activities and disagreements about returned overhead distribution often distracted and discouraged the team members. Dr. Borrego received a PECASE award for related work in December, 2008.