Principal Investigator: L. Douglas James (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Sponsor: GWRI
Start Date: 1969-10-01; Completion Date: 1971-09-30;
Keywords:
Description:
Because of the necessity of working with many interactive linkages between hydrology, engineering design, economics, esthetics, perception and communication mechanisms, and many other factors, the involvement of an interdisciplinary team was seen as essential to research on developing an approach for prescribing an effective combination of remedial and preventive flood plain management to alleviate the consequences of flooding along small urban waterways. A team organized through the Environmental Resources Center (an entity having a role of research coordination) at the Georgia Institute of Technology was comprised of eleven people in six disciplines plus two or three times as many others in supporting roles. Each had a strong commitment to function in an interdisciplinary manner and not through a group of loosely coordinated multidisciplinary efforts. In addition to attacking the flood management problem, the interdisciplinary team represented a deliberate effort to probe the constraints on interdisciplinary research at the university level and propose institutional and organizational adjustments for making such groups more effective.
While the team did make some significant contributions in terms of gathering data pertaining to the research problem, none of its members were really satisfied with their accomplishments. The working team was asked to use its experience as a basis for making recommendations which it believed would help subsequent teams to be more successful and through an iterative process of individuals forwarding propositions and group discussion produced a set of 27 specific recommendations. The report, written by a member who joined the team about a year afterwards, contains material describing the objectives of interdisciplinary organization, a history of how the team was organized and functioned, a discussion of organizational problems encountered, and an assessment of team morale and team effectiveness. Each point is discussed in the context of the 27 recommendations made by the team.
Key recommendations were that team members be recruited who are problem oriented but have sufficient discipline focus to function successfully, that the administration of the project not be tied to any specific discipline, that a core staff within the administrative unit be organized to keep the team moving, that viable research assignments be given each team member early in the total effort, that the role and responsibility of each team member be clearly defined, and that informal support from the university hierarchy and community be cultivated. If universities are to address successfully the social issues of our times, they must seek such mechanisms for extending their competences beyond issues neatly fitting within traditional disciplinary molds.