University of South Florida (Tampa)
ER-19: Interdisciplinary Research in Tenure and Promotion

1) USF Research Development Services (RDS) encourages and facilitates the collaboration among researchers across disciplines. Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research explore problems by uniting disciplines and create new tools and new fields of research. To support interdisciplinary partnerships RDS provides: • Consultation at any stage of the research process • Identification of new social networking and profiling tools • Facilitation in forming new research groups • Identification of new interdisciplinary funding announcements • Review of proposal drafts • Coordination of activities • Collaboration in inter and intra-university projects RDS is also involved in bringing together faculty from throughout the University to share their research and build partnerships through facilitating symposiums, speakers, and other Research One events, for example the Florida Climate Institute (USF Chapter) involves faculty from different disciplines to team up for research and education development in climate related topics. 2) While interdisciplinary research is currently not featured in USF's tenure and promotion criteria, USF maintains a strong commitment to supporting and advancing interdisciplinary research. This commitment is demonstrated in the recent construction of the Interdisciplinary Research Building and the new Interdisciplinary Science Teaching and Research Building, as well as many faculty and student funded award opportunities that promote interdisciplinary research. 3) Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research are highly valued across all departments and colleges. A recent task-force evaluating integrated interdisciplinary inquiry at USF produced the following definition of interdisciplinary research to be used in the development of future policies at USF: Interdisciplinary research is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or field of research practice, please see: http://www.acad.usf.edu/Task-Force/III/docs/III-Task-Force-Report.pdf