Interdisciplinary Funding and the Virtues of Professors: Evidence From a Survey on Curiosity, Intellectual Humility, and Collaboration

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Efforts and Impact of Educational Change in Higher Education (Table 4)

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing need for interdisciplinary research if we are to address the most complex issues of our time. However, it's not clear: (a) what individual differences predict support for interdisciplinarity, and (b) whether structural factors (e.g., funding) promote interdisciplinary collaboration. In a longitudinal survey spanning 2 years, we examined whether receiving an interdisciplinary research grant increases how much professors support interdisciplinarity, how much they enjoy their research, as well as their curiosity, collaboration and intellectual humility. Our findings suggest that those who received an interdisciplinary grant compared to those who did not reported higher scores in intellectual humility, curiosity and collaboration, enjoyed their research more, and engage in more interdisciplinary academic practices.

Authors

• Stylianos Syropoulos, Arizona State University

• Liane Young, Boston College

• Gregg Sparkman, Boston College

• Gordon Kraft-Todd, Boston College

• Kim Nelson Pryor, Southern Methodist University

• Laura J. Steinberg, Boston College