IV. Promoting Innovation and Interdisciplinary Research: Department-Centered Interventions

Encouraging interdisciplinary research and teaching has been a top priority for individual departments at colleges and universities within the PIT-UN since 2018. At the same time, difficulties have persisted in incentivizing interdisciplinary work within the traditional tenure model, which discourages pre-tenure faculty from doing interdisciplinary research and teaching that is often valued less within prestigious journals and academic circles.

While the PIT-UN small grants fund has worked to address the lack of financial incentives and support to do interdisciplinary research, the problem of promotion and tenure remains one of the largest barriers to the effective integration of public interest technology into institutions at the department level. Accordingly, key challenges include:

• Pre-tenure faculty remain hesitant to engage in PIT unless they know it will result in promotion and/or tenure; and
• The traditional tenure model remains an obstacle due to lack of incentives for interdisciplinary work.

Progress toward addressing these challenges falls into three main categories: reinventing tenure and promotion, developing research centers and departments, and fostering a culture of interdisciplinary work.

Interviewees noted that one of the biggest challenges toward tenure-level faculty evaluating pre-tenure faculty doing interdisciplinary research is that evaluation models are lacking. “Tenure often causes more problems than it solves. The traditional metrics for measuring faculty performance don’t necessarily reflect the quality of work,” said Todd Richmond of Pardee RAND. On a similar note, Justin Pearlman, vice provost for communications and engagement at Columbia University, noted, “One big challenge is to find and engage the right people in relevant departments at peer schools who can evaluate this type of interdisciplinary work, and right now that task can often be difficult.”

“Tenure often causes more problems than it solves. The traditional metrics for measuring faculty performance don’t necessarily reflect the quality of work.”
–Todd Richmond, Pardee RAND

Other interviewees expressed similar sentiments. “Tenure and promotion are the biggest challenges to the development of a public interest technology field,” said Daniel Murray, executive director at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

Other public interest technologists noted that while they personally value interdisciplinary research and teaching, traditional criteria still govern tenure decisions at their institutions. “Tenure expectations present challenges, but they are not insurmountable,” said Louis Nelson, vice provost for academic outreach at the University of Virginia. Nelson noted that encouraging pre-tenure faculty to do interdisciplinary work is merely “a gentle mediation against the prevailing reality, which is that cross-disciplinary work is not always encouraged pre-tenure. We and our partners nationally need to find ways to mitigate that.”

1. Broadening the Scope of Work for Tenure Consideration

For some universities, like the Olin College of Engineering and the Pardee RAND Graduate School, departments have reinvented the concept of tenure for modern academia by broadening the scope of work for tenure consideration and by eliminating tenure altogether. Although Pardee RAND and Olin are at the forefront of reconceptualizing tenure, many interviewees at other institutions noted the importance of rethinking tenure. Jennifer DeVere Brody at Stanford University said, “Something that would be helpful from the network is to rewrite the rules on tenure and promotion to show how to evaluate a successful file of doing public interest technology work.”

“Something that would be helpful from the network is to rewrite the rules on tenure and promotion to show how to evaluate a successful file of doing public interesting technology work.”
–Jennifer DeVere Brody, Stanford University

Olin College of Engineering has broadened the scope of work considered for promotion to dovetail with its nontraditional institutional model. Much of Olin’s “do learn” curriculum is scaffolded with engineering and design projects, including capstones where students partner with corporations and nonprofit organizations on hands-on engineering projects, including developing many social ventures. Accordingly, Olin’s model of promotion broadens the scope of work that is typically considered for promotion. Erhardt Graeff, assistant professor of social and computer science, said that Olin’s model for promotion of faculty encourages interdisciplinary work by “developing students in important and meaningful ways … [and] creating external impact, which is usually defined [at other institutions] as research that is recognized as valuable by their [disciplinary] peers.”

By defining “external impact” broadly to encapsulate public interest technology work, Graeff said, Olin’s early-career and tenure-equivalent faculty have the freedom to conduct meaningful work without fearing those contributions will be ignored. With a total enrollment of around 350 students and an entrepreneurial spirit built into the school’s mission, Olin might not serve as a replicable model for all other institutions looking to shift away from established tenure-granting models. Nonetheless, Olin’s vision for an academic institution beyond the confines of department-based tenure serves as an example for institutions looking to modify traditional structures.

2. Promoting Interdisciplinary Work by Eliminating Tenure

Similarly, Pardee RAND Graduate School provides an alternative model for tenure, specifically considering how they teach public policy graduate students. Pardee is known for its emphasis on project-based learning and interdisciplinary focus, which naturally leads faculty to consider a variation of the traditional tenure model. In doing so, there is no tenure model at Pardee. All faculty are full-time researchers within the larger think tank of the RAND Corporation, and they choose to lead courses or workshops with graduate students. “[Faculty] teach because they want to … [and] they don’t need to be recognized by the department because teaching is not a metric for their regular performance reviews,” said Todd Richmond, director of the Tech & Narrative Lab at Pardee RAND.

Without the constraints of tenure and associated pressures of traditional academic publishing, interdisciplinary work at Pardee RAND is often conducted through project work, labs, and experimentation. In particular, Richmond’s Tech & Narrative Lab focuses on policy problems and implications related to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT), and digital gaming. The lab emphasizes the importance of storytelling in policy analysis, and the method of experimentation without the pressure of tenure permits a unique learning environment.

“Research has historically involved submitting a proposal to a granting agency with well-defined hypotheses and experiments. What I found in working in emerging technology is that until we start playing with the technology capabilities, I don’t even know what the questions are,” said Todd Richmond from Pardee RAND. Richmond contends that “exploring the problem spaces through building and breaking things is critical, and there is an assumption of risk, acknowledging that a lot of experiments won’t work.” In this way, Pardee can bring together policy analysts and technologists on pressing projects in public interest technology through lab- and experimentation-based learning.

Other institutions, like Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Virginia, and UC Berkeley have not completely solved the problem of tenure, but they have created innovative research centers and designed interdisciplinary departments to bolster interdisciplinary research and teaching. Deirdre Mulligan at UC Berkeley noted the importance of centers and departments, saying, “Centers and working groups … are an excellent way of incentivizing social scientists and domain experts to better understand the human experience through data science and technology.”

“Centers and working groups … are an excellent way of incentivizing social scientists and domain experts to better understand the human experience through data science and technology.”
–Deirdre Mulligan, UC Berkeley

1. Creating Innovative Research Centers

One way that institutions have encouraged interdisciplinary work is through the creation of research centers within institutions. Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy serves as an example for institutions looking to pair pre-tenure with tenure-level faculty doing cutting-edge research in the field of public interest technology.

The center has published groundbreaking work on every public interest technology issue from artificial intelligence and bias to data privacy and the regulation of cryptocurrency, and has become a model for the co-location of diverse faculty such as computer scientists, sociologists, and ethicists. The center has seen success in its fellows program, in which fellows partner with senior faculty on interdisciplinary projects lasting between one and three years. Tithi Chattopadhyay from Princeton University credited both committed university support and the development of a scholarly community for the success of the research center.

The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Stanford University encourages interdisciplinary work through a few innovative strategies. CCSRE conducts research at the intersection of race and technology and teaches undergraduate and graduate students. CCSRE is notable in its recognition of the need to circumvent obstacles to tenure by hiring program staff and research staff to foster the partnerships necessary for community-engaged learning and research.

“We and others have to think about how to bring in people from the outside who are experienced in that work,” said Daniel Murray from Stanford University. “That is why it is important to bring in people through practitioner fellowships, collaborations, and center programs.”

2. Designing Interdisciplinary Departments

The University of Virginia is spurring interdisciplinary work through the creation of its new School of Data Science, which draws on the university’s practice of hiring in interdisciplinary clusters. “Clusters try to draw faculty from across the university—in cohorts where domains/topical areas overlap but research methodologies are fairly different. This optimizes the chances of using a variety of approaches to achieve a common goal or solve a grand challenge,” said Louis Nelson from the University of Virginia.

Similarly, UC Berkeley created the Division of Data Science and Information (DDSI) in November 2018 as an interdisciplinary department comprised of faculty and students from the College of Engineering, College of Letters and Science, and the School of Information. “The goal of educating students in DDSI is to make sure they have domain-specific competencies and also technical competencies,” said Deirdre Mulligan at UC Berkeley. DDSI employs data science and computational methods to solve complex problems in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities and gives students the data literacy to engage critically with public interest technology work. Alongside the creation of DDSI, UC Berkeley created a Data Science major and Master of Information and Data Science degree, both of which pair computational modeling courses with a requisite course on Human Contexts and Ethics.

Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, Harvard University, and others are aiming to foster a culture of interdisciplinary work without creating new academic infrastructure. They have done this through creating non-tenure public interest technology roles and integrating public interest modules and principles into their teaching and research.

“If you want people to teach this and have this practical applied knowledge that can’t be learned from a textbook, then you have to be more flexible in how you hire.”
–Christopher Goranson, Carnegie Mellon University

1. Creating Non-Tenure Public Interest Technology Roles

Creating non-tenure roles for technologists is crucial to the success of public interest technology at the department level, and faculty tasked with hiring these roles are looking for successful models. “Finding visiting faculty and adjunct faculty who have the ability to teach this work is a challenge right now,” said Pete Peterson, dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy is a pioneer in leveraging data science and computing for the public interest. Heinz College faculty work with Allegheny County and the Pittsburgh community in tackling homelessness, child abuse, and service delivery problems though informed data analysis, and Carnegie Mellon facilitates public interest and government-focused research through creating new non-tenure public interest technology roles. Said Christopher Goranson, distinguished service professor at Heinz College:

If you want people to teach public interest technology who have a practical applied knowledge that can’t be learned from a textbook, then you have to be more flexible in how you hire. It can’t just be an adjunct. If a university can open up pathways to offer fulltime roles and maybe not a tenured path, then there is a foundation laid for public interest technology to be an actual discipline down the road.

2. Integrating Public Interest Principles into Teaching and Research

Given the role of science and technology in explaining and addressing contemporary policy issues, public interest technology represents the next frontier for advancing cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approaches to academic pursuits. “Our earth scientists have been plugged into the public policy landscape in Miami to drive solutions creation at the nexus of earth sciences and policy through climate change planning for municipalities,” said Saif Ishoof, vice president of engagement at FIU. “For us, public interest technology is an extension of the success that we have had bringing together hard sciences and public policy to provide deeper pathways of learning.”

Georgia Tech College of Computer is promoting interdisciplinary work in two new ways. Instead of convincing tenure-level faculty to reinvent tenure and engage in interdisciplinary work, Ellen Zegura, Fleming professor of computer science, noted the importance of training undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants in interdisciplinary and ethical models of teaching computer science courses.

Zegura and her colleagues conduct workshops with teaching assistants to show them how they can effectively integrate ethics into the computing curriculum. With their recent grant from PIT-UN, Zegura and Georgia Tech more broadly will be pairing STEM professors at Georgia Tech with the Sociology and Criminal Justice Departments at Georgia State University to give pre-tenure faculty and graduate students an opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary research with leading scholars in fields other than their own.

UT Austin is another university that has successfully encouraged interdisciplinary work without creating entirely new administrative superstructures. Through their Bridging Barriers incubator for interdisciplinary projects, a UT Austin team of faculty from English, information, engineering, architecture, computer science, and journalism departments created the Good Systems project. Existing with limited administrative support, the eight-year $8 million project analyzes how society can ensure that AI is beneficial to humanity and analyze any unintended consequences that may be overlooked in developing emerging technologies. The Good Systems project brings together students, researchers, and faculty leaders through research grants that incentivize interdisciplinary work in public interest technology. In doing so, the Good Systems project bolsters a culture of interdisciplinary work without creating entirely new departmental structures.

In a similar light, professor David Eaves, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, is developing teaching resources to promote interdisciplinary training for students with the recently awarded PIT-UN small grant. The project brings together faculty from public policy programs and internal government training programs across the country to help faculty members better integrate public interest technology principles into their teaching modules.