Engineering and Cross-disciplinary Research

Cross-disciplinary research has been a key component certainly in environmental science (my undergraduate major of study) long before it became popular. This is especially true after sustainable development was put on the international map after the 1992 Rio Summit. When it comes to agricultural engineering, the term cross-disciplinary becomes more unclear. In fact, the most useful sources I found for this exercise come from computer engineering, which is still related to my research independent study this summer.

As agricultural engineering hones on sustainability (not only in development but in educational outreach), it is by default involved with other fields. Watcher notes that it is basically impossible to educate on sustainability utilizing a single discipline (48). Outreach programs through extension services seem to be a staple at every major university. Yet, it is not as though agricultural engineers and agronomists are always contracting out services to sociologists and anthropologists. Rather, they are applying their problem-solving, scientific methods to approach outreach from an engineering perspective, combined with the notion that universal skills such as public speaking and group presentations were taught in general education. Additionally, the myth that engineers cannot write or speak well is losing stigma as we become more and more visible in this information age.

In short agricultural engineering has certainly become more holistic, but cross-disciplinary would be a stretch to describe agricultural engineering. At best, it’s a gray area when working with consumer and food sciences. Collaboration here is very important for a variety of reasons, including informed consumer safety. Moving towards including more disciplines is important in an age of unprecedented information and communication.

I would hypothesize the limitations of any cross-disciplinary research in agricultural engineering stem from what was discussed in the Week 2 readings. Specifically, I am not aware of agricultural engineers who collaborate on grants extensively outside of their own field; yet engineering itself applies the pure sciences and mathematics. Mehanjiev, Brereton and Hosking note that ideas in engineering are transferable (1). This seems more practical than the methodical conversations described in Week 2 readings.

The economics of cross-disciplinary research is that there appears a growing interest (demand) for the concept, but it can and does take time, especially in academia. I would say that my research family is able to work effectively and we do often go line by line on important parts of the documents we write. But because we don’t always agree and sometimes have to communicate the same ideas in different ways so everyone can understand and I can see how this can keep people from other duties when time and efficiency are valuable commodities.

These challenges can transition into the political realm by creating red tape, so any cross-disciplinary project should be weighed out carefully. I can say that in the natural sciences, understanding incentives is a key role in making policy judgments. If a life cycle analysis or other holistic means are used to develop a project and find an outcome, then I would find difficulty in focusing on just one field. Yet, if one examines life cycle analyses, this procedure has its own set of ISO standards that do not call for specific collaboration of fields.

The social implications for cross-disciplinary research could yield a much better understanding of social dynamics and human culture. Agricultural engineers, for instance, could apply a scientific approach to solving problems that social or natural scientists may not have been exposed to or simply do not use. It’s even possible that cross-disciplinary education programs can be developed beyond the general education for students to develop more intangible skills. Such skills are frequently cited on resumes and CVs. Ivory noted that you need to be able to explain research if it’s on a CV, but this also applies to skills. I also think that it could help the social sciences in the long term because collaboration could bring in a variety of uncertainty analyses, which are a staple for engineers.

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Sources:

Mehanjiev, Nikolay, Brereton Pearl, and Hosking John . "Second International Workshop on Interdisciplinary Software Engineering Research (WISER’06).". New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery, 2006. 1-3. Print. <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1137662>.

Wachter, Christine. "Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning for Diverse and Sustainable Engineering Education." GIEE 2011: Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers. Ed. Andre Beraud, Anne-Sophie Godfroy and John Michel. Paris, France: Sense Publications, 2011. 48. Print. <http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-6091-982-4_5>.