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A community-engaged approach to transdisciplinary doctoral training in urban ecosystem services

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Abstract

Community-based projects with inclusive stakeholder engagement are increasingly important to achieve robust outcomes in the science and management of ‘wicked’ urban ecosystem service challenges. We summarize lessons learned from a transdisciplinary, team-based doctoral education program that engaged students in research on such multi-stakeholder, complex problems. The key lessons are (a) problem-based projects foster active student engagement and accelerate transdisciplinary analysis, (b) problems addressing more acute interventions by public or private organizations enable learning by clearly delineating the issues and revealing the goals and perspectives of varied stakeholders, (c) successful projects that address wicked problems require that transdisciplinary teams begin from inception to robustly frame research questions with multiple lenses and choose appropriate theories and methods to implement projects, (d) regular stakeholder engagement leads to mutually meaningful project outcomes that advance scholarly frontiers for university researchers and provide relevant solutions for community partners, and (e) university administrative investment in program faculty, students, and staff and flexibility to reward innovative collaborations across disciplinary boundaries are keys to facilitate success in transdisciplinary education. Our lessons provide guidance both for addressing wicked problems through research projects in general and for formulating transdisciplinary training approaches for graduate education.

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  • 29 April 2020

    In the original publication of the article, two of the contributors��� names (Darrell Brown, Kim Heavener) were missing in the acknowledgement section. The correct acknowledgement is provided below.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant #0966376: Sustaining Ecosystem Services to Support Rapidly Urbanizing Areas. Additional support was provided by the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University and US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. We greatly appreciate the numerous contributions from ESUR-IGERT students, faculty, staff, and community partners who participated in our ESUR-IGERT curriculum from fall 2011 to summer 2017. Thanks also go to Paul Thomspon who offered valuable insights on transdisciplinary curriculum. We also appreciate the PIs of other IGERT sustainability-related programs who provided the lists of their community partners. Finally, we appreciate the constructive feedback provided by two anonymous reviewers. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring agencies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    Heejun Chang

  2. Department of Environmental Science and Management, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    Elise F. Granek, David Ervin & Alan Yeakley

  3. Department of Economics, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    David Ervin

  4. Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    David Ervin

  5. Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, 21250, USA

    Alan Yeakley

  6. Department of Sociology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    Veronica Dujon

  7. School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, USA

    Vivek Shandas

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  1. Heejun Chang
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Correspondence to Heejun Chang.

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Handled by Thaddeus Miller, School for Future of Innovation in Society and The Polytechnic School at Arizona State University, United States Minor Outlying Islands.

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Table 7 Summary of IGERT sustainability-related programs that involve/d community engagement
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Chang, H., Granek, E.F., Ervin, D. et al. A community-engaged approach to transdisciplinary doctoral training in urban ecosystem services. Sustain Sci 15, 699–715 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00785-y

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