Supporting New Interdisciplinary Collaborations: the Science and Society @ State Program
Researchers were awarded an S3 seed grant to develop their plan and apply for funding for their collaborative project to study the role youth play in an environmental crisis and how they can be empowered as change agents using simple water testing tools.
MSU is uniquely positioned to be a world leader in novel interdisciplinary research that synthesizes STEM/biomedicine, arts/humanities, and social sciences. This is foremost because MSU is home to not only a group of world-class STEM/biomedicine scholars but also one of the largest and most diverse groups of scholars who study science itself—philosophers of ecology, anthropologists of medicine, historians of physics, fine artists who engage with chemistry, etc.
Since 2014, Science and Society @ State (S3) has been promoting MSU’s goal of fostering interdisciplinary externally-funded research by offering $10,000 seed grants to new interdisciplinary teams on campus. It is co-funded by the VPRGS and by stakeholder colleges/offices across the university, led by a director and a board of representatives from contributing colleges/offices.
With seed funding from Science & Society @ State (S3), a team of scientists and outreach experts are setting out to make FRIB a common term for Michigan's students.
The S3 Interdisciplinary Seed Grant supports new or emerging interdisciplinary collaborations between a MSU’s science studies scholars (sociologists/historians/anthropologists/artists/STS scholars, etc. who study science and technology) and STEM/health scholars. These interdisciplinary seed grants help create opportunities for collaborative research projects between the scholars working within a scientific/medical field, and the humanists, artists or social scientists who study that field.
Until now, S3 has focused on administering its current interdisciplinary seed grant program, but this forum is intended in part to spark additional conversation about what other roles S3 and other campus institutions can play in fostering interdisciplinary research that cuts across arts/humanities-social sciences-STEM/biomedicine interdisciplinarity.
We aim to gather a diverse group of campus stakeholders to tell about what S3 has accomplished, generate an idea for what it could accomplish in the future, and begin discussions of how other campus programs can synchronize related efforts.
- Introduction
- Sean Valles, Director of S3 and Associate Professor, Department of History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science
- Developing Clinicians as Medical Educators: A Cross-College Collaboration to Improve Teaching Effectiveness of Physicians as Teachers
- Randi Stanulis, Professor, Department of Teacher Education
- Integrating Equitable Computational Science into High School Science Courses
- Danny Caballero, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
- David Stroupe, Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education
- Generative Generations: STEAM Video Game Development Program for Indigenous Youth
- Elizabeth LaPensée, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Information
- Christie Poitra, Assistant Director, Native American Institute and Affiliate Faculty in American Indian & Indigenous Studies, and Bio/Computational Evolution in Action Consortium
- Estrella Torrez, Associate Professor, Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Co-Sponsored by the MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity. The MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity (C4I), located in the College of Arts & Letters, is an academic center of excellence for interdisciplinary activity. C4I works to maximize college and university strengths in interdisciplinary research and teaching and serve as a hub for interdisciplinary activity on campus.