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Collaborative Leadership Development Series

The Graduate School, in partnership with the Office of Human Resources and the Provost’s Interdisciplinary Team, has developed a professional development series for faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students engaged in interdisciplinary research, teaching, training, and creative endeavors.  The series, which began in spring 2008, provides participants with opportunities to gain the leadership skills needed to successfully navigate the challenges of working in interdisciplinary teams; to launch and sustain cross-disciplinary collaborations; and to advocate for the institutional changes needed in order to foster all forms of interdisciplinary inquiry at the University of Minnesota.   

The series was developed as a cooperative initiative between The Graduate School, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Provost’s Office in recognition that many of the skills needed to effectively engage in collaborative and interdisciplinary activity are not routinely taught within the academic and professional curriculum.   Working in teams often requires greater awareness of and ability to translate discipline-based concepts, methods and practices into terms comprehensible to experts from other fields. The pedagogy of team teaching that brings insights from diverse disciplines to focus on a common object of study is another critical skill that will be addressed in the program on collaborative leadership.  Beyond alternating or sequential presentations of differing perspectives, sessions in the series address how to bring interdisciplinary perspectives into the curriculum to promote critical thinking and integrative learning among students and faculty as co-collaborators in the classroom. 

Effective leadership of collaborative research teams often requires considerable attention to group dynamics, the professional development of team members, negotiating the division of labor and credit, as well as managing conflict. There is much to learn from those who have successfully secured external funding for interdisciplinary research and training initiatives in terms of how to organize and structure work that crosses departmental and collegiate boundaries as well as how to maneuver through such bureaucratic processes as the return of indirect costs to participating units.  While the leaders of such teams often are chosen on the basis of their academic credentials, as principal investigators with strong records of success in obtaining grants themselves, promoting the development of a research team comprised of co-equals may require a somewhat different skill set than the leadership of a hierarchically organized enterprise.  Understanding these sorts of differences and building the new skill set required for collaborative leadership is at the heart of this professional development series. 

Interdisciplinary initiatives that have received central funding through the compact process have been asked to send key administrators, staff, faculty and students to this professional development series in the effort to enhance the effectiveness of their teams.  This series, however, is open to all who are interested.  Look for news about the schedule of workshops, lectures, and other sessions on this web site, and please contact us with your thoughts about topics that would be of interest and ideas about experienced collaborative leaders who you would recommend as speakers in this series.

Read the President's Emerging Leaders Team report on Collaborative Leadership Development, released in August 2008.

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