RCDC Research Roots & Wings Roundtable I: Mentoring Doctoral Students for Transdisciplinary Team Science

The Social Work Grand Challenges highlight that complex social problems are often best addressed by a transdisciplinary collaboration that capitalizes on the conceptual and methodological contributions of different fields. This paradigm of collaboration creates a platform for innovations in both research and applications to solve challenging social problems. Social work, as an integrative and applied discipline (Brekke, 2014), is well positioned to collaborate with disciplinary scholars with the greatest synergy, take a leadership role in transdisciplinary teams, and make critical contributions to orienting team science towards achieving social justice goals. The new scientific environment of transdisciplinary team science warrants effective communication, collaboration, and the development of partnerships between social work researchers, researchers from other disciplines, practitioners, and policymakers (Gehlert et al., 2017). Thus, educating and training the next generation of social work researchers to prepare them for transdisciplinary team science is an urgent need (Nurius et al., 2017).

The challenge for doctoral education, however, is to successfully prepare the next generation of social work researchers to address complex societal challenges within a transdisciplinary context, while retaining the unique scientific methods, conceptualizations, and values of social work. A common challenge for doctoral students is to augment their leadership role in these teams when interacting with researchers from other disciplines. In addition, training in transdisciplinary science raises critical issues for mentorship, particularly around publication, research funding, obtaining faculty positions, and successfully meeting promotion and tenure expectations. As scientific technologies and capabilities change, social work doctoral education is also challenged to align structure and curriculum in a way that will nurture students’ skills and competencies to not only function and lead in a transdisciplinary context, but also adapt flexibly and dynamically to social change.

This roundtable aims to generate a dialogue on how to successfully prepare our doctoral students for transdisciplinary team science across various stages of their career trajectory by convening featured panelists and audience members to explore the following topics:

• Identify skills and competencies needed to engage in transdisciplinary team science in alignment with social work values; • Educational structure, curriculum, and training strategies for strengthening social work researchers’ involvement and leadership role in transdisciplinary teams; • Effective mentoring strategies that expand students’ capacity to engage in and lead transdisciplinary teams; • Institutional efforts and/or practices that support the development of transdisciplinary team science expertise and leadership among students and faculty.