Structuring Research Coordination Networks (RCNs) for Graduate Student Success

The purpose of the National Science Foundation’s Research Coordination Network (RCN) program is to support the communication and coordination of research, training, and educational activities across disciplinary,... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of the National Science Foundation’s Research Coordination Network (RCN) program is to support the communication and coordination of research, training, and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic, and international boundaries (NSF, 2016). In particular, the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability track focuses on cultivating collaboration around interdisciplinary topics that will advance an integrative approach to sustainability science. However, a recent National Research Council report on the Science of Team Science identifies several obstacles to the successful structuring of such networks, including problems related to cross-disciplinary communication, managing access to information, problematic or perverse incentive structures, and the tension many faculty feel between a desire for autonomy and the benefits of coordination.  On the other hand, advances in information communication technology (ICT) create new affordances that may overcome these obstacles by connecting scientists in a myriad of new ways that are less hierarchical, more decentralized, and take on topologies that are less tree-like and more web-like. Thus, the most effective scientific organizations of the 21^st century may function more like the highly inrterconnected networks envisioned by the RCN program.

While it is often the case that the burden of integrative research coordination falls disproportionately upon graduate students, it is rare to establish explicit graduate training programs that equip students with the interactional expertise and resources to overcome the obstacles detailed above.  This presentation reports on the five years of experience of RCN: Sustainable Energy Systems, with an emphasis on those activities that have contributed most to graduate student success, and the role of ICT in defining protocols of communication, document sharing, and decision rights.  In compiling this report, we differentiate between the tacit knowledge students gain through shared experiences and the explicit knowledge gained through study, and explain why both forms of knowledge are essential to success in team and network-based science.

Questions remain about the effectiveness of RCNs in regard to their broader impacts, accomplishments, and production of research, such as:

• What is the impact of RCN participation on graduate students’ professional networking, research, and educational training?
• What career advantages do RCN-supported graduate students gain from participation, in comparison to students who do not participate in or receive support from RCNs?
• How do coordination activities interfere with or complement scholarship?

To partially inform these questions, we provide a bibliometric analysis of research products originating from the RCN collaborations, and summarize qualitative interviews with the participating graduate students. Our analysis holds potential implications for interdisciplinary collaboration in sustainability science, as well as lessons learned and suggestions for future large-scale proposals which include network-based organizing.