Experiences And Expectations Of Doctoral Institution Faculty Collaborating Across Disciplines

—Engineer-social scientist collaborations are an important strategy for advancing engineering education research. To understand the nature of disciplinary differences that might complicate cross-disciplinary collaborations, a survey of 200 NSF-funded faculty from Carnegie doctoral institutions was conducted. Faculty rated and described their attitudes and experiences with research and collaboration, which the literature predicts would vary by disciplinary background. However, few statistically significant differences were found between science/engineering faculty and social science/humanities faculty. The entire sample reported a strong perception that their institutions (61% “encourages it quite a bit”) and other faculty at their institutions (43% “very open to it”) are supportive of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Most respondents have located collaborators via prior work interactions like committees (89% have done this), but many are also willing to ask other colleagues for recommendations (49% have done this). This paper also reports on the wide range of difficulties experienced collaborating and participants’ expectations for the process of collaboration. These results are discussed in the context of existing theories of disciplinary differences, and recommendations for fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration are offered.