Research
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA WATER INSTITUTE 2009 PROGRAM INITIATION FUND
The Water Institute aims to support interdisciplinary working groups consisting of UF faculty, graduate students, and key external experts to address complex issues of water resource sustainability that have state, national and global importance.
Goals: The specific goals of the 2009 Program Initiation Fund are to develop the theoretical underpinnings, preliminary data and methodological specificity needed to develop compelling, nationally-competitive interdisciplinary proposals for RFPs such as the recent NSF calls for interdisciplinary proposals related to Environment, Society and the Economy (ESE), Multi-Scale Modeling (MSM) or Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC). Recent experience on NSF review panels indicates that successful proposals must present a compelling specific interdisciplinary challenge; propose a theoretical framework that underpins the approach to addressing the challenge, collect new (or synthesize existing) data in support of the integrated research; and analyze or model the data using well-specified state of the art approaches; and advance the science in at least two disciplines (i.e. be publishable in the leading journals of those disciplines) as well as advancing the integrated solution of the specified problem.
Review Process: Proposals were reviewed by an internal Water Institute faculty panel. There were many innovative ideas presented in the proposals that were synergistic with each other and ripe for integration and development into externally funded projects. The review panel recommended that the Water Institute award seed funding to several teams to develop full proposals for external funding, rather than fund 1 or 2 full projects.
Strategy: The Water Institute plans to facilitate a process that cross-pollinates the promising ideas presented in the PIF proposals and creates interdisciplinary working groups to develop successful proposals for external national-level funding. Four proposal groups were invited to participate in this process. Issues that these teams will focus on include surface water withdrawals in the Ocklawaha or St. Johns River Basin; development and implementation of springs management plans, and water allocation issues in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basins.
The Water Institute proposes to help to develop the proposed interdisciplinary working groups based on the concept of “communities of practice”. Dr. Etienne Wenger is an educational theorist and practitioner who developed this concept. According to his web-site “communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a group of academics writing compelling integrated interdisciplinary research proposals. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”
Dr. Wenger visited UF on May 4-5 to give a general seminar and facilitate a 1-day workshop launching the 2009 PIF Interdisciplinary Working Groups. As a result of the workshop each proposal group agreed to:
The Water Institute aims to support interdisciplinary working groups consisting of UF faculty, graduate students, and key external experts to address complex issues of water resource sustainability that have state, national and global importance.
Goals: The specific goals of the 2009 Program Initiation Fund are to develop the theoretical underpinnings, preliminary data and methodological specificity needed to develop compelling, nationally-competitive interdisciplinary proposals for RFPs such as the recent NSF calls for interdisciplinary proposals related to Environment, Society and the Economy (ESE), Multi-Scale Modeling (MSM) or Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC). Recent experience on NSF review panels indicates that successful proposals must present a compelling specific interdisciplinary challenge; propose a theoretical framework that underpins the approach to addressing the challenge, collect new (or synthesize existing) data in support of the integrated research; and analyze or model the data using well-specified state of the art approaches; and advance the science in at least two disciplines (i.e. be publishable in the leading journals of those disciplines) as well as advancing the integrated solution of the specified problem.
Review Process: Proposals were reviewed by an internal Water Institute faculty panel. There were many innovative ideas presented in the proposals that were synergistic with each other and ripe for integration and development into externally funded projects. The review panel recommended that the Water Institute award seed funding to several teams to develop full proposals for external funding, rather than fund 1 or 2 full projects.
Strategy: The Water Institute plans to facilitate a process that cross-pollinates the promising ideas presented in the PIF proposals and creates interdisciplinary working groups to develop successful proposals for external national-level funding. Four proposal groups were invited to participate in this process. Issues that these teams will focus on include surface water withdrawals in the Ocklawaha or St. Johns River Basin; development and implementation of springs management plans, and water allocation issues in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basins.
The Water Institute proposes to help to develop the proposed interdisciplinary working groups based on the concept of “communities of practice”. Dr. Etienne Wenger is an educational theorist and practitioner who developed this concept. According to his web-site “communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a group of academics writing compelling integrated interdisciplinary research proposals. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”
Dr. Wenger visited UF on May 4-5 to give a general seminar and facilitate a 1-day workshop launching the 2009 PIF Interdisciplinary Working Groups. As a result of the workshop each proposal group agreed to:
- Commit as a PIF research award recipient to engage actively in developing and participating in the PIF Community of Practice oriented toward developing integrated interdisciplinary research programs focused on interactions among social, political, hydrologic and ecologic water issues.
- Be flexible and contribute as appropriate to link their specific research expertise and experience with others in different disciplines and different proposal groups as appropriate.
- Commit to develop an integrated proposal for an interdisciplinary project to programs such as the NSF Environment, Society and the Economy (ESE), Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC) of Multi-Scale Modeling (MSM) RFPs before December 2010.
