Sustainability: The Journal of Record, 2014

Many of the central sustainability challenges facing society today-climate change, social inequality, and resource degradation, to name a few-are socially complex, politically fraught, and imperfectly understood. To be able to effectively engage in addressing such "wicked problems, " individuals need a mixture of content knowledge and soft skills that enable them to critically analyze these challenges from a systems perspective, develop creative solutions, communicate effectively, and work collaboratively with others who may not share common views. Such skill sets and abilities are also more generally valuable in navigating personal, organizational, and societal complexities. Portland State University's (PSU) Pathways to Sustainability Careers initiative seeks to better integrate programs that provide students with the knowledge and experience they need to engage with complex problems and be competitive and effective in sustainability-related careers. While PSU already offers a number of programs relevant to this effort, these opportunities are scattered across the university; finding these opportunities and organizing them into a coherent and complementary set of experiences can be challenging. The Pathways effort is focused on more effectively knitting together existing programs and emergent initiatives from across the university in order to engage faculty and staff through a collective action approach. By doing so, this initiative endeavors to provide a more intentional, cohesive, and easily navigable set of pathways for students, which will provide them with the academic knowledge, leadership skills, and real-world experiences needed to engage with "wicked" problems, and prepare them to successfully navigate an increasingly complex world.

Ecology and Society, 2018

Graduate programs emerging in universities over recent decades support the advanced study of sustainability issues in complex socio-environmental systems. Constructing the problem-scope to address these issues requires graduate students to integrate across disciplines and synthesize the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. Graduate programs that are designed to foster inter-and transdisciplinary research acknowledge the importance of training students to use integrative research approaches. However, this training is not available in all graduate programs that support integrative research, often requiring students to seek external training opportunities. We present perspectives from a group of doctoral students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds conducting integrative research in universities across the United States who participated in a 10-day, National Science Foundation-funded integrative research training workshop to learn and develop socio-environmental research skills. Following the workshop, students conducted a collaborative autoethnographic study to share pre-and postworkshop research experiences and discuss ways to increase integrative research training opportunities. Results reveal that students, regardless of disciplinary background, face common barriers conducting integrative research that include: (1) lack of exposure to epistemological frameworks and team-science skills, (2) challenges to effectively include stakeholder perspectives in his/her research, and (3) variable levels of committee support to conduct integrative research. To overcome the identified barriers and advance integrative research, students recommend how training opportunities can be embedded within existing graduate programs. Students advocate that both internal and external training opportunities are necessary to support the next generation of sustainability scientists.

Nature Sustainability, 2019

Sustainability Science, 2017

The establishment of interdisciplinary Master's and PhD programs in sustainability science is opening up an exciting arena filled with opportunities for early-career scholars to address pressing sustainability challenges. However, embarking upon an interdisciplinary endeavor as an early-career scholar poses a unique set of challenges: to develop an individual scientific identity and a strong and specific methodological skill-set, while at the same time gaining the ability to understand and communicate between different epistemologies. Here, we explore the challenges and opportunities that emerge from a new kind of interdisciplinary journey, which we describe as 'undisciplinary.' Undisciplinary describes (1) the space or condition of early-career researchers with early interdisciplinary backgrounds, (2) the process of the journey, and (3) the orientation which aids scholars to address the complex nature of today's sustainability challenges. The undisciplinary journey is an iterative and reflexive process of balancing methodological groundedness and epistemological agility to engage in rigorous sustainability science. The paper draws upon insights from a collective journey of broad discussion, reflection, and learning, including a survey on educational backgrounds of different generations of sustainability scholars, participatory forum theater, and a panel discussion at the Resilience 2014 conference (Montpellier, France). Based on the results from this diversity of methods, we suggest that there is now a new and distinct generation of sustainability scholars that start their careers with interdisciplinary training, as opposed to only engaging in interdisciplinary research once strong disciplinary foundations have been built. We further identify methodological groundedness and epistemological agility as guiding competencies to become capable sustainability scientists and discuss the implications of an undisciplinary journey in the current institutional context of universities and research centers. In this paper, we propose a simple framework to help early-career sustainability scholars and well-established scientists successfully navigate what can sometimes be an uncomfortable space in education and research, with the ultimate aim of producing and engaging in rigorous and impactful sustainability science.

Sustainability, 2014

The future of global environmental sustainability is contingent upon educating the next generation of environmental stewards. Critical elements of training such an interdisciplinary workforce include mentoring and experiential learning in the areas of science, communication, and leadership. To keep pace with the ever changing and increasingly complex issues of global environmental sustainability, environmental educators must encourage and support the participation and training of a diverse body of students in the environmental sciences. The Rocky Mountain Sustainability and Science Network (RMSSN) is a partnership of over two dozen universities, federal agencies and other organizations designed to help train the next diverse generation of interdisciplinary leaders who are prepared to address issues related to global climate change, environmental sustainability, and the management of public lands and resources using the Rocky Mountains as a laboratory and classroom. Herein, we present the RMSSN as a model for engaging students in the environmental sciences with an emphasis on understanding key elements of sustainability. Our model is based on a foundation of: (1) diversity; (2) tiered mentoring in cohorts; (3) engaging lectures coupled with field experiences on public lands; (4) long term networking; and (5) environmental internships.

Sustainability, 2020

This article provides evidence and a rationale based on adaptive governance studies for why creating meaningful youth engagement should be understood in terms of intergenerational dialogue, collaboration, learning, and substantive decision-making in global environmental governance. We have centered our discussion on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as the largest global conservation organization. Through an organizational ethnography approach, we have demonstrated how generational concerns within the IUCN have been framed in terms of participation, and then present the IUCN Intergenerational Partnership for Sustainability (IPS) as a case study of a grassroots movement that is focused on transforming the IUCN towards being a fully intergenerational global governance system for nature conservation. We have described the development of intergenerational thinking and action within the IUCN, and discussed intergenerational governance as being essential for a...

Psicologia Social

Acts of the 4th Congress on the Archaeological Work in Thessaly and Central Greece, held at the University of Thessaly (Volos), 15-18.3.2012