2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

The National Climate Assessment has identified foundational cross-cutting research capabilities that need to be developed for climate and global change assessment that include the integration of disciplines across approaches and building capacity for climate assessment that includes training, education and workforce development. The NSF HBCU Research Project, Broadening Participation Research Project: Charting a Path to Transdisciplinary Collaborative Design builds on the work of the Coastal Community Design Collaborative, a partnership between Hampton University, and Old Dominion University, which is a cross-university, cross-disciplinary program, in which architecture and civil engineering and technology students develop real world interventions for communities impacted by flooding related to sea level rise. The studio-based learning program builds on current hybrid seminars and design studios, moving toward increasing participation through digitizing seminar content, improving remote campus studio capabilities, and, in the third year, expanding the student population to include area professionals as students in this emerging field of study. Through a series of iterative steps, to gradually test, evaluate, and revise curricula and instruction, the project intends to move the program toward true trans-disciplinary functionality. Consistent with design-based research, the program includes cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign throughout the three years of the project implementation. The first-year design interventions, with quantitative and qualitative analysis, and second year design interventions will be presented along with plans for future interventions. Design-based research allows the study to be both interventionist and to develop new theories about trans-disciplinary undergraduate education. This project strengthens a Community of Practice around the emerging field of adaptive design, provides solutions to prolong the life of communities facing similar adaptation challenges and provides means and methods to incorporate the work and methodologies of disparate disciplines into productive working and research design entities.