0504248 COVER SHEET FOR PROPOSAL TO THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION NSF 04-550 10/29/04
COVER SHEET FOR PROPOSAL TO THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT/SOLICITATION NO./CLOSING DATE/if not in response to a program announcement/solicitation enter NSF 04-23 NSF 04-550 FOR NSF USE ONLY NSF PROPOSAL NUMBER 10/29/04 FOR CONSIDERATION BY NSF ORGANIZATION UNIT(S) 0504248 (Indicate the most specific unit known, i.e. program, division, etc.) DGE - IGERT FULL PROPOSALS DATE RECEIVED NUMBER OF COPIES DIVISION ASSIGNED FUND CODE DUNS# (Data Universal Numbering System) FILE LOCATION 943360412 EMPLOYER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (EIN) OR TAXPAYER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (TIN) SHOW PREVIOUS AWARD NO. IF THIS IS A RENEWAL AN ACCOMPLISHMENT-BASED RENEWAL IS THIS PROPOSAL BEING SUBMITTED TO ANOTHER FEDERAL AGENCY? YES NO IF YES, LIST ACRONYM(S) 860196696 NAME OF ORGANIZATION TO WHICH AWARD SHOULD BE MADE ADDRESS OF AWARDEE ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING 9 DIGIT ZIP CODE Arizona State University Box 3503 Tempe, AZ. 852873503 Arizona State University AWARDEE ORGANIZATION CODE (IF KNOWN) 0010819000 NAME OF PERFORMING ORGANIZATION, IF DIFFERENT FROM ABOVE ADDRESS OF PERFORMING ORGANIZATION, IF DIFFERENT, INCLUDING 9 DIGIT ZIP CODE PERFORMING ORGANIZATION CODE (IF KNOWN) IS AWARDEE ORGANIZATION (Check All That Apply) (See GPG II.C For Definitions) TITLE OF PROPOSED PROJECT MINORITY BUSINESS IF THIS IS A PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL WOMAN-OWNED BUSINESS THEN CHECK HERE IGERT in Urban Ecology REQUESTED AMOUNT 3,184,586 $ SMALL BUSINESS FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION PROPOSED DURATION (1-60 MONTHS) 60 REQUESTED STARTING DATE SHOW RELATED PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL NO. IF APPLICABLE 07/01/05 months CHECK APPROPRIATE BOX(ES) IF THIS PROPOSAL INCLUDES ANY OF THE ITEMS LISTED BELOW BEGINNING INVESTIGATOR (GPG I.A) HUMAN SUBJECTS (GPG II.D.6) DISCLOSURE OF LOBBYING ACTIVITIES (GPG II.C) Exemption Subsection PROPRIETARY & PRIVILEGED INFORMATION (GPG I.B, II.C.1.d) INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE ACTIVITIES: COUNTRY/COUNTRIES INVOLVED or IRB App. Date HISTORIC PLACES (GPG II.C.2.j) (GPG II.C.2.g.(iv).(c)) SMALL GRANT FOR EXPLOR. RESEARCH (SGER) (GPG II.D.1) VERTEBRATE ANIMALS (GPG II.D.5) IACUC App. Date PI/PD DEPARTMENT PI/PD POSTAL ADDRESS Box 1501 Department of Biology PI/PD FAX NUMBER Tempe, AZ 852871501 United States 602-965-2519 NAMES (TYPED) HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS/OTHER GRAPHICS WHERE EXACT COLOR REPRESENTATION IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER INTERPRETATION (GPG I.E.1) High Degree Yr of Degree Telephone Number Electronic Mail Address Ph.D 1971 602-965-4734 [email protected] PhD 1985 480-965-4735 [email protected] PhD 1979 602-965-6561 [email protected] PhD 1994 480-965-6838 [email protected] PhD 1971 480-965-2975 [email protected] PI/PD NAME Stuart G Fisher CO-PI/PD Nancy B Grimm CO-PI/PD Edward J Hackett CO-PI/PD Ann P Kinzig CO-PI/PD Charles L Redman Page 1 of 2 IGERT in Urban Ecology Stuart G. Fisher Arizona State University PROJECT SUMMARY This project will provide integrative graduate education, research, and training in the crossdisciplinary field of urban ecology. Cities are not only important ecosystems to humans but represent excellent laboratories for ecological research. Urban areas exhibit distinct boundaries, landscape patchiness, high levels of exotic species, and conditions that mimic global-scale change (elevated CO2 and temperature). Rapidly urbanizing Phoenix is one of only two urban sites in the National Science Foundation’s LTER network, creating an excellent opportunity for frontier, multidisciplinary research and graduate training and for collaborations that integrate the social and natural sciences. The intellectual merit of this activity lies in the challenge of bringing multiple disciplines together to train students to understand and manage liveable, sustainable cities in a manner consistent with regional and global-scale ecological values. Arizona State University’s IGERT in urban ecology emphasizes training in life science, earth science, and social science. Training will involve team research, interdisciplinary “issues” seminars, dissertation research in some aspect of urban ecology, broadly construed, and an international experience. The project will pay explicit attention to the conduct of research (including interdisciplinary collaboration, group dynamics, and the responsible conduct of research) and the engagement of science with law, policy, and the public sphere. Unlike most PhD programs in the US, which are based upon scientific independence, ASU’s IGERT will both use and investigate the efficacy of interdependence (collaboration, cooperation) as a research mode. The premise is that scientific investigation in important areas such as cities is increasingly multidisciplinary, yet students receive little direct training or experience in collaborative strategies and group dynamics. This project will thus provide innovative graduate training appropriate to multi-investigator, multidisciplinary research. This second five-year funding period builds upon substantial investment over the last five years and effectiveness won by concerted trial and error. This next phase coincides with a major reorganization of ASU’s four campuses, a synthesis of five new schools from innumerable traditional departments, and a focus on interdisciplinarity as an organizing principle. IGERT faculty members and students are strategically placed to both inform and influence this reorganization. A new University Initiative on Disciplinary Integration has been stimulated in part by IGERT activities and involves IGERT faculty members as leaders. The broader impact of this effort lies in its scientific understanding of urban dynamics and in a lowering of discipline-related barriers to innovative, socially relevant graduate education at this and other American universities. Project Summary - 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS For font size and page formatting specifications, see GPG section II.C. Total No. of Pages Page No.* (Optional)* Cover Sheet for Proposal to the National Science Foundation Project Summary (not to exceed 1 page) 1 Table of Contents 1 Project Description (Including Results from Prior NSF Support) (not to exceed 15 pages) (Exceed only if allowed by a specific program announcement/solicitation or if approved in advance by the appropriate NSF Assistant Director or designee) 30 References Cited 2 Biographical Sketches (Not to exceed 2 pages each) Budget 24 8 (Plus up to 3 pages of budget justification) Current and Pending Support 0 Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources 1 Special Information/Supplementary Documentation 12 Appendix (List below. ) (Include only if allowed by a specific program announcement/ solicitation or if approved in advance by the appropriate NSF Assistant Director or designee) Appendix Items: *Proposers may select any numbering mechanism for the proposal. The entire proposal however, must be paginated. Complete both columns only if the proposal is numbered consecutively. PROJECT DESCRIPTION SECTION A. IGERT FACULTY PARTICIPANTS Principal Investigators Stuart G Fisher PI/Co-PD* Charles L Redman Co-PI/ Co-PD* Ramon Arrowsmith Co-PI* Nancy B Grimm Co-PI* Edward J Hackett Co-PI* Ann Kinzig Co-PI* Kevin E McHugh Co-PI* Margaret C Nelson Co-PI* Marjorie S Zatz Co-PI* Senior Personnel Jon Allen John M Anderies* Bob Bolin* Anthony J Brazel* John M Briggs* Philip R Christensen James Collins Elizabeth Corley* John Crittenden Stanley H Faeth* Patricia Gober Nora M Haenn Sharon Harlan Paul Hirt* Eric Keys Mark C Klett* Susan E Ledlow Peter H McCartney Jane A Maienschein David L Pearson David Pijawka Stephen J Pyne* Daniel Sarewitz* Juliet C Stromberg Subhrajit Guhathakurta Sander van der Leeuw Paul Westerhoff Jianguo Wu* Department or School Area of Expertise School of Life Sciences Anthropology/Ctr for Environmental Studies Geological Sciences School of Life Sciences Sociology School of Life Sciences Geography Honors College/Anthropology Div.Grad Studies/Justice & Soc. Inquiry Ecosystem ecology Historical ecology, urbanism Chem/Materials Engineering School of Life Sciences Social Science Geography School of Life Sciences Geological Sciences School of Life Sciences School of Public Affairs Civil/Environ Engineering School of Life Sciences Geography Anthropology Sociology History Geography School of Art Learning and Teaching Excellence Ctr for Environmental Studies School of Life Sciences School of Life Sciences School of Planning/Landscape Arch School of Life Sciences School of Life Sciences School of Life Sciences School of Plan./Landscape Arch Anthropology Civil/Environ Engineering School of Life Sciences Atmospheric chemistry Mathematical bioeconomics Environmental sociology Urban climatology Plant ecology Planetary geology Ecology/evolutionary biology Environmental/science policy Sustainability/pollution control Populations/community ecology Urban geog, water resources Cultural ecology Environmental sociology Environmental history Cultural/political ecology Landscape photography Effective collaboration, teaming Environmental informatics History & philosophy of science Conservation ecology Urban planning Environmental history; fire Science and public policy Restoration/riparian ecology Land and urban economics Archaeology/environ issues Water issues Landscape ecol and modeling *Biosketches provided Project Description - 1 Geomorphology Biogeochem, urban/stream ecol Interdisciplinarity/science Urban ecology, resilience Social geography, populations Interdisc research & teaching Race, gender, ethnicity studies SECTION B. VISION, GOALS, AND THEMATIC BASIS We propose to continue a graduate training program in urban ecology that builds upon the successes and experiences of our existing IGERT program. Arizona State University (ASU) is home to one of two NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) projects focused upon urban ecosystems, and our IGERT has developed close and continuing ties with this interdisciplinary research program. Nowhere is collaborative, interdisciplinary effort to understand human ecosystems more vital than in cities, where environmental problems are most severe, systems are most highly manipulated, and over half the world’s population makes its home. Interest in urban ecology is growing rapidly, yet well-trained scientists in urban ecology are few. Already, our IGERT Fellows have participated actively in the development of this interdisciplinary field. It has become clear that there is a tremendous demand in the broader society for scientists who understand policy and decision-making, engineers conversant in biology, and social scientists who can work closely with life scientists. The Central Arizona–Phoenix (CAP) LTER and the IGERT program incorporate a broad spectrum of natural scientists, social scientists, and participating faculty members and students from engineering, planning, and public policy. The challenges and rewards of integration are many, and we are particularly excited about our IGERT's key role in efforts to understand both the ecology of urban systems and effective practices for interdisciplinary education and research. Our goals are severalfold. First and foremost, we will continue to develop a multifaceted training program that strongly connects graduate, undergraduate, and faculty learning and research in urban ecology. Second, we will continue to nurture interactions among scholars (at all levels) of several social and natural science disciplines to better understand urban ecology. Third, we will continue to reflect systematically on how interdisciplinary research is most effectively accomplished. Increasingly, scientific problems are complex and their solution is demanding of broad skills. However, graduate training continues to focus on independent, single-investigator science that may be maladaptive in postgraduate, real-world research where collaborative teams are essential. Therefore, this IGERT program deliberately confronts issues of research collaboration. We do so through: 1) explicitly evaluating collaborative practices through seminars and workshops on research values, methods, and patterns of organization; 2) incorporating social scientists as analysts of research collaboration and interdisciplinary integration through two ongoing projects (an IGERT student’s dissertation [Parker] and a new NSF-funded research project [Rhoten and Hackett]); and 3) assessing educational successes and shortcomings through feedback from student participants as they complete graduate school and move into more senior research roles. We are convinced that traditional methods of graduate training are insufficient to produce effective members of the multidisciplinary, collaborative research groups needed to achieve understanding in urban ecology and other emerging crossdisciplinary scientific enterprises. Our training program is intended to remedy that deficiency. In this second IGERT funding period, we will continue our concerted effort to perfuse the rest of the University and the institutions of the community in which we are embedded, with an evolving vision of interdisciplinarity. As part of this effort, we: 1) developed an integrative committee with the Division of Graduate Studies and the two other IGERT programs at ASU; 2) enabled five interdisciplinary faculty hires dedicated to IGERT; and 3) worked to lower barriers to interdisciplinary programs such as tenure policies, course requirements, teaching credits, and dissertation structure. Project Description - 2 In the next five years, ASU will change dramatically, with four restructured campuses and a reorganized Tempe campus that replaces traditional departments with new schools focusing upon, for example, Sustainability Science, Global Health and Technology, and Earth Science. The School of Life Sciences, the first of these new schools, is in its second year, having emerged from three separate departments. President Michael Crow recently met with four Urban IGERT faculty members and agreed to support the infrastructure for a new University Initiative in Disciplinary Integration, which will include such features as crossdepartmental graduate-degree programs, University professorships awarded to those most creatively and effectively pursuing interdisciplinarity, and campus-wide synthesis centers and fellowship programs. Our IGERT program is in a prime position to inform and to benefit from this effort. The commitment of local investment in IGERT is promising, and we expect our experience with IGERT to spur development of new programs over the next two to five years. To help institutionalize our IGERT, an expanded list of Co-PIs includes associate deans of both the Division of Graduate Studies (Zatz) and Honors College (Nelson), as well as the director of the Center for Environmental Studies (Redman). Because institutionalization includes the entire campus and enriches our perspective on urban ecology, we have added faculty participants in Humanities (Pyne, Hirt) and Fine Arts (Klett). Although our efforts remain firmly embedded in the sciences, we believe boundaries at the edges of science are as difficult and necessary to cross as those within. SECTION C. MAJOR RESEARCH EFFORTS Five years ago when our IGERT program started, six academic departments—Biology, Anthropology, Geography, Geology, Plant Biology, and Sociology—formed its core and provided research opportunities to IGERT students. Since then, two departments have merged (with microbiology) to form the School of Life Science (SoLS), and plans are underway to sort the others into new integrative alliances. Our CAP LTER urban research program was just beginning and discipline-specific Figure 1. IGERT in Urban research dominated the scene. The research landscape is Ecology’s five major research efforts: BGC-Biogeochemical different now, and the differences are apparent in the research Retention, Transport, and descriptions below. Not only have these narrower research Transformation; URBDYNprograms begun to broaden, but they are increasingly Urban Dynamics; BIODIV-Urban overlapping and becoming interdisciplinary in response to the Biodiversity; SCIPOL-Science, reality of dealing with complex environments that include Policy, and the Public; and GEOLND-Geomorphic and humans. For the five research areas (see Figure 1) featured Human Landscapes. below, evidence of this broadening, integrative evolution and melding of natural and social sciences is clear. In these descriptions, we focus on the dissertation-research opportunities provided IGERT Fellows. In addition to a marked disciplinary evolution of the research pillars of the IGERT program, a higher-order development of the Center for Environmental Studies (which houses IGERT), soon to become the International Institute for Sustainable Societies, has occurred. This growth has generated new integrative urban-centered research thrusts that are integrative and interdisciplinary from inception. These nascent research initiatives (described at the end of this section) provide an exciting environment for IGERT dissertation research and, in many cases, received inspiration from IGERT/LTER efforts. Project Description - 3 In the following descriptions, research is organized around five exemplary research programs in which students are engaged and conduct dissertation research. Questions posed at the beginning of each section give an idea of just a few of the many, broad topics under which dissertation research might be designed. The definition and scope of each research area circumscribe the domain of inquiry and its relationship to urban ecology. For each section, we then present dissertation opportunities in the field. Within the descriptions of each of the five research foci, a final section describes examples of opportunities for connection with other research efforts. 1. Biogeochemical Retention, Transport, and Transformation x x x What are the consequences of large atmospheric inputs of nutrient elements and/or toxic materials for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem productivity and functioning in urban and surrounding desert ecosystems? At what scales are human perturbations of biogeochemical cycles manifested? Are resulting patterns related in some consistent way to social distributions? What are the consequences of hydrologic modification and massive nutrient inputs (from human imports) for aquatic biogeochemical processes and aquatic-terrestrial interaction? Definition and Scope Understanding biogeochemical pools and processes in an urban environment requires not only the usual complement of disciplines (e.g., geochemistry, microbiology, ecology, atmospheric science, and hydrology) but also the knowledge of human activities and the biogeochemical properties of a built environment. Material fluxes and biogeochemical linkages between atmosphere, land, and water have been studied for decades in relatively undisturbed ecosystems, but not in urban ecosystems where human-generated fluxes of nutrients and toxins are coupled with nonhuman biogeochemistry. The most expansive question that underlies our research on urban biogeochemistry is: How do urban element cycles differ qualitatively and quantitatively from those of nonurban ecosystems? Dissertation Opportunities Nutrient dynamics. CAP LTER researchers are building elemental mass balances for the nutrients N, C, and P for an urban ecosystem. These budgets provide context and suggest important questions for biogeochemical research. For example, the N mass balance for CAP (Baker et al. 2001) showed large anthropogenic N inputs (imported food and fertilizer, and NOx produced from extensive automobile use), large engineered gaseous outputs, and an accumulation of N in unknown compartments of the CAP ecosystem. Deposition rates of aerosol C and N, using new methods for sampling this material (Allen), serve as a foundation for studies of microbial nutrient cycling in soils exposed to the urban atmosphere (Grimm). We hypothesize that high rates of N deposition drive desert ecosystems toward phosphorus limitation and will test the hypothesis using a new LTER fertilization experiment of N, P, and N+P. IGERT Fellows will be able to develop research projects in the context of this long-term experiment. To determine the fate of excess N (i.e., input>output by mass balance), IGERT and other students working with Grimm are investigating the location of landscape “hot spots” (sensu McClain et al. 2003) of N retention and transformation. Natural riparian-stream ecosystems that are the most likely sites of nutrient retention in desert landscapes (Belnap et al. in press; Fisher et al. 2004) have been eliminated from the urban landscape (Grimm et al. 2004). Widespread, manmade, aquatic features like golf-course lakes may be effective sites of N retention, or hot spots may be Project Description - 4 shifted to more terrestrial recipient systems like neighborhood retention basins (Zhu et al. in press). How do rates of denitrification (a major mechanism of N removal) vary among lake, stream, and floodplain habitats in a highly modified urban versus nonurban streams? Contaminants and environmental justice. Linkages between four reactive compartments of the ecosystem (atmosphere, land, surface water, and groundwater) constrain material transport through landscapes. Toxins and pollutants may concentrate in recipient systems to generate biogeochemical “riskscapes” for urban inhabitants; research by LTER biogeochemists will quantify distributions of toxic materials in soil and water systems. This understanding provides a basis for assessing hazard burdens, risk distributions, ecosystem effects, and environmental equity. Individual behavior explains variation in spatial and temporal distribution of contaminants at home-lot or neighborhood scales, whereas at municipal scales, distributions respond to perturbations arising from institutional decisions (e.g., park management, zoning). Research being conducted by social scientists Bolin, Hackett, Harlan, and their IGERT students examines the relationship of spatial distributions of technological hazards to the demographic composition of adjacent neighborhoods. Clear patterns of social inequities in the distribution of risk burdens illuminate environmental injustices by class and race in the Phoenix area (Bolin et al. 2002; Bolin et al. in press). IGERT Fellows have a rare opportunity to couple analyses of environmental risk with high-quality data on contaminant distributions. Their interest would help to motivate the biogeochemical studies to understand the reciprocal dynamics among generation and transport of toxic material, social response, and ecosystem response. Opportunities for Connection with other Research Efforts Studies of biogeochemical cycling and transport are shaped by the nature of geologic landscapes (GEOLND) which, in turn, shape the distribution, abundance and diversity of plants and animals (BIODIV). An example of the latter would be effects of atmospheric N deposition (a fertilization effect) on desert annual plants. A longer-term view of this dynamic can be understood only in the context of urban growth (URBDYN). 2. Urban Dynamics: Land-Use Change, Community Structure, and Social Relationships x x How have Phoenix’s human and natural environment shaped contemporary urban growth processes and social change? What are the legacy effects of past land use? What are the spatial and social distributions of environmental hazards and benefits in the metropolitan Phoenix area? How are these hazards and benefits distributed across ethnic groups, age categories, and social classes? Definition and Scope This research effort focuses on the urban-growth process from the ramifying perspectives of historical development, natural systems, built environment, social organization, and policy implications. The emphasis is on how people use urban space in creating cultural landscapes and the implications for the larger social, economic, demographic, and political systems in which they function. Opportunities are offered by research programs in core (anthropology, sociology and geography) as well as in associated disciplines, such as history (Pyne, Hirt) and planning and landscape architecture (Guhathakurta). Project Description - 5 Dissertation Opportunities Ancient settlement. Phoenix was once the site of one of the greatest metropolitan centers of prehistoric North America. The Hohokam, a society of irrigation agriculturists, lived in this location for a millennium, with the city reaching its zenith about 800 years ago. Interestingly, this achievement was not long-lived, as the city was essentially abandoned during the next two centuries. It remained vacant until a century ago when new settlers reexcavated the Hohokam canals and established the city of Phoenix. An exciting intellectual challenge has been to compare how ecological relationships changed for prehistoric and historic populations over time (Nelson, Redman). ASU archaeologists, IGERT Fellows, and others have identified qualitatively different trajectories of settlement dynamics that led to the development of large towns in the Southwestern US and other regions of the world (Knowles-Yánez et al. 1999). Current and future change. In recent times, the Phoenix metropolitan area has become a dynamic laboratory for studying social change, with a population growth greater than any other county in the nation between 1990 and 2000 (+1 million persons). More than 75% of the housing stock has been built since 1970, land markets are largely unregulated, and competition among municipalities for new development is fierce. Thus, the nature of growth at the urban fringe, attitudes about development and its regulation, and the assimilation of new residents are decidedly different in Phoenix than in older, more established urban areas, yet represent an emerging pattern in the US and abroad. Opportunities abound for exploring how Phoenix's human and natural environments shape contemporary growth processes and social change (Gober, Kinzig). Urban developmental trajectories. Socioecological factors provide the context in which human action occurs and cities grow. IGERT Fellows have been collaborating with CAP LTER scientists to provide geological, historical, and paleoecological background for the growth of cities in central Arizona. We also know from studies of many of the great cities of the world that urban growth and longevity rely on more than physical and economic conditions. Human communities are marked by a “sense of place,” identities that evolve over generations, offering identity and special value. Eliciting human dimension of the urban condition in Phoenix’s mobile society requires that anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers collaborate in studies at varying scales of space and time, revealing complex meanings of community and place, as well as the attitudes, values, and institutional arrangements that underpin these meanings (McHugh, Redman, Gober). Opportunities for Connection with other Research Efforts Patterns of urban growth may be constrained by geologic features such as mountain fronts and rivers, a spatial pattern that develops in concert with the physical template (GEOLND). Although the long-term perspective on urban growth offered by archaeology expands the temporal scale of our enterprise, quaternary geology extends this view even further and allows development of a truly multiscale vision of human-driven landscape change (GEOLND). Science Policy (SCIPOL) provides a suite of alternative future patterns of growth with respect to both built and social environments of humans and plant and wildlife species (BIODIV). Project Description - 6 3. Geomorphic and Human Landscapes x x How are the linkages between the human and natural systems operating in the region influenced by the surficial geology and the configuration of the landscape? How can the archaeological record of human interaction with the landscape help to establish ranges of possible changes in both the human and the natural systems? Definition and Scope A broad spatial and long temporal emphasis on the surficial materials and processes operating at or near the earth’s surface is the physical foundation for urban ecology. Geology and geomorphology provide the template for the ecologically defined patches, the pathways that link them, and the processes operating over and through them. Archaeology offers a long time frame over which to view human modifications of the landscape and strategies for selection and use of different landscape features or patches. With a temporal perspective ranging from millions of years to single events lasting seconds and a synoptic spatial view, these perspectives are essential for understanding the context of urban systems. In addition to providing the pattern upon which the human and natural systems interact, the context defines natural hazards, directs the flow of resources and waste, establishes the natural beauty for which a region is known, and consumes energy at various rates in its transformation by urbanization. Dissertation Opportunities Quaternary geology. Arrowsmith’s group has documented the actual landscape change of the greater Phoenix area over the last 2 Myr (Robinson 2002). Robinson was one of the first IGERT Fellows to receive her Ph.D., and now she holds a prestigious Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellowship with the US Geological Survey. This research left us with a number of important additional avenues to pursue: 1) the use of remote sensing to delineate surficial geologic and geomorphic units and test the hypothesis that they do provide a template for the spatial distribution of urban ecological processes, and 2) characterizing late Pleistocene and Holocene landscape change with changing climatic and the variable human impacts on the system that began with the extensive Native American occupation of the region, changed with European settlement, and continues with urbanization today. Artificial hydrologic controls and fluvial processes on piedmont systems in greater Phoenix. We are characterizing the changes in the fluvial systems of the region from urbanization and the balance between structurally engineered solutions and utilization and consequences of multiuse green belts in floodways (Robinson 2002; MacLeod 2003). As manifest by the many students already involved and the extant collaborations, numerous dissertation topics can be developed in direct collaboration with the stream-ecology groups (Grimm, Fisher) and with faculty in Geological Sciences and Geography interested in fluvial geomorphology and sediment transport. In addition, we can build upon MacLeod’s work to develop a comprehensive model for the fluvial systems in the region and the changes in them as they traverse the urban system. This model can then be used to test for feedbacks between fluvial network activity and the human system that is drawn to it and modifies it. Groundwater, aquifer structure, surface subsidence, and water balances. Groundwatersurface water resource management is a central concern for the desert region (as manifest by the Decision Center for a Desert City project). Our integrative efforts at improving understanding of the aquifer structure and applying the spectacular view of uplift and subsidence associated with Project Description - 7 groundwater pumping and recharge that INSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) provides has moved along steadily with students working at the master’s level. We are ready now to have PhD-dissertation-level efforts develop a comprehensive physical understanding of the region’s groundwater system with emphasis on its management. Long-term human-landscape interaction. The prehistoric Hohokam modified the river systems and landscape adjacent to rivers as early as AD 600 through construction of a massive irrigation system. Their shaping of the landscape and control over water distribution is among the most extensive in prehistoric North America. The interaction of human and technological investment in landscape modification, intensification of resource extraction, and environmental and social change can be studied over the 1,400-year span from early irrigation to the present. Archaeological field studies and information from historical records are being combined with contemporary remote-sensing information and field ecology to uncover the continuously changing palette upon which the urban landscape developed. Opportunities for Connections with other Research Efforts Given a synoptic view of groundwater-surface water interactions such as that available from INSAR, geology, and geophysics, how does the complex natural system respond (past, present and future) to the multiple levels of urban dynamics (URBDYN) that influence water use and quality (BGC)? What policies (SCIPOL) can ameliorate the cost of land subsidence on built structures in one segment of the population caused by groundwater withdrawal to benefit another? 4. Urban Biodiversity: Population and Community Ecology x x x How do humans alter the composition of plant and animal communities in cities compared to the surrounding, less-altered matrix? Do cities increase or decrease diversity? How do food-web structure and dynamics vary in human-dominated environments? What does this teach us about general ecological theory? How does the human-enhanced urban tree community feedback on desired values for human habitation and natural animal populations? Definition and Scope The interactions and relationships of organisms with the biotic and abiotic environment, and the effect of these interactions on the distribution and abundance of organisms over time and space, is a major focus of modern ecology (Molles 2005). An increasing fraction of plant and animal populations and communities now occur, or soon will occur, within cities or within the “footprint” of urbanization. Because humans have drastically altered the distribution and abundance of organisms, it seems logical to study populations and communities in urban settings. Whereas the first IGERT afforded graduate student opportunities to study patterns of biodiversity in more and less human-dominated environments, the current proposal offers opportunities for experimentally elucidating the mechanisms underlying these established patterns. We know from long-term and ongoing CAP LTER studies that urbanization may or may not alter diversity of various groups of species in that some groups of taxa (top predators) decrease in diversity while others increase (e.g., plants). However, species composition is radically altered in all major groups of taxa (e.g., Shochat et al. 2004), with some urban-adapted species becoming abundant while others wane or disappear. This change in species composition sets the stage for addressing a long-standing and central question in ecology: What factors Project Description - 8 determine food web and trophic structure? Theory and empirical studies show that both carnivores (top-down) and resource availability (bottom-up) influence community structure and trophic dynamics to varying degrees, depending on herbivore and predator or parasite species composition, intraguild predation, spatiotemporal variation in environmental resources, and plant competition. However, most studies of resource and consumer forces on plant-herbivore-natural enemy communities have ignored human activities, except for agroecosystems. This omission is unfortunate, as one of the most intensive and expanding human activities, urbanization, alters top-down and bottom-up forces in dramatic ways, but rarely has been incorporated into studies of trophic dynamics and food webs. Yet, given dramatic shifts in species composition, we can expect that both control and the structure of food webs in cities differ from less humandominated ecosystems. Dissertation Opportunities Food- web manipulations. To address the fundamental question of what controls food-web structure and function, Faeth and colleagues are experimentally examining the role of bottom-up (resources) and top-down (predators and parasites) in structuring food webs associated with a focal plant species, Encelia farinosa (brittlebush), a native Sonoran Desert plant that is widely used as a landscaping plant in urban areas. They are experimentally manipulating the effects of vertebrate (birds) and ground-dwelling vertebrate (lizards) and invertebrate predators and resources (water) in series of controlled experiments in the urban environments (mesic yards and desert remnants) and in outlying “natural” desert regions in a replicated, full-factorial design. The four treatments include: 1) exclusion of vertebrate predators, 2) exclusion of invertebrate predators, 3) supplemental water, and 4) controls (no caging, ring barriers, or supplemental water). This research is among the first to rigorously test how trophic dynamics differ among human-dominated, less human-dominated, and “natural” habitats. Anthropogenic impact on vegetation cover. The influence of urbanization on landscapelevel vegetation coverage and structure will be analyzed by remote-sensed high-resolution aerial photography, essentially creating a tree cover map of the entire CAP study area. To determine how humans create and modify the urban biotic matrix, these data will be analyzed with socioeconomic and housing variables using structural modeling (Briggs). Opportunities for Connection with other Research Efforts Knowledge of the size, shape, and spatial arrangement of land use/land cover patches in the urban environment is key to understanding biotic distributions (GEOLND). In fact, CAP LTER’s intent is to integrate patch-based studies of arthropod and bird distributions using GIS and a patch-dynamics model. How ecological mechanisms of food-web control map on this patch structure is a question rich with possibilities for graduate dissertations. One of the most intriguing questions of modern ecology is how community structure influences ecosystem properties (e.g., productivity and nutrient cycling). The diverse array of plant and animal communities in the urban matrix provides a lucrative opportunity to explore biotic-diversity effects when biogeochemical dynamics are simultaneously measured (BGC). Project Description - 9 5. Science, Policy and the Public x x x How are new forms of scientific organization shaping scientists’ work, work lives, and careers? How do collaborations influence scientists’ human and social capital, and what can we generalize from IGERT and other interdisciplinary collaborations? How do connections with decision-makers, policy, media, and the public shape environmental research? Definition and Scope In recent years, scientific research and graduate education have become increasingly interdisciplinary, partly for reasons arising within the sciences and partly as a result of federal policies and programs (including IGERT, of course, but also others in ecology, cognitive science, nanoscale science and engineering, and across the biomedical sciences). Science and engineering research has also become more collaborative, drawing larger and more diverse groups of scientists into new forms of organized interaction (Hackett et al. 2004). For more than a decade, analysts of science have detected changes in the “social contract” between science and society, with concomitant changes in the organization of science, the careers of scientists, and the conduct and content of scientific work. Such changes, in turn, alter the ethical principles that guide scientists and that define responsible research conduct (Chubin and Hackett 1990; Gibbons et al. 1994; Croissant and Restivo 2001; Nowotny et al. 2001). The borders between sciences and between science and the public have become blurred, and there are rising expectations for a shorter and more certain path from research to its application in decisions or products (Hackett 1990, 1994). Taken together, such changes in the organization and conduct of science are likely to influence the education of scientists, their work and work lives, career patterns, principles of ethics, and the responsible conduct of research. Research concerned with urban ecology and related environmental processes, as performed within the CAP LTER and the Decision Center for a Desert City, offers a site for exploring issues that arise when science is conducted in an arena that spans disciplines and extends into the worlds of business, policy, and the public. IGERT students are involved in this theme through a spectrum of seminars, collaborative workshops, research opportunities, and interactions that spark an understanding—founded in experience, scholarship, and empirical research—of the issues that arise from changes in the organization and conduct of science. Dissertation Opportunities Innovative, interdisciplinary, integrative graduate education project (I3; Hackett and Diana Rhoten, Social Science Research Council, funded by NSF 2004-2007). This project aims to understand the distinctive research and educational features of interdisciplinary graduate education and to assess their effects on scientific research and the early career. The study uses a combination of questionnaire surveys, interviews, and panel evaluation of scientific work, which affords students different ways to become involved. Scientific decision-making under uncertainty. The Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC; Gober, Redman, Sarewitz, Corley, Hackett) brings social scientists, scientists, and decision-makers together to explore how scientific evidence, analysis, modeling and their representations can best inform decisions about water quality and supply for Phoenix. DCDC offers an unparalleled opportunity to observe the border crossings and translations needed to transcend disciplinary differences in the service of informing decisions and policies (see IGERTRelated Integrative Successes below). Project Description - 10 Collaborative patterns in science research. One of our Fellows (Parker) is examining ecology’s integration with social science, exemplified by the recent rise of urban ecology, in historical and cross-national perspective. Of particular concern is the role that new organizations, including LTERs, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the Resilience Alliance, have played in the integration. Opportunities to study collaboration patterns of IGERT faculty and students exist (Corley). The purpose of this line of research would be to delineate how social scientists and natural scientists use different (or similar) collaboration patternsʊand how future IGERT programs could benefit from this information. Opportunities for Connections with other Research Efforts This research effort is applicable to all others in that it shapes and reveals how effective integrative research is done, how results are transferred among scientists and the public, and how ethical constructs guide the enterprise. Although some view urban ecology as an earth and life science, humans are central, not only as subjects, but also as observers and interpreters of the dynamic. We believe the challenge to gain new insights through intellectual fusion of natural and social sciences to be our most worthy objective. IGERT-Related Integrative Successes Initially, our IGERT program was based upon an array of rather conventional research projects in conventional disciplines. The integration and cross-fertilization of this array has led to exciting successes over the past five years that have transformed the larger CES (upon which IGERT is centered) into a new and innovative structure. Examples of these higher-order integrative efforts are below. All provide training opportunities for IGERT students. We are in the third year of Agrarian Landscapes in Transition, an NSF-funded project that focuses on coupled human-nature interactions at the periphery of our urban center. The ASU project, conducted Kinzig and Redman, is the center of a six-LTER collaboration examining the long-term cycle of land-use change affecting human landscapes. We are partnering with the Nature Conservancy to improve eco-regional planning and scenario building. ASU’s recent membership in the Resilience Alliance (RA) has led us to explore what a “resilience” approach offers to IGERT students. The Alliance is an international consortium that seeks novel ways to integrate science and policy in order to discover foundations for sustainability. Resilience researchers are interested in complex systems and the coupling of ecological and human sciences. Resilience theory is used to help us understand the source and role of transforming change in these adaptive systems (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Kinzig, Redman, Anderies, and van der Leeuw have forged an alliance with this interdisciplinary group. With ASU input, the RA is examining whether archaeology and studies of the past can enhance understanding, and ASU is at the core of a new urban-resilience initiative (Redman and Kinzig 2003). Five IGERT Fellows have worked with RA scientists in Sweden, Australia, and France. We received NASA renewal grant to expand our Urban Environmental Monitoring project, which uses data collected by the Terra and other satellites to record the changing structure and composition of 100 cities across the globe. A subset of partner cities then enhances this remotesensed data with local information, with the goal of improving their ability to monitor and manage rapid urbanization. IGERT faculty (Arrowsmith) and students in geology and geography are leading this effort. Social and ecological processes are strongly interdependent and understanding their relationship within different geographic and cultural settings promises a firmer foundation for projecting urban futures and evaluating sustainable trajectories. Project Description - 11 ASU recently became home to the Consortium for the Study of Rapidly Urbanizing Regions (CSRUR), which is incubating a variety of initiatives and partnerships focused on urbanenvironmental interactions and the built environment. Included are projects on sustainable materials, transportation alternative, energy futures, and ameliorating the urban-heat island effects that threaten Phoenix’s quality of life. In Summer 2004, Redman was appointed to cochair of the Task Force on Rapid Urbanization for the National Academy’s Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability’s. His appointment came from his work on research projects allied with IGERT and the directorship of CSRUR. He will lead a collaboration of social and life scientists as well as engineers, city planners, and financiers with the goal of identifying specific ideas and actions that will guide rapid urbanization down more sustainable pathways. IGERT students will benefit through attending meetings held at ASU and by participating in the preparation of state-of-the-science papers for meetings and their follow-up discussions. CES has become home to one the NSF’s three new centers for studying Decision Making under Uncertainty. This opportunity is unparalleled for IGERT students because it evolves from an ongoing collaboration of social, life, and earth scientists into policy and management domains. Our Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC)—was founded to focus on watermanagement decisions in our rapidly urbanizing desert (Gober, Redman). The broad array of scientists and practitioners engaged in this project will be available to IGERT Fellows. DCDC research aims to apply the most sophistical models of decision science to water allocation. DCDC will investigate the cognitive processes by which individuals and water managers make decisions. To improve the scientific foundation of these decisions, the Center will focus on improving mesoscale climate models of temperature and precipitation and GIS-based support decision support tools. Associated with the DCDC is the Decision Theater—currently under construction—that will feature a cave environment with a 270o 3-D screen that can project interactive visualizations of projected scenarios considered by DCDC. The Decision Theater will be available for visualization and interactive evaluation of IGERT-generated projects as well. The goal for the NSF-funded Networking Urban Ecological Models project (McCartney) is to develop and deploy a distributed information infrastructure so that the ecological and regional research community, urban planners, and resource managers can benefit from integrated urban ecological models. The pilot project for this grant, in which IGERT Fellows may participate, will be a modeling exercise that couples climate, water, and land-use change models to improve the public policy debate. Integrated urban ecological models will be used in the Decision Theater to allow citizens to visualize scenario futures for their cities. Lastly, The Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) has just moved to ASU from Columbia University (Sarewitz). CSPO is devoted to enhancing the capacity of public policy to link scientific research to beneficial societal outcomes. It creates knowledge, cultivates public discourse, and fosters policies to help decision-makers and institutions grapple with the immense power and importance of science and technology. Working with ASU’s IGERT in Biomolecular Nanotechnology, CSPO has developed a semester-long graduate science-andsociety seminar, with a two-week workshop held in Washington DC, in which students engage in participatory exercises designed to broaden understanding of the social and political context for science. This program will be expanded to include urban ecology IGERT students and will bring together graduate students with biochemists and bioengineers. IGERT graduate students will also play a productive role in a new, five-year CSPO research project on climate-science policy. Project Description - 12 SECTION D. EDUCATION AND TRAINING Philosophical Tenets of the IGERT Program Being reflective and adaptive, this program is continually evaluated and adjusted as we discover effective strategies and identify opportunities for improvement. Several philosophical tenets serve as guiding ideas, precepts, and values. These tenets are a visible part of the program, are distributed to participants, and are frequently discussed, clarified, and elaborated. 1. An integrated view begins with established disciplines. Our intention is not to establish a new discipline but to work in an evolving network of multiple disciplines. Students earn degrees from established departments. No new degree-granting program is proposed here. 2. Experience in a collection of disciplines does not a multidisciplinary program make. Our goal is to integrate the stuff of disciplines to produce researchers who can move among disciplines with a confidence built on experiential breadth. 3. Solution of complex problems requires collaboration. We aspire to educate scientists who are more collaborative and interdependent than typical of most existing graduate programs. All components of our program require collaborative skills. 4. Effective collaborative groups have flexible participants. Graduate students, undergraduates, postdocs, faculty members, and others are involved in the enterprise. The IGERT community provides a research capability that is a flexible, invertible hierarchy. Community members must be able to shift among group roles of leadership and support depending on the task at hand. 5. Faculty members are also students. IGERT faculty members are selected based upon their willingness to operate in this flexible network of learning and teaching. We do not presume to know how best to organize an optimal interdisciplinary enterprise. Rather, we see IGERT as a research project designed in part to learn how to do that. 6. The IGERT program is graduate-student centered. Although faculty members are ultimately responsible for the IGERT program, students take an unusually high level of responsibility for organizing and operating classroom, experiential, and research programs. 7. There is more than a single track to understanding. Innovation requires a diversity of views. Although we focus on a core of IGERT Fellows, we deliberately incorporate IGERT Associates, i.e., students interested in urban problems, and whose academic aspirations enrich the IGERT program core. Diversity of view benefits both Fellows and Associates. 8. Our goal is to understand how we understand. Our program is deliberately reflective and self-conscious. We are interested both in understanding the world and the processes, group dynamics, collaborative structures, and methodological approaches that best lead to this understanding. Members of the IGERT community continually examine the ethical and value dimensions of their work. 9. Our approach is experiential and empirical. An understanding of urban ecology is gained by engaging the city as a research laboratory. Field studies form the core of our knowledge, supplemented by laboratory experiments and models. 10. Research questions are motivated by both basic and applied objectives. We will fully engage public concerns yet we seek to identify scientific principles of general application (i.e., to other cities, social groups, ecosystem types). Project Description - 13 Diverse Disciplinary Foundations Five departments form the core of this IGERT program and will grant doctoral degrees to IGERT Fellows in Anthropology, Life Science, Geography, Geology, and Sociology. These departments were chosen because of their excellence in training graduate students and their relevance to the urban ecology theme, as expressed through participation in the CAP LTER. However, many other disciplinary units in colleges other than Liberal Arts and Sciences are involved both in urban studies and in the planning of this education and training program. These include the College of Engineering, Schools of Planning and Public programs, and the College of Fine Arts. In our efforts to establish a broad base of graduate-student participation, IGERT Associates from both core and associated units are encouraged to participate in IGERT activities and are eligible for IGERT support for research and travel. To ensure disciplinary diversity among IGERT Fellows, we will aim for an even distribution across earth, life, and social sciences. While disciplinary diversity is laudable, the challenge is to integrate these disparate disciplines. The heart of our IGERT programs consists of the integrative elements described below. Integrative Components of the IGERT program Although strong disciplinary foundations are crucial to success of this program, we have designed the program components to be integrative. We stress that all of these activities and program elements (Figure 2) will involve participation of faculty members, Fellows, and Associates from many disciplines at any given time. All IGERT faculty participants have committed to participate in at least one (and in many cases, more than one) component. Figure 2. IGERT program elements. 1. Group dynamics of Fellows. The IGERT Synthesis Center has been one of our greatest successes. IGERT students have offices in home departments all over campus, thus a magnet facility was needed to bring students together for brainstorming, small seminars, or simply informal interactions. Believing that a shared physical space was key to developing a supportive, intellectually stimulating community, we set aside a 767 sq ft research and conference space Project Description - 14 solely for IGERT students. Students themselves designed the space and its amenities. Movable tables, comfortable chairs, wall-to-ceiling whiteboards, and a small kitchen characterize the space. State-of-the-art computer facilities are provided with printers, scanners, and wireless internet access. To ensure that that students visit the Center often, we provide free parking, a much appreciated amenity on the ASU campus. 2. Distributed leadership. Our philosophy is to support student ownership of the program. IGERT students share leadership responsibility with a faculty Executive Committee and CoDirectors Fisher and Redman. Two students, designated Senior Fellows, coordinate a host of IGERT activities and initiate others. Students rotate in coordinating the reading group, steering distinguished visitor programs, facilitating workshops, and overseeing the Synthesis Center. 3. Urban ecology course and reading group. It is important to initiate new IGERT students with an overview of the subject matter and the philosophy of this training program. A facultytaught formal course in urban ecology is offered every year and required of all Fellows and Associates. In the alternate semester, a brown-bag style current readings course is offered. Advanced IGERT students organize and lead readings and discussion on a full range of topics in urban ecology. This participatory seminar is required of all IGERT Fellows and Associates during each semester of their tenure. 4. Intellectual issues (seminar). This seminar, offered yearly by Co-Directors Fisher and Redman, exposes students to broad issues varied by discipline-specific perspectives. The purpose of the seminar is to attack and critically analyze an integrative multidisciplinary issue and, more importantly, to use that forum to learn how to overcome barriers that disciplinary traditions generate. The subject of this seminar varies yearly but has included discussions of works by Paul Ehrlich, Bill Cronon, Jared Diamond, and C.S. Holling. 5. Collaborative workshops. A pivotal experience for each IGERT Fellow involves participation in two collaborative workshops. Each of these research experiences involves a sustained interaction to answer a question generated by interdisciplinary IGERT Fellow and faculty groups. These collaborative projects are intended to span the range of research activities, from proposal writing to data analysis to proposal or manuscript submission, but all work is completed as a team. Either faculty members or students can initiate workshops, but the most productive workshops have student-originated. Successful workshops have included multidisciplinary studies of city parks, urban lakes, geography of environmental justice, the concept of the ecological footprint, and the ecological impact of a proposed light-rail system. 6. Ethics and values in urban ecology. IGERT Fellows and other students take a semesterlong graduate seminar (Hackett) that examines the nature, conduct, and uses of scientific knowledge. The course questions what is distinctive about scientific knowledge and its production; compares the research process in several fields; examines patterns of collaboration and the scientific career; considers the relationships among science and law, policy, and the public sphere; and discusses the responsible conduct of research. 7. Visiting Scholars Program. Departments co-sponsor frequent seminars with us. We use department venues because it forces us to move among the buildings that house the several Project Description - 15 disciplines we integrate. In the past few years, the IGERT program has co-hosted visits by William Cronon, C.S. Holling, Sir Crispin Tickell, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Sheila Jasanoff. IGERT Fellows arrange to meet separately with these distinguished visitors, usually over lunch. 8. IGERT dissertation advisor, supervisory committee, and dissertation. Although we are not proposing a new degree program, we are reaching into established programs with IGERTspecific dissertation requirements: 1) IGERT Fellows must have at least one supervisory committee member from outside the department in a field identified as the student’s complementary discipline; 2) the Executive Committee evaluates student progress as it relates to IGERT responsibilities and opportunities; 3) dissertations must be integrative, reflect an understanding of multiple disciplines, and include a component that demonstrates collaborative research abilities. The collaborative component would be co-authored. A fully successful dissertation exhibits linkages among disciplinary perspectives, as well as connections to issues that professionals in industry, government, and the public deem important 9. Team building and collaborative skills. We believe experience in collaborative interdisciplinary science is not sufficient to develop effectiveness as a collaborator; formal training is needed. Therefore, we recently initiated, and will continue to provide, formal training for all IGERT students and faculty members in the skills needed for effective teamwork in interdisciplinary settings. The Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence (Ledlow) runs the program, which consists of a workshop on effective collaboration skills at our annual fall orientation retreat and several short individual-skills seminars and teambuilding exercises presented each semester as part of the brown-bag reading group. An initial session to develop a plan for effective meetings and discussions will be required of each collaborative workshop at the outset of their work. We expect faculty members to participate fully in these sessions aimed at developing effective collaborative skills. 10. Training in Mentoring. We are committed to the idea of a continuum of learning from undergraduates to senior faculty members and thus include undergraduate Fellows (“REU” Fellows) in our program. Many Co-PIs support REU Fellows through supplements to regular grants, and department-based programs support others. IGERT REU students are paired with IGERT Fellows and are involved in hands-on research. The graduate student’s major professor and an IGERT mentoring workshop led by Co-PIs Fisher and Nelson (Associate Dean of ASU’s Barrett Honors College) coordinate this activity. A multidisciplinary undergraduate program, “Community of Undergraduate Research Scholars,” parallels the graduate workshop. Approximately 6-8 mentor-protégé pairs are accommodated in this manner. Although it is not unusual for undergraduates to gain research experience working with graduate students, we believe our providing instruction in the nature of this interaction to be innovative. Our mentoring program is coordinated with the Division of Graduate Studies’ Preparing Future Faculty program, led by another Co-PI (Zatz, Associate Dean of the Division of Graduate Studies). 11. IGERT Associates. To take advantage of the great student interest in issues surrounding urban ecology and to diversify the contacts made in seminars and workshops, elements of the program are open to a wider student audience. We attract applications from a large cadre of very talented students. Although this number lies beyond our ability to fund as IGERT Fellows, the associate program doubles the number of students reached. IGERT Associates participate in Project Description - 16 many, although not necessarily all, IGERT activities and have their primary funding from departmental or other sources. In this way, we leverage the training opportunity to incorporate more students than supported by IGERT Fellowships alone. 12. International Experience. IGERT expands disciplinary breadth of thinking but in a multicultural, increasingly globalized world, cultural breadth is also essential developing effective collaborations in multiscale urban science. Several IGERT students have participated in international collaborations. We propose (see later section) a three-tiered option of international experience that we hope will reach all IGERT Fellows. No small part of this is bringing international scientists to us as part of our visitors’ series. 13. CAP LTER Activities. IGERT Fellows benefit in many ways from their active involvement with the CAP LTER project. • All 26 LTER sites in the US network feature long-term monitoring and maintain extensive, Web-accessible databases. Use of such long-term data has the potential to greatly enhance the generality of dissertation research. • Scientists from the CAP LTER and its community partners are conducting over 30 research projects, and almost all are interdisciplinary in nature. These will provide many collaborative research opportunities for IGERT Fellows. • Monthly All Scientist Meetings are an opportunity to mix with CAP LTER researchers and community partners and learn about their projects. IGERT Fellows are expected to attend. • Monthly meetings of all of the CAP LTER graduate-research assistants and Associates are held to share research results and ideas about potential collaborations. • The CAP LTER Annual Poster Symposium is an opportunity to present research results and explore integrative topics with faculty members and community partners. • The CAP LTER has an active K-12 outreach program called “Ecology Explorers.” Many activities in this award-winning program are appropriate for IGERT Fellows, including graduate student-teacher partnerships and working with high-school interns. 14. Job placement and counseling. Annual reviews of graduate-student progress will always involve career planning and a clearinghouse for job opportunities in multidisciplinary science. We believe that our active graduate program will provide students with an unusually broad spectrum of contacts, both locally and nationally. Because we are among those defining the field of urban ecology, we should be well connected to employment needs and directions therein and our past graduates have been very successful in finding employment in the field. The gained skills of cooperative research, combined with rigorous disciplinary training, also make IGERT Fellows competitive applicants for employment in their own disciplines. Our philosophy is that there are many rewarding ways in which IGERT Fellows can continue to contribute after graduation; the traditional academic job is just one of these. Equally important are opportunities to work with the private sector (industry, technology), public agencies (planning, environmental management), or with innovative educational efforts (advertising, communication, experiential schools). Our goal is diversity of view, and we would be disappointed if our graduates aspired only to traditional academic careers. Project Description - 17 Melding Research and Structured Training Our goal during the ontogeny of the individual Fellow and during the development of our IGERT program, is to move toward an experience that mimics as near as possible the real world of research and problem solving. Although some formal coursework is needed and may represent the most efficient way to communicate certain concepts and skills, our goal is to enable students to use these concepts and skills to answer significant research questions. While seminars are useful in developing abilities to express and exchange ideas, we want to use these tools to ask and answer new questions of significance and to disseminate results. To achieve this end, we see the collaborative workshop as the central element of our program. Workshops are by definition collaborative and must be interdisciplinary. Both faculty members and Fellows are involved, but undergraduates and postdocs may be as well. The best workshops have been initiated by students. Results are to be published in professional journals or form the basis for innovative grant proposals. What we learn formally about collaborative skills or science ethics are applied in the context of these activities. Courses provide a framework for thinking about motivating principles or techniques used to collect or analyze data, but the program is centered on research. Workshops will be well supported with IGERT funds at all stages. Although individual grants contribute greatly to the resources needed for IGERT research, we aspire to explore interfaces between conventional activities and expect to provide support for that effort. Faculty members involved in workshops will receive full credit for participating as part of their teaching responsibilities. Results of these integrative ideas will appear in collaborative dissertations and will help nurture new approaches from the interstices between the traditional disciplines we represent. Success will be marked by a blurring of boundaries between teaching and research, faculty members and students, pedagogy and science, as well as the disciplinary boundaries that would otherwise divide participants in the enterprise. Student Progression through the IGERT Program Our program is flexible while retaining disciplinary rigor and a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach. No single program of study will fit all IGERT Fellows, but the following phases are typical. Programs can be completed in a reasonable time (4-5 years) even though core department requirements remain substantial. IGERT course requirements vary with the student, but will fit within the 84-hour course requirement for the PhD. We do not claim the Urban Ecology IGERT program is easy, but with financial support secure, Fellows can focus their full energy on their studies and collaborations. We will recruit vigorously, attract talented students, and expect them to achieve at a high level. Phase 0: Recruitment, orientation, advising. Specific plans for recruitment are described in Section G. Students entering the IGERT program will attend an orientation retreat before classes begin. There they will meet IGERT faculty members and current IGERT Fellows and be assigned an initial IGERT faculty advisor from their home department. The orientation retreat offers stimulating discussions, practical advice, and socializing. Faculty attendance is required. The goal from the beginning will be to establish a community of collaborators that will work together throughout the student’s tenure at ASU and beyond. Phase 1: Establishing the IGERT approach and satisfying disciplinary requirements (1 to 2 years). During his or her early years in the program, the IGERT Fellow becomes acquainted with the IGERT philosophy and subject matter, while completing the disciplinary requirements Project Description - 18 of his or her chosen department and developing a proposal for dissertation research. During this phase, students are expected to participate in the urban ecology course, the urban ecology reading group, the intellectual issues seminar, and two semesters of collaborative workshops. It is essential for graduate students to become involved in research from the outset, and participating in collaborative workshops will help to accomplish this goal. Phase 2: Building collaborative relationships (1 to 2 years). The focus of this phase is research, collaboration, and establishment of the Fellow as a mature scholar. Fellows complete remaining course work and continue to participate in the urban ecology reading group and the ethics and values course. They will increase their participation in CAP LTER activities beyond attending meetings to include presenting posters at the CAP LTER Annual Poster Symposium and interacting more actively with LTER scientists. International experience is typically gained during this period and fieldwork is conducted. It is also during this or the following phase that IGERT Fellows serve as teaching assistants (required by most core departments). Phase 3: Maturing of the IGERT Fellow (1 to 2 years). By this time IGERT Fellows assume a leadership role in the program, becoming more like professional colleagues as they complete their dissertations and prepare for postgraduate careers. As steps in that process, experienced Fellows will: 1) lead the urban ecology reading group; 2) supervise the research of an REU Fellow; 3) continue to present posters at the CAP LTER Annual Symposium. As part of their burgeoning professionalism they will present papers at national conferences and publish their research results. Those who have built external relationships through their internship or field research will extend them as one possible bridge to the next stage in their careers. Support during Phases 1-3. Fellows receive IGERT Fellowships during the first two and the last year of their PhD program. In Years 3 and 4, support will come from a variety of sources: departmental teaching assistantships (TAs), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences TAs committed to IGERT Fellows, CAP LTER research assistantships (RAs), internships, or other new sponsored research projects. We will support IGERT students during all summers of their tenure. We believe the first two and last year fellowship support regime is ideal in that it maintains full engagement of the Fellow in IGERT activities for their entire PhD career. Experienced IGERT students serve an important role as mentors for new students and we feel it would be difficult to maintain this support structure without providing final-year support. In addition, we believe that supporting students in their final year, and counseling them to this end, will encourage the timely completion of their PhDs. SECTION E. ORGANIZATION, MANAGEMENT, AND INSTITUTIONAL COMMITMENT Organization and Management Fisher and Redman will continue to co-direct the IGERT in Urban Ecology program, maintaining contact with the NSF and coordinating student, faculty member, and staff activity (Figure 3). Fisher will have primary responsibility for academic activities, which include student recruitment, faculty coordination, curricular issues, and maintaining contact with the NSF. Redman will have primary responsibility for coordinating research opportunities with CAP LTER and other CES projects, as well as University relations, community partners, and chairing the Executive Committee. Fisher and Redman devote a substantial portion of their time to these responsibilities and to teaching in the IGERT program (this represents a University commitment Project Description - 19 of contributed effort). Fisher was formerly Director of Graduate Programs in the Biology Department and has a strong record of providing a challenging and supportive atmosphere for graduate students. Redman served as chair of the Department of Anthropology for nine years, during which their PhD program in archaeology was rated as one of the two most improved in the nation (Society of American Archaeology 1993). Both Fisher and Redman have extensive records of successfully supervising National PHD students. Science Foundation An Executive Committee of 11 Internal External members will assist the co-directors. Assessment Advisory Activities Committee Redman will chair the committee, Executive Committee composed of Fisher, the seven other PI/PDs Co-PIs, and two Senior Fellows. The Staff Program Senior Committee will have life scientists Coordinator Fellows and Office Staff (Fisher, Grimm, Kinzig), social scientists (Redman, Hackett, Research McHugh), an earth scientist IGERT ASU Graduate Experience College and Fellows and for UnderAdministration (Arrowsmith), and representatives graduates Associates from the University administration (Nelson, Zatz). The Committee will IGERT CAP LTER & Faculty and Other meet regularly to plan and schedule Member Research and Departments Activities IGERT activities, allocate fiscal Partner resources, screen applicants in Community Organizations conjunction with member departments, and manage budget reporting to NSF and ASU. In Figure 3. The interactive structure of ASU’s IGERT in Urban addition, an External Advisory Ecology. Committee, composed of PIs from IGERT programs linking social and natural sciences, will assess the progress of our IGERT. For external review and feedback, we will also rely upon several individual visitors throughout the year with whom we meet and interact, usually with students. CES, directed by Redman, will continue to be IGERT’s administrative home and provide key logistical support to the Executive Committee. CES exists as a focal point for interdisciplinary research in environmental science, has a major urban emphasis, and is fully committed to implementing this program. Staff support includes a senior executive coordinator and an assistant, both half-time. Departments share much of the effort ancillary to supporting IGERT students and faculty participants. Senior Fellows are essential in providing liaison between students and faculty members and in managing and coordinating activities such as the reading group, field trips, and visiting speakers. Students have been strongly proactive in this program, and their ownership of the enterprise is largely responsible for its success. Information Management CAP LTER has developed important research resources available to IGERT research teams: an environmental informatics lab, site-use permissions, a GIS database and use of the GIS lab, improved biological collections and collections databases, use of a chemical-analysis lab, and a biological-analysis lab. These facilities are in addition to individual and shared facilities in labs Project Description - 20 distributed among participating departments. Remote-sensing data from both satellite and airborne systems are available through the LTER and the Geological Remote Sensing facility. LTER research vehicles and standard measurement equipment are available to IGERT participants (See Facilities section for more information on resources available to IGERT). Institutional Commitment and Sustainability ASU strongly supports the Urban Ecology IGERT (see Letter of Commitment). The University has already committed five faculty lines during the first five years to enhance interdisciplinary strengths. The Office of University Evaluation provided free assessment services. The Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence provided training in team building and group dynamics and will continue to do so at an even higher level in the next five years. The Division of Graduate Studies has earmarked 10 out-of-state tuition waivers, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has committed 10 teaching assistantships. The higher administration has been very supportive of the IGERT effort and will be even more supportive in the future, as University-level reorganization unfolds consistent with IGERT goals of greater disciplinary integration. SECTION F: STUDENT AND PROGRAM ASSESSMENT In addition to working with his/her own departmentally based dissertation committee and chair, each Fellow, with his/her faculty advisor, meets annually with the IGERT co-directors to formally review progress and discuss future plans. Data on accomplishments, publications, and presentations are collected at this time and managed by the senior executive coordinator. This annual review is in addition to departmental reviews and is the first line of assessment of the program. In addition, a visiting committee of scientists established by the LTER program and other external bodies will review the Fellow’s scientific programs. The larger faculty council of 37 IGERT faculty members meet with Fellows at the CAP LTER Annual Poster Symposium to discuss the program’s evolution. Ideas for seminars, speakers, collaborative workshops, and administration are reviewed at this time. NSF’s annual assessment provides additional data for evaluating the progress of the IGERT, with detailed information provided by NSF in the project’s penultimate year. In addition, we commissioned an extensive, questionnaire-based assessment by the University Evaluation Center in Year 3. We used this independent assessment as an adaptive-management tool to make midcourse corrections in the program. We will continue these programs in the next IGERT funding term. To evaluate the success of our IGERT compared to conventional PhD programs on campus from which IGERT fellows are drawn, we will work with ASU's Office of University Evaluation to compare groups using outcome-based measures that we will develop. This task is a challenge given a small and diverse IGERT student population, but we are committed to the IGERT enterprise as an experiment and want to evaluate its efficacy with the same scientific rigor we apply to the study of urban systems. IGERT faculty participants and Fellows bring a self-reflective component to their studies. One of our Co-PIs (Hackett) has NSF funding to develop new concepts and tools for assessing the integrative aspects of IGERT programs nationwide and for examining the influence of IGERT programs on the early careers of participants. IGERT Fellow John Parker is writing his dissertation about contemporary and historical efforts to blend social and ecological theories, using IGERTs, LTERs, NCEAS, and the Resilience Alliance as strategic sites for his contemporary research. Project Description - 21 SECTION G. RECRUITMENT, MENTORING, AND RETENTION A number of strategies will be employed to enhance both general and targeted diversity recruitment. In addition to recruitment efforts on the part of the collaborating academic units, special IGERT recruitment efforts will include advertisements, announcements, and presentations at national meetings and in society newsletters, visits of prospective students to campus, and outreach at venues such as the California Forum on Diversity and SACNAS and McNair conferences. We are also continuing our efforts to identify promising students through our collaboration with ASU’s Barrett Honors College and outreach to other honors colleges. Given our location in the Southwest, our targeted recruitment efforts focus especially on American Indian and Latino/a students. In concert with the Division of Graduate Studies, we are collaborating with the ASU American Indian Institute, the American Indian Graduate Center’s national offices, and Graduate Horizons, which is a new program designed to increase the number of talented American Indian students applying to graduate schools nationwide. At the first annual Graduate Horizons workshop, held during Summer 2004, the Division of Graduate Studies (Zatz) found that there was considerable interest in ASU’s IGERT programs. NSFsupported summer REU and UMEB programs, as well as the Hughes Foundation and NIHMARC (Minority Access to Research Careers) supported REU programs, provide yet another source of potential students for our program. This year, ASU is host to two NSF-funded Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridges to the Doctorate programs in Biodesign and in Applied Mathematics and Electromechanical Dynamics. Through these two programs, 22 students from underrepresented populations are beginning work on their master’s degrees. We intend to introduce these young scholars to our IGERT-related research projects, and hopefully to recruit several of them into our IGERT program. ASU is also host to 53 Gates Millennium Scholars and 151 National Hispanic Scholars; we will invite these scholars to relevant events within disciplines so that they may participate in some of our activities. Finally, we receive listings of McNair and NIH-MARC students nationwide and will write letters of invitation to minority scholars expressing interest in relevant areas of study. Our retention efforts emphasize the importance of strong mentoring, professional development, and competitive funding opportunities in years when the students are not supported by IGERT. We take mentoring seriously and will provide a wide range of mentors for our Fellows and Associates. We also have identified mechanisms through which IGERT Fellows can themselves serve as mentors for more junior graduate students and for undergraduates. We believe strongly that mentoring and being mentored go hand in hand, and that this process is a critical element in our students’ professional development. Working in collaboration with the Division of Graduate Studies and the Barrett Honors College, our mentoring activities include: x A mentoring course that links IGERT Fellows and Associates to undergraduate honors students; and x Senior IGERT Fellows will assume responsibility for mentoring of junior Fellows and Associates. Beyond the research-focused professional development aspects of the IGERT and funding for professional travel, IGERT Fellows and Associates are encouraged to participate in the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF), Preparing Future Professionals (PFP), and Strategies for Success professional development series offered by the Division of Graduate Studies. ASU-PFF is now in its 11th year and enjoys a national reputation for excellence. It is a two-year course sequence which prepares doctoral students for faculty roles and responsibilities in higher education. PFP is Project Description - 22 a newer program designed for doctoral students who wish to explore opportunities for research careers in industry, government, and the nonprofit sector. Fifteen (approximately 25%) IGERT Fellows and Associates have enrolled in PFF, and 31 (almost 50%) have participated in our PFP and Strategies for Success workshops and seminars. Funding is a critical component to retention and timely graduation. The College of Liberal Arts and Science has contributed funding to ensure that IGERT Fellows have the opportunity to teach courses in their specialty areas at some point during their doctoral studies, under the supervision of faculty mentors. We find that IGERT Fellows and Associates are successful applying for funding through Javits and NSF graduate fellowships, NSF dissertation fellowships, and internally competitive dissertation writing funds from the Division of Graduate Studies. Finally, our Fellows are fully engaged in university life, taking leadership positions in graduate and professional student associations on campus. In addition, and related specifically to our efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student population, we encourage interested students to become involved in the Black Graduate Student Association, the Latino/a Graduate Student Association, and the American Indian Graduate Student Association. SECTION H. RECENT TRAINEESHIP EXPERIENCE AND RESULTS FROM PRIOR NSF SUPPORT This proposal is to continue our IGERT effort for another five years. As such, the entire proposal is a representation of "Results from Prior Support" in that it represents the product of evolutionary learning to this point. Below we provide an assessment of our program in more tangible, quantitative terms. However, we think the true success of an IGERT program can be measured in two more significant ways. First, we measure our success in the production of a new generation of PhD students, more broadly trained, more innovative, and more collaborative than before. We have asked our Fellows to write their own testimonials to this via individual vignettes. Second, in developing institutional changes so that this integrative, collaborative modus operandi pervades the educational system and is made available to future generations of students in perpetuity. We close this section by making a case for this in the context of ASU. Data We are currently ending our fourth IGERT year and results are just becoming evident. Twenty-four students have been supported as Fellows. One withdrew from the program, and three graduated with PhDs (1 Geology and 2 Biology). Four Fellows will graduate this year with PhDs (1 Geography, 2 Biology, and 1 Anthropology). Over 70 Associates (15 Anthropology, 11 Biology, 1 Engineering, 2 Environ Design, 3 Environ Planning, 1 Fluid Dynamics, 11 Geography, 9 Geological Sciences, 11 Plant Biology, 2 Sociology) have been supported by the program and 14 have graduated (Biology 1 MA, 2 PhDs; Geography 2 MA and 4 PhDs; Fluid Dynamics 1 MA; Plant Biology 1 MA, 2 PhDs, Sociology 1 PhD). Three former Fellows are postdocs (University of Georgia/Athens Marine Sciences; USGS, Flagstaff, AZ; and Ohio State University), and one is going into a faculty position Fall 2004 (Southern Illinois University). Three former Associates are assistant professors (Texas State University, U of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Drexel University), one is employed by AZ Dept of Environmental Quality, one is employed at Maricopa Association of Governments, one is postdoc at University of Arizona, one is an instructor at ASU West and Maricopa Community College. Twenty Fellows have published 49 papers and have given 78 presentations at professional meetings and 68 posters. Six students have traveled abroad (or will soon) as part of their studies. Forty Associates have 5 publications, 12 papers presented at professional meetings and 27 posters. Project Description - 23 Vignettes of IGERT Fellows The above statistics fail to capture the texture of our program in human terms. Our most tangible products are the talented young scientists who pass through and shape their program. The vignettes below (edited for length) are paraphrased from short biographical sketches contributed by a sample of IGERT Fellows to illustrate the diversity and breadth of their individual experiences. Shade Shutters left a career in international finance and came to ASU to study ecology but, before joining IGERT, he had not considered the human dimensions that are an integral part of managing natural resources. Shade has interacted with a broad range of social scientists, here and at other universities, and will spend part of next summer at Indiana University at a conference on modeling complex adaptive social systems. After obtaining his doctorate Shade would like to do a postdoc at the interface of policy and science, then seek a job that would combine active natural-resource management with academic responsibilities. James Clancy is a new PhD student in public administration, having completed a 30-year career in the private sector. As an IGERT fellow, James is studying urban ecology with Nancy Grimm and John Briggs. His interests include application of decision science and policy analysis to urban ecology and national-science policy. James is currently studying Arizona state water legislation with the intent of conducting policy implementation studies on this topic as part of his dissertation. Kris Gade came to ASU to study the interactions between human development and ecological services. In her second year, she organized an IGERT workshop focused on the first park established in Phoenix and its changing role in the surrounding neighborhood. She is studying the role of transportation corridors in plant dispersal between developed and natural areas. Kris spent two months in Melbourne, Australia with the Australian Research Center for Urban Ecology learning about politics, management, and ecology of roadside habitats. She plans to do a policy-related postdoc before seeking an interdisciplinary position in urban ecology. Cathryn Meeghan came to ASU to study archaeobotany in Jordan. Since joining IGERT, she changed her focus to the Hohokam and is including a strong ecological component in her research on subsistence stress and risk aversion. She has also pursued IGERT research in France, where she learned about using a historical perspective to study land use, which she will integrate into her dissertation to reflect modern-day relevance. Timothy Collins is working on his geography dissertation on forest management and fire hazard issues in ponderosa pine forest communities of Northern Arizona. Based on his involvement with the CAP LTER Environmental Risk Group and his IGERT coursework in ecology, Collins has extended the scope of inquiry to blend knowledge from the disciplines of geography, sociology, and ecology. His work has both theoretical relevance (e.g., hazard vulnerability and socioecological resilience) and is integral to adaptive ecosystem management in the study region. John Parker’s research is in the areas of the sociology of work and science. Over the last four years he has focused on social, technical, and organizational aspects of collaboration in ecology. His IGERT experience has been a key factor shaping his academic trajectory and has widened my academic horizons. As a result of participation in several IGERT workshops, he has been able to collaborate in research falling outside the traditional domains of his discipline and has several publications pending in these areas. He reports that IGERT has given him three precious commodities: time, funding, and quality collaborators, factors that have allowed him to Project Description - 24 conduct more research and publish more papers than would have ever been possible through traditional graduate training. John Roach came to ASU to study the biogeochemistry of desert streams and is focusing his research on the cycling of nitrogen in Indian Bend Wash, an extensively modified urban stream running through the City of Scottsdale. Discussions with geologist Ramon Arrowsmith evolved into an IGERT workshop detailing the history of the watershed beginning with its formation during the basin and range faulting of the Southwestern US and ending with the changes resulting from the past 55 years of intensive human development, especially related to water quality. John plans to do a postdoc in biogeochemistry before seeking an academic position in stream ecology. Sara Grineski came to ASU to study sociology. The IGERT program has allowed her to retain her broad interests in sociology, geography, and ecology as related to health and environment. She organized an IGERT collaborative workshop to investigate health and air quality in a Phoenix neighborhood as per request of the community. IGERT has also taken her to Canberra, Australia for a summer research exchange where she studied environmental justice and urban parks. She hopes to receive a faculty position at a university in the western US to continue with integrated studies of the environment. IGERT as a Leader in Institutional Evolution: Rationale for a 2nd Period of Funding A great investment has been made in the infrastructure supporting this program. The Synthesis Center, for example, is now complete and working. Students and faculty members have formed a supportive culture of interdisciplinarity. By trial and error, we have learned how to effectively run courses and workshops. The Senior Fellow system is in place, and four new faculty members supporting this program were hired, with a search underway for a fifth. The urban LTER is developing nicely and satellite research projects are being spawned, ripe for student participation. International connections have been established and experience has been gained to increase efficiency of that exchange. Urban ecology is new and increasingly visible and demand is great for training in this area. All these factors argue for continuation in the interest of capitalizing on this initial investment. In addition, an unparalleled opportunity exists at ASU to institutionalize this IGERT and test a model for expansion that may be applicable in large universities everywhere. This second fiveyear funding period coincides with a period of major reorganization of ASU’s four campuses, creation of five new schools from innumerable traditional departments, and a focus on interdisciplinarity as an organizing principle. IGERT faculty members and students are strategically placed to both inform and influence this reorganization. A new Presidential Initiative on Disciplinary Integration has been stimulated in part by IGERT activities and will involve IGERT faculty members in leadership roles. Interdisciplinary and cross-college PhD degrees will be designed. Connections between IGERT Fellow mentors and Honors College REU students are just starting to evolve and, since LTER is heavily vested in K-12 ecology, a seamless vertical enterprise will soon emerge. Thus, the opportunity is great to perfuse the University vertically and horizontally with insights we are gaining from this IGERT program and to thereby expand the experiment manifold. Project Description - 25 SECTION I. INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION International exchanges benefit IGERT students by extending an understanding of the ecological and social dynamics of a particular setting (e.g., Phoenix) to a much greater range of biogeophysical and cultural conditions. As some cities are “new” and others “old,” cross-city comparisons allow a space-for-time substitutions to elucidate urban dynamics and outcomes. International exchanges thus strengthen the scientific validity of ASU-based studies. Of equal importance is the opportunity international exchange affords students to study the culture of science itself—how its reigning paradigms, place in society, promotion of interdisciplinarity, and emphasis on collaboration might change from nation to nation, or lab group to lab group. There is no single correct approach to the conduct of science or the processes that will lead to successful interdisciplinary and collaborative research endeavors. Many of us spend a lifetime learning what works for us and for the particular setting in which we find ourselves. IGERT students will do the same, but they can start with a broader foundation for their ongoing education if they are able to compare one or more interdisciplinary and collaborative research groups. At the same time, we believe that short-term exposure to research in an international setting (e.g., a few months or less) is best facilitated among groups that already have an established collaboration, particularly among the PIs if not yet among the students. Such an existing relationship allows more effective planning in advance of the exchange and provides better guarantees that the exchange student will find a supportive environment and a project sufficiently well thought out that the student can “hit the ground running” and produce something of use (for both the student and the host institution) by its end. Although this may constrain the diversity of groups that can be accessed in an exchange, we nonetheless have found that the benefits of working with known collaborators tend to significantly outweigh the costs of potentially constraining opportunities. We propose collaboration with host institutions for international exchange with whom we have existing relationships. Kinzig and Redman have an affiliation with the Resilience Alliance (RA)—an international consortium of institutions focused on change in complex socioecological systems. The RA currently has about 20 member institutions in Australia, Canada, France, Holland, Mozambique, Sweden, Thailand, US, and Zimbabwe. There is an ongoing collaboration on urban resilience with the four member nodes in Australia (CSIRO in Canberra; Brian Walker primary contact), Sweden (Stockholm University; Thomas Elmqvist primary contact), and Thailand (Chiang Mai University; Louis Lebel primary contact). International exchanges will be with those three overseas groups, but IGERT students may request exchanges with other institutions either within or outside of the RA. There is unlikely to be a “one-size-fits-all” exchange program, thus we propose three different exchange styles: (1) 3-month, single-student exchanges; (2) multi-student workshops following international meetings; or (3) attendance at established “short courses” or summer workshops at international institutions. We hope that, with these three options, all IGERT students will participate in at least one international exchange. Option 1: 3-Month Exchanges In consultation with our international host institutions (Stockholm, Canberra, Chiang Mai), we will select 6 students (1-3 per host institution) for a 3-month exchange experience over the five-year period of the grant. Calls for proposals will be circulated to the students each fall indicating which institutions/PIs are willing to take students in the coming calendar year and the International Collaboration - 1 general areas of research that would be appropriate to each institution/PI. Students may also submit proposals for exchange with other institutions with which they have developed relationships. Proposals from students will be evaluated both by the ASU team (Kinzig, Fisher, Redman) and the host institution PI, based on: 1) suitability of proposed research for student’s dissertation and/or career goals; 2) appropriateness of proposed research for host institution; 3) likelihood of project success; and 4) suitability of the student for international exchange (e.g., maturity, communication ability, etc.). Once students are selected, Kinzig will facilitate communication between the student and the host institution to ensure that proposals are further developed to the mutual satisfaction of both student and host and any needed project resources are secured before the student’s arrival. This process is very similar to the (successful) one followed for our last international-exchange program. Upon return, students will be asked to submit a written summary of their research activities and present their experiences at an IGERT seminar. Option 2: Workshops Members of the Resilience Alliance attend annual meetings as well as smaller “theme meetings” throughout the year. In recent times, the RA has made funds available for a small contingent of students and postdocs to attend. In addition, there are many international meetings attended by two or more members of the RA (e.g., the upcoming “Life in the Urban Landscape” meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden in May-June 2005) or by other international colleagues (e.g., IUCN World Conservation Congress). We propose shorter-term exchanges, centered on these meetings, in which students from ASU and at least one other international institution (6-10 students total), and at least one PI from each institution, meet as a group. Participants would come together two days before the meeting to exchange short research presentations, discuss the cross-cultural nature of collaborative and interdisciplinary research, and take a local field trip. Participants would then attend the international meeting and again meet for two days afterwards to evaluate meeting outcomes, and share insights gained about collaboration and the future of urban ecology. “Natural” collaborations may or may not emerge from such meetings; we would consider the opportunity to exchange information, expand a network of student colleagues, and attend an international meeting to be of sufficient value. These experiences could be established either through student-generated proposal (2-4 students propose meeting at a particular workshop; Kinzig identifies potential partner institutions for participation, including those already planning to bring students) or through invitation to annual or theme RA meetings, where appropriate (ASU students would be covered with IGERT funds; non-ASU [and at least some non-US] students would be covered with RA funds, which are increasingly being made available for this purpose). Option 3: Short Courses Several international short or summer courses in environmental studies currently exist (e.g., IIASA’s programs for Young Scientists). Students would be encouraged to seek out such opportunities and apply for funding, through the IGERT international program, to attend such courses. Proposals would be evaluated based on: 1) the suitability of such a course for the student’s research and career goals; and 2) the course’s quality/reputation. International Collaboration - 2 SECTION J. RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION HISTORY IGERT in Urban Ecology Recruitment and Retention of Fellows Department: Anthropology Total Fellow Applicants 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 1 4 3 6 4 Women/Minority Applicants 0 0/1 0/1 2/1 1/1 Women/Minority Awarded 0 0/1 0/1 2/1 1/1 Women/Minority Enrolled 0 0/1 0/1 1/1 1/1 Total Fellow Enrolled 1 3 2 4 4 PhD Awarded Women/Minority Total PhD Awarded 1* *expected Department: Biology 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 Total Fellow Applicants 3 4 6 11 5 Women/Minority Applicants 2/0 2/0 2/1 5/0 2/0 Women/Minority Awarded 2/0 2/0 2/0 3/0 2/0 Women/Minority Enrolled 2/0 2/0 2/0 2/0 2/0 Total Fellow Enrolled 3 4 4 5 5 PhD Awarded Women/Minority 1 Total PhD Awarded 1 1/1* *expected Department: Geography Total Fellow Applicants 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 2 3 4 8 6 Women/Minority Applicants 1/0 1/0 2/0 2/0 2/0 Women/Minority Awarded 1/0 1/0 1/0 1/0 2/0 Women/Minority Enrolled 1/0 1/0 1/0 1/0 2/0 Total Fellow Enrolled 2 3 3 4 4 PhD Awarded Women/Minority 1 Total PhD Awarded 1 Department: Geology 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 Total Fellow Applicants 1 2 1 1 1 Women/Minority Applicants 1/0 1/0 0 0 0 Women/Minority Awarded 1/0 1/0 0 0 0 Women/Minority Enrolled 1/0 1/0 0 0 0 Total Fellow Enrolled 1 1 1 1 1 PhD Awarded Women/Minority 1 Total PhD Awarded 1 Recruitment and Retention History - 1 IGERT in Urban Ecology Recruitment and Retention of Fellows, Continued Department: Plant Biology 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 Total Fellow Applicants 2 2 2 5 1 Women/Minority Applicants 2/0 2/0 1/0 3/0 0 Women/Minority Awarded 1/0 1/0 1/0 1/0 1/0 Women/Minority Enrolled 1/0 1/0 1/0 1/0 0 Total Fellows Enrolled 1 1 1 2 1 PhDs Awarded Women/Minority 1 Total PhDs Awarded 1 Department: Sociology 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 Total Fellow Applicants 0 2 2 4 2 Women/Minority Applicants 0 1/1 1/1 2/1 0 Women/Minority Awarded 0 1/1 1/1 1/1 1/1 Women/Minority Enrolled 0 1/1 1/1 1/1 1/1 Total Fellows Enrolled 0 2 2 2 2 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 PhDs Awarded Women/Minority Total PhDs Awarded Department: Civil Engineering Total Fellow Applicants 0 0 0 0 1 Women/Minority Applicants 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 Women/Minority Awarded 0/0 0 0 0 0 Women/Minority Enrolled 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 Total Fellows Enrolled 0 0 0 0 1 20002001 20012002 Academic Year 20022003 20032004 20042005 PhDs Awarded Women/Minority Total PhDs Awarded Department: Public Affairs Total Fellow Applicants 0 0 0 0 1 Women/Minority Applicants 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 Women/Minority Awarded 0/0 0 0 0 0 Women/Minority Enrolled 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 Total Fellows Enrolled 0 0 0 0 1 PhDs Awarded Women/Minority Total PhDs Awarded Recruitment and Retention History - 2 Summary of ALL IGERT Fellows, All Departments Academic Year 2000-2001 Total Fellow Applicants 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 17 18 35 21 9 Women/Minority Applicants 6/0 7/2 6/3 14/2 6/2 Women/Minority Awarded 5/0 6/2 5/2 8/2 6/2 Women/Minority Enrolled 5/0 6/2 5/2 6/2 6/2 Total Fellows Enrolled PhDs Awarded Women/Minority 8 14 13 18 19 0 1 0 2 1 Total PhDs Awarded 0 1 0 2 4 Summary of All IGERT Associates, All Departments Academic Year 2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 Total Associate Applicants 23 24 24 27 15 Women/Minority Applicants 14/0 12/0 15/1 18/1 12/0 Women/Minority Awarded 7/0 7/0 8/1 10/1 12/0 Women/Minority Enrolled 7/0 7/0 8/1 10/1 11/0 Total Associates Enrolled PhDs Awarded Women/Minority 12 13 14 18 14 1 2 2 4 Total PhDs Awarded Recruitment and Retention History - 3 REFERENCES CITED Belnap, J., J. R. Welter, N. B. Grimm, N. Barger, and J. A. Ludwig. In press. Linkages between microbial and hydrologic processes in arid and semi-arid watersheds. Ecology, in press, 2004. Bolin, B., A. Nelson, E. J. Hackett, K. D. Pijawka, C. S. Smith, D. Sicotte, E. K. Sadalla, E. Matranga, and M. O'Donnell. 2002. The ecology of technological risk in a Sunbelt city. Environ. & Plan. A 34:317-339. Bolin, B., S. Grineski and T.Collins. In press. The geography of despair: Environmental racism and the making of south Phoenix. Human Ecology Review. Chubin, D. E., and E. J. Hackett. 1990. Peerless Science: Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy. State University of New York Press, Albany. Collins, J. P., A. Kinzig, N. B. Grimm, W. F. Fagan, D. Hope, J. Wu, and E. T. Borer. 2000. A new urban ecology. American Scientist 88:416-425. Croissant, J., and S. Restivo, eds. 2001. Degrees of Compromise: Industrial Interests and Academic Values. State University of New York Press, Albany. Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott, and M. Trow. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Sage, London. Grimm, N. B., J R. Arrowsmith, C. Eisinger, J. Heffernan, D. B. Lewis, A. MacLeod, L. Prashad, W. J. Roach, T. Rychener, and R. W. Scheibley. 2004. Effects of urbanization on nutrient biogeochemistry of aridland streams. In R. DeFries, G. P. Asner, and R. Houghton, editors. Ecosystem interactions with land use change. American Geophysical Union. Gunderson, L. H., and C. S. Holling, eds. 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA and London, England. Hackett, E. J. 1990. Science as a vocation in the 1990s: The organizational culture of academic science. Journal of Higher Education 61(3):241-279. Hackett, E. J. 1994. A social control perspective on scientific misconduct. Journal of Higher Education 65(3):242-260. Knowles-Yanez, K., C. Moritz, J. Fry, C. L. Redman, M. Bucchin, and P. H. McCartney. 1999. Historic Land Use: Phase I Report on Generalized Land Use. Central Arizona – Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Contribution No. 1, Center for Environmental Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe. MacLeod, A. 2003. Artificial hydrologic controls and the geomorphology of the Greater Phoenix area. Senior thesis, Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe. McClain, M. E., E. W. Boyer, C. L. Dent, S. E. Gergel, N. B. Grimm, P. M. Groffman, S. C. Hart, J. W. Harvey, C. A. Jonston, E. Mayorga, W. J. McDowell, and G. Pinay. 2003. Biogeochemical hot spots and hot moments at the interface of terestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Ecosystems 6:301-312. Molles, M. C. 2005. Ecology: Concepts and Applications. 3rd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York. 622 pp. Nowotny, H., P. Scott, and M. Gibbons. 2001. Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Polity Press, Cambridge, England. References Cited - 1 Redman, C. L., and A. P. Kinzig. 2003. Resilience of past landscapes: Resilience theory, society, and the longue durée. Conservation Ecology 7(1): 14. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss1/art14 Robinson, S. E. 2002. Cosmogenic nuclides, remote sensing, and field studies applied to desert piedmonts, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe. Shochat, E., W. L. Stefanov, M. E. A. Whitehorse, and S. Faeth. 2004. Urbanization and spider diversity: Influences of human modification of habitat structure and productivity. Ecological Applications 14(4):268-280. Society of American Archaeology. 1993. Ph.D. programs in archaeology: Results of an SAA Bulletin Survey. SAA Bulletin 11(1):8-11. Zhu, W., N. D. Dillard, and N. B. Grimm. In press. Urban nitrogen biogeochemistry: Status and processes in green retention basins. Biogeochemistry, in press, 2004. References Cited - 2 FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER RESOURCES The Center for Environmental Studies (CES) is the administrative home of IGERT, staff to coordinate IGERT activities and providing space for seminars and meetings. CES facilities include a large conference room with videoconferencing and computer presentation capabilities (interactive whiteboard), a large meeting room for workshops and conferences, and the IGERT Synthesis Center (described in the proposal). Several IGERT faculty members have office space at CES. The CAP LTER, CES Informatics Lab (see below), the K-12 education program “Ecology Explorers,” the CSRUR, the DCDC, and LTER and other postdoctoral scientists and field technicians are based at CES. The CES Informatics Lab is available to IGERT students. The lab has servers with a total storage capacity of two terabytes, a dozen work stations, Esri Spatial Database Engine GIS server, an ArcIMS internet map service, relational database modeling software, ArcView/ArcGIS, Erdas Imagine, MapObjects, Matlab, SPSS, and office productivity software. The Information Technology GIS lab and the Geological Remote Sensing Lab (GRSL) are facilities that partner with CAP LTER and thus are available to IGERT students. The latter facility receives and processes both satellite and airborne images, including those of 100 global cities from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on board the Terra satellite. Additional resources are available to IGERT students throughout ASU: The recently completed Keck Laboratory for Environmental Biogeochemistry, built with a grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation (Grimm is Co-PI) houses 4 mass spectrometers (MS) that will enable virtually any stable isotopic analysis that can be conceived by IGERT students. The multi-user Goldwater Environmental Laboratory (GEL) is equipped with numerous instruments for chemical analysis, including elemental analyzer, two automated chemical analyzers, ion chromatograph, AA spectrometers, GC/MS, and IRMS. The CAP LTER has specialized field equipment including chemiluminescence detector and gas-flux chambers for trace-gas research, a GPS, micromet stations, and infrared gas analyzers for soil respiration and leaf photosynthesis measurement. The ASU Library has more than 2.6 million volumes and is the 27th largest research library in North America and is a depository for US Government publications. The general catalog is accessible by computer via the internet, and major journals are available on line to ASU users. CAP LTER and thus IGERT students have access to a variety of research laboratories throughout ASU. CES has a small wet lab equipped with hood, a large-capacity drying oven, and storage space for field equipment. Many CAP LTER/IGERT faculty in SoLS have individual labs, although these are increasingly shared among researchers and are made available to IGERT students. They are well equipped with state-of-the art computers and software for simulation modeling, GIS, spatial analysis, numerical analysis, and graphic preparation; and standard analytical laboratory and field equipment. Laboratories in Geological Sciences are modern and well equipped, including sophisticated remote sensing and visualization computer hardware and software. Several faculty members and the LTER program have field vehicles available for IGERT student use, and all departments have meeting and lecture space that can be reserved. The Archaeological Research Institute houses extensive southwestern archaeological research collections and sponsors graduate research opportunities. Additional labs available for IGERT use: Office of Climatology (Geography) houses archives of historical weather records for Arizona, the state climatologist, a governor-appointed position, and special network weather and climate data for central Arizona. A Geography computer laboratory is accessible for numerical model simulations (e.g., mesoscale metorologic models) and data archival. The Survey Research Laboratory (Institute for Social Science Research; 4-10 staff, 6400 ft2) provides training for graduate students in survey research methods and supports faculty research programs, using a Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing System for all telephone surveys. Facilities - 1
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