In January 2011, the College of Letters & Science, the College of Engineering and the Graduate School, started a small campus project with a big mission.
The project, known as the Systems for the Transdisiciplinary Advancement of Research (STAR), supports faculty and staff in transdisciplinary research and connects them to business professionals in the Madison area.
The program's director - Katherine Sanders - is passionate about helping people create healthy and innovative workplaces.
Through STAR, Sanders hopes to help faculty and research staff reach their goals for creating and leading transdisciplinary research teams. STAR's programs are built around leadership and management as well as how to collaborate with colleagues who use contrasting research paradigms.
“People know that true collaboration across divergent disciplines is challenging, and takes energy,” Sanders says. “And STAR has been created to help support those efforts."
As a first step toward connecting faculty and research staff to business professionals, STAR has partnered with BioForward, Wisconsin’s professional association for the bioscience industry.
With over 250 member companies and growing, a big part of BioForward’s mission is to connect professionals across industry sectors and academia to ultimately create partnerships, entrepreneurial activity and new businesses.
“STAR’s leadership programs are the best we’ve seen,” said Karen Dettinger, Business Development Director at BioForward. “Participants learn the core concepts underlying leadership and management, while at the same time developing relationships with people across industry and academia. Beyond fads and celebrity leaders, they learn what works, and why, so they can make the best possible decisions for themselves.”
The STAR leadership program, “Foundations: The Science behind Leadership & Management,” starts again in September 2011 and runs into December 2011.
The transdisciplinary collaboration program will be piloted in Fall 2011.
Email Dr. Sanders at kjsander@wisc.edu for more information on either of these professional development opportunities.
STAR also takes periodic proposals to help staff new campus "Collaboration Incubators."
If you have a transdisciplinary research theme (a theme broad enough to engage researchers from diverse research paradigms) go to the STAR website to submit it for consideration for Fall 2011.