Terrific. Thank you all so much. Very
helpful. I'm realizing we have a few minutes, we
started a few minutes late so I'm gonna take a
slight moderator's prerogative and go over just a few minutes.
So I and what I wanted to do was
really um in the spirit of engaging all of us
um in this conversation, I wanted to pose one
question for our discussion and that is, I mean we've
heard a you know a great um a couple of
examples of seed funding here right here on campus.
We've heard um others at the national level, the
federal level interested in in funding these kinds of projects.
Um I wonder, as you all um have have
so much experience in trying to find money to support
the work you do, and to our panelists, if
you could imagine what what an effective and user friendly
funding um situation would look like for a person wanting
to do transdisciplinary work? What would that look
like? What would it be you had said earlier,
someone had mentioned earlier about, oh it's so
nice to be in a room where everybody, you
know, not only talks about this but actually
encourages us to do this kind of work. If
you could think about what kind of funding um landscape
or pro program or project program let's say um would
look like for you to get your work done for
you to knock on the door, What would you
want on the other side of that door? I'm
asking you. Yeah. Yeah. [inaudible]
[inaudible]
and that and speak to the fact that it takes
it takes a group. It takes a diverse group
to understand a difficult and diverse problem. So when
I think about the apparatus that I would want to
deal with, I would want a group of people
that come from several different backgrounds that meet maybe on
like a monthly or a quarterly basis that would review
my project and actually look at it from multiple perspectives
and diverse lenses to understand what I'm actually trying to
do. And that would be able to understand the
kind of impact I want to have on the world
with what I'm coming up with. Thank you for
that. I think to your point it's the idea
is that for the review panel, for example,
for whoever the funder is, but for the review
panel to have transdisciplinary researchers on that who can
can look um from their own lens as a transdisciplinary
researcher and in addition to having the the other
multiple disciplines reviewing it with their lenses. But but
the you know, one of the things we were
talking about the um projects you you had reminded me
of a couple of projects I've been involved in um
that involved NIH funding and CDC
Funding and they were billed as these um you
know, at the time, multidisciplinary projects. But
really what they were was like parallel play when you're
kid. We were each playing in our own little
thing, but we were kind of playing together.
Um and I think what we're after here is what
happens as we, you know outgrow toddlerhood and we
actually start to engage and we play with each other.
So the review panels have to be like that
as well. I mean, I think, you
know, to be able to expect that um a
person from a single discipline is gonna look at at
at your transdisciplinary work is hard to imagine.
They could have a real good set of comments for
that. Having different sectors represented. I think you
need different institutions. So like he's from the government,
National National Endowment for the Arts. I would
want other universities. I would want community centers like
um with the speakers that were talking earlier, Emily
especially, it's when you're doing this research, whatever research
you're doing, you wanted to have a real impact
on the people. So having rep representatives of those
stakeholders in the room. So here people who work
directly with the community, here are people who engage
in the scholarly work. And then here are the
people who have the money. How do all of
these people actually sit in a room come together and
then pick something that's really going to have impact on
the people who need it most. Yeah. And
and for a land grant institution like Virginia Tech,
that fits so squarely into what our mission is.
But that is an excellent point. Um, thank
you for sharing. Others? What would you want to
see on the other side of that door? Yeah,
thank you. It's pretty simple. But I
think there's often a concern that the agency personnel and
those that are crafting these calls get it for lack
of a better word, but that it goes to
a review panel and they don't get it. They
are still in those silos. So I guess would
be nice to know if and how review panels are
being um, for lack of a better word brought
up to speed on on what the expectations, expectations
of transdisciplinary are, what they look like and
what we really want to see in a proposal because
I think that's the big fear among many people is
that they're gonna do this great work and it's gonna
be the program officers may love it, but it
doesn't get funded. Yeah, that's something we really
are trying to be vigilant about. Again, we
have a little bit more diesel term. Again,
that was used earlier, nimbleness with a smaller agency,
smaller government agencies. We can, we can
be a little bit more, uh, you know,
we can, we can be very deliberate in
choosing people from various sectors and various backgrounds to serve
on these panels and we do that and we make
it fully transdisciplinary that said, you know,
there are other layers, right? There's always management,
you know, did even if we like it
or you know, we we take it up the
chain, you know, is this something that the
National for the Arts wants to fund? It goes
then to the National Council on the Arts, they
make a recommendation. Um but it is, you
know, it's a highly competitive process. I do
think though that by and large the panel decisions are
and I think this is true, not only for
research for across the National Art for the Arts,
uh the panels have a great deal of input is
with a lot of federal agencies, so they get
those recommendations get taken extremely seriously. Um but I
do think this has been this is just enlarge that
question a bit for us federal funders and maybe even
institutionally like there's this wish that we could just be
more cross institutional or cross agency in our approach.
So we so many times and one thing is we
have recommended people for other panels for other federal agency
panels. Now, we don't know all the time
what whether they took us up on that and used
them. Um but you know what we would love
and we talked about this for a long time with
the National Science Foundation, nothing really quite matured yet,
but you know, having some agreement where we
could create our own panels with them and and you
know, do projects that are falling in between two
stools that are not getting to the Nationals for the
Arts or the National Science Foundation, which, you
know, where we need reviewer teams. Um and
and those are really hard conversations that having that falls
on us in government, but that's the that's the
onus is, you know, they want to all
agencies want to protect their, you know, their
mission very as they should, but in doing so
they may overlook that there's a need for this transdisciplinary
panel and funding orientation. I would just add
to that that that we do that in house too.
So it's not uncommon for Ben or any of
the other institute directors to call the one of us
and say we have this proposal and it sort of
fits with us, but there's this element, are
you interested? You want to take a look, do
you have people that can help us look at it
um, together? And so so we recognize that
up the chain as you leave, leave our summit
outside the university and so I think we really try
um to be very mindful of that, so we
don't want to leave you with the impression that we
have these like institute silos, but they're really a
a um I don't know what's a good analogy of
what we are, but we really work in tandem
and in partnership with one another to help um,
to set the stage for you. Yeah, that's
exactly what I was going to say. I think
it's easier for us at Virginia Tech than between federal
agencies and there's not a lot of um more senior
researchers here today, there's a lot of young people
and there's some administrators here. But one of the
things that senior researchers can do is to actually consider
working on these panels. If you're a scientist,
consider working on an NEA. If you are an artist,
consider, you know, look at, I'll
scare it so um over there. Um but you
know, he is a musician, but he's just
got an NSF grant. Him working on an NSF
panel brings that to the panel that you're asking for,
Um and that that you're looking at is how
do we get these panels? And I'll just make
a plug to a guy who's no longer, who stepped
down from the National Science Foundation, but it's a
point in bringing him up is his um friend Leonard,
um and he was one of those people that
when he was with this diverse um panel would give
them permission. I remember being in a panel very
where um somebody said, well this project has a
lot of art in it, is that okay that
we liked it? Is it okay that we ranked
it highly and a frame was very proud to say
yes, it is fine, it is multidisciplinary,
that point of view is important. He was also
very proud that he was the at that time,
the number one NSF program officer that was brought up
on Capitol Hill, um, the most in terms
of the projects that he funded. So there's a
challenge on the politics that we brought up today as
well. But he's terrific. I mean, I
think, you know, just one quick thing.
Um, if I can remember it, it was
uh yeah, just just that. Um, yeah,
the the one thing that I don't know that
I think we also have to be a little bit
guarded about and careful about is what I'll just call
disciplinary integrity. So that doesn't mean we shouldn't do.
I mean obviously this is all about transdisciplinary
work. But what what gets tricky is sometimes when
the science or even the art seems skimpy in one
of those transdisciplinary type of applications. So it's
really important that, you know, that that nothing
is lost in the process of fusing. And if,
if everything is gained, you know, and
if there is a loss, it's it's called out
and it's like, okay to do this, we
are maybe going to sack sacrifice this design or that
that but the benefit is this that and I think
that's something that I have seen reviewers sometimes struggle with
is when they're, you know, you can imagine
it's like a cognitive psychologist reviewing and she's used to
a certain protocol and she sees this is different.
Why are they doing it this way that's a week
or study or there's less end or something, you
know, and we can, if they can justify
that, then that's okay. Yeah, I I
think that's a great point. The other pieces to
this gentleman's point, I think it would also be
completely acceptable. Not not that, you know,
it would, you know, every project officer can
decide what they're gonna do, but completely acceptable to
recommend to the project officer that somebody who has experience
in transdisciplinary research beyond the panel. You know,
it's it's certainly a reasonable thing for them to
consider whether it's for that particular panel or a panel
in the future. So it's partly having the right
for the disciplinary integrity, having the right disciplines there,
but also having someone there who can say see
across all that people like you who do this kind
of work, um, would be really critical for
the kinds of panels that that we're talking about.
So I would encourage you. I mean, as
a former Fed, you know, one of the
things we do is listen to our constituents, right?
We listen to people who use our services and
who we to people that we serve. And so
I would encourage you to do that. Um,
if you're applying for a federal grant as well.
All right, um, in the interest of,
of our ensuring we've got time to do the rest
of the things that just make one quick thing.
I would like to amplify the plug that was made
earlier about. If you want to be a Panelist
uh, by all means contact us. Uh,
we would be very interested. We keep, you
know, we always looking for great reviewers and we
appreciate the voluntary work. And the second thing is,
as Ben knows, there's a report that maybe
you all know, National Academy of Sciences produced uh,
not long ago, that was co funded by
the National Humanities, any a and uh, the
Mellon Foundation called branches or branches from the same tree.
Um, and it's a wonderful report looking at
this very, these very topics as it pertains to
arts and humanities and stem and medicine. Excellent.
Thank you all so much. Can we please thank
our panel again.