Interdisciplinary Researchers Discuss Faculty-Student Research

How do students learn to work as a team to conduct research about real-world problems? The Bass Connections program at Duke University offers faculty members the opportunity to collaborate across disciplines, and to engage with students from undergraduate through doctoral levels. Students discussed their experiences and how being a researcher influenced their academic and professional trajectories. In this group interview, three faculty members share insights about teaching research with project-based methods. They described benefits from participation and the new directions discovered for their own research.

Faculty leaders in interdisciplinary projects with student researchers

• Charlotte Sussman, Professor of English

  Bass Connections Participation: Faculty leader for: Representing Migration through Digital Humanities (2019-2020)
  Note: this project was also connected to several “Data+” projects – Data+ is an affiliated summer program of Bass Connections in which students work on interdisciplinary data science projects during the summer

• Manoj Mohanan, Associate Professor of Public Policy
  Bass Connections Participation: Faculty leader for: Indian Health Information Networks (2017-2018), Trust and Violence in Healthcare (2021-2022) and  COVID-19 and Household Well-being in Developing Countries (2021-2022)

• Janet Bettger, Associate Professor in Orthopedic Surgery
  Bass Connections Participation: Faculty leader for:  Help Desk: Scaling Volunteer Models that Address Patients' Social Needs (2020-2021), Help Desk: A Student Initiative to Help Address the Social Determinants of Health (2019-2020), Global Alliance on Disability and Health Innovation (GANDHI): What Makes Innovation Stick? (2018-2019), Global Alliance on Disability and Health Innovation (GANDHI) (2017-2018), Global Alliance on Disability and Health Innovation (GANDHI) (2016-2017)