A University professor received a five-year, $472,494 grant from the National Science Foundation last week to continue a program that he says has been helping social scientists and natural scientists understand each other’s research for the past six years.
Political science professor Ron Mitchell runs the “DISsertation Initiative for the Advancement of Climate Change ReSearch,” or DISCCRS, a week-long conference held at ranches across the country that helps these scholars better communicate their findings to policymakers and the public.
During the week, participants in DISCCRS discuss their research with top climate scientist “mentors” from the natural and social sciences as well as policymakers, representatives of national funding agencies, and media experts to determine the future of climate change and to create networks between policy officials and these research scientists.
The DISCCRS program helps people who have recently received their doctorate degrees researching issues related to climate change learn new interdisciplinary skills so they can better understand and address the problem of climate change.
For Mitchell, discussion among scientists and policymakers is like a new language.
“We all talk in different languages,” Mitchell said. “This helps them learn to talk to each other.”
Mitchell says those who take part in DISCCRS figure out the cost of climate change, “how much it will cost if we don’t do something and how it will cost if we do something.”
“This allows them to communicate effectively with people like Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Nike Inc., and others on what they need to know about climate change,” Mitchell said. “It’s really about helping to train the next generation from economists to political scientists and oceanographers.”
Oregon State University doctoral student Betsy Bancroft, a former participant in the conference, said she was grateful for the opportunities it provided her.
“DISCCRS provided me with a community of peers working on issues relating to climate change,” Bancroft said. “In addition, I was exposed to new findings in fields of research I don’t normally follow in the literature.”
Bancroft presented her dissertation on the effect of ultraviolet radiation on amphibians at the 2008 conference’s Symposium Session, which Mitchell said is a key component of the conference.
“Those symposia involve a week-long retreat at which 34 top new Ph.D.s working on climate change are brought together with six to 10 top climate scientist ‘mentors’ from the natural and social sciences as well as policymakers, representatives of national funding agencies and media experts,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell’s former research assistant, Jennifer Marlon, said she sees DISCCRS as a link that helps people who are highly specialized make connections in the field of climate change research.
“This program is pretty intense,” Marlon said. “You have (34) new graduates with a dozen highly specialized mentors on a fairly small ranch. Strong connections are always made.”
Marlon got her doctorate degree in geography from the University in 2009. In the four years she spent as Mitchell’s assistant, she helped organize and plan many aspects of the conference.
“The program has created a broad network of over 2,000 Ph.D.s who have deposited their dissertation abstracts in an online database as well as a ‘committed core’ of over 140 Symposium Scholars who participated in DISCCRS I through IV,” Mitchell said. “Through these symposiums, numerous articles have been published, grant proposals funded and a network of teaching and communication created.”
Mitchell said the symposium’s value has been consistently recognized with awards totaling over $2 million from NSF, and the University has been awarded more than $600,000 of
these funds.
Anthony Leiserowitz is the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change and a research scientist at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University.Leiserowitz was in the 2006 symposium with Mitchell, and received his doctorate from the University in 2003.
“It’s very rare to have the opportunity to meet and learn from an interdisciplinary group of junior and senior climate scientists,” Leiserowitz said. “Interdisciplinary science is all the rage these days but is very hard to do in practice, and DISCCRS does a great job helping new scientists understand the tremendous value of interdisciplinary research but also help in recognizing and overcoming the many barriers.”
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