The elderly face high costs -- from health care to housing -- and many won't have enough money to pay the bills. Rather than leaving people in the financial shadows, a novel tool developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston is sparking a revolution to keep aging lively and affordable.
To measure the living costs of people aged 65 and older, the Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard, a geographically (county-by-county) based tool that helps elders calculate the appropriate income necessary to cover basic costs such as housing, medical expenses, food, transportation and some leisure activities. It is a new and more accurate measure of an independent elder’s income needs.
The standard reveals that many elders can't cover their expenses, and its causing concern around the nation.
In Boston, the median household income of people aged 65 and older is $17,470. The institute calculates that to meet basic living costs, including fair-market rent, transportation, and health care, an elderly couple needs $30,557. By contrast, the average annual Social Security benefit for couples is $19,776, creating a gap for elders without additional savings.
To close the gap, Wider Opportunities for Women has launched an ambitious campaign that includes organizing, advocacy, and research on a national level. With the support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, an organization dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people, a total of 20 states will participate. The Gerontology Institute is Wider Opportunities for Women's national research partner to develop and apply the Elder Economic Security Standard.
The impact of the Elder Economic Security Standard has already been felt. In California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin where Wider Opportunities for Women and the Institute have been working, editorials by major newspapers and features on television are ringing the alarm. Wider Opportunities for Women has compiled the results on a special web site.
In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick has agreed to convene a statewide commission on long-term care and innovative outreach efforts to help seniors overcome their resistance to enrolling in public support programs.
The initiative is particularly critical as we face today’s economy. This year, seniors relying upon Social Security for the majority of their income were forced to choose among such necessities as heating oil, prescription drugs, and food as they received the lowest cost of living adjustment from Social Security yet.
Laura Henze Russell and Ellen Bruce of the Gerontology Institute developed the methodology and format of the Elder Economic Security Standard. They were inspired to ask the difficult question: how much does it really cost for older adults to live independently, taking into account differing factors such as health, life circumstances, family status, and geography; and what happens to their costs as life circumstances change over time?
"We really need a fresh look at the network of support programs for elders, because so many of the guidelines were set so many years ago," said Russell, director of the Elder Economic Security Program at the Gerontology Institute. "One of our hopes is that we're educating seniors that it's not necessarily their fault that they can't makes ends meet," said Bruce.
The Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard with support from The Boston Foundation.
The Gerontology Institute carries out basic and applied social and economic research on aging and engages in public education on aging policy issues, with an emphasis in four areas: income security, health (including long-term care), productive aging, and basic social and demographic research on aging.
Friday, May 30, 2008
The University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Harvard School of Public Health will create a research center devoted to health and healthcare disparities.
A five-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities will fund the HORIZON Center, named for its goal of providing healthy options, research, interventions, and community organizing. The center will work with the Cherishing our Hearts and Souls Coalition, a group in Roxbury, which has the youngest, poorest, least educated, and least employed people among Boston's neighborhoods.
Boston’s racial and ethnic groups have different risks of illnesses and death. Black residents, for example, have higher rates of preterm births, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, hospitalization, cancer mortality, and premature death, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
HORIZON pioneers a new way to discover and implement promising solutions to address this unequal burden of poor health, called community-based participatory research. This is a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. If research is to result in findings that are practical and culturally appropriate, the researcher and the researched community must work together. Community-based participatory research also goes beyond linking health to medical care, lifestyles and genes to consider other powerful determinants of health, specifically the social conditions in which we are born, live and work.
Of the billions of dollars spent on health care research in the U.S., only an estimated $45 million is allocated to community-based participatory research, but that amount is growing. The call to the call to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities is one of the key drivers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has organized a national partnership to end health disparities. Unnatural Causes, a groundbreaking documentary series on public television, exploring America's racial and socioeconomic inequities in health, further dramatized the challenge.
Many leaders of community-based public health groups have stories of disappointment and missed opportunities, experiences that foster an unhealthy skepticism about whether academia can be a trustworthy partner. The world of biomedical science can seem far away when you are dealing with immediate problems such as poverty, racism, and environmental conditions.
"But it's a total myth that underserved communities have no interest in research," Baquet said. "It's just that it has not been presented in a way that they can consider the benefits. Trust is the issue," according to Dr. Claudia Baquet, director of the University of Maryland Comprehensive Center for Health Disparities, who spoke at a conference earlier this year at UMass Boston also sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and community outreach organizations.
Celia Moore, chairperson of the Psychology Department at UMass Boston, and leader of the HORIZON initiative, "We propose to increase the number of local agencies, community organizations and residents who contribute to and participate in research, training, health promotion, and community organizing activities, and focus them on the common goal of reducing the health disparities."
“We hope that what we learn and put into practice in our own community can eventually benefit urban residents across the nation,” said James H. Ware, dean for academic affairs at Harvard School of Public Health.”
The HORIZON Center's four core missions, as well as its research and pilot projects, are all designed to strengthen the evidence-based practices and strategies for understanding and training practitioners in reducing health disparities.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
“Can you ever seem at home in a place where you don’t seem to fit?”
This question, asked by journalist Helen Zia, opens the pilot episode of As I Am, the new Asian American public radio program being co-produced by the Institute for Asian American Studies (IAAS) and WUMB, UMass Boston’s public radio station. The hour-long program features journalism, commentary, and art, all from an Asian American perspective.
In a segment of the program, “Leaving Los Angeles,” American Public Media’s Angela Kim shares her story about finding the one thing that helped her cope with her homesickness and reminds us that no matter where we may move we are often searching for something, anything, to remind us of where we came from.
As I Am won the 2008 Outstanding Special Program award from the American Women in Radio and Television for the segment “Leaving Los Angeles.” The prestigious Gracie Award recognizes the realistic and faceted portrayal of women in entertainment, commercials, news, features and other programs. Each year, these awards attract the best and brightest in radio, television, cable, and new media. The winners were honored at the Gracies Gala on May 28, 2008 in New York City.
As I Am was born in a conversation between Watanabe, the director of IAAS and Pat Monteith, the general manager of WUMB, when Monteith discovered that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was hoping to increase the diversity of programming on the nation’s public airways. “The opportunity showed itself right in front of me,” Monteith says. “Knowing that there was no other show aimed at this [Asian American] population besides Pacific Time, I asked Paul if he was interested.” He was, as was the UMass administration, which has funded the production of the pilot with a UMass Boston Proposal Development Grant. The completed pilot will be offered to public radio stations around the country this spring.
As I Am models itself partially on NPR’s All Things Considered, and Chicago Public Radio’s popular This American Life, as well as on the now defunct syndicated Asian radio show Pacific Time, which broadcast out of San Francisco from 2000 to 2007. While the staff and contributors of As I Am are Asian American and will address issues that affect Asian Americans, they plan to touch on themes, like the concept of “home,” which transcend race, ethnicity, and nationality. “We’ll be pulling in all these different voices,” says Nathan Bae Kupel, one of the producers of the show.
Paul Niwa, a professor at Emerson College who contributed a documentary report on rising rents that are forcing working-class residents out of Boston’sChinatown to the pilot, describes As I Am as “a collage of experience, poetry, commentary, music lyrics, and more.”
As for future shows, say Bae Kupel and Watanabe, the possibilities are endless. “There are thousands of stories that need to be covered, which will be exciting for many different kinds of audiences,” Watanabe says, smiling. “I have a million ideas.”
The entire hour-long program is on the Public Radio Exchange. Stations in North Carolina, Illinois, and California will air As I Am this month in recognition and in celebration of-Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
On a typical day, you find Allen Gontz, an assistant professor of environmental, earth, and ocean sciences, of coastal geology at UMass Boston, in historic neighborhoods of Boston pulling an electronically equipped skid plate along the surface of the ground, directing waves of radar deep down.
"What we are looking for is historical and cultural objects or remnants," he said. "It could help develop a better understanding of what Boston would have looked like during the Revolutionary War."
First and foremost a scientist, Gontz is spearheading the use of surveying systems and software that non-invasively, non-destructively map the subsurface and the features within it.
His latest examination is of the grounds of the Paul Revere House, Boston's oldest building and a historic Colonial landmark. There, surveyors from the Boston firm Harry R. Feldman Inc. are teaming up with Gontz to create a digital picture of what's above and below ground so history can be protected as the space is enlarged.
The organization that runs the Paul Revere House the Paul Revere Memorial Association aims to expand its historic North End site to include a neighboring residence Revere once owned, creating more space for the thousands of visitors each year who make the pilgrimage each year to a starting point of the American Revolution. Although the Revere house was built in 1680, no thorough land survey has ever been done. If the team is able to locate the foundations, preservation groups can restore the property to the way it looked in the 1700s, when Revere began delivering messages for the American revolutionaries.
"This gives us a way to do things without digging," Nina Zannieri, executive director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association said according to the Boston Globe. "It’s a heavily visited site. We had 255,000 visitors last year. It’s a major historical site."
Gontz jumped at the chance to bring his students to study the Revere site when the association approached him. His focus is on the city's original coastline, and the Paul Revere House was originally only two streets from Boston Harbor.
Although the data from the recent surveys are still being analyzed, based on preliminary readings the UMass team suspects that a privy - a gold mine for historical researchers for what it reveals about the lives and habits of those who used it - and other foundations or walls, revealing structures now long forgotten, will be discovered.
Feldman employees and the UMass group are now working with their images, cleaning them up and creating a virtually perfect computerized three dimensional image of the property. Using medical imaging software, they will produce an image that can be rotated and viewed on a computer screen. Precise dimensions of the building will be available, and an exact record of the historic property is established for posterity.
Gontz’s methods work by sending a tiny pulse of energy into a material and recording the strength and the time required for the return of any reflected signal. A series of pulses over a single area make up what is called a scan. Reflections are produced whenever the energy pulse enters into a material with different electrical conduction properties the material it left. The strength of the reflection is determined by the contrast of the two materials. This means that a pulse which moves from dry sand to wet sand will produce a very strong, brilliantly visible reflection, while one moving from dry sand to limestone will produce a very weak reflections.
Data are collected in parallel transects and then placed together in their appropriate locations for computer processing in a specialized software program. The computer then produces a horizontal surface at a particular depth in the record. This is referred to as a depth slice, which allows operators to interpret a plan view of the survey area.
In recent years, the use of these non-invasive techniques has transformed earth science. The emerging field draws on scholars in computer science, mathematics and statistics, classical studies, architecture, geography, graphic arts and design, and physical anthropology. The resulting methods reduce the cost, time and risk associated with archaeological investigations.
The innovation in the Paul Revere House examination is figuring out how to stitch together the images. "It's really cutting-edge work anywhere in the world,” according to Gontz.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Arthur Eisenkraft believes that students learn math and science the way that practicing scientists and mathematicians do. They learn when something grabs their attention...when the content is relevant to their lives. They learn when we permit them to get their hands on the subject matter. In short, when we allow students to use all of their senses, they make sense of math and science.
Grabbing students' attention is vital. As the nation's economic base shifts increasingly toward technology, participation and achievement in science and mathematics particularly among minority students becomes increasingly important. Yet, we face the potential of a serious shortfall in the number of individuals entering these fields. All too often, usually around the middle school grades, many students, especially minority students, learn to dislike or fear science and mathematics.
Eisenkraft’s book, Quantoons, which won a 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award for Book Illustrations/Graphics from the Association of Educational Publishers, is a perfect illustration of his philosophy how to engage students. The book, published by the National Science Teachers Association, presents text by Eisenkraft and colleague Larry D. Kirkpatrick with images from internationally known illustrator Tomas Bunk.
The book was featured for six months in an exhibit at New York’s Hall of Science. The book celebrates collaboration between Eisenkraft and Kirkpatrick that began with Quantum magazine, which was published between 1989 and 2001. Their writings on physics were interpreted by Bunk, whose drawings have entertained millions of MAD magazine readers and fans of his “Garbage Pail Kids.”
“We wanted to bring challenging physics questions and their answers to a broad audience of children and adults. Tomas’s illustrations made our job that much easier,” said Eisenkraft, who created Quantum with the help of the science teachers association. “We wanted to break apart the myth that physics can’t be fun; that it is a remote subject.”
For example, a Quantoon that explores the classic physics problem of crossing a raging river and determining where you’ll land on the opposite shore is accompanied by a funny/sad metaphorical cartoon about traversing the river of life from birth to death.
Eisenkraft, UMass Boston’s Distinguished Professor of Science Education, directs the Center of Science and Math in Context. He is also a member of a team of professors and educators awarded a $12.5 million National Science Foundation Boston Science Partnership grant to re-shape science education in the Boston Public Schools.
Eisenkraft's book Active Physics (2005, It’s About Time Publishing) a text used by more than 100,000 students across the country as the backbone of a movement to revise the traditional order of science education – biology, then chemistry, then physics – to place physics at the forefront for students be they in rural, suburban or inner-city districts. The program is built on research results from studies in cognitive sciences, student assessment, student engagement, and problem-based learning. He has also authored Active Chemistry, his latest book.
A new learning model underlies Eisenkraft's work. He developed the 7E learning model to emphasize the increasing importance of eliciting prior understandings and the extending, or transfer, of concepts. The 5E learning cycle model requires instruction to include the following discrete elements: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. The proposed 7E model expands the engage element into two components—elicit and engage. Similarly, the 7E model expands the two stages of elaborate and evaluate into three components—elaborate, evaluate, and extend.
While text books offer a classical tool for educators, Eisenkraft said projects like the magazine and the illustrated book give him a chance to test new approaches aimed at getting students and teachers focused on physics.
“Projects like Quantum offer the opportunity to try to do things differently,” said Eisenkraft, who taught high school physics for 28 years and was honored as a Science Teacher of the Year. “Working with the Boston Public Schools, we are teaching the teachers of physics and science to do things differently too. We think students are going to benefit from the results.”
Eisenkraft is a member of the UMass Boston Science and Math Learning Research cluster. The goals are to investigate teaching and learning materials and methods and to apply findings to the improvement of curriculum, instruction, and learning in schools and universities.
People who experience anxiety disorder – about 6.8 million adult Americans, twice as many women as men - have reason to keep tabs on the work being done at leading research institutions to improve treatments. A $2.4 million National Institute of Mental Health backed project under way at UMass Boston may well lead to widespread use of a new therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) that has shown much promise in clinical trials.
A team of investigators led by UMass Boston associate professor of psychology Lizabeth Roemer is comparing a mindfulness- and acceptance-based behavior therapy for GAD to an older, established treatment, which should lead to better matching of treatments to clients. In 2001 Roemer and her collaborator, Dr. Susan Orsillo of Suffolk University developed a therapy for generalized anxiety disorder that integrates mindfulness-based, as well as other acceptance-based, strategies into a behavioral approach to treating this chronic anxiety disorder.
GAD is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable, irrational worry about everyday things. Commonly occurring with other psychological disorders, GAD has been the least successfully treated of the anxiety disorders.
Roemer and her colleagues believe that better targeting of the function of worry and the nature of GAD is necessary. “Recent developments in understanding worry and GAD suggest the potential utility of mindfulness and acceptance-based elements in treating GAD,” she says. In the context of this work, this new approach means “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment in a nonjudgmental way to both internal and external sensations.” The researchers propose that mindfulness may help individuals to respond to their naturally occurring internal experiences more adaptively and to lead richer, more satisfying lives.
The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness and acceptance techniques, up from 3 in 2000, on a variety of applications, such as to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, and reduce hot flashes. For all these hopeful signs, the science behind mindfulness and acceptance techniques is in its infancy.
Roemer's hypothesis however appears to be well supported by the body of work on the subject. Studies have shown that worry plays an “avoidant” role in GAD that may be highly responsive to the practice of mindfulness. “Worry appears to reduce distressing internal experiences in the short-term, although it likely prolongs them over time by interfering with emotional processing… and limiting the ability to respond adaptively,” says the study’s co-principal investigator, Dr. Susan Orsillo of Suffolk University. “Experiential acceptance, which mindfulness practice promotes, may be the solution.”
Preliminary findings from an open trial have been encouraging, as has a controlled trial that compared the treatment to the effects of normal maturation and other influences. “This novel treatment seems to be targeting the phenomena at which it is directed, with corresponding improvements in symptoms and quality of life,” says Roemer.
Orsillo’s and Roemer’s book Acceptance- and Mindfulness-Based Approaches to Anxiety: Conceptualization and Treatment (Springer, New York, 2005) placed mindfulness and acceptance into the clinical lexicon, establishing links with established traditions, including emotion theory and experiential therapy.
The latest National Institute of Mental Health funding is for a large-scale follow-up study that will further validate if and how the unique features of mindfulness and acceptance-based behavior therapy make it more effective. The results of that study will be telling, but regardless, individuals with generalized anxiety disorder can now look to the future with more hope.
UMass Boston’s Cat Mazza perfectly represents the newest directions in art, now served by computer networking, modeling, and simulation. An Assistant Professor of New Media, she developed a software program that encourages the 54 million knitters in the United States to make "logoknits"--knitted garments with the logos of sweatshop offenders.
Mazza is featured in a provocative exhibition of international artists using fiber in unexpected and unorthodox ways, Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting, which originated at The Museum of Arts & Design, New York, and is now on display at the Indiana State Museum.
In the exhibit, Dave Cole knits with backhoes and telephone poles, while Althea Crome makes her "nano-knit" garments using fine medical wire as "needles." Niels van Eijk uses lace techniques to create a lamp out of optical fibers. And Mazza translates video images into knitted images to educate about sweatshop labor.
"These are not your grandmother's crocheted doilies and knitted legwarmers," says Museum of Arts & Design Chief Curator David McFadden, in an introduction to the show on the web site, IN.gov. "The traditions that have defined both knitting and lace-making for centuries are suspended in this exhibition. Each piece bears a political or personal message, invites public participation, and encourages the viewer to reconsider how fiber functions on a tangible, spiritual and aesthetic level."
Mazza’s Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting entry is the collectively crocheted “Nike Blanket Petition,” decorated with a Nike “swoosh”, and made by knitters from more than 20 countries. To make the “swoosh,” Mazza used Knitpro, a special software program she designed that lets anyone create a knitting pattern out of a graphic image. She has since developed Knitoscope, a software program that translates digital video into knitted animation.
Mazza is a recipient of a 2007 Media Arts Fellowship funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, awarded to innovative and pioneering filmmakers and media artists. She founded microRevolt to “investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor.”
Inspiring micro revolution, Mazza says, in an interview on the blog We Make Money Not Art, “in many ways began as an experiment more than a conviction. What is the political potential of craft and can it be an avenue for pleasure as well as organizing for social good?”
In knitting circles, participants not only knit but also chat about social issues. When pieced together from numerous individual contributions, as many knitted protest projects are, the works become a sort of handcrafted petition. Mazza's creative works are part of the re-emergence of knitting as a hip hobby that makes statements.
Last year, Mazza launched Stitch for Senate, a new twist on wartime knitting. During World War II, as part of the Knit for Defense movement, women knit a variety of gear for men on the front. Mazza’s Knit for Defense makes helmet liners for U.S. troops. She is encouraging senators to send the liners on to soldiers abroad. Research for this project will accumulate into Knit for Defense - her experimental animation about the history of wartime knitting, funded by Creative Capital.
Cat Mazza holds an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her work has been exhibited internationally in England, Italy, Russia, Brazil as well as throughout the United States. She was also a founding member of Eyebeam, a new media art and technology center in New York City.
Friday, May 9, 2008
MathWorks, a provider of software for technical computing and modeling, based in Natick, is running a "wiki-like" programming contest where anyone can look at anyone else's submission and then resubmit it as their own. Through this competitive collaboration MathWorks has found improvements in programming performance.
It's a very counterintuitive way of working. Open up your problem to other people in a systematic way. A problem may reside in one domain of expertise and the solution may reside in another.
People have talked a lot about innovations happening at the intersection of disciplines. So, could this practice in the open source software community work among scientists trying to solve scientific problems?
According to Karim R. Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, systematic evidence is now coming in that shows that broadcasting or introducing problems to outsiders yields effective solutions and quickly. Lakhani’s study shows that enjoyment and the challenge of learning were the strongest motivators for scientists to participate in the process.
Waltham based InnoCentive has put this idea into practice with the help of $6.5 million in financing from Spencer Trask Ventures, a New York-based venture firm.
InnoCentive has built an online community of problem seekers and solvers who collaborate to solve technical issues. The 140,000 registered solvers represent more than 60 different scientific disciplines. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies such Procter & Gamble and Eli Lily pay a fee per challenge posted. When the best solution is rewarded to the solver, InnoCentive receives a commission of 20% or more. The reward for solvers is from $5,000 up to $1,000,000. Seekers find that they can get more work done than their internal research and development departments can handle. Both seekers’ and solvers’ identity are kept confidential and InnoCentive guarantees the protection of intellectual property.
Since 2006, InnoCentive has been in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation's Accelerating Innovation for Development initiative to find solutions to problems faced in developing countries, for the non-profit sector. For example, Rockefeller is offering $20,000 for a design for a solar-powered wireless router composed of low-cost, readily available hardware and software components.
Any ideas?
Friday, May 2, 2008
Like UMass Boston (Research Reenvisioned for the 21st Century: Expanding the Reach of Scholarship at the University of Massachusetts Boston), other universities have begun to use the “cluster” approach to organize leading edge research involving multi-disciplinary efforts.
The term “cluster” was popularized by Michael Porter in The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990). Clusters are geographic areas where there are enough resources and competences to reach a critical threshold, giving it a key position in a given economic activity, with a decisive sustainable competitive advantage over other places, or even world supremacy in that field.
Taking a page from business strategy, research universities seek to build a compelling and differentiated strategy for growth, and therefore reputation, driving it off of core competencies matched with powerful market and competitive insights.
The increasing use of a business model based on market factors to guide university strategic decision making is driven by increased competition for students and research dollars resulting in pressure on universities to market themselves; rising costs of research in the sciences; growing media use of competitive rankings, as indicators of presumed educational quality; and increased costs of operating the university.
But while the use of a business model makes sense for university administrators whose success is directly tied to their performance in the advancing the institution as a whole, success of faculty is tied to disciplinary recognition, not institutional success, as measured in part by the scientific community outside the institution, often resulting in competing priorities.
Nevertheless, there are many faculty members who realize, when they push the limits of their field that they have much more in common with colleagues across the university than with members of their own departments. They also hear from their students that employers want graduates who are prepared to meet the multidisciplinary needs of the world, integrating what they have learned in disparate fields.
To encourage researchers from a wide range of disciplines to collaborate to bring research knowledge to bear on issues of importance, universities have begun to organize research clusters. Oregon State University claims to have coined the term "research cluster." “We're breaking down traditional disciplinary boundaries because we've learned that collaboration creates synergy, excitement, and creativity."
New Mexico State University also claims to be one of the first to use the term. It has established five research clusters to take advantage of strategic opportunities that build on institutional strengths and respond to local, regional, and national needs.
Colorado State University has even trademarked the term "supercluster" to describe a "new model to move research to market."
Clusters are emerging as a way to express distinctiveness, as well as to invest in research growth.
The University of Houston has established six interdisciplinary research clusters designed to enable scholars to better exchange ideas and explore emerging research areas and to work more effectively with industry, other research organizations and the community.
These research clusters are powerful centers of creativity, in which teams of researchers from a wide range of disciplines collaborate across traditional boundaries to bring research knowledge to bear on issues of intellectual, scientific, social, economic, environmental and cultural importance.
The University of Washington has a seed fund to organize research clusters. Their Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters are intended to bring together faculty and graduate students from different departments and disciplines with shared research interests. The university intends to seed new and vital research activity but not provide ongoing support of existing programs. Funds can be used to support meeting costs, photocopying, visiting speakers, etc.
In practice, the key initial challenge in organizing research clusters is to overcome the “either/or” mentality. The question, the university can either invest in clusters or colleges, but not both, is replaced with a “what if/and” question, what if you thought of college and cluster investment as synergistic? By making this shift, the promise of the cluster approach began to become possible.
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