We review shoreline monitoring methodologies used by members of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Archaeology, Geology, and Wildlife Biology teams from February 2021 to December 2022 on Pockoy Island in Charleston County, South Carolina, USA. Our project objectives were to better understand the driving forces behind the landward movement of the shoreline (transgression), to apply new understanding to the rate of shoreline erosion of the island that directly impacts the Pockoy Island Shell Ring Complex (38CH2533), and to establish best practice for future community science monitoring efforts. Each member of our team used a different shoreline monitoring methodology (a nested methodology approach). Multiple unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV)-derived orthoimagery datasets, on-the-ground transect measurements, and Arrow Gold real-time kinematic (RTK) unit measurements have been collected monthly following significant storms or king (perigean) tide events. Moving forward, the erosion transect approach tested within this project will serve as the foundation for community science monitoring at heritage at-risk sites in South Carolina. In this article, we introduce initial efforts in establishing a community science monitoring program in South Carolina that will influence future research, land management, and policy, and we propose how our research might be adapted for other sites at risk.

In this article, we celebrate Dante Cicchetti’s extensive contributions to the discipline of developmental psychopathology. In his seminal article, he articulated why developmental psychopathology was imperative to create research portfolios that could inform the causes, consequences, and trajectories for adults often initiated by early lived experiences (Cicchetti, 1984). In this three-part article, we share our transdisciplinary efforts to use developmental psychopathology as a foundational theory from which to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions for populations who experienced early adversity or who were at risk for child abuse and neglect. After describing interventions conducted at Mt. Hope Family Center that spanned over three decades, we highlight the criticality of disseminating results and address policy implications of this work. We conclude by discussing future directions to facilitate work in developmental psychopathology. Currently, one of three national National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded child abuse and neglect centers, we look forward to continuing to build upon Dante’s efforts to disseminate this important work to improve society for our children, our nation’s often most vulnerable and forgotten citizens.

The United States National Science and Technology Council has made a call for improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education at the convergence of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The National Science Foundation (NSF) views convergence as the merging of ideas, approaches, and technologies from widely diverse fields of knowledge to stimulate innovation and discovery. Teaching convergency requires moving to the transdisciplinary level of integration where there is deep integration of skills, disciplines, and knowledge to solve a challenging real-world problem. Here we present a summary on convergence and transdisciplinary teaching. We then provide examples of convergence and transdisciplinary teaching in plant biology, and conclude by discussing limitations to contemporary conceptions of convergency and transdisciplinary STEM.

Major advances in biology and ecology have sharpened our understanding of what the goals of biodiversity conservation might be, but less progress has been made on how to achieve conservation in the complex, multi-sectoral world of human affairs. The failure to deliver conservation outcomes is especially severe in the rapidly changing landscapes of tropical low-income countries. We describe five techniques we have used to complement and strengthen long-term attempts to achieve conservation outcomes in the landscapes and seascapes of such regions; these are complex social-ecological systems shaped by interactions between biological, ecological and physical features mediated by the actions of people. Conservation outcomes occur as a result of human decisions and the governance arrangements that guide change. However, much conservation science in these countries is not rooted in a deep understanding of how these social-ecological systems work and what really determines the behaviour of the people whose decisions shape the future of landscapes. We describe five scientific practices that we have found to be effective in building relationships with actors in landscapes and influencing their behaviour in ways that reconcile conservation and development. We have used open-ended inductive enquiry, theories of change, simulation models, network analysis and multi-criteria analysis. These techniques are all widely known and well tested, but seldom figure in externally funded conservation projects. We have used these techniques to complement and strengthen existing interventions of international conservation agencies. These five techniques have proven effective in achieving deeper understanding of context, engagement with all stakeholders, negotiation of shared goals and continuous learning and adaptation.

The Mount Sinai Health Hackathon is designed to provide a novel forum to foster experiential team science training. Utilizing a Social Network Analysis survey, we studied the impact of the Mount Sinai Health Hackathon on the nature of collaborative relationships of hackathon participants. After the event, the number of links between participants from different disciplines increased and network density overall increased, suggesting a more interconnected network with greater interdisciplinary communication. This social network approach may be a useful addition to the evaluation strategies for team science education initiatives.

The European InSOTEC project aims to identify remaining socio-technical challenges for the implementation of geological disposal of radioactive waste in European countries. Geological disposal has been recognized as the reference solution in radioactive waste management by the European Commission, which has set up the IGD-TP as a platform to foster exchanges between authorities on research and development (R&D) on this topic. This paper turns to the national level to analyse national R&D programmes on radioactive waste management (RWM) and particularly, geological disposal (GD) in order to assess to what extent there are national platforms that broaden interaction beyond an expert community. For this, we focus on identifying those practices and structures that reflect a degree of inter- and transdisciplinarity in the design and implementation of national R&D programmes. Our argument, embedded in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, is that the way GD is framed by the research and policy community has important implications for the processes of developing and governing a technology. From our empirical case studies, we will explore the extent to which social-science research is integrated and the way stakeholders may have an impact on the development of R&D programmes. Overall, including social science research as an integral part in R&D programmes on GD and fostering collaboration between different types of knowledge in the R&D agenda-setting phase may help in the consideration of GD as a socio-technical problem, where the social and the technical are inextricably linked.

Concerns are growing over the ability of the modern food system to simultaneously achieve food security and environmental sustainability in the face of global change. Yet, the dominant tendency within university settings to conceptualize and address diverse food system challenges as separate, disconnected issues is a key barrier to food system transformation. To address this fragmented approach, educators in North American institutes of higher education have begun new degree programs, specializations and certificates related to food systems. These programs, which we term sustainable food system education (SFSE) programs, have a common goal: to support post-secondary students across a range of disciplines in developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions to effectively address complex challenges in the food system. Graduates of these programs will be able to engage in collective action towards transforming the food system. As educators participating in flagship SFSE programs, we identify common pedagogical themes evident in SFSE programs, including our own. We then propose a signature pedagogy (SP) for sustainable food systems education. Signature pedagogies are conceptual models that identify the primary elements by which professional education in a specific field is designed, structured and implemented. On the basis of our analysis of SFSE programs, we identified systems thinking, multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, use of experiential learning approaches and participation in collective action projects as central themes within a SFSE SP. By making these themes and their function explicit within a pedagogical framework, we seek to spur critical and creative thought regarding challenges of professional education in the field of sustainable food systems. Scholars and practitioners are encouraged to review, critique and implement our framework to advance the dialogue on SFSE theory and practice.