The Potential and Pain of Multidisciplinary Programs: A 40 Year Perspective

The ocean – covering much of earth’s surface and providing the ecosystem services we need – is key to life on our planet. Successfully managing the use and protection of marine places and resources via an EBM framework requires an inherently cross-disciplinary approach and necessitates the understanding of natural and social science, and a focus on place, scale, connections within and between the socio-ecological system and the importance of engagement and anticipating/monitoring change including being able to make explicit the tradeoffs needed to adapt. Established in 1974, OSU Marine Resource Management – a science-based, multidisciplinary Masters program – fosters cooperative discovery and learning, links science, policy, and practice to management and education, and believes that critical, creative, and practical thinking are essential for creating opportunities and solving problems. The potential to include the arts and humanities via “marine studies” as well as “marine science” – and move into truly trans-disciplinary learning, discovery, and practice – is truly exciting. Achieving this, however, requires a candid, conscious recognition that although highly desired and extremely competitive, current multidisciplinary programs struggle with disciplinary silos, limited funding, and changing and constricting employment opportunities. Workable strategies to solve these struggles are needed before moving forward.