Teaching interdisciplinarity through research: lessons from an international water and sanitation project

This study explores the interdisciplinary nature of the Resource Recovery Project, a US National Science Foundation funded International Research Experience for Students (IRES) initiative addressing wastewater management and resource recovery in an ecotourism-dependent region impacted by global climate change. Using a phenomenological approach, we examined how the professional biographies and disciplinary orientations of four principal investigators (PIs)—two environmental engineers and two applied medical anthropologists—shaped the project’s interdisciplinary nature. Data were collected through group discussions and individual interviews with the PIs, which were then analyzed using open and axial coding and thematic analysis. Findings reveal that while the project aimed to integrate engineering and anthropology to develop culturally appropriate and sustainable sanitation, there were challenges to achieving true interdisciplinarity. The collaboration was more successful in providing students with research experiences that incorporated methods from both engineering and anthropology than in integrating both the substantive and syntactic structures of the disciplines that would result in cognitive advances. Implications include the need for intentional co-design, early involvement of all disciplines, and institutional support to foster true interdisciplinarity for students’ research apprenticeships.