Achievement

CAPSTONE INTEGRATING AND REINTEGRATING SEMINAR We improved the capstone seminar in two ways. 1. We front loaded guest speakers with experience on assessing emerging technologies into a two day Washington field trip, featuring NRC, NAE, EPA, Woodrow Wilson Center, CSPI, congressional staff and lobbyists as guests. These intensive meetings worked in highlighting integrating themes, in strengthening our own multidisciplinary community and in providing research contacts to trainees. 2. We changed the writing requirement to either a dissertation prospectus or research paper. Most of our trainees must present dissertation proposals to home departments during or after taking the capstone seminar. This year, trainees helped each other respond to the varied disciplinary definitions of an acceptable research proposal, and in so doing deepened their ability to conduct multidisciplinary while reintegrating with the narrower expectations of home departments.