Transdisciplinary academic-NGO collaborations for the resilience of food, energy, and water: a case study on the INFEWS-ER experience in post-disaster Puerto Rico

Abstract

The communities of Puerto Rico are highly vulnerable to climate change as the archipelago has experienced a multitude of compounding crises and extreme weather events in recent years. To address these issues, the research, analysis, and design of grand challenge solutions for disaster-prone regions like Puerto Rico can utilize collaborative transdisciplinary efforts. Local non-governmental and community-based organizations have a pivotal role in the reconstruction processes and the building of community and environmental resilience in underserved communities. This paper contributes an empirical case study of an online transdisciplinary collaboration between a group of academics and a Puerto Rican non-governmental organization, Caras con Causa. From participant observation, it includes a document analysis of meeting notes with cohort members who were involved in a collaborative National Science Foundation Project, The INFEWS-ER: A Virtual Resource Center Enabling Graduate Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems, with Caras con Causa between October 2020 and April 2021. Caras con Causa focuses on uplifting Puerto Ricans by creating and administering environmental, educational, economic, and community programs, highlighting disaster relief and resilience to help Puerto Rican food, energy, and water systems. Eight key discussion themes emerged from the document analysis: team organization, collaboration with Caras con Causa, deliverables, team contributions, context understanding, participation outcomes, technology setup, and lessons learned. We analyze each of the emerging themes to explain how academics may use transdisciplinary skill sets in addition to standard disciplinary-based approaches or techniques to enhance the institutional capacity of a non-governmental organization doing community resilience work to benefit local food, energy, and water systems. While the learned lessons in this non-governmental organization-academic collaboration may be context-specific, we provide insights that may be generalizable to collaborations in comparable transdisciplinary settings.

Full text

Transdisciplinary academic-NGO
collaborations for the resilience of
food, energy, and water: a case
study on the INFEWS-ER
experience in post-disaster Puerto
Rico
Daniela M. Markazi
1
, Ann M. Brunton
2
, Philip Margarit
3
,
Glorynel Ojeda-Matos
4
, Sinta Sulistyo
4
, Michael Fernández Frey
5
,
Mariela Ramírez Berríos
5
, Samuel P. Reed
6
, Jill Heemstra
7
and
Luis F. Rodríguez
2
*
1
Informatics Programs, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, United States,
2
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
Champaign, IL, United States,
3
Water Resources Science, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, MN,
United States,
4
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States,
5
Caras con
Causa, Cataño, Puerto Rico,
6
Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St.
Paul, MN, United States,
7
Northeast Community College, Norfolk, NE, United States
The communities of Puerto Rico are highly vulnerable to climate change as the
archipelago has experienced a multitude of compounding crises and extreme
weather events in recent years. To address these issues, the research, analysis, and
design of grand challenge solutions for disaster-prone regions like Puerto Rico
can utilize collaborative transdisciplinary efforts. Local non-governmental and
community-based organizations have a pivotal role in the reconstruction
processes and the building of community and environmental resilience in
underserved communities. This paper contributes an empirical case study of
an online transdisciplinary collaboration between a group of academics and a
Puerto Rican non-governmental organization, Caras con Causa. From participant
observation, it includes a document analysis of meeting notes with cohort
members who were involved in a collaborative National Science Foundation
Project, The INFEWS-ER: A Virtual Resource Center Enabling Graduate
Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems, with Caras con
Causa between October 2020 and April 2021. Caras con Causa focuses on
uplifting Puerto Ricans by creating and administering environmental,
educational, economic, and community programs, highlighting disaster relief
and resilience to help Puerto Rican food, energy, and water systems. Eight key
discussion themes emerged from the document analysis: team organization,
collaboration with Caras con Causa, deliverables, team contributions, context
understanding, participation outcomes, technology setup, and lessons learned.
We analyze each of the emerging themes to explain how academics may use
transdisciplinary skill sets in addition to standard disciplinary-based approaches or
techniques to enhance the institutional capacity of a non-governmental
organization doing community resilience work to benefit local food, energy,
and water systems. While the learned lessons in this non-governmental
organization-academic collaboration may be context-specific, we provide
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Richard Lawford,
Morgan State University, United States
REVIEWED BY
Jennifer Freya Helgeson,
National Institute of Standards and
Technology, United States
Rebecca Romsdahl,
University of North Dakota, United States
*CORRESPONDENCE
Luis F. Rodríguez,
lfr@illinois.edu
RECEIVED 26 November 2022
ACCEPTED 26 June 2023
PUBLISHED 22 August 2023
CITATION
Markazi DM, Brunton AM, Margarit P,
Ojeda-Matos G, Sulistyo S,
Fernández Frey M, Ramírez Berríos M,
Reed SP, Heemstra J and Rodríguez LF
(2023), Transdisciplinary academic-NGO
collaborations for the resilience of food,
energy, and water: a case study on the
INFEWS-ER experience in post-disaster
Puerto Rico.
Front. Environ. Sci. 11:1108375.
doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2023.1108375
COPYRIGHT
© 2023 Markazi, Brunton, Margarit,
Ojeda-Matos, Sulistyo, Fernández Frey,
Ramírez Berríos, Reed, Heemstra and
Rodríguez. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC BY). The use, distribution or
reproduction in other forums is
permitted, provided the original author(s)
and the copyright owner(s) are credited
and that the original publication in this
journal is cited, in accordance with
accepted academic practice. No use,
distribution or reproduction is permitted
which does not comply with these terms.
Frontiers in Environmental Science frontiersin.org01
TYPE Original Research
PUBLISHED 22 August 2023
DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2023.1108375

insights that may be generalizable to collaborations in comparable transdisciplinary
settings.
KEYWORDS
FEWS, transdisciplinary research, team organization, knowledge co-production, disaster
preparedness, virtual collaboration, service-learning project, hurricane relief
1 Introduction
Puerto Rico has become emblematic of regions suffering many
compounding crises in recent years (Soto, 2020;Stablein et al.,
2022), including major economic policy shifts (Falcón, 1991;Cabán,
2018), demographic changes (Hinojosa et al., 2019;Matos-Moreno
et al., 2022), natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes
(Zorrilla, 2017;Kishore et al., 2018;Mitsova et al., 2021;Vičičet al.,
2022), the COVID-19 pandemic (Garriga-López, 2020), and
consequent economic downturns (Lloréns, 2018). These crises
have highlighted the vulnerability of Puerto Rico’s communities
and food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to climate change and
extreme events (Santiago L. et al., 2020;Welton et al., 2020;Bennett
et al., 2021) relative to other regions (Rafael et al., 2021). This
unfortunate new reality of dealing with repeated, compounding
disasters is likely to continue due to the effects of climate change,
especially in tropical regions (Gould et al., 2018;Zscheischler et al.,
2018;Stablein et al., 2022). As a result, disaster risk reduction (DRR)
becomes crucial in addressing these crises (Wisner et al., 2012;
Twigg, 2015), as DRR aims to reduce exposure to hazards and
vulnerabilities and to decrease risk while ultimately strengthening
resilience (Manyena, 2006;UNISDR, 2011;2012).
The increasing frequency of disasters calls for a greater need for
resilience, or the capacity of the system to absorb shock or
disturbance while retaining its function and structure (Walker
et al., 2004;UNISDR, 2009;Stablein et al., 2022). Resilience
highlights the ability of a social system to respond and recover
from disasters by allowing the system to absorb impacts and cope
with disaster and post-disaster recovery (Cutter et al., 2008;
UNISDR, 2009). Resilience is especially critical in Puerto Rico
due to frequent power outages (Santiago R. et al., 2020), lack of
recovery times between frequent disasters (Johnson and Olshansky,
2016;Yabe et al., 2021), and lack of trust in government and
institutions (Petrun Sayers et al., 2023). In addition, Puerto
Rico’s sociopolitical factors, such as its commonwealth status and
complex federal laws, have hindered effective response to disasters
and reconstruction efforts (García-López, 2018;Rodríguez-Díaz,
2018;Colón-Morera and Cordero-Nieves, 2023). For instance,
the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Maria was
insufficient for the level of severity and local needs compared to
the response to similar situations in Texas and Florida (Willison
et al., 2019), and three years after the hurricane, the allocated funds
for disaster recovery were underutilized with only 29% spent
(Marxuach, 2021).
Prior to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico was already facing rapid
financial deterioration because of significant borrowing, inadequate
fiscal management, and limited options to renegotiate its debt with
institutional investors due to the territory’s legal status, which
prevented Puerto Rico from utilizing the U.S. Bankruptcy Code
(Meng, 2019). After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the
archipelago’s own attempt to create a restructuring process, the
U.S. Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and
Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) in 2016, further constraining
Puerto Rico’s ability to manage its fiscal crisis. While PROMESA
established a Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto
Rico to help achieve fiscal responsibility and access to capital
markets (Cabán, 2018), the law imposes limitations on how the
Puerto Rican government can harness local resources to address
crises, ultimately resulting in a curtailed ability to respond to
disasters (Rodríguez-Díaz, 2018).
Furthermore, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, known as the
Jones Act, poses additional challenges to Puerto Rico’s ability to
provide disaster response. The Jones Act was originally established
to enhance national defense by ensuring the availability of vessels
during times of national emergency and to stimulate domestic
commerce (Rivera, 2018). The Jones Act mandates the use of
American merchant ships for all imports to and exports from
Puerto Rico, making it the most costly option in the world; as a
result, food prices increase by 25%–30%, which is particularly hard
on people living in poverty who may already struggle with food
insecurity and lack of food storage due to financial constraints
(García-López, 2018;Straub, 2021). This sole dependency on the
U.S. merchant marine also puts the supply chain at risk, eliminating
the possibility of negotiating prices with other merchant marines.
Navigating the vulnerabilities of the FEWS and the challenges
posed by compounding human-made crises and climate change
requires a comprehensive approach. This approach should integrate
DRR, community-based solutions, and collaborative efforts among
various stakeholders, including non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), civil society, and academics (López-Cepero et al., 2021;
Sheppard, 2022). Local NGOs and community-based organizations
play a pivotal role in disaster relief and recovery processes, building
both community and environmental resilience in underserved
communities (Fitzpatrick and Molloy, 2014;Hayward et al.,
2019). Civil society plays a key role, as effective DRR is only
achieved with active participation from the local community
(UNICEF, 2014;Seddiky et al., 2020). Partnerships between
NGOs, academics, and other stakeholders facilitate the effective
interplay between practice-based data and theory, often leading to
knowledge creation. It is important to note that the motivations for
collaboration may differ among the NGOs, community members,
and academics (Harris and Lyon, 2013), but they share a common
need to demonstrate impact (Aniekwe et al., 2012;Stevens et al.,
2013). For instance, NGOs may be motivated by funding access and
addressing community issues that span multiple disciplines, while
academics are interested in tackling complex FEWS issues and
collaborating with NGOs to gain context-sensitive experiences
(Harris and Lyon, 2013). Such collaborations bring benefits for
all participants (Roper, 2002;Zscheischler et al., 2018), and
transdisciplinary research has the inherent ability to enhance
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both human (O’Donovan et al., 2022) and social capital (Gray,
2008).
1.1 Related work
Academic-NGO collaborations bring numerous benefits, such
as improved academic and practical project outcomes and the ability
to tackle real-world problems and ignite innovation (Aniekwe et al.,
2012). For example, working with NGOs hones academics’applied
expertise and provides opportunities to refine theories through
access to empirical evidence (Aniekwe et al., 2012). Further,
working with stakeholders who may live in areas that often face
disasters is a way to develop DRR solutions, empower communities,
and control crises (Beaven et al., 2016). For NGOs, academics
provide sufficient additional perspective and analytical capacity,
which are sometimes unavailable to the NGO’s team (Roper, 2002).
While there are benefits to these types of collaborations, they
also come with their own set of challenges. Collaborations between
academic institutions and NGOs can be challenging due to issues
such as institutional politics, differing timeframes and philosophies,
and varying expectations and requirements for outcomes; prior
investigators suggest having a better understanding of how these
collaborations can improve development interventions, programs,
and projects and highlight how effective communication and open
dialogue are crucial when collaborating with academics, affiliated
organizations, and NGO practitioners (Aniekwe et al., 2012).
Similarly, Lokot and Wake (2021) emphasize the importance of
recognizing power imbalances and addressing challenges that come
with traditional research partnerships in humanitarian contexts.
Roper (2002) examined the reasons why academic-practitioner
collaborations often fail; one reason is that some projects can be
difficult for practitioners to comprehend and are overly complex.
Previous literature highlights how NGOs and community-based
organizations can collaborate with academics to enhance FEWS and
disaster resilience. Regarding FEWS, Dentoni and Bitzer (2015) note
how projects with multiple stakeholders (i.e., NGOs and academics)
can be utilized to deal with problems in the global food system.
Similarly, Bolañoz-Palmieri et al., (2021) state how multi-
stakeholder collaborations are essential for reducing food loss
and waste. In Malaysia, a similar collaboration helped to
implement sustainable food waste practices (Chan et al., 2022).
Further, a study in Bangladesh analyzed how academics and NGOs
collaborate to support climate change adaptation and disaster
resilience in coastal communities in the Bagerhat District; the
study aimed to create a visual representation of the disaster risk
and resilience system by illustrating relationships among different
groups involved, such as NGOs, government, academic and research
institutions, private sector, and community-based organizations
(Bollettino and Ferguson, 2020).
Considering that disasters represent inherent failures in the
ability of communities to supply FEWS, building bridges between
science and practice would seem a viable pathway to address these
real-world problems (Marshall et al., 2018). Notably, energy
(Shinozuka and Chang, 2004;Tormos-Aponte et al., 2021) and
water (Blake et al., 2012;See et al., 2017) are often absent or limited
in availability around times of crisis. Depending on the structure of a
local supply chain, food may quickly become limiting (Nozhati et al.,
2019), contingent upon local approaches to disaster preparedness
(Das, 2018). To our knowledge, there remains a gap in the literature
on the transdisciplinary interface of academic-NGO collaborations,
the FEWS nexus, and the resilience to disaster-related events
(Gaillard and Mercer, 2013;Gall et al., 2015;Bendito and
Barrios, 2016;Thompson et al., 2017).
1.2 Addressing the research gap
To address this gap, this case study describes a collaboration
between an INFEWS-ER (Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy,
and Water Systems Educational Resources) cohort of graduate
students, mentors, and advisors and a Puerto Rican NGO, Caras
con Causa (CCC), to improve community DRR as it relates to
FEWS. The purpose of this study is to analyze a transdisciplinary
academic-NGO collaboration from October 2020 to April 2021,
helping to foster the resiliency of communities during post-disaster
reconstruction processes in Puerto Rico and increase their disaster
resilience capacity (Chen et al., 2008;Hudec et al., 2018). Working
with CCC, this cohort identified a common goal and sought to
reflectively co-design context-sensitive solutions spanning the
boundaries of natural sciences, engineering, and social sciences
(Lang et al., 2012;Gaillard and Mercer, 2013;Bendito and
Barrios, 2016;Thompson et al., 2017;Matsuura and Razak, 2019;
Lawrence et al., 2022). In this case, the cohort created a literature
database and funding opportunities document to support CCC’s
community-based programs. Considering the symbiotic
relationship that defines academia and external stakeholder
collaboration, this study addresses how a group of academics and
an NGO collaborate to advance community resilience, how different
academic backgrounds influence academic-NGO outcomes, and the
practices to include and avoid in academic-NGO collaborations.
Lessons learned are expected to be useful for academics (students
and faculty), NGOs, and those who want to participate in academic-
NGO collaborations.
2 Methods
To understand this transdisciplinary collaboration, we describe
our case study (Yin, 2018) and focus on our local collaborator, CCC,
and the INFEWS-ER cohort in detail. Document analysis (Bowen,
2009) on meeting notes taken from participant observation
(Jerolmack and Khan, 2017) from the academic year
2020–2021 describes how the collaboration evolved over time
and how cohort participants from diverse disciplines shaped the
results and deliverables.
2.1 Case description
National Science Foundation project, The INFEWS-ER
(Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems
Educational Resources), is an international training program for
graduate students that focuses on challenges within the nexus of
FEWS (Koelsch et al., 2019;Rodríguez et al., 2019;2023;INFEWS-
ER, 2022;Marshall et al., 2022). Participation in this program is
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voluntary. Graduate training modules, topics, and webinars include
stakeholder engagement, social justice, cultural intelligence, systems
thinking and modeling, communication in transdisciplinary
environments, analytics, and high-performance teaming, all of
which aim to teach graduate students how to tackle complex or
wicked FEWS problems. Generally, cohorts of graduate students are
asked to target significant grand challenge scale problems of the day.
Graduate students that participate in the INFEWS-ER have weekly
meetings with advisors and mentors and are provided a basic
guideline regarding project milestones. Within the “Disaster
Relief and Resilience”INFEWS-ER cohort, described here, a
group of graduate students collaborated with a Puerto Rican
NGO, Caras con Causa (CCC), or “Faces with a Cause”; thus,
participants of the graduate INFEWS-ER cohort and CCC are
co-authors on this paper. From 26 October 2020, to 23 April
2021, our cohort developed a literature database and a list of
funding opportunities to support CCC’s environmental citizen
science and science, technology, education, art, and math
(STEAM) education programs. Approximately midway through
this program, cohorts participate in a reflection exercise with
other cohorts participating in the INFEWS-ER at that time. This
allows cohort members to gauge their progress and lessons learned
in the execution of transdisciplinary research efforts and to identify
methods that might be useful. It is the intention of this design of
cohort experiences that participants observe their development of
transdisciplinary skill sets while delivering products to their
stakeholder communities. Observations regarding the process of
developing transdisciplinary skills for this cohort later became the
subject of this study.
CCC works with several disadvantaged communities within
the municipalities of Cataño and Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. CCC
aims to uplift these neighborhoods by working with local youth to
create educational, environmental, and economic opportunities.
Through their two main programs, “Community Laboratory”
and “Urban Roots,”CCC creates environmental opportunities
for communities to better their local ecosystems and generate
meaningful environmental data through citizen science. Urban
Roots is a horticultural reforestation initiative to cultivate
mangroves to sustainably restore local ecosystems. For
example, within the Urban Roots program, CCC helps
community members participate in educational plantings,
allowing students to rehabilitate local reserves that have been
negatively affected by urban development (Caras con Causa,
2022). The Community Laboratory (LabCom) initiative gives
students access to laboratory equipment to conduct science
activities and exercises outside of school, many of which relate
to FEWS. These programs provide extracurricular activities for
students who may not have access to similar exercises in their
school. For instance, public schools in the areas utilize the
LabCom facilities “as an annex, having innovative educational
experiences and alternatives that meet the academic
requirements of the Department of Education”(Caras con
Causa, 2022). Puerto Rico’s public schools lost approximately
18,000 students per year due to the economic crises from
2006–2017 (Hinojosa et al., 2019). Since 2016, hundreds of
schools have been closed across the archipelago due to
disasters, neglect, and poor governance (Katz, 2019). CCC’s
programs improve student engagement, foster environmental
stewardship, and build community and environmental
resilience against future disasters.
These programs led by CCC increase FEWS resiliency in the
communities in which they operate through the rehabilitation of the
local nature reserves. Mangroves and other trees planted through the
Urban Roots program are directly beneficial to disaster resiliency
and water quality. Urban forests have been found to provide
stormwater management benefits due to evapotranspiration and
roots stabilizing nearby soil, reducing runoff and subsequent soil
erosion and transport into waterways (Taguchi et al., 2020). In
addition, urban forests can help combat the urban heat island (UHI)
effect, reducing energy needs for cooling during warmer seasons
(Manning, 2008;Livesley et al., 2016;Marando et al., 2019).
Mangrove forests, in particular, have been found to offer some
protection against storm surges from tropical hurricanes (Dahdouh-
Guebas et al., 2005). Through the implementation of the Urban
Roots program, CCC is able to improve water resources in the
surrounding communities, supporting improved water resource
management. Additionally, with their reduction in the UHI
effect, urban forests planted by CCC can help reduce the energy
needs of the surrounding communities, further contributing to an
increase in their FEWS capacity.
Moreover, in relation to FEWS, CCC has a nursery, Vivero
Antillano, where they grow native trees and shrubs (endangered and
endemic) (Caras con Causa, 2022). The nursery serves as a tool for
students and community members to learn more about the
environment. From the nursery, CCC plants thousands of trees
and plants them within Natural Reserve Las Cucharillas, a nature
reserve near San Juan. This nursery serves as an example of what can
be achieved in other areas where food and horticultural products are
in demand within local communities. There are several other regions
around the archipelago where mangroves are to be restored, such as
in nurseries from COPI in Piñones (COPI, 2022) and Para la
Naturaleza in multiple Puerto Rican cities (Para la Naturaleza,
2022). These nurseries are designed as integrated systems to
enhance resilience, collecting and storing rainwater to
supplement irrigation systems. A renewable solar power system is
currently being designed and developed to drive the irrigation
system. Subsystems like these are essential for a reliable system,
given the fragility of municipal power and water delivery systems,
while providing a learning opportunity for local schools
participating in LabCom.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign began working
with CCC in 2018 after Hurricane Maria and has a continued, long-
term relationship with the NGO. From this relationship, the
university created two engineering for disaster resilience courses
where students learn stakeholder engagement and engineering
techniques to advance FEWS in Puerto Rico. With the help of
CCC, the students from these courses can participate in short study
abroad programs in the archipelago, implementing engineering
systems they created in the course, working on service-learning
projects, and helping CCC with their environmental programs.
Additionally, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, along
with CCC and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, has led
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) projects both in
Illinois and Puerto Rico for students to learn qualitative and
quantitative engineering skills related to Puerto Rico’s FEWS
(Disaster Relief and Resilience, 2022). Moreover, this relationship
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has been vital for the INFEWS-ER program and its cohorts. For
instance, from 2019–2020, another INFEWS-ER cohort (with
members and advisors from the University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign) collaborated with CCC (Stablein et al., 2022).
This work effectively utilized the expertise of both the current
cohort and CCC; it used the academic resources and diverse research
skills of graduate students, mentors, and advisors along with the
citizen science, education, and ecological work of the NGO. The
2020–2021 disaster relief and resilience team consisted of
11 graduate students of various academic backgrounds and
universities in the United States who completed the INFEWS-ER
program. It should be noted that 17 total participants initiated the
program. Disciplines represented on the team encompass both the
social sciences and STEM fields, with majors including chemistry,
water resources science, economics, physics and geophysics, social
work, agricultural communications, agricultural and biological
engineering, consumer economics, informatics, and sustainability.
In addition to the team of graduate students, the cohort also includes
five mentors, who were 2019–2020 INFEWS-ER cohort participants
(Stablein et al., 2022), and three advisors, providing feedback and
guidance during the INFEWS-ER cohort challenge. These terms will
be referred to throughout to describe the participation of specific
groups within our team.
As the outcome of the collaboration, our cohort produced an
academic literature database and a list of funding opportunities to
assist CCC with its programs and future funding efforts. CCC
specifically requested these deliverables, as they explained to us
that they often seek external funding that requires evidence-based
literature to back up the claims of the organization. To assist with
this, we utilized Zotero (Zotero, 2022) to collect and store literature
that supports Urban Roots and LabCom, such as papers regarding
STEAM education, citizen science, and environmental science. We
taught members of CCC how to use Zotero, and we created a how-to
document for them to use the database independently. We also created
a list of abstracts of each of the papers we found for CCC, making the
material easy to understand and inclusive for non-academics.
Furthermore, we created a list of grants and funding opportunities
applicable to CCC, highlighting due dates and application requirements
for each opportunity. To split up the work based on our interests and
backgrounds, three subgroups were made, where five team members
worked on finding literature for LabCom, four team members worked
on finding literature for Urban Roots, and two team members, our
Knowledge Brokers, helped create the funding opportunities list.
Cohort communication and content management included both
guided structure and the autonomy for team members to develop their
own systems. At the beginning of the cohort, the advisors set up a
cohort course website, established a meeting structure with rotating
roles of facilitator, notetaker, and timekeeper during meetings, and
organized informational sessions on topics and learning modules along
with a preliminary meeting with CCC. The cohort was left to figure out
the need for and implementation of out-of-meeting communication,
team-building activities, and accountability methods. Weekly cohort
meetings involved the cohort participants and advisors but not CCC.
With the exception of the introductory meeting with CCC, meetings
that included CCC were scheduled outside of normal weekly meetings
and occurred on three occasions, following the availability of the CCC
representatives.
2.2 Research design and analysis
To gain a better understanding of the behavior and decision-
making of the cohort during an academic-NGO collaboration, we
relied on participant observation for this empirical case study
(Jerolmack and Khan, 2017;Yin, 2018). We observed our
interactions, decisions, and behavior during the cohort
challenge and collected data in the form of meeting minutes.
These minutes provided a detailed record of the group’s
discussions, decisions, and actions. A set of meeting minutes
was taken by a rotating notetaker from the team during every
meeting of the collaboration after the initial orientation took
place at the end of October 2020. By the end of the project, every
team member was a notetaker at least once. As the notetaker
role shifted throughout the collaboration, the quality and detail
in notes varied. Each notetaker used a default base template to
structurethenotes.Thebasetemplateincludedaspacetoadd
the meeting’s purpose, attendance, the identity of that week’s
rotating meeting facilitator, notetaker, and time manager,
activities and actions conducted during the meeting, and the
next steps to focus on. The base template structure was
structured according to the P.L.A.N. Collaborative Project
Management Framework (The P.L.A.N. Collaborative Project
Management Framework, 2020).
In total, 44 individual meeting-minute documents were
created from November 2020 to April 2021. Meeting minutes
were imported into both NVivo™(NVivo, 2022)andMAXQDA
(MAXQDA, 2020), where two coders conducted document
analysis (Bowen, 2009;Frey, 2018)ineachprogram
individually. Within these programs, meeting notes were
organized into four categories that represent when these were
generated: 1) general INFEWS-ER cohort meetings, 2) team
meetings with CCC, and team meetings with 3) LabCom and
4) Urban Roots. Classifying the meeting notes in this way gave
context to each meeting note, identified who was present at the
time of discussion, and facilitated analysis. One previous study
that focuses on academic-NGO collaborations also used
document analysis to investigate administrative archives
from university administrators, society leaders, and public
officials to understand more about these types of
collaborations in Ecuador (Appe and Barragán, 2017). In our
case, we used this research approach to analyze our own
meeting minutes to retroactively evaluate our academic-NGO
collaboration and the process behind the collaboration.
For this analysis, two coders separately analyzed the documents
by reviewing and interpreting the text to gain empirical knowledge
and generating a set of codes (or themes). As the codes (or themes)
emerged from the text, these codes were applied deductively to all
the meeting notes. As an iterative process, the analysis included
inductive and deductive analysis of the text content (Bowen, 2009).
To strengthen the reliability of data analysis of meeting notes, the
two coders compared the emerged codes and agreed on how to code
the text content. Afterward, we adjusted the codes based on the
agreed coding technique (changing codes from our new shared
understanding of how to code) and created the final codebook,
highlighting the main themes and noting the number of occurrences
for each (Table 1).
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3 Results
Analysis of the meeting minutes taken during the academic-
NGO collaboration revealed eight key discussion themes: team
organization, collaboration with CCC, deliverables, team
contributions, context understanding, participation outcomes,
technology setup, and lessons learned (Table 1). Each will be
discussed in turn.
TABLE 1 Themes and sub-themes established via document analysis. Each theme was identified to have occurred with frequency as listed under Number of
Occurrences.
Themes Sub-themes Description Number of
occurrences
1: Team Organization Distribution of Work, Background and Skills, Participant
Expectations
How the challenge and team were organized 90
2: Collaboration
with CCC
Learning from CCC, Questions for/from CCC, Communication
with CCC, Documents from CCC
Collaboration between the team and CCC 39
3: Deliverables Timeline, Goals, Discussion of Findings Outcomes of the collaborative experience handed over
to CCC
30
4: Team
Contributions
Skills Utilized, Personal Contributions Cohort members’skills and contributions 16
5: Context
Understanding
Understanding of Project/Material, Uncertainty of Project/
Material, Translation
Participant interest in learning more about the context
of the project and Puerto Rico
12
6: Participation
Outcomes
Career Outcomes, Skills Gained Training, skills, and competencies acquired through the
INFEWS-ER experience
12
7: Technology Setup Zotero Database, Technology for Communication Decision-making process for technology use 12
8: Lessons Learned Advice Given Knowledge derived from the INFEWS-ER experience 6
TABLE 2 Examples of each theme taken from the meeting minutes. For some themes, multiple examples are utilized to highlight the meaning and topics discussed
that match the theme.
Themes Example (taken from meeting minutes)
1: Team Organization “Discussion about skill sets and how to incorporate this into the literature review, matching everyone’s skill sets”
“Discuss splitting up groups and people who will connect the groups (LabCom vs Urban Roots)”
2: Collaboration with CCC “I think that’s something really important to talk to Caras about. If they don’t want new projects or things for them to implement, we should
do things that they want us to do and what will be helpful for them. We should do things we want to do as a group but also take into account
that our stakeholders are going to be doing the actual implementation of these things.”
3: Deliverables “Many articles fit for both groups (Urban Roots and LabCom), we can use the tags for both Urban Roots and LabCom -- this might make
things easier for Caras if they want to focus on specific areas.”
“We should decide on similar formats for everything.”
4: Team Contributions “Initially, seemed like ‘I didn’t have anything to contribute,’but learned that every individual has something to contribute. I am a piece of this
puzzle, but everyone else is too.”
“Discussion about skill sets and how to incorporate this into the literature review, matching everyone’s skill sets.”
5: Context Understanding “Purpose: Learn more about the history, policy, and political climate in Puerto Rico and how that impacts the ability of local communities to
prepare for, respond and recover from disasters”
6: Participation Outcomes “Important that we have a product to show. Think about how we’re going to use this to market ourselves as well -- something we can be
proud of.”
“Marketing your experience for career next steps”
7: Technology Setup “Zotero has a certain amount of storage capacity to save the documents. Do you think we should still complete the abstract document?”
“Create a keyword/journal search document as a Google Sheet”
8: Lessons Learned “The cohort should move at a faster pace and get more work done during the first semester. We could potentially reduce the number of
webinars to make more time to do work during our formal meetings. We could potentially work on fewer platforms. We can work on
understanding what our stakeholders want quicker. We can do more team-building exercises or try to get to know each other better
earlier on.”
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3.1 Team organization, collaboration with
CCC, and team contributions
“Team organization”was the most common theme. Discussion
on this topic was broad, and there were frequent conversations on
how the team and collaboration were organized. Team members
would talk about their roles, the project itself, the organization of the
challenge and collaboration, how team members wanted to split up
into smaller groups, the rescheduling of meetings and absences of
team members, the distribution of work, and what it means to be a
high-performing team (Tables 1,2: Team Organization).
The discussion on team organization occurred throughout the
project, peaking as the cohort was starting work on the deliverables
in earnest in January and February and toward the cohort’s
formation, documented by the meeting minutes (Figure 1A). The
number of occurrences for team organization followed similar
patterns to discussions on how the team collaborated with CCC
and the contributions of the team.
The “collaboration with CCC”was the second most common
theme. On November 2nd, team members were introduced to
previous projects with CCC, and discussions about their own
projects with CCC began on November 16th in a meeting with
CCC (Figure 1A). Cohort members discussed the project goals and
clarification of the project, ideas for the project, tasks to do before
directly meeting with CCC, information requests from CCC, and
questions for CCC. As with the discussion on team organization, the
discussion of collaboration with CCC was greatest toward the cohort
meeting minutes commencement (November 2020) and during
project commencement (Figure 1A: January and February 2021).
“Team contributions”was one of the most uniformly discussed
themes throughout the project, occurring a total of 16 times with a
similar occurrence pattern to team organization and collaboration
with CCC. The discussion on team contributions peaked in January
2021, similar to team organization and collaboration with CCC
(Figure 1A). Team members discussed their different backgrounds,
shared skills, how to match students’skills to the project, and the
strengths members brought to the project. Participants also
discussed disagreements and the contribution of each team
member. These discussions were a formative part of building the
transdisciplinary research capacity of the graduate students
(Figure 2) as they reflected on how they could best contribute to
the group and the value of a transdisciplinary team (Table 2; Theme
4: Team Contributions).
3.2 Context understanding, participation
outcomes, and deliverables
For “context understanding,”cohort members talked about
Puerto Rico (its culture, history, and political climate), the
communities with whom CCC works, how disasters have affected
Puerto Rico, governmental corruption across the archipelago, and
the importance of context in engineering and community-engaged
projects. Most of these discussions occurred in November during the
introductory portion of the challenge, where the meetings were
structured around learning modules set forth by the advisors, with
discussion on the topic ending by February 2021.
Like “context understanding,”“participation outcomes,”was
also discussed 12 times, though at different points during the
project (Figure 1B). Participation outcome discussions concerned
high-performing teams, marketing the cohort challenge experience,
the measurements of success, and how to align the project with
cohort members’interests. These discussions occurred throughout
the project (Figure 1B), instead of primarily at the beginning as
context understanding was.
The third most frequent theme was the “deliverables”of the
project to CCC. Cohort members discussed the deliverables’status,
their accessibility and inclusivity, how to define collaborative
success, and the ways in which the deliverables should be
organized and created (e.g., the ways the deliverables could be
easily displayed and handed over to CCC). Conversations on
deliverables did not start until after January 2021 as work on the
project began, and discussion increased in frequency until the end of
FIGURE 1
Line charts of the number of instances of discussion for team
organization, collaboration with CCC, and team contributions (A);
context understanding, participation outcomes, and deliverables (B);
and discussion for technology setup and lessons learned (C).
Meetings began on 2 November 2020, and ended on 23 April 2021.
There was a two-week winter break in December, so fewer meetings
were held during this month.
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the project (Figure 1B). These discussions occurred in an opposite
frequency to context understanding, which was heavily talked about
early on in the collaboration and decreased halfway through.
3.3 Technology setup and lessons learned
Furthermore, “technology setup”had equal discussion with
context understanding and participation outcomes
(12 occurrences). For the technology setup, cohort members
discussed what technology they were going to use to create the
literature database for CCC, online polls to figure out when to
schedule meetings, and different means of online communication
(e.g., Slack), most discussion of which occurred in February 2021 as
the cohort was figuring out how to make the deliverables accessible
to CCC.
The occurrence pattern for “lessons learned”was similar to
the technology setup, although the lessons learned lagged by a
month. It was the least frequently discussed theme; all related
discussions were lengthy and detailed (six total occurrences).
Cohort members discussed ways to improve future cohort
challenges, how to better start the process of working on the
project, and their experiences working with the NGO. Discussion
on lessons learned (mainly March 2021; Figure 1C)revealedthat
the cohort was engaging in co-reflection on its own in addition to
the scheduled reflection in January built into the cohort
challenge. Since the January reflection was mid-way through
the project and constructive for moving forward, discussions
from this meeting were classified under themes other than
“lessons learned.”Co-reflection, such as discussing lessons
learned, is considered an integral part of transdisciplinary
research (Roux et al., 2010).
4 Discussion
The results provide insights on both advantages and limitations/
challenges to the academic-NGO collaborative process, and here we
highlight what to include and avoid in these collaborations. Having
an established relationship between the cohort leadership and CCC
was advantageous, as it enhanced the cohort’s ability to build trust
and communication during the collaboration. Further, a structured
approach to a transdisciplinary process is especially helpful in FEWS
work, as knowledge ordinarily pertaining to many disciplines
provides perspectives from both the hard and social sciences, as
well as at the community, level. The effectiveness of the
collaboration was limited by accountability and motivation
within the cohort, communication, and the great investment of
time in developing a transdisciplinary process. The size of the team
impacted member motivation and caused troubles when
distributing work evenly. The cohort experienced communication
barriers, and correspondence with CCC was impacted by the
ongoing pandemic and related impacts to day-to-day operations.
Upon reflection, we discovered that CCC shifted its operations at the
beginning of 2021 to prioritize in-person community services and
virtual learning in response to the pandemic’s impact on the
communities they serve. This coincided with our cohort project
and resulted in significant changes to CCC’s availability due to
increased workload and longer working hours to meet the
population’s needs. For reference, CCC worked with over
380 students in Puerto Rico, 86% of whom lacked access to
computers or the Internet, during this time. This posed a
significant challenge to ensuring that educational services were
consistently and urgently provided through alternative means. As
a result, from the perspective of the team, progress was delayed (we
later deemed this an inappropriate response, given the reflection on
FIGURE 2
Process flow diagram of the steps towards the outcomes for the cohort (in purple) and the NGO specifically (in orange), incorporating the eight
identified themes with placement at their most pertinent parts in the process.
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CCC’s situation), and lessons learned only materialized toward the
end of the collaboration. As the collaboration took place from
2020–2021, the pandemic was ongoing, and COVID-19 acted as
both an asset and a limitation.
4.1 Relationships
The well-founded relationships between advisors and
mentors within the cohort (Section 2.1)andCCCatthe
project’s start created the foundation of trust between the two
groups (Figure 2). Based on their past experiences in
transdisciplinary research and their familiarity with the NGO,
our advisors and mentors were abletooffertheteamtheirinsight
into CCC’s work and organizational structure or on working in
transdisciplinary teams, such as how to organize work for a large
group. It was clear that the long-lasting relationship benefitted
CCC since its members arrived at the start of the
2020–2021 cohort with a defined scope for deliverables, in
contrast to the undefined scope and deliverables at the
beginning of the previous cohort’s project (Reed, personal
communication). This foundation changed and arguably
expedited the project definition process for the
2020–2021 cohort.
The existing relationship between the academics and the
NGO improved the knowledge and familiarity of one group
with the other, facilitating communication and trust between
the two groups (Figure 2). As mentioned previously, past
participants from the 2019–2020 INFEWS-ER cohort were
mentors during the 2020–2021 cohort (Section 2.1). Existing
relationships are a common way to build trust in
transdisciplinary collaborations through the knowledge that
the two groups can work together and through an existing
foundation of shared understandings and norms (Harris and
Lyon, 2013). The trust foundation from the existing relationship
gave both parties confidence that the other would hold up its end
in achieving the project outcome.
As seen in the findings, the context of the project was evident
from the existing relationship between the cohort and CCC, as
much discussion focused on context understanding toward the
beginning of the collaboration but went away in three months
(Figure 1B; Theme 5: Context Understanding). In general
academic-NGO collaborations, it is crucial for both parties to
fully understand the project and each other’s roles to ensure that
all gaps are addressed, and research tasks are complementary
(Aniekwe et al., 2012). According to Stokols et al. (2008),havinga
history of successful partnerships with a particular organization
or community in transdisciplinary collaborations is helpful. This
fosters trust between coalition partners and strengthens future
collaborations. Maintaining strong relationships through regular
communication and socialization builds trust and creates a sense
of group identity. Throughout the cohort challenge, the
collaboration with CCC was solid and sustaining (Figure 1A;
Theme 2: Collaboration with CCC). Therefore, trust was readily
established because of the long-standing collaboration. One
challenge regarding trust for the team was believing that CCC
was still on board throughout the project despite occasional lags
in communication response time. When reflecting on the
collaboration, we learned that CCC remained committed to
the project despite facing operational challenges and resource
constraints due to the return to in-person services in 2021 and
restrictions imposed by strict COVID-19 protocols. This trust
was previously generated by other members of the cohort and
enabled the project to move forward, minimizing snags in project
completion from issues of lack of knowledge of the other
group. Based on prior literature and our own findings, trust is
established through knowledge of others, past collaboration, and
shared expectations, understanding, and context (Harris and
Lyon, 2013).
4.2 Transdisciplinarity
The breadth of disciplinary knowledge and cultural exposure
amongst members of the cohort revealed both the disparity in
knowledge about the field of CCC’s work and the differences in
research terminology. This disparity demanded explicit open-
mindedness and effective communication (Theme 1: Team
Organization), which is beneficial for stakeholder engagement
(Milani, 2019). The team responded to this demand by
facilitating communication that crossed disciplinary boundaries;
the team was able to overcome challenges with inter-team
communication that are common with transdisciplinary efforts
(Gaziulusoy et al., 2016). Since team members recognized they
had such diversity of backgrounds, due in part to framing from
the cohort advisors and learning modules, they acknowledged each
other’s differing expertise and were able to have discussions with
respectful debate. For example, in January, based on concern that
some team members were not interested in the project that CCC had
proposed, there was a debate on whether the cohort could perform a
second project. Previous literature mentions how having increased
debates is common in high-performing teams (Ocker and
Fjermestad, 2008).
In addition to what the cohort learned about the cultural,
historical, and economic situation of Puerto Rico (i.e., Theme 5:
Context Understanding), cohort members who had at one point
been residents of Puerto Rico contributed place-based knowledge
that strengthened the understanding of the stakeholders for the
group. Tandemly, bilingual cohort members also facilitated
conversations with CCC where a mix of English and Spanish
was utilized. To effectively contribute to decision-making and
provide appropriate solutions, it is essential to have a
comprehensive understanding of the situation at hand (Heiden
and Saia, 2020). By prioritizing a thorough comprehension of the
situation, a meaningful impact can be made on the outcomes of
the decision-making process.
Thebreadthofknowledgepresent in the graduate student
team was beneficial in contributing to the human capital and
research capacity of the graduate students. The development of
the literature review database relied on “soft”research skills
gained by most graduate students during their studies, such as
reading literature and synthesizing its information, and less on
their technical expertise or expertise in the field in which CCC
works. As team members worked outside of their field during
the production of the literature review, a deliberate checks and
balance system was created, where the team would go over each
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research article to determine if it fit the needs of the review. The
main difficulty of the project lay in defining the project’s
organization and how sub-groups within the team would
work together, which relied less on discipline and more on
collaborative/research experience. Even so, team members were
able to split into groups and specialize in topics of interest for
the literature review (Section 2.1). Team members commonly
discussed how their different disciplines could help: the useful
contribution of each member was one of the most common
discussion points under Theme 4: Team Contributions. As seen
in previous literature, field variety has the potential to enhance
scientific creativity (Yong et al., 2014;Lee et al., 2015). While
discussion on academic backgrounds was common, true
disciplinary understanding, as described by Castán Broto
et al. (2009), may not have been achieved, nor may not have
been absolutely necessary, in the few months of the cohort
challenge. Rather than the specific composition of disciplines
(e.g., informatics, social work, engineering, etc.), we posit that
it was the range of disciplines and diversity of experience that
imparted an open-mindedness among the cohort to different
perspectives, possibly aiding the group in both understanding
the Puerto Rican NGO and in creating an accessible product.
Food, energy, and water systems research is inherently
transdisciplinary; FEWS stretchesacrossavarietyof
disciplines, integrating both social and hard sciences into
solving problems related to facets of FEWS grand challenges.
Transdisciplinary approaches are at the core of the FEWS fields
as they are essential for dealing with the scale, complexity, and
interconnectedness of issues in FEWS (Munasinghe, 2001).
Inherently, what our team added to CCC’s effort was
transdisciplinary, as not only are both disaster relief and
resilience transdisciplinary, it is the resources of food,
energy, and water that are most limiting in the immediate
aftermath of a disaster. A core component of CCC’smission
is to improve community resilience, and these efforts
contribute towards this goal. Both transdisciplinary
knowledge on how each program will assist the community
on a social and economic level, as well as on a natural science
and engineering level, were needed in order to better
understand and assist with the multitude of benefits these
programs bring. The transdisciplinarity aspect of this project
is exemplary of the transdisciplinarity in FEWS research,
whereas without the diversity of backgrounds the team
possessed, this case study would have been significantly less
effective and capable of providing our NGO partner with the
research and knowledge needed to assist with their issue that
our team was charged with. In general, transdisciplinary
research involves bringing together individuals from
different disciplines and perspectives to collaborate and
contribute their ideas. This process of knowledge co-
production is essential for effective collaboration (Boon
et al., 2014). The CCC project that may emerge later, as a
result of the deliverables we created for CCC (e.g., the research
database and funding opportunities list), would likely seek to
build FEWS-related community resilience either with CCC or
in neighboring communities. The provision of community-
based, safe, and reliable food, energy, and water are central
to resilience.
4.3 Accountability and motivation
The large group size caused some team members to struggle to
see how they could contribute and stay motivated (Theme 4: Team
Contributions) and caused difficulty in organizing work distribution
(Theme 1: Team Organization). Cooke and Hilton (2015) found that
within teams, each member may have their own values and
motivations, influenced by various factors such as expertise,
organizational context, or life experiences. The difficulty in
establishing accountability and motivation when participation
was voluntary was exacerbated by the project’s virtual modality
(Armstrong and Jackson-Smith, 2013). Gaziulusoy and their
collaborators (2016) argued that geographically separate
transdisciplinary teams are less efficient, though Ocker and
Fjermestad (2008) showed that virtual teams have the potential
to be high-performing. We found that accountability, participation,
and enthusiasm were largely self-driven without both the natural
pressure and camaraderie that comes from in-person interactions.
The heavy reliance on self-driven action over the large volunteer
team may help explain team attrition, frustration, and burnout.
Trust is integral to a team as the safety of participants is built on
trust—trust promotes creativity and innovation (Ocker and
Fjermestad, 2008). Trust in an interdisciplinary team is especially
important because as people cross disciplinary boundaries, they
become vulnerable (Harris and Lyon, 2013). We found that within
the cohort, trust was built over time during online meetings and
especially once the team split into smaller groups. Early on, the team
had optional “coffee chats”before official meetings as an informal
way to get to know each other, and later, some team members added
each other on social media as an added way to connect. Additionally,
it is important to note that the trust between the cohort and CCC is
also critical for their collaboration; we found that the long-lasting
relationship between INFEWS-ER and CCC (Sections 2.1,4.1) was
enough to instill trust in the groups despite limited interactions
between them (Figure 2).
Other interdisciplinary efforts have been found to suffer from
the lack of systemic or institutional support for their time and
efforts, making participation by graduate students or junior faculty a
risk rather than a reward (Armstrong and Jackson-Smith, 2013).
Graduate students in this cohort had competing priorities with their
own research and classes, but many students were able to combat
this by requesting and receiving class credit for the project from their
university (this was not given by default). However, we did observe
attrition among the team members.
4.4 Communication
Communication barriers included meeting frequency, the online
Zoom platform, lags with communication, and disciplinary
differences. Intra-team communication was exclusively virtual
due to the cross-university nature of the collaboration. Tools
such as Slack, email, and Zoom meetings were used to overcome
this barrier, with the bulk of intra-team communication completed
during weekly Zoom meetings. Ocker and Fjermestad (2008)
showed that it is not the mode nor frequency of communication
that contributes to the performance of the team; rather, it is the level
of debate among the team members. Since most communication was
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completed during weekly Zoom meetings, most progress was
completed at the weekly timescale until the team broke into sub-
groups that met more frequently. In addition, meetings by Zoom
limited conversation to primarily one conversation stream in which
some team members were more able or comfortable to speak up
while others had more trouble making their ideas known.
Alternatively, a feature of Zoom meetings unavailable in in-
person meetings was the chat feature in which participants could
contribute in writing without breaking the flow of oral conversation.
Correspondence with CCC over email involved a
communication lag time of up to a week, which was accentuated
by scheduling virtual meetings weeks in advance. This reduced the
team’s ability to exchange information and ask questions of the
stakeholders, as well as limited team productivity (e.g., not starting
the project until two months after receiving it, see Section 3);
however, we learned after reevaluating our communication with
CCC that at the time of the project, CCC was going through a
transition after COVID-19, resuming in-person community work
despite strict COVID-19 protocols, while also having many
employees working remotely. This unexpectedly consumed CCC
employees’time and ability to respond in a timely manner as many
learned to adjust. As graduate students at major universities in the
continental United States, we expected a certain pace for all of our
communication given the infrastructure available. When accounting
for our stakeholders from a different environment, community, and
culture, we realized that our communication expectations were not
appropriate when considering the transition period CCC was
experiencing. It should also be noted that all communication and
discussion regarding key themes (Figure 1) decreased around the
Christmas and New Years holidays, contributing to a delayed start of
the project.
Previous research has shown that there can be significant
communication challenges among different disciplines in
transdisciplinary research both inside (Harris and Lyon, 2013;
Stablein et al., 2022) and outside of FEWS (Rudhumbu et al.,
2017). Although we recognized some communication challenges
upon reflecting on the collaboration, actual coded segments of
meeting notes did not show evidence of this communication
challenge. We hypothesize that communication was smoother
than that of the previous cohort (Stablein et al., 2022) due to
mentorship from the previous cohort (Section 2.1) and a learning
module on communication and dialogue in transdisciplinary
research in December 2020.
4.5 Obstacles to efficiency
By and large, transdisciplinary learning can be inefficient (Roux
et al., 2010;Gaziulusoy et al., 2016); the cohort experienced this
inefficiency with delayed discussion on deliverables and technology
setup (Figures 1B, C). Team members reflected that progress was
slow and that more progress could and should have been made in the
first months of the project (Table 2; Theme 8: Lessons learned).
Consequently, we must ask why the progress was slow based on the
perspective of team members, if the delays were necessary, and what
factors contributed to the eventual acceleration of progress.
The large group size led to a slow project start, logistical
challenges in scheduling meetings, and a lack of clarity
concerning individual roles. Working with such a large team
(17 team members at the outset) over a virtual landscape limited
individual participation in the early stages of the project until
subgroups were created months after the first meeting (Section
2.1). Two subgroups researched topics relevant to the Urban
Roots program (four team members) and the LabCom program
(five team members). The third subgroup was Knowledge Brokers
(two team members), which originally planned to bridge the other
two groups but evolved into identifying possible grants for CCC.
Cohort members subdivided themselves into the subgroups
depending on interests or perhaps by observing which other
team members joined each sub-group. The subgroups were
smaller units that allowed for increased accountability, more
focused work for each member, and easier meeting scheduling.
Efficient group decision-making was hampered by a
combination of large group size and the ambiguous definition of
leadership roles. The rotating meeting leadership roles
(i.e., facilitator, notetaker, timekeeper) involved all team
members, gave each team member leadership experience, and
provided accountability. However, the lack of a consistent
leadership team slowed group decisions and organization,
especially in the project’s initial stages. Although CCC introduced
the project to the group in November 2020, the team did not begin
project work until January 2021, arguably due to a lack of group
decision-making derived from the large cohort group size and
unclear, rotating leadership structure, as well as the impact of the
holidays on communication (Section 4.4).
However, the delayed start on the literature review deliverable
may have been a necessary allowance for establishing trust and
common language (Roux et al., 2010) and for building cohesion
within the team (Klein, 2008), the case for which can be made by
analyzing the timeline of progress. Because there were no pre-
defined group leadership roles, the team had to realize a need for
leadership roles, define those roles, and fulfill the roles. This process
required establishing trust within the team. After the team
designated a communication lead dedicated to communicating
with CCC, they were able to schedule a second meeting with
CCC, which was one impetus for project commencement. In
addition to the January 2021 meeting with CCC, another factor
that may have aided in starting the project was a January day of
reflection with other graduate cohort groups and the consequent
definition of a mission statement.
We posit that while there may have been a “phase of confusion”
before the cohort properly organized itself; this was not a waste of
time as it helped build the research capacity for the graduate
students as they built rapport and learned about working in a
team. Indeed, proper team integration cannot be pushed too
quickly, or the quality of a group’s integration will be
shortchanged (Klein, 2008).
4.6 COVID-19: both an asset and a limitation
While recognizing that COVID-19 has had complex impacts on
many aspects of work, including fatigue with virtual environments
and effects on mental health (Elbogen et al., 2022), we found that the
COVID-19 pandemic acted as a strength for this cohort as well as a
limitation. The cohort started working together on 26 October 2020,
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approximately seven months after the start of the COVID-19
pandemic in the United States. At this point, most students were
accustomed to online meeting tools such as Zoom while also
experiencing fatigue (Nesher Shoshan and Wehrt, 2022) and a
desire to connect with other graduate students. Therefore, at this
time, participating in a virtual cohort provided a sense of
community that was lacking elsewhere. This sense of community
may have been strengthened in the COVID-19 setting as opposed to
a pre-pandemic setting with many in-person activities competing
for the time and interest of graduate students.
Managing burnout from continuously working and learning in a
virtual environment became a limitation in our study. Effects of
remote work due to COVID-19, such as social isolation and family-
work conflict, have been found to significantly affect productivity
and engagement with work while also simultaneously increasing
work-related stress (Galanti et al., 2021). A previous study
investigating burnout from different education levels and
durations of the study found the highest burnout in university
students with nine hours of online learning per day (Sunawan
et al., 2021). Within our study, we saw that team members
participating in this project were taking their own disciplinary
classes virtually throughout the study’s duration and were thus
exposed to differing levels of burnout which contributed to losses
of productivity, frustration, and in some cases, team attrition, as the
team went from 17 to 11 team members (Section 2.1).
4.7 Other limitations of this study
The meeting notes that were coded to form the dataset for this study
include inherent biases. For example, since the meeting notetaker was
inconsistent during meetings, the material analyzed for this study may
not fully capture what occurred during meetings since some notetakers
were more thorough than others. Additionally, team members took
notesonsubjectsrelatingtotheworkthatwasbeingaccomplished,not
necessarily all topics covered during the meeting. For example, cohort
members recalled making small talk before meetings which included a
discussion of “Zoom burnout,”but no notetaker recorded this
discussion in the notes. Therefore, the dataset analyzed for this
study is inherently biased toward the work aspects of the project
and does not necessarily represent all social aspects of the project.
5 Conclusion
Lessons learned from this case study can help future cohorts or
similar academic-NGO collaborations. From this study,
investigators, communities, and societies can benefit from
learning how transdisciplinary efforts influence academic-NGO
outcomes and FEWS projects, practices to include and avoid, and
how different cohort members’backgrounds affect collaborations.
For example, we observed that it is beneficial to explicitly include the
establishment of relationships between stakeholders, a structured
approach to transdisciplinary processes, and cohort members from
diverse backgrounds and disciplines, as this increases open-
mindedness for collaboration. However, it may be important to
avoid large cohort sizes, communication lags, and members that
may lack accountability or motivation.
One aspect of this study that future researchers can seek to
achieve is a focus or an environment that facilitates team building,
especially early in the process. The relationship between the NGO
partner and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been
long-standing, such that mutual trust and respect were already
established (Section 2.1). The 2020–2021 cohort benefited from
that previously existing relationship and thus was able to
facilitate a rapid integration. We recognize that not all
collaborations benefit from this. All collaborations have an origin
point. Therefore, deliberate cultivation of the relationship is
necessary in all cases. This initial relationship-building is
important in these types of collaborations, whether between the
stakeholders and researchers or the researchers themselves.
Transdisciplinary research brings together a diverse group of
academics and stakeholders, which requires a high level of
mutual trust, partnership, and collaboration to build a successful,
high-performing team. We suggest that future efforts build these
types of relationships deliberately within the team and with
stakeholders from the outset. With increased effort in team
building, communication, and participation can be easier among
cohort members.
Future studies can also improve upon our project management
style by increasing collaboration between cohort members and
leveraging each other’s expertise. In our study, we broke the
larger team into smaller subgroups to work on our proposed
tasks (Sections 2.1,4.5). With this style of project management, it
limited some ability to collaborate across teams or leverage each
other’s areas of expertise and knowledge. We believe that the small
team structure for a research team as large as ours was the best
structure to allow for participation and efficiency within the team;
however, participants become divided, and this should be taken into
consideration for future studies using this structure. Previous
research suggests that individuals in smaller teams perform better
than those in larger teams (Mueller, 2012). Kameda et al. (1992) note
that subgroups of four individuals have the greatest individual
performance, and our subgroups ranged from two to five team
members. However, large cohorts broken into smaller teams need
deliberate infrastructures to check in on one another and leverage
their strengths.
Furthermore, studies can benefit from learning about the
attrition that occurred during our transdisciplinary collaboration.
As our team decreased in size over the course of the collaboration,
we learned that it is important to allow for attrition to occur as some
team members are not actually willing to invest the time necessary to
participate in a transdisciplinary project. The INFEWS-ER
experience is solely extracurricular and only available to graduate
students who are willing to devote their free time to it, as no course
credits or assistantships are awarded by default. An interview or
application system to vet whether students had the time available
and the requisite motivation would likely lessen the attrition that
occurred. We also recommend more frequent cohort meetings and
one-on-one meetings when potentially unmotivated team members
are identified to avoid problems with accountability.
From this transdisciplinary academic-NGO collaboration, the
graduate student team gained skills in stakeholder engagement,
large-team project management, and communication across
disciplines; these skills helped us develop our human capital.
CCC gained resources to enhance its ability to secure grant
Frontiers in Environmental Science frontiersin.org12
Markazi et al. 10.3389/fenvs.2023.1108375

funding. From CCC’s perspective, the virtual experience highlighted
the potential of utilizing graduate students’abilities to tackle
organizational and community issues from remote locations. This
is especially useful in addressing specific and urgent needs identified
by the organization that may not have enough resources to attend to
them at the moment. Future projects that emulate our process
diagram (Figure 2) can increase the efficiency of academic-NGO
partnerships toward capacity building and self-reliance. In addition,
CCC increased its capacity building. These efforts provide resources
and tools for CCC to act independently (without the cohort), which
is beneficial for the development of the local community as well as
disaster relief and resiliency. For instance, the resources we created
positioned CCC to better compete for larger grants with revised and
cited literature which lends further credibility and weight to the
projects they are implementing. With access to larger funds, CCC is
able to plan for the long term, increasing its chances to make a
difference, particularly in environmental and educational areas.
Overall, this case study bridges a gap in academic-NGO
collaborations at the intersection of the FEWS and disaster
resilience, highlighting practices to both emphasize and avoid.
These findings should be valuable for students, faculty, NGOs,
and others interested in participating in such collaborations.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in
the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed
to the corresponding author.
Ethics statement
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human
participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional
requirements. Written informed consent from the participants was not
required to participate in this study in accordance with the national
legislation and the institutional requirements.
Author contributions
DM led the study and contributed to all sections, including
conducting the document analysis with GO. DM, AB, PM, GO,
SS, SR, JH, LR, MF, and MR wrote different sections of the
manuscript. DM and AB created the figures.MF,MR,LR,andJH
contributed to the conception of the study. LR acquired the
funding. DM completed the final edits and formatting. All
authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted
version.
Funding
The INFEWS-ER cohort was funded under National Science
Foundation grants 1639340 and 1833225 and under National
Institute for Food and Agriculture Project Number ILLU-
741-624.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our team members, mentors, and
advisors from the 2020–2021 INFEWS-ER cohort who were
unable to participate in the writing of this manuscript.
Throughout the cohort, there were many presenters whose
information on Puerto Rico, context, team building, and more
shaped our thinking and our development as early career
transdisciplinary researchers. We sincerely thank Belen Rosado
Casanova, Beatriz Almódovar Acevedo, and Diana Ferro Díaz for
their contributions to the project. Furthermore, we express our
appreciation to Anna-Maria Marshall for her guidance on
qualitative research methods and support.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated
organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the
reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or
claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or
endorsed by the publisher.
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