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Office of Interdisciplinary Initiatives (OII)

The Graduate School
University of Minnesota

Mission: The Graduate School Office of Interdisciplinary Initiatives (OII) is committed to seeding, supporting and sustaining interdisciplinary initiatives and programs that contribute to unparalleled interdisciplinary graduate education and advance the University of Minnesota’s position as a leader in interdisciplinary inquiry. The OII provides leadership in the development and implementation of system-wide strategies to facilitate collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and to achieve excellence in interdisciplinary graduate education and training programs. The OII engages members of the University community in dialogue aimed at identifying institutional policies, programs, and best practices that enhance collaborative and interdisciplinary inquiry. The OII also provides support to new and existing interdisciplinary graduate programs.

Vision: To provide leadership and enhance excellence in interdisciplinary inquiry with the goal of providing unparalleled interdisciplinary graduate education.

Initiatives:  Interdisciplinary research and teaching are critical to producing workable solutions to many of society’s most pressing problems.  The high level of institutional investment in seeding interdisciplinary initiatives during the past decade, and the multitude of interdisciplinary programs, centers and projects that have emerged over an even longer period, are critical sources of institutional innovation and vitality. 

While the academy has been a fertile seedbed for these energetic initiatives, there is a growing sense that aspects of the existing institutional structure, policies, and practices, historically organized by discipline, create unnecessary impediments to success for faculty and students engaged in interdisciplinary teaching, research and creative initiatives. 

The University’s Strategic Positioning process recognized the challenges inherent in working across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and identified the University’s ability to successfully engage in interdisciplinary teaching, research, education and creative expression as essential to attaining our goal of becoming a top three public research university.

Initiatives coordinated by the Office of Interdisciplinary Inquiry, in cooperation with the Provost's Interdisciplinary Team, seek to address existing challenges to interdisciplinary inquiry, and to foster and support best practices in interdisciplinary research, teaching, and training.