Who We Are

Overview

Welcome to the Transdisciplinary Studies program at Claremont Graduate University. Our program provides a platform for the CGU community to transform education and research to address deeply entrenched and constantly evolving complex challenges toward creating positive and equitable futures.

The CGU Transdisciplinary Studies Program includes:

• A dedicated MA degree program
• Support for student and faculty fellows
• Competitive research and dissertation fellowships
• An annual research symposium
• A wide range of initiatives that promote and support cross-disciplinary collaboration

What We Do

Transdisciplinarity embraces complexity. Our world is complex. We—are complex beings.

The most pressing issues we face are complex, ill-defined, and context-specific, thus needing solutions that transgress and transcend legacy thinking that contributed to these problems. This includes a commitment to crossing both disciplinary and academic boundaries. We define transdisciplinarity as: “Working across knowledge and stakeholder boundaries to address wicked problems and facilitate transformative solutions toward equitable and flourishing futures.”

We recognize the inherent interconnected and interdependent nature of reality, and our role as stewards for the future. To this end, we foster mindsets and skills for ethical systems and complexity analysis, co-creation with community, reflexive and critical questioning of assumptions and status quo barriers to equitable futures, and common ground creation that bridges old silos in seeking innovation and non-reductive methods for meaningful solutions. We venture into our scholarship and practice with ethical purpose, curiosity, and humility to work co-creatively across disciplines and beyond academia.

With these values and goals, the program encourages scholars to construct and reimagine innovation and collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and communities, making transdisciplinarity a cornerstone of CGU’s identity and a meaningful approach for addressing the pressing challenges of our time.

Our Vision

CGU’s Transdisciplinary Studies Program fosters an adaptive, creative, and transformative community of scholar-practitioners who innovate with a passion for furthering equitable, flourishing, and positive futures.

Our Mission

The Transdisciplinary Studies Program connects, transcends, and re-imagines disciplinary boundaries in realizing our vision by:

• cultivating innovative, collaborative transdisciplinary courses designed around real-world problems,
• offering a cutting-edge Master’s in Transdisciplinary Analysis.
• awarding dissertation and research fellowships and other awards to promote boundary-crossing work across disciplines and beyond academia.
• promoting our transdisciplinary scholars and faculty,
• collaborating with institutional offices to provide academic professional development,
• promoting interfield and dual degree pathways,
• creating and sharing transdisciplinary resources and thought leadership.

Our Purpose

To create equitable flourishing societies and futures by building opportunities that support students and faculty to cross boundaries, embrace complexity, and transgress status quo barriers in reimagining and creating transformative solutions.

Our Values

Our three intersecting value categories are: Plural Mindsets, Community & Collaboration, and Equity, Justice, Futures.

Systems, Complexity, Plurality

• Sense-making with multiple complex perspectives.
• Curiosity and empathy with plural perspectives.
• Courageous intellectual humility.

Community & Collaboration

• Co-creative collaboration within and beyond academia.
• Community-Mindedness—empathy, generosity, collaboration.

Equity, Justice, Futures

• Creative adaptive thinking.
• Reflexivity in examining assumptions.
• Post-anthropomorphic: people and planet.

Our History

The Transdisciplinary Program at Claremont Graduate University was founded in 2002, with a generous gift from Trustee Dr. George Kozmetsky and his wife Ronya Kozmetsky.

Dr. Kozmetsky, a visionary in business, education, and philanthropy, introduced the concept of transdisciplinary scholarship to CGU as a way to articulate and enhance the university’s long-standing commitment to teaching and research that transcends traditional academic boundaries.

Dr. Kozmetsky’s influence at CGU was profound. A cofounder of Teledyne Inc. and founder of the IC² Institute in Austin, Texas, he was known for fostering partnerships between academia and industry. His ideas were instrumental in shaping CGU’s transformative academic plan in 2001, which laid the groundwork for the creation of the Transdisciplinary Studies Program and the first university-wide Chair.

Since its inception,the program has been evolving and is a vibrant and integral part of the university’s academic landscape through the stewardship of its Directors, starting with Dr. Wendy Martin (2002 – 2013), Drs. Patricia Easton and Tom Horan (2013-2017), Dr. Andrew Vosko (2017 – 2024), and currently, Dr. Shamini Dias.