By their nature, global change issues demand a high level of interdisciplinary awareness and the ability to communicate research results effectively to a wide range of audiences. Our program combines first-rate natural science of global change at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center with the equally distinguished social science research on the economic, political, cultural, and social issues surrounding the development of global change policy and mitigation in the USCD Departments of Economics, Political Science, History, Rady School of Management as well as the Environmental Law Institute .   Our project also links all these research entities with the UCSD Environment and Sustainability Initiative (ESI)  a program to develop science-based sustainability solutions, working in partnership with the business and government community locally and globally. ESI is leading development of a comparative study of climate impacts on coastal cities through the Association of Pacific Rim Universities World Institute. Our goal is to produce students who not only carry this research pedigree but also have the depth of knowledge and familiarity with related fields to communicate their research broadly and develop and implement effective solutions to global change challenges.

Our educational model consists of four elements that are tightly integrated with the research themes. First, we offer a 10-week summer course, typically taken in the first summer before a student begins formal classes. The summer class is intended to introduce the students to the research themes of the IGERT, the faculty and their research, and the basic elements of marine biology, climate science, economics, governance, international law, ethics, and communications that define the research areas that students will pursue during their dissertations. The intensive nature of the course also helps form a tight cohort of students that can help retain students in the program, provide mutual support during all phases of graduate school, and provide cross-disciplinary partners in thesis research. Second, we offer, in addition to regular courses offered by each discipline, a series of themed courses that are intended to deepen the understanding and cross-disciplinary communication established in the summer class. These classes include student-run seminar courses, required for all CMBC students, that will regularly bring the student cohort together and help to establish interactions between students in different years of the program. Third, students are required to participate in a group research project that brings students from different disciplines together to address an interdisciplinary theme. Each group will develop an interdisciplinary position paper related to one or more of the themes that incorporates scientific and social scientific data and perspectives, and potentially contribute to student Ph.D. research topics. The projects will be presented at an annual symposium, posted on the CMBC website, and submitted for publication.    

Depending on funding, students will participate in an internship that is intended to provide experience in aspects of the science, policy, economics or social dimension of their research topic and so broaden the tools and experience that students bring to their dissertation work. Through all this, we expect our students to become experts in a specific research topic related to the themes, as well as to emerge from graduate school with an understanding of the broader context of their research and the communications skills needed to work with a wide variety of groups within and outside their research field. The ability to integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines is a primary goal of our program as exemplified by the design of our summer course, the cross communication expected in the student-run seminars, and the multi-disciplinary skills and teamwork required for the group research project. Our course work also exposes students to a diverse array of viewpoints and backgrounds, particularly the summer class and themed seminar series. In both sets of classes we bring in outside experts from academia, government, law, media, and the arts to discuss particular research topics, as well as to discuss career trajectories and opportunities.