[M.K. Thompson]More teamwork, more science

Interesting tidbits of information appear above my email inbox every day, including new vocabulary words, funny and interesting quotes, and news headlines. This week, one of the news headlines from the Discovery Channel caught my eye: "Space Station at 10: Much Teamwork, Less Science."

The word "teamwork" can inspire dread in adults and children alike. Team projects are common in both school and industry, and nearly everyone has had a bad experience. Stories of weak and tyrannical leaders and uncommunicative, unresponsive and irresponsible team members abound.

Much of the difficulty occurs because team work and project management are their own disciplines with their own set of required skills but without any hard and fast rules. Teamwork requires members to juggle schedules, preferences and personalities. To be a good team member, you must learn to recognize your strengths and weaknesses and complement them with the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates. It is also important to understand your teammates` points of view and become proficient in the art of conflict management. Learning these skills can be an emotional and difficult process.

The stigma against teamwork can be even stronger in science, mathematics and engineering. Classes in these fields often feature sets of well-organized, deterministic problems to be solved by each student individually. They exhibit must less of the ambiguity of other fields such as business and law, and involve less in-class discussion and debate. Extracurricular activities in the sciences also tend towards individual projects instead of group collaborations. As a result, students in these professions are often less comfortable working in teams on open-ended problems.

For better or for worse, the "good old days" of engineers and scientists working on invention or discovery alone in their kitchens, basements and backyards are mostly gone. Now innovation is done in corporate research centers and government think tanks with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people working on a single project or new technology. Each team member has specialized skills or talents and must work with the others as efficiently as possible. We would not have airplanes or space shuttles without team work. We certainly wouldn`t have a space station.

The space station itself is a shared venture among the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the 11 countries which comprise the European Space Agency. (Brazil is also participating through NASA.) Each country contributes to running, repairing and resupplying the space station. After NASA`s space shuttles are retired in 2010, Russia, Europe, Japan and the United States will all share resupplying duties. Russia will be primarily responsible for crew transport. Not only do these countries have to work together to protect a $100 billion investment, they have to work together to protect the lives of the crew members in space. Without international cooperation, it would not have been possible to keep the space station continuously occupied for 2,950 days and counting.

The crew members of the space station also have to work together. Up to three people typically live on the space station for six months at a time, performing maintenance, repairs and science experiments in living quarters that are approximately the shape and size of a large bus. Perfect test scores or not, if you can`t get along with your fellow crewmembers, you don`t go to space.

Surveys of engineering companies have repeatedly shown that industry values "soft skills" like communication and teamwork at least as much as they value technical skills and domain knowledge. Bright and talented young workers can be taught or trained to do any job as long as they have a positive attitude, good communication skills and are able to work well with others. Their career opportunities are unlimited. However, brilliant engineers who can`t get along with anyone will be relegated to a back office, segregated from co-workers, hidden from customers, and passed over for promotion.

The result is that engineering education has also been shifting in recent years to "more teamwork, less science." Many engineering classes now feature team projects. Most capstone design classes are now team-based. Soft skills are receiving more attention than they once did and top schools are focusing on creating well-rounded, integrated science and engineering curricula which produce well-rounded graduates.

Should we be concerned that the work at the international space station is primarily focused on making day-to-day living in space possible? Should we be worried that our students are sacrificing their education in the "hard" sciences for the sake of communication and team work? In both cases, there is no cause for concern. These efforts set the foundation for successful collaborations on both terra firma and in space, while providing maximum flexibility for the future. Investment in teamwork in any context is an investment in the future.





Mary Kathryn Thompson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. She can be reached at mkthompson@an.kaist.ac.kr. - Ed.