Research Supervision Team: Structures, Responsibilities and the Collaborative Roles for supporting Interdisciplinary Research

摘要

Generally, they say that Universities must produce true knowledge and are centers of excellence for research, and it is the private sector that creates the wealth of a nation through the commercial exploitation of the research. But, this has been changed in today's University context. Universities are supposed to train students to be job creators and not job seekers by the translation of an innovative research finding into new products and industrial processes for socio-economic development. Therefore, in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Applied Research (which can be Interdisciplinary or Multidisciplinary), Supervison, the supervisor's job is not only to educate doctoral students to possess knowledge but also to use the knowledge and create economic growth and welfare. As proposed by Relational, Intellectual and Physical RIP Model the diverse nature of STEM Applied PhD research will be handled by the Research Supervision Team (RST) approach. Though RIP model supports RST approach in which sharing supervision between several supervisors with different competencies, an individual supervisor should also possess skills to play multiple roles satisfying the academic demand and the market demand as nowadays most PhD students are linked to a project and financed by external sources, thereby introducing more market driven agendas. This paper discusses on the multiple roles of supervisors, types of collaboration, collaboration between roles and best approaches to ensure collaboration.