The Rackham Graduate School, which long has been active in supporting boundary-crossing activities, is making one of its interdisciplinary initiatives even more collaborative by changing the design of the Summer Institute.

Since 1998, five Summer Institutes have brought faculty and graduate students from all over campus together for discussions of broad themes, such as “The Body” and “Scale.” The new format for the institute is designed to continue to spark ideas and connections, but to do more to support developing collaborations, Associate Dean June Howard says.

This meant changing the design of the institute in a fundamental way; now, applications will come from teams of collaborators rather than individuals. Not everything has changed, however. As in the past, those selected for the institute still will meet for intensive discussions in May.

“Both faculty and student participants in the past institutes said that the very best thing about them was the chance to talk to people from so many different fields,” Howard says. “So that will stay the same.”

Teams doing almost any sort of interdisciplinary collaboration are eligible to apply for the Summer Institute. The announcement suggests that projects should be “innovative and adventurous,” and that they “might include—but are not limited to—a research project resulting in coauthored publication, preparation and offering of a team-taught graduate course, planning and mounting of an exhibit, and development of a grant proposal.”

Groups may be of any size, and they may be made up of faculty, faculty and graduate students together, or graduate students only. The Summer Institute will provide up to $30,000 in funding for teams accepted into the program.

The goal of the institute is not only to support valuable collaborative projects, but to create cross-disciplinary understanding through conversations, Howard says.

“It provides an occasion for us to reflect on what kind of institution we are becoming, with so much interdisciplinary work going on,” Howard says. “The teams will work on their specific projects, but then there will be a broader discussions among all the participants about the nature of advanced inquiry and interdisciplinary work in general.”

Howard adds, “At the same time, there are connections that aren’t getting made very often—between the humanities and the sciences, for example.”

The institute will be co-directed by Howard, who is professor of English, American culture and women’s studies, and Steve Kunkel, associate dean for biological sciences and life sciences initiatives, and professor of pathology.

“Sometimes it seems that Central Campus and the Medical School are on different planets when we go about our daily academic missions,” Kunkel says. “However, all of our faculty from the different schools and colleges are incredible, dynamic and creative individuals, and we truly need to gather to share ideas and experiences.”

To facilitate the creation of collaborative groups, the graduate school will make the Rackham Clearinghouse available on the Web. This is a registry that will allow faculty and graduate students interested in participating in the program to connect with one another.

“This is an experimental program, and we do recognize that people who are interested in participating in something like this may want some help from us,” Howard says. “I hope to be engaging in a lot of conversations with interested faculty and graduate students over the next few months.”

Applications are due Feb. 25. For more information, visit http://www.rackham.umich.edu/Events .