Elizabeth Mellin, LPC Associate Professor PhD Program Director Binghamton University

 Application:  Considers the larger question of “scholarship for what?” or “How can it be helpful to individuals as well as institutions?”  What is the mission of our scholarship in MHEDIC and to what extent is it impacting (and impacted by) policy and practice? How does theory lead to practice and practice lead to theory in school mental health?  How are we connecting across faculty, practitioner, and policymaker roles in MHEDIC?  What are we doing well and what could be improved?

 Integration  Do we have a shared understanding of interdisciplinarity?  What is our justification for an interdisciplinary approach in practice, policy, research, and training? Should we argue against narrow, disciplinary approaches?  To what extent does the mission of MHEDIC demand interdisciplinarity and and what are the relevant disciplines or “overlapping [academic] neighborhoods?” ?  What are telling examples of interdisciplinarity within MHEDIC?

 Discovery:  What are key areas of research for MHEDIC?  What research methods are we using to advance our mission?  What new knowledge are we producing and how does that invigorate other areas of scholarship (application, integration, teaching)?  Value of creating a matrix (Weist, 2015) to map our research?

 Teaching and learning (including in-service training):  How does application, integration, and discovery inform our training of pre- and in-service professionals?  How does our teaching inform practice and research?  How has MHEDIC influenced both how and what we teach as well as our own learning? Has MHEDIC pushed us in creative new directions?  To what extent can we locate evidence of MHEDIC influence in our own syllabi, assignments, training programs?

 To what extent can we thematically link our work across Boyer’s four types of scholarship? What is that theme and how is it reflected in each type?  What types of scholarship are we particularly engaged in and where could we give more attention?  Is there value in applying this model to MHEDIC? If so, how is it productive? If not, are there other frameworks that could be useful to our group?

 Challenges  Understanding of interdisciplinarity  Organizing theme, issue – developing the identity of program and graduates  (Re)imaging doctoral education from home profession/discipline  Opportunities  Not constrained by accreditation requirements  Potential for “radical interdisciplinarity”  Developing a new culture for PhD study from the ground up that emphasizes application and interdisciplinarity