Learning from the Unexpected: Challenges and Opportunities of Interfaculty Research

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to systematize and disseminate the challenges, lessons learned, and practices derived from the process of establishing and implementing the Interfaculty Working Group on Agri-food Issues (MIPA). The study adopts as its theoretical framework a formative assessment and knowledge management model and focuses on the analysis of the learning and reflexive processes that have enabled the MIPA to engage in a continuous feedback exercise referred to as the meta-project. This exercise sought to examine and document the organizational process associated with the formation and development of research practices and faculty training across seven of the eleven faculties of the Universidad Externado de Colombia (UEC). The analysis draws on contributions from the researchers participating in the Working Group regarding the organizational functioning of the initiative. Conceptually and methodologically, the article employs the multi-level analysis approach developed by Geels to illustrate how the MIPA generates tensions with the higher education regime, particularly in relation to knowledge production processes. Preliminary findings indicate that the MIPA experience presented in this article is innovative within the UEC and constitutes a living and evolving instrument that requires periodic updating to ensure its relevance and usefulness as a reference for the management of interfaculty research groups. The MIPA represents a permanent, collaborative, and organic institutional space that integrates teaching, research, and outreach, and is potentially replicable in other units of the UEC as well as in other universities.