[media-credit name=’SUNDEEP MALLADI/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Nine years ago, in the forefront of a national trend, the University of Wisconsin launched an initiative to combine many academic disciplines and create new collaborative fields of study. Dubbed the Cluster Hiring Initiative, separate departments across campus teamed up to create new interdisciplinary topics — such as biomedical engineering, political economy, computer sciences and economic sociology. Implemented in 1998, the initiative was a new idea at the time, according to Peyton Smith, associate vice chancellor for extended programs, and aimed to pull together disciplines across UW to create new programs and further education at the university. "We're going to keep pushing in this area. This is what the world needs more and more," Smith said. "It's an innovated program that, by all measures, is succeeding." A cluster, according to Smith, is a small group of usually three faculty members from different academic disciplines hired to work together in an integrated field of expertise. Often, the cluster receives additional help from other people affiliated with the fields of research. Since its launch, 49 clusters have been created at the university with a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration in research projects. Fields with cluster hires currently include international public affairs, bioethics, energy sources and policy, poverty studies and computer sciences, among others. "There's a lot of value in hiring someone that will help to this offer," Smith said. "The religious studies, the legal studies and masters in international public affairs were started or higher supported by cluster hiring. The demand is there for the students." And other universities have been taking cues from UW's hiring methods, including Florida State University, which implemented its own cluster hiring initiative in 2005. "It's a way of achieving impact above and beyond individual hires," said Ross Ellington, associate vice president for research at FSU. "This is a way to invest in the university to help FSU be more competitive in the national and international arena." Ellington said the initiative at UW provided inspiration when FSU formulated its own cluster-hiring proposal. "Madison's a university that we aspire to be," Ellington said. "They've got it all." To launch its own initiative, UW received funds from the state government, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and private donations. The plan went under an evaluation at a university conference earlier this month, which focused on investigating the effectiveness of the initiative since its implementation. Annual evaluations of the Cluster Hiring Initiative allow UW to catch mistakes early and improve on them, Smith said, adding the initiative would continue to run as long as it helps the university. "Whether we'll be operating in 20 [or] 30 years is a good question," Smith said. "But the Cluster Hiring Initiative is an ongoing initiative that will be reviewed periodically to make sure it stays fresh and active." The benefits of cluster hiring allow faculty with different areas of expertise help develop stronger research proposals for funding requests, Smith said. "In the world of big science and medical grants, you need interdisciplinary teams of investigators to get things funded," Smith said. "These helped the research enterprise and trickled down into benefits to society and students." Nonetheless, Smith said although the initiative is successful, the system is still trying to making improvements with each year, like refining the research proposal search process. "We've made some mistakes. We learn things as we went along," Smith added. "We're generating excitement and generating interactions between different departments."