It has been long recognized that one of the most important aspect of delivering high quality STEM education is to provide the students with an educational experience that includes a wide range of knowledge including not only engineering, science, and mathematics but also liberal arts education such as ergonomics (operation, safety, usability), business (economics, marketing, management, planning, corporate identity), aesthetics (form, visualization, style), and social, environmental, and cultural issues. In response to this need, the School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science (SEMS) at Robert Morris University (RMU) formed a Research and Outreach Center (ROC) in the year 2010. The center activities support the development of interdisciplinary curricula at the undergraduate level and encourage faculty and student engagement in interdisciplinary projects that could be later presented at the university, regional, national and international levels. SEMS-ROC demonstrates diversity in research backgrounds of the faculty and includes interdisciplinary interests of all three departments in the school. Research activities tend to cluster around several broad topic areas involving faculty from across SEMS disciplines as well as in some cases, from other Schools at the institution along with other institutions around the country. One of the initiatives undertaken at SEMS-ROC to break down the departmental-level and school-level silos and encourage to nurture the development of interdisciplinary work environment was the "Research Conversations" meetings. These meetings were held in an informal way to provide a platform for faculty to share their own research expertise with their peers and to learn from each other. This peer-to-peer contact also had a positive effect of finding common interests, explore overlapping areas of research, forming collegial relationships that blossomed later into multidisciplinary teams. Several research project ideas came forward through this knowledge diffusion which led to grant applications, the development of ideas for undergraduate curricula, active research programs and subsequent conference and journal paper publications. Some of these conversations were also summarized and published as Research Highlights newsletter after an editorial process to promote and advertise the research conducted within the university. Interdisciplinary approach for research has also been applied to education at the authors' institution. Two undergraduate course curricula have been have been redeveloped to incorporate significant project elements and engaged learning tools to enhance student learning and experience. One engineering course dealing with product and tool design is delivered in collaboration with Media Arts and Marketing departments. The other course in software engineering is now taught through discussions of assigned case studies and scenarios drawn from industry. This paper summarizes the design of Research Conversations meetings and the new interdisciplinary curricula and presents the impact it has had on the development of interdisciplinary work culture at RMU.
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