The creation of science is increasingly carried out within transdisciplinary teams, leading to greater interest in the science behind how these teams interact and collaborate. Successful transdisciplinary teams have defined leadership and clear roles, and create shared goals and mental models. Team leaders also need to be able to pivot to meet changing needs and priorities (Boone et al., 2020). But what happens when the leaders change? Our paper offers a unique perspective on the creation of team science and the role leaders in these transdisciplinary teams play when those teams undergo transitions. Our transdisciplinary team focuses on STEM education related to data-driven decision-making. The team engages postsecondary and secondary teachers; undergraduates and graduates; and specialists in education, science communication, community development, leadership, biological systems engineering, and gaming to create learning activities for high school STEM education. Initially, our evaluation team conducted a focus group with the team to understand the factors that contributed to the team’s ability to work together. This first phase of our ongoing evaluation process provided insights into how team members view their own and others’ roles and the characteristics of a successful team, and also indicated that the team has built trust and been able to work past disciplinary silos. However, the team members’ understanding of their roles and others’ roles was unclear. In addition, these results indicated that the team lacked a clear idea of what the best team leadership should look like, and the subsequent leadership transition further complicated the confusion around individual roles and the role of leaders in the project.

We used that information and a thorough review of the literature to create a survey designed to help us better understand the challenges that surfaced in qualitative data analysis. Because of the transition, we postponed conducting the survey until the transition was completed. Based on the survey results, we are working with the team to co-develop an intervention to address the ongoing challenges raised in the focus group, as well as the insights we gained from the survey. We will then replicate the survey to determine whether the intervention was successful in addressing the team challenges identified in it. We anticipate that the results of a follow-up survey will provide useful insight into the team’s ability to enhance their work together through intentional strategies designed to address challenges and assess the success of those strategies.