University-Industry Partnerships: A Program of Benchmarking and Outreach in the EPSCoR States

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The southern Technology Council (STC) will work with research universities in the 18 EPSCoR states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, in a broad-based effort to use benchmarking research to better understand and improve policies, practices, and performance in university-industry R&D relationships. The proposed project addresses the fact that universities are now being called on to play a wider array of partnering roles vis-a-vis industry. These go beyond technology transfer per se, and extend to issues such as: (1) partnerships in curriculum and instruction; (2) industry liaison structures and services; (3) university-industry cooperative research; (4) niversity-industry-government partnerships in economic development strategy; (5) the capitalization of partnerships; and (6) community leadership education on university roles in the "new economy". EPSCoR-state universities are involved in all of these issues. Nonetheless, there is a great variance across institutions in their success in partnering, as well as their knowledge about innovative models that have been developed elsewhere. This is a natural venue for the use of benchmarking discipline that includes: (1) identifying an area of organizational activity; (2) gathering performance data therein (preferably quantified); (3) identifying best practices and policies used by exemplary organizations to enhance performance in that area; (4) dissemination and implementation of results; and (5) recycling the whole process. In the proposed project, this sequence of steps will be followed through the execution of a small number of carefully-selected benchmarking research mini-projects. Leadership from EPSCoR-state institutions will be deeply involved in that selection process, and in ongoing project oversight. The proposed project will include benchmarking research approach to other important topics concerning the university-industry interface. The project will produce up to five major reports which will be disseminated to approximately 1000 academic and community leaders in the 18 EPSCoR states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.