The following is a list of the articles that appear in the November 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 11, November 2019

• In industry contracting, careful risk analysis can produce more flexibility. Contract negotiations with corporate partners can often be difficult, even to the point of weakening the partnership itself. They require a delicate balance, because protecting your own interests must always be a primary factor, even when you’re on the verge of a blockbuster deal. But protecting your institution, and recognizing risk factors in the negotiation, can actually make negotiations go more smoothly and conclude more quickly, experts say.
• Industry engagement managers plan ahead to help maintain continuity. There is no guarantee of continuity when it comes to university-industry partnerships. Strong interpersonal relationships can be erased almost without notice with a personnel change, and longstanding research partnerships in specific spaces can suddenly cease as a corporation decides it must “shift gears.” Engagement managers say that while these unexpected changes cannot be avoided, there are strategies you can employ to help “cover your bases” — although some of these strategies emerge only after learning the hard lesson of reality.
• Ohio University introduces three “flexible options” for sponsored research. Seeking to avoid the inevitable consternation that lengthy negotiations produce among industry partners, Ohio University has introduced what it calls its “Flexible Options for Sponsored Research,” which offers three distinct tiers of engagement from which partners can choose. Tier One, with “traditional” IP terms, offers a non-exclusive royalty-free license with an option for exclusivity. Tier Two, which the university calls “Risk Managed IP Terms,” offers an exclusive license with a pre-set royalty rate. Tier Three, or “Industry IP Ownership,” involves assignment with prepayment.
• UCSD crowdsourcing program shows potential for industry engagement. A campus-wide program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) originally designed to use crowdsourcing to help improve performance in numerous UCSD initiatives also holds potential for enhancing corporate engagement, say two of the individuals responsible for running the program.
• UW Health takes multi-faceted approach to speeding clinical trials. Recognizing the attractiveness to industry of making the clinical trials process speedier and more efficient, UW Health, the academic medical center and health system for the University of Wisconsin, has taken major steps to improve a process previously cited as lacking by a group of entrepreneurs, investors and others active in health care and familiar with the process at UW-Madison.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the October 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 10, October 2019

• Programs seek to align industry engagement with corporate desire for inclusion, diversity. On the one hand, as universities and industry collaborate on diversity programs, the guiding philosophy appears to be singular: diversity is a clear benefit to the workforce and the companies that employ them, so let’s work together to increase the talent pipeline in ways aimed at securing that benefit.
• Wichita State program puts students to work with industry partners. University-industry partnerships often encompass some form of collaboration that focuses on preparing students for future work, be it through internships, co-ops, or capstone projects. But industry engagement leaders on the Innovation Campus of Wichita State University are taking it a step further: participating students spend part of each class day working for an industry partner.
• UVA launches new partnership program for School of Data Science. The University of Virginia is looking for industry partners to help underwrite its brand new School of Data Science, just recently approved by the State Council for Higher Education. The Corporate Partners Program, which requires an annual membership fee of $35,000, already has three partners — Capital One, S & P Global, and LMI.
• Imperial’s ‘Business Partners’ program offers deeper engagement opportunities. It’s not as if Imperial College has been unsuccessful in initiating industry partnerships; in fact, the UK university is currently engaged with about 350 companies in corporate-sponsored research alone. However, industry engagement programs can always create room to grow and even better serve industry
• Master agreement renewal shows success of partnership at NC State. The recent renewal of the master agreement between Eastman Chemical Company and NC State, involving a new six-year commitment of $10 million following an initial investment of $16 million for the first six years, clearly demonstrates the strength of the partnership. However, cautions Leah D. Burton, the school’s director of the Centennial Campus Partnership Office & Industry Alliances, partnerships like these are not “built in a day.”
• New NSF program seeks to jump start university-industry collaborations. In the pilot phase of NSF’s new program, Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel), there were 43 teams awarded funding. Of those teams, 38 were headed by universities; four were led by non-profits and only one was led by a corporation. W. Douglas Maughan, who heads the NSF program, would like to see that change.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the September 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 9, September 2019

• Alumni with strong corporate ties make a perfect match for engagement. Alumni just naturally have a tendency to be supportive of their Alma Maters, and those who have attained significant wealth often express that support through philanthropy.
• Campus-wide sponsorships open doors to expanded engagement opportunities. If you’re walking around a college campus and you happen to notice several branches of the same bank, or several outlets of the same retailer, chances are it’s likely not just because the university campus is a good location or because it has lower construction or leasing costs. No, it’s more than likely the result of a campus-wide partnership program.
• Chemours investing $150M to create ‘Discovery Hub’ on U Delaware’s STAR Campus. The Chemours Company, a global chemistry company that specializes in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts, and chemical solutions, is making a $150 million investment in the University of Delaware’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus with the construction of an R&D headquarters it will call The Chemours Discovery Hub.
• First building at VA Tech’s Innovation Campus will offer many options for industry. The decision by Amazon to place its HQ2 in the greater Washington, DC, area has attracted activity among local universities and others, who are scrambling to create new space to meet anticipated demand.
• Wayne State opening Mobility Center with focus on skills development for industry. Wayne State University is partnering with the Michigan Mobility Institute (MMI) to launch the “Center for Advanced Mobility,” which will begin operations this fall. The center is described by the partners as “the world’s first holistic, advanced mobility curriculum.”
• Penn State Erie builds multiple engagement bridges to plastics industry. It may be more than 50 years since “The Graduate” hit movie theatres, but “plastics” is still a magic word in Erie, PA, where Penn State Erie has a deep and tight focus on that industry.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the August 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 8, August 2019

• Emory takes novel approach to engaging industry in “living lab.” The Emory Healthcare Innovation Hub is certainly not the first example of a major healthcare center launching an ambitious undertaking in the pursuit of innovative healthcare solutions, but its leadership insists its approach is nevertheless unique.
• Marquette employs structured plan in launch of corporate engagement office. It takes much more than a demonstrated need and a strong commitment to successfully pursue the creation of a new Office of Corporate Engagement — or to revamp an existing one, for that matter. As Marquette University has demonstrated, it takes a carefully structured plan — one that will not only lead to successful implementation, but will also lay the foundation for this, or any such office, to succeed in its mission.
• Guest Column: How do R&D teams evaluate new partnership opportunities? We’re often asked by the universities that use IN-PART’s matchmaking platform for university-industry collaboration what R&D teams are looking for in new potential collaborators. So, to provide some answers, we spoke with our industry community and asked them what informs their decisions to establish new partnerships with universities.
• Cleveland State revamps online portal in bid to ease industry searches. Cleveland State University has just completed and launched a revamped version of its Innovation Portal in an effort, according to the university, “to streamline the process of finding information about CSU’s wide range of industry-relevant research, technologies, and innovation resources.”
• U of Illinois system backs statewide corporate engagement effort. The University of Illinois system is behind a statewide initiative called the Illinois Innovation Network (IIN), designed to “bolster the Illinois economy through entrepreneurship, research and workforce development,” according to a statement from the network.
• Community college involves corporations, university in engagement efforts. Industry engagement offices and corporations are more actively seeking the involvement of community colleges in their efforts to prepare students for future careers and to meet the increasing demands for talent acquisition. But in one case, it appears to be a community college that is serving as the driving force of such efforts.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the July 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 7, July 2019

• Talent pipelines become critical to industry engagement in low-unemployment era. The desire of universities to educate and train their students to make them more marketable to industry, and industry’s need to find many of their future employees on college campuses, has always been a natural component of U-I collaboration. But the recent dramatic drop in unemployment has added a new element to such collaborations — an almost desperate search on the part of industry and a heightened look by academia at creating new programs to meet industry’s urgent talent needs.
• Collaboration canvas tool used to guide mid-term review with industry partners. The SIRIUS Centre for Scalable Data Access in the Oil and Gas Domain, a collaborative research organization funded by the Research Council of Norway and hosted by the University of Oslo, recently used a “hybrid” version of a collaboration canvas process designed for either university or industry use so that it could be implemented in single sessions together with industry partners.
• U of South Carolina’s new approach yields big results in corporate engagement. When the University of South Carolina transformed its approach to collaboration with industry in 2013 with the formation of its Office of Economic Engagement, perhaps few could have predicted how significant the impact would be.
• Smart city initiatives offer new avenue for industry collaboration. The need for urban areas to efficiently manage Internet of Things (IoT) assets, to become “smart cities,” is a space that has become increasingly attractive to political leaders. Recognizing that they do not have the necessary expertise in-house to take such challenges on themselves, they are frequently turning to universities (for knowledge and research) and industry (for research and bandwidth) as partners in these initiatives.
• U of Maine partners with national lab in bid to boost state lumber industry. Universities, especially land grant institutions, place a high value on research that has a positive economic development impact. That importance is magnified when a key local industry is facing serious challenges — like the lumber industry in Maine.
• To add value locally, learn to work with economic development groups. Imagine this. You are in charge of industry engagement for your university, and an economic developer is trying to convince a company to relocate to your community. The company wants your engineering school to custom train their staff. Moreover, they want to redesign the curriculum so that the school’s graduates would make good hires for their company. Or suppose, as happened in southeastern Ohio, that a major employer shuts down and hundreds of people lose their jobs.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the June 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 6, June 2019

• Universities find a fertile source of industry partnerships: Their own start-ups. Start-ups are often thought of by many as seekers of financing; after all, lacking resources is part of the classic picture of companies in their early stages of development. That’s why it may come as a surprise that a number of universities are finding their own start-ups as excellent sources of funds for research — true industry partners, even as they are seeking to solidify their own futures.
• UAlbany revamps approach to corporate engagement, seeks to eliminate ‘silos.’ About 30 months ago the University at Albany – State University of New York embarked on a major transformation of its corporate engagement efforts, seeking to eliminate what it saw as significant communication breakdowns and an opportunity to better serve its industry partners.
• Strength of partnership leads to NC State’s selection in IBM quantum initiative. The long and strong partnership between NC State and IBM, and NC State’s track record in industry engagement, were key factors in its selection by IBM as the first university in North America to participate in its quantum computing “Q Hub” program, more formally known as IBM Q Network Hubs. IBM now has seven in all, including hubs at Oxford University in the UK and institutions in Australia and Japan.
• Auburn creating one-stop poultry research facility for industry partnering. Auburn University has anything but modest ambitions for the Charles C. Miller Jr. Poultry Research and Education Center. Opened in 2012, it continues to expand, and “it is our goal to be the leading institution in poultry research, education and outreach in the United States, if not the world,” according to College of Agriculture Dean Paul Patterson.
• As UW focuses on clean energy research, new center set to draw industry partners. In its basic physical structure, the 340,000 square-foot Center for Advanced Materials and Clean Energy Technologies (CAMCET) at the University of Washington will be similar to many research facilities on campuses across the country. It will have areas for research and testing, for education, and for office space. But there will be one key difference.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the May 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 5, May 2019

• Special focus: Creating successful engagement events. Hosting events is a big part of successful industry engagement, providing a crucial source of introductions, outreach, education, and relationship-building. This issue’s  first four articles are focused on this task, including coverage of “Industry Day” events, a best practice program from Sweden’s Uppsala University, a partner recognition program at UMass Lowell, and a “reverse pitch” program from Carnegie Mellon.
  • Key strategies for hosting a successful ‘Industry Day’ on campus. “Industry Days,” or day-long events held to showcase what a university has to offer to one or more industry partners, can be an effective way for a university to “put its best foot forward.”
  • Uppsala “AIMday” industry event has long, successful track record. While some universities are now just starting to think about sponsoring industry days, Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, has been presenting an academia-industry initiative for more than a decade.
  • UMass Lowell gives a big “thank you” to industry partners. No doubt universities greatly appreciate the support they receive from their industry partners — not only for their financial contributions, but also for the other support they provide in terms of collaboration. But how many of them actually take the time to say “thank you?”
  • CMU reverse pitch challenge ‘flips the table’ on corporate engagement. University-based start-up companies and similar entities seeking corporate sponsorships or partnerships are exhaustingly familiar with the process of developing and presenting elevator pitches. But what if the process was reversed?
• New one-stop engagement center makes navigation of PSU easier for industry. In an effort to increase and expand the number of multi-faceted corporate relationships it has, Penn State University has opened the Penn State Corporate Engagement Center.
• New ‘city’ on Purdue campus seen as major draw for industry, start-ups. Universities looking to draw companies and start-ups to their regions may be overlooking a government tax incentive program that, coupled with the perks and talent pipeline available on campus, can become a strong economic development and industry engagement magnet.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the April 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 4, April 2019

• Automatic licensing in industry-sponsored research: Does it pay off? “The jury is still out” on automatic (pre-negotiated) licensing in industry-sponsored research, said a trio of attorneys who comprised the panel for a session entitled “Automatic Licensing Initiatives: How they work and how they are working,” at the recent AUTM 2019 conference in Austin, TX.
• ACTA model streamlines contracting for sponsored multi-center clinical trials. The search for model agreements to reduce the often tedious and lengthy period of negotiations necessary to finalize university-industry contracts is an ongoing battle, with efforts extending to many different types of projects and partners. It now seems that in at least one specific area — industry-sponsored multi-center clinical trials — a viable solution has been found.
• Tulane, LSU Health join forces in their efforts to garner more industry partnerships. The sum of the whole, they say, is often greater than its parts. That premise is clearly behind the partnership that has developed between Tulane University and LSU Health as they seek to broaden their collaborations with industry. Their success in working together to meet the needs of industry could serve as a strong hint to schools who share a geographical location, but who don’t yet combine their efforts in industry engagement.
• Pitt’s focused collaboration expands into wide range of partner engagements. It began as cleanly and simply as many partnerships do: Two entities realized they each had something the other needed, and readily agreed to a partnership based on meeting those needs. But what a difference a few years can make; today, that partnership has branched into areas perhaps neither had imagined.
• George Mason’s ‘GovCon’ center targets massive federal contracting market. The new Center for Government Contracting at the George Mason University School of Business has the goal of bringing together industry and government contracting in an academic setting to focus on research, education and training, and collaboration.
• Clemson, GE forge deeper engagement built on 20 years of collaboration. The latest headlines from Clemson, SC, crow about a new investment by GE Power at its Advanced Manufacturing Works (AMW) in Greenville, SC, including the installment of three 3D printing machines, intended for the use of Clemson University students as they work side by side with GE engineers at the newly established Advanced Manufacturing Lab. Impressive as that investment is, however, it is just the latest step in a deep relationship that has developed between these partners over a period of more than 20 years.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the March 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 3, March 2019

• Controversial partners put industry engagement managers in tough spot. The controversy involving the Chinese firm Huawei and the possibility of IP theft has filled the headlines, and with the media coverage has come stories of the tech company’s university partners ceasing, or at least questioning, ongoing research collaborations.
• U of Indy and Roche partner on “academy” to train future employees. Many companies collaborate with universities to help develop a talent pipeline, but Roche Diagnostics and the University of Indianapolis have created a much more formal structure: The “Roche Academy” trains a select group of students with the specific goal of having them join Roche after graduation.
• Universities creating large-scale ‘research Meccas’ to attract more industry. Impressive development projects and equally lofty goals are typical of the innovation centers and districts a number of universities are pouring money into as a way to create magnets — they hope — for a greater influx of industry partners to their campuses.
• University, industry find mutual benefits through business advising programs. “University-based advising can be the cornerstone of a strong university-industry partnership that increases innovation and improves new employee readiness,” says UIDP in its publication “University Business Advising.” You certainly won’t get any argument from John B. Jackson, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, Small Business Institute, and CSUF (California State University, Fullerton) Startup Incubator. In fact, UIDP cited Jackson’s program and its 100 client projects per year as an example of a strong business advising program.
• GA State partners with law firm to provide insights into legal analytics. It must be challenging these days for law firms interested in getting up to speed in the rapidly evolving world of legal analytics. Not only is determining how to best employ legal analytics a challenging task, it can be an expensive proposition as well — and it could create a new market for university engagement professionals.
• Mcity casts wide net for partners in pre-competitive autonomous vehicle research. Picture a public/private partnership focused on connected and automated vehicles that involves a major research university, leading automobile manufacturing companies, automobile supply companies, insurance firms, telecommunications and infrastructure companies, the DoD and local government, and you may come close to describing Mcity.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the February 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar video, Metrics and Benchmarking for University Corporate Engagement: Breaking Down Silos to Gauge Performance.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 2, February 2019

• For those who’ve done it, co-location is a winning partnership strategy. Co-location is a growing trend in university-industry collaboration, but to make it work most effectively is more challenging than simply putting people together in a shared space, and those who’ve done it offered their models, strategies, and lessons learned in a series of interviews with UIEA.
• Fee-for-service options provide another avenue for industry engagement. In an ideal world, offering industry the opportunity to explore initial or limited exposure to the resources available at a university on a fee-for-service basis will ultimately lead to a deeper, more long-term relationship, but in some cases that just doesn’t happen.
• Innovation voucher program provides financial support for industry partnerships. The University of Rhode Island Business Engagement Center, or BEC, has clearly impacted the development of university-industry collaborations in the state in a positive way. Established about five years ago, the “one-stop-shop” for Rhode Island companies, which BEC says it modeled after the engagement center at the University of Michigan, has hosted over 800 corporate campus visits and encouraged 220-plus corporations to support its programs.
• Princeton puts industry at the heart of its efforts to strengthen ecosystem. There’s much talk and activity related to building innovation ecosystems, but there’s no real road map for getting the job done. One thing that everyone can agree on, however: it’s a big, complex, and difficult job.
• Connecting students with industry is the driving goal of specialized program. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Supply Chain Management Institute (SCMI) is, as its name implies, focused on a very specific area of business. And since 2010, SCMI’s “raison d’etre” has been to create and expand new ways for supply chain management students to interact with industry.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the January 2019 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter. 

If you are a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue as well as your bonus webinar collection, Best Practices in Forming and Managing Industry-University Partnerships.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2019

• Universities key to successful pitch for Amazon HQ2. Few economic development efforts in recent years (if any) have captured as much national attention as the competition to win approval from Amazon for its HQ2 location. The successful efforts of Northern Virginia, one of 238 applicants, were led by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP), and one might have assumed that, like its co-winner in New York, tax incentives were one of the keys to it success.
• University-industry effort helps fill training gap among grad students. An extensive joint program between The Graduate School of NC State and several of its corporate partners is providing targeted programming for graduate students seeking a career in industry.
• Don’t let details of visiting scientist agreements get lost in the shuffle. While leading an interactive discussion on visiting scientist agreements at the recent UIDP27 meeting in Chicago, Carolyn M. Brougham, JD, senior contracts officer in the Office for Sponsored Research at Northwestern University, noted that “the big question we dealt with is how the ‘sausage’ is made, and who quarterbacks for the university?”
• UCF and its students thrive with aerospace industry partnerships. In real estate, they say the three most important factors are “location, location, location,” and that certainly can’t hurt a university interested in seeing as many of its graduates as possible hired by leading companies in desirable fields.
• New web portal at U Saskatchewan offers one-stop-shop for industry. Few university outreach efforts warm the hearts of industry as much as the question, “How can we better serve you?”
• Scotland weaves together ‘triple helix’ of partners to enhance life science ecosystem. A new “simple guide” to health sciences in Scotland was initiated by an organization representing different areas of the spectrum.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the December 2018 issue of Industry-Sponsored Research Management monthly newsletter. 

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If you would like a free sample issue, click here.

Industry-Sponsored Research Management
Vol. 2, No. 12, December 2018

• Cornell creates new industry-friendly contract options to attract more partnerships. While an enthusiastic approach to forming partnerships with industry is a good start for a university seeking to expand in the area of corporate-sponsored research, the leaders of Cornell University’s efforts recognized that an “open for business” attitude was just that: a start.
• Starbucks and ASU partner to offer free tuition to thousands. In what is definitely a unique approach to university-industry partnerships, Starbucks and Arizona State University have worked together since 2014 on the Starbucks College Achievement Plan (SCAP), a program designed to provide the opportunity for Starbucks’ partners (employees) to attend and graduate college that they otherwise likely would not have had.
• UW restructures units, adds staff to strengthen outreach to industry. Has UW-Madison been faltering in its efforts to engender partnerships with industry? A recent article in the publication Isthmus posed the following question: “Why does the world-class research institution struggle to work with industry?”
• Open new partnership opportunities by helping tech scouts see the bigger picture. Optimizing relationships with corporate technology scouts is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but it can include both narrowing and expanding their focus, depending on their company’s needs and their awareness of the university’s capabilities.
• New agreement enables CSL Behring to choose from 21 potential university partners. As a company involved in therapeutics, diagnostics, or medical devices, would you prefer to pursue collaborations one university at a time, or link up with a source that can offer you your pick of proposals from as many as 21 universities?
• Researchers take road trip to get face time with potential industry partners. For universities in rural or off-the-beaten-path locations, getting face-to-face with potential industry research partners is no simple task. But Michigan Technological University (MTU), a 7,000-student school in Houghton, is getting some of that face time by sending its researchers on a road trip.
• Cranfield’s research deal with Severn Trent recognized as ‘Top 100’ partnership. What lands an academic-industry partnership among the “Top 100” global corporate-academic partnerships, according to the Nature Index?