The following is a list of the articles that appear in the November 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 11, November 2021

• Reorganizations are giving TTOs a much bigger role in industry engagement. In a number of recent reorganizations, universities have combined a traditional tech transfer office with corporate engagement, and in many cases the TTOs are taking a much larger role than before. This is the result of a combination of trends; an expanded understanding of what a TTO is, and data showing a broader contribution to overall engagement than perhaps was previously recognized.
• Corporate Affiliates Program at Texas A&M speaks industry’s language. The Texas A&M AgriLife Corporate Affiliates Program (CAP), set to officially launch in 2022, is already actively soliciting industry partners for the initiative, which it anticipates will “foster and create relationships between Texas A&M AgriLife faculty and graduate students with our incredible industry peers,” says Patrick Stover, PhD, Vice Chancellor of Texas A&M AgriLife, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research. 
• VA Tech pushes to take its industry engagement efforts international. This year’s sessions of the Virginia Tech Office of Research and Innovation’s “Research Development Series,” aimed at helping faculty to “increase the scope and impact of their research, creativity, and innovation portfolio,” will include a session to help researchers identify international research partners. But the event does not represent the launch of an initiative to generate a greater number of such partners; rather, it is the latest step in a concerted effort by the university to take its corporate engagement efforts international.
• MagCorp creates “Shared IP Model” to help simplify partnership structure. Magnetics Corporation (MagCorp), a new company co-founded by alumni of Florida State University, has established what it asserts is a unique model for university-industry partnership, highlighted by a “Shared IP Model” that pre-designates the division of IP rights.
• Princeton catalyzes industry engagement with cross-discipline faculty. David MacMillan, FRS, FRSE, the Princeton University professor who in October was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, likes to describe The Princeton Catalysis Initiative (PCI) Symposium as “speed-dating for scientists,” bringing together, as it does, more than 200 faculty from diverse fields, corporate leaders, and students to hear eight-minute flash talks about their leading edge research. These events — this year’s was the fourth of the series — serve as the cornerstone of The Princeton Catalysis Initiative (PCI), founded in 2017 by a group of faculty members from the Department of Chemistry (including MacMillan) who wanted to “catalyze” new research by introducing campus researchers to cross-disciplinary collaboration options.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the October 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 10, October 2021

• UT Dallas’ contracting model attracts industry partners with IP-friendly terms. An industry-friendly model developed at the University of Texas-Dallas that enables corporate sponsors to obtain IP rights was recently implemented for the ninth time in two years, as Dallas-based SOTECH Health licensed platform technology developed by Shalini Prasad, PhD, department head and professor of bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. The invention developed by SOTECH, a breath analyzer that produces COVID-19 test results in less than 30 seconds, has already been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization.
• WSU dedicates an entire week to celebrate highly valued industry partnership. A number of universities have set aside special days or events to honor their most engaged industry partners in an effort to solidify and nurture these partnerships. Some have even dedicated a day to celebrate a single partner . . . but an entire week?
• Syracuse U engages with media tech start-ups for student internships. The symbiotic interests of an alum who leads a growing start-up and the director of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship have led to the creation of the Newhouse Startup Garage, a collaborative entrepreneurial program that will both support technology-driven media start-ups and offer students internships, jobs, and research opportunities — all inside the Newhouse School.
• CUNY ‘Futures in Finance’ initiative links students with finance professionals. A trio of leading financial firms — Bloomberg LP, Centerbridge Partners, and Goldman Sachs — has joined forces to help underwrite CUNY Futures in Finance, a workforce development initiative to help train City University of New York students for careers in the financial industry.
• Holy Cow: WKU aligns with dairy industry to foster “smart” Holsteins. Western Kentucky University (WKU) has enlisted the partnership of Holstein Association USA, the Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund, and approximately 18 individual industry partners to form the WKU SmartHolstein Lab, which is located at the WKU Agriculture Research and Education Center.
• Schlumberger reaches out to HBCUs with its software donation program. The American workforce experienced an unprecedented and challenging year as a result of the global pandemic and racial division in the wake of the George Floyd killing. This prompted many corporations to revisit their current support models around inclusivity, including their impact at HBCUs. Schlumberger, spearheaded by their employee resource group (ERG) in a joint effort with UIDP (University-Industry Demonstration Partnership), began reviewing ways to incorporate long-lasting impact in their engagements with HBCUs.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the September 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 9, September 2021

• Strong communication among campus units enhances strategic engagement efforts. No corporate engagement department is an island (apologies to John Donne). While the creation and implementation of campus-wide projects and initiatives aimed at strengthening industry partnerships most often resides within the corporate engagement office, few of these undertakings can be pulled off without the enthusiastic participation of many other departments or units on campus. Key to that participation, engagement experts agree, is effective communication with those units.
• Ohio State spinoff helps universities evaluate strength of industry partnerships. UNITE, a consulting company spun out of The Ohio State University, is built around a data-driven technology tool that assigns a value based on the strength of corporate relationships, helping engagement professionals better manage their portfolio of industry partnerships.
• With selection of first cohort, quantum accelerator Duality plans ‘Corporate Collisions.’ Duality, which describes itself as “the first accelerator program in the nation exclusively dedicated to supporting quantum start-ups,” has selected its initial cohort of participants and is planning new programming aimed at engendering “collisions” between the start-ups and industry partners.
• U Buffalo helps transform start-up and nurtures a holistic partnership. It could have been as simple as a start-up licensing a university technology, but the relationship between University at Buffalo and Garwood Medical Devices LLC not only led to a redirection of the company’s growth path, but it has also grown into a fully holistic partnership.
• UCL student program yields more than 600 industry engagements per year. University College London’s (UCL) Industry Exchange Network (IXN), launched by its Department of Computer Science in 2011, has grown to at least 600 student engagements per year, partnering with over 80 companies, according to representatives from UCL who led a recent UIDP webinar, “Student Projects with Industry.” In fact, UCL leaders noted that one of the reasons they were presenting the UIDP webinar is that they are now interested in expanding their program by partnering with U.S. universities and companies on international projects.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the August 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 8, August 2021

• Universities pursue new paths to help industry meet demand for employees. In recent years an untold number of industries have faced the stark reality that if present trends continue, they will simply not have enough employees to meet demand, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated that shortage. In response, universities have created a wide range of programs and strategies to help their industry partners meet those needs.
• Employee Accounts model: A new level of engagement for talent development. A new model of career services and corporate partnership developed at Arizona State University has, in a very short time, already led to increased placements with industry partners.
• Webinar-based faculty outreach a key to launch of master research agreement. A recent webinar to inform faculty about a new master research agreement was nothing new to either of the two partners — the University of Pittsburgh and BridgeBio. In fact, they consider the webinar outreach critical to the successful launch of U-I collaborations and a best practice that should be considered when rolling out these agreements.
• Guest Commentary: SRA or RSA? They’re more than just acronyms. Corporate engagement staff and sponsored programs specialists are routinely familiar with sponsored research agreements (SRAs). Less common, and less familiar than SRAs, are Research Services Agreements (RSAs).
• Boston Children’s, ElevateBio craft strategic partnership in cell, gene research. Agreements between academic institutions and industry partners that span several years are becoming more common in U-I collaborations. However, a new five-year agreement between Boston Children’s Hospital and ElevateBio, a cell and gene therapy technology company, sets itself apart with the broad range of undertakings it outlines.
• Sony awards program looks to create ongoing collaborations with PIs. The Sony Research Award Program, established in 2016, set as one of its primary goals “. . . professional collaborations that will foster strong relationships and have the potential to become multi-year collaborations.” Now in its sixth year, the program appears to be achieving that goal.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the July 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 7, July 2021

• New challenges bring new best practices for industry engagement offices. While the term “best practice” is commonly used and readily accepted by practitioners of university-industry collaborations, when it comes to a clear-cut definition things become a bit more challenging. After all, the terminology is applied to so many different types of tools and strategies and brought about by myriad pain points. Beyond that, the COVID-19 pandemic created a different reality, which led in turn to a whole new family of best practices.
• In “new model,” UIUC and IBM launch 10-year deal worth more than $200 million. Hailing what both partners consider a “new model of collaboration,” the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and IBM have reached a ten-year research agreement whose focal point will be a major new research center for exploration in quantum information, high-performance computing, hybrid cloud and networked environments. Total investments, which will include not only IBM and UIUC, but also the State of Illinois, will exceed $200 million.
• U Minnesota, Cisco go fast and go big in their first partnership. In their very first collaboration, the University of Minnesota and Cisco Research concluded an agreement “in record time” — an agreement that included the funding of six sponsored research projects. The initial contact concerning research sponsorship began in February; the agreements were finalized by the end of April. Simultaneously, the partners also negotiated a master research agreement.
• Wichita State creates new industry links with alumni council for its business school. Like many other universities in the U.S., Wichita State has a robust, active alumni association, whose focus includes engagement with alumni in industry leadership positions. More recently, however, Wichita State has joined a more select group of institutions that are creating alumni organizations dedicated to specific colleges within their universities – in its case with the business school.
• Cytiva collaboration a major step in realization of Aggie Square goals. In the “good old days,” when large regional shopping malls dotted the landscape, developers were always in search of an “anchor tenant” — a well-known department store chain that would agree to lease a large space in the mall and likely attract a trove of smaller tenants along with it.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the June 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 6, June 2021

• Start of “new normal’ depends on campus policies and the plans of industry partners. It’s been more than a year since universities and their industry partners virtually ceased all in-person meetings and much of their collaborative research activities in response to COVID-19. Now, with tens of millions of people vaccinated and more getting their shots every day, with many students back on campuses and communities all over the country “opening up,” are U-I partnerships “opening up” too? Will things to be “back to normal” on campus this fall?
• Engagement office signs up ‘founding partners’ and builds deep collaborations. Several Canadian industry leaders have committed to agreements identifying themselves as “founding partners” in the wake of the University of Waterloo ’s recent creation of Gateway for Enterprises to Discover Innovation, or GEDI, its corporate engagement office.
• Corporate sponsorship key to ‘Engineering Ambassadors’ program of K-12 outreach. Strong industry partner support, most notably by the Raytheon Technologies subsidiary Pratt & Whitney, has been one of the keys to the success of Engineering Ambassadors, a Penn State program that focuses on the development of future engineers.
• Georgia State, State Farm give students a “LIFT” through partnership program. The consolidation of Atlanta’s Georgia State University with Georgia Perimeter College, the largest two-year institution in the state, in 2017 not only enabled the university to expand its outreach to students in the state, but it also set the stage for a significant expansion of its partnership with State Farm. That expansion focused on the creation of the LIFT (Learning, Income and Family Transformation) program, which has dramatically improved graduation rates, advancement to four-year degree programs, and many other areas of the academic and personal lives of participating students.
• Partnerships with HBCUs growing, but industry says more can be done. Every week lately it seems there are new announcements of industry partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. And judging from panelists’ comments during a session at UIDP Virtual 2021, industry interest in HBCU collaborations is only growing. However, the panelists added, there’s plenty more that can be done on both sides to further enhance this growth.
• Student-focused engagement programs rely on strong communication with industry. The University of Louisville is no stranger to industry partnerships involving its students, as illustrated by several examples of projects either launched or continued in recent years.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the May 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2021

• Metrics can play a significant role when evaluating success of partnerships. Can you “measure” the success of your U-I partnership? To a degree, you certainly can, say the experts. Universities and their industry partners employ a variety of metrics to help determine the strength of existing relationships and the projects in which they’ve collaborated. Quantitative measures can indicate the relative success of sponsored research projects, student hires by partners, capstone project results, satisfaction among industry partners, faculty and students, and much, much more.
• University offers scholarships to employees and family members of industry partners. Universities have come up with any number of creative ideas to deepen the loyalty of industry partners and strengthen their relationships, and here’s one that’s likely to do both: Lawrence Technology University (LTU) in Southfield, MI, is offering undergraduate and graduate scholarships for employees and family members of their industry partners.
• Adding industry judges to student competition results in a ‘win-win.’ Here’s one way to make a big splash as the new Director of Foundation and Corporate Engagement in University Advancement: Find a well-established student research competition and convince the organizers to let you add industry judges to the program. That’s exactly what Jessica Blackburn did shortly after assuming that position at Arkansas State University about five years ago.
• NSF program offers grad students funds for industry training. There’s nothing like learning about a program from folks who have participated in it. That’s precisely how a webinar at the recent UIDP 2021 virtual conference, entitled “NSF INTERN Program: The User’s Perspective,” was designed. University and industry representatives shared their experiences with the program, which they say has proved immensely successful in bringing together talented student researchers and interested corporations in collaborations of great benefit to both partners.
• Engagement pro uses strategies from her “day job” to manage COVID testing. Christy Bertolo already had a full-time job — Director of Strategic Partnerships at Ohio State — when a call came from the university asking her to put on another “hat” and run the university’s campus-wide COVID testing program. As unusual as the request might have seemed at first, a closer look reveals that it was actually quite logical, as it involved establishing a solid working relationship with an outside vendor.
• Not into esports? You may be missing an opportunity for industry engagement. Looking for new opportunities to create successful collaborations with industry? How about esports? What’s that, you say? You’re really not that familiar with esports — and besides, what do they have to do with U-I partnerships?

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the April 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now to get access every month to the best guidance available on expanding industry engagement efforts and attracting and managing corporate partnerships, as well as access to our online archive of back issues.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 4, April 2021

• Fine-tune policies to better support student-industry collaborations. What are the recognized best practices among university industry engagement offices when it comes to student-industry collaborations? How are contracting agreements structured? How are fees charged? How is IP handled?
• Streamlining process supports growth of capstone effort. About two years ago, Jason King, associate director of corporate relations at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences, was presented with a challenge. “My Dean asked me to help streamline our eight (six at the time) different capstone programs.”
• Rutgers alumni initiative brings engagement programs to the workplace. A growing number of universities are including a strong focus on alumni involvement as a key part of their overall corporate engagement efforts. But at Rutgers University, the initiative known as the Rutgers Alumni Workplace Engagement (AWE) has shifted the focus away from making things happen on campus to engendering new programming at the workplace of the industry partner.
• Even experienced faculty vulnerable to potential pitfalls during engagement. Common wisdom might hold that veteran faculty innovators are better prepared to interact with industry partners and are therefore less likely to commit some of the most common errors to which their less experienced colleagues are prone. But some of them may actually be more likely to commit “unforced errors.”
• Prestige, size, and location no longer restrict university-industry collaboration. Neither the prestige, size, or location of a university or a company are prohibitive any longer for university-industry collaborations. In our annual 2021 survey of the industry engagement and R&D communities, we found that these factors are considered by only a minority of teams when starting new partnerships.
• Oakland U makes potential industry partners ‘an offer they couldn’t refuse.’ Convincing a roster of collaborators including General Motors, Siemens, MAHLE Industries, ABB Inc., AM General, Continental, Hirotec America, KUKA Robotics, Magna International, Rave Computer and the U.S. Military Ground Vehicle Systems to become founding industry partners to fund an ambitious Augmented Reality Center (ARC) may seem like a tall mountain to climb, but Khalid Mirza, PhD, ARC Founding Director, puts it in the simplest of terms: “We made them an offer they couldn’t refuse — by presenting a business case,” he asserts.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the March 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now to get access every month to the best guidance available on expanding industry engagement efforts and attracting and managing corporate partnerships, as well as access to our online archive of back issues.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 3, March 2021

• Apprenticeships on the rise as universities link with community colleges to expand offerings. Apprenticeship programs are booming on college campuses. Recognizing their value to both students and industry partners, research universities and university systems have either partnered with community colleges or created whole programs around them.Dahousie revamps office, embraces transparency and standardization
• Dahousie revamps office, embraces transparency and standardization. “Streamlining” may be an easy term to describe the recent changes made by Dalhouisie University’s Office of Commercialization and Industry Engagement — changes that include its current name and a revamping of its website. But its leaders note that it was the transparent sharing of those changes, enabled by the redesigned website and the standardization of the ways the office approaches industry engagement, that truly embody the transformation of the office.
• UW-Madison launches internal fund to support internships, collaborations. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has started a new fund, with a total of $2 million initially available, to support research collaborations with industry and internships for graduate students.
• UofSC partnership with IBM seeds an entire ‘partner network.’ The announcement of a recent partnership involving the University of South Carolina, Nephron Pharmaceuticals, Yaskawa Motoman, and Siemens tells the story of a collaboration between a university’s faculty and students and several industry partners to develop an innovative pharmaceutical solution. But this collaboration, impressive as it is, tells only part of the story.
• Retail innovation lab is focus of new McGill research collaboration. A real, live retail store is serving as the “laboratory” for a research collaboration between McGill University and Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., a leader in the Canadian convenience store industry.
• Top brass at U Arizona and Raytheon take partnership to the highest level. Universities and industry partners consistently stress the importance of interfacing at all levels, including the “C-Suite,” and how important it is for their endeavors to have the support of top leadership. It is rare, however, to see that level of partnership demonstrated as publicly as having the two presidents share a byline.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the February 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now to get access every month to the best guidance available on expanding industry engagement efforts and attracting and managing corporate partnerships, as well as access to our online archive of back issues.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 2, February 2021

• Transactional to strategic: When is the time right to make the transition? Corporate engagement conversations these days are rife with terms like “holistic engagement,” and “strategic partnerships.” Long-term partnerships involving deep engagement with industry partners in multiple areas of collaboration are greatly desired, but as the ancient Chinese proverb says, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” So, how does a relationship grow from that first step into something more? How does the university know when the time to make such a move is right, and how do they approach their industry partner?
• UGA launches Student Industry Fellows Program to enhance talent pipeline. The University of Georgia has just launched its Student Industry Fellows Program (SIFP), an initiative designed to “cultivate innovation competencies” among undergrads and graduate students, enhance the school’s talent pipeline and workforce readiness, and generate partnerships with industry.
• Virtual Penn State event generates positive response from industry. The four-year-old industryXchange event, hosted by the Penn State College of Engineering, went “virtual” for the first time this year and didn’t skip a beat; attendance was up, and it generated requests from several industry representatives to contact faculty.
• Experienced partners form new logistics innovation hub. “There’s no substitute for experience,” goes the old adage, and if that holds true the future is bright for the planned logistics innovation hub in the port city of Savannah, GA.
• Student-industry collaboration leads to solution to improve truck driver safety. Collaborations between university students and industry can be gratifying in many ways, from the enhancement of students’ skillsets, which can yield careers for them and valuable employees for the company, to the creation or enhancement of a close relationship between the university and its industry partner. But a significant value added is created when the research results in a prototype that will meet the needs of the industry partner, and perhaps the industry in general.
• U Miami business school partners with company on FinTech boot camp. Joining a growing list of university-industry partnerships focusing on FinTech, the Miami Herbert Business School and 2U, Inc., an education technology leader, have collaborated on a 24-week, part-time, online boot camp that begins this month.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the January 2021 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now to get access every month to the best guidance available on expanding industry engagement efforts and attracting and managing corporate partnerships, as well as access to our online archive of back issues.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 3, No. 1, January 2021

• Planning process focuses on moderation in budget, teamwork in goal setting. While the fiscal year for many universities starts in July, the first quarter is when the planning process for the next year’s budget, as well as goals and objectives for corporate engagement, start to take shape. For corporate engagement executives, that often means taking care to stay within the fiscal guidelines established from “above,” while seeking input from key team members when establishing goals and objectives for the coming year.
• Universities create links to industry partners with custom education offerings. Customized education programs developed in concert with industry partners are helping to meet evolving industry needs, while at the same time creating the potential for creating or expanding on other partnership areas. Two such programs, separated by an ocean and with entirely different structures, are linked nonetheless in their foundational concepts and serve as excellent examples of this approach.
• GA Tech, Facebook partner to engage Black, Latino students in AI education. In the initial steps of a program of collaboration with U.S. universities “that serve significant populations of Black and Latino students,” Facebook has partnered with Georgia Tech to develop, co-teach, and fund graduate-level online deep learning courses. The program will be expanded in 2021 to include additional institutions.
• Bayer helps launch Cal State STEM education program for under-represented students. The Bayer USA Foundation has invested more than $1 million to help grow the Institute for STEM Education at California State University East Bay. The institute focuses on four main areas: early STEM education; extended learning programs including afterschool and family activities; professional training for educators; and supporting students in their transitions from high school to college and then from college to career.
• Strong university-industry partnership earns Guardian award for ‘Team Hydroflex.’ While the Guardian University Awards (Guardian is a well-known UK daily newspaper) specifically recognize ground-breaking projects from UK universities, by its very title their ‘Business Collaboration of the Year’ award is in reality bestowed upon both a university and its industry partner. The 2020 ward in this category was no exception: it recognized the efforts of both the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) at the University of Birmingham, and Porterbrook Leasing Company Limited, a leading participant in the rail leasing market.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the December 2020 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor monthly newsletter.

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

Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now to get access every month to the best guidance available on expanding industry engagement efforts and attracting and managing corporate partnerships, as well as access to our online archive of back issues.

University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 2, No. 12, December 2020

• Alliance management an integral part of successful industry engagement. Convincing a potential industry partner that an initial collaboration is attractive is one thing; keeping that partner on board and strengthening that relationship as the years go on is quite another, and that’s where alliance management comes in — as more and more university corporate engagement offices have come to realize.
• Faculty affiliates a key element in regional industry collaboration platform. A recently announced multi-disciplinary team of faculty affiliates will be one of the major components of Notre Dame University’s iNDustry Labs, a “new platform for collaboration with regional industry partners.”
• “Pilot” collaboration helps partners assess likelihood of long-term relationship. Job interviews have often been referred to as “crap shoots.” The candidate may have the perfect resume, may present well during the meeting, and there may be clear philosophical alignment between the applicant and the employer. And yet, until the new hire actually assumes that full-time position, there is still uncertainty as to whether the correct choice has been made. The same holds true for the early days of a university-industry partnership.
• AI tools can help address greater contract volumes and finite resources. As with most areas involved in university operations these days, industry contract management staff are facing the timeless challenge of “doing more with less.” Artificial intelligence tools could offer help
• Norfolk State, Netflix partner in virtual HBCU boot camp program. In an effort to help more college graduates of color enter the tech industry, Norfolk State University and Netflix are collaborating to launch the streaming giant’s first “Virtual HBCU Boot Camp.”