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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the November 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.

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 2, No. 11, November 2020

• As the pandemic continues, virtual efforts don’t deter industry engagement professionals. In the pre-COVID era, if you had asked a university-industry engagement professional whether they would rather meet with their counterpart in person or virtually, the answer would not have been in doubt. That does not mean, however, that they are distraught over the impact of the pandemic on partnering activity, where they most often have no choice but to meet virtually.
• Pitt reorganization part of plan to strengthen links with its external partners. The University of Pittsburgh has reorganized its industry engagement and economic development functions by placing them within its Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in a bid to improve its connection to industry and other partners.
• U Minnesota links corporate relations and tech transfer in new “front door” portal. While at some universities the various departments that interface with industry exist in their own siloed worlds, many have found that the way to optimize engagement opportunities is through teamwork, and that was certainly the case as the Corporate and Foundation Relations and Technology Commercialization teams at the University of Minnesota joined forces to create Industry Engagement at the U, a new portal serving as the “front door” to industry engagement.
• Experiential learning programs reap benefits in corp. branding, recruiting. University-industry engagement professionals frequently share their experiences and best practices when it comes to experiential programming with industry for their grad students, but it’s less common to hear about these programs from the industry perspective. Yet that perspective was exactly what the attendees got at a session during the recent UIDPConnect 2020 virtual conference.
• UNC, BASF sign master research agreement with roots in fundamental biology. BASF and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who have partnered in research since 2018, have signed a master research agreement “to jointly address global challenges such as climate change, food security and scarcity of resources.”
• Renovated steel mill provides new home for CMU manufacturing initiative. Picture a facility one-third of a mile long on the banks of the Monongahela River — a complex that formerly served as the home to Pittsburgh’s last operating steel mill, LTV’s Hazelwood Coke Works. Then further picture that facility divided into three separate buildings with new interior construction and renovation to create a new mini-ecosystem, now known as Mill 19, intended to be a focal point in Pittsburgh’s burgeoning innovation economy.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the October 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.

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 2, No. 10, October 2020

• Micro-internships proving an attractive alternative in the COVID era. Micro-internships can hardly be called “new,” but there’s no doubt they have become even more attractive since the advent of COVID-19. University leaders actively engaged with employers have shown increased interest as many traditional internships have been withdrawn by companies.
• New position at Rutgers is part of “reimagined” corporate engagement team. The recently announced position of Director of Entrepreneurship Partnerships at Rutgers University comes as the university works to essentially recreate its Corporate Engagement Center (CEC) after determining that something was lacking in its overall structure, according to Sacha Patera, PhD, associate vice president and head of the CEC.
• K-State rebrands research partnership cluster as Edge Collaboration District. What’s in a name? A lot more than you might think. A geographic area formerly known as the North Campus of Kansas State University is now being called the “Edge Collaboration District,” but the move is much more than a mere name change; it involves a rebranding that more accurately describes and defines the ongoing mission of an area where corporate, technical and research partners have come together and, hopefully, will do so in even greater strength and with clearer definition as the future unfolds.
• University, spinoff join forces to launch life science incubator. Universities launching incubators is old news. Corporations launching incubators is not uncommon. But universities teaming with corporations — with a spinoff, no less — not so much.
• UMaine in $100 million partnership to build offshore wind project. There are few, if any, “overnight successes” when it comes to university technologies attracting corporate partners, and this partnership may have a longer story than many — but the “wait” clearly seems to have paid off.
• NCATS pursues translational innovation by setting itself apart from other NIH centers. Sometimes the key to success involves taking “the road less travelled” (apologies to Robert Frost), and that is certainly the approach that The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has taken, according to its director Christopher P. Austin, MD.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the September 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.

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2020

• Universities, industry partners create new paths to success in the COVID era. There is no book for university-industry engagement response during a pandemic. Leaders on both sides of the partnership equation were forced to pivot quickly into a new reality, focusing not only on the continuity of their operations on campus, but also on maintaining and, if possible, strengthening existing relationships.
• Practice Labs enables ASU students to focus on business solutions. Like many other research universities Arizona State has been active in programs that link students experientially with industry partners, such as capstone projects and internships. However, about three years ago ASU took a major step beyond those traditional approaches with the creation of Practice Labs.
• UGA hosts virtual forum on internships for industry partners. Universities have been putting their best foot forward in terms of service to their industry partners when it comes to meeting the challenges of COVID-19. One clear example is the recent hosting of a virtual forum on internships facilitated by the University of Georgia’s Innovation District. The goal was to enable industry partners to share best practices, challenges, and strategies in their virtual summer internships.
• U Hawaii building “cradle to career” engineering talent pipeline. A first-ever workshop held at the University of Hawaii on July 22nd “to understand our current engineering landscape,” and a follow-up event August 20th, were just the initial steps in an ambitious initiative to “build a streamlined and connected cradle-to-career engineering talent pipeline, improving the preparedness and increasing the number of students to meet Hawaii’s engineering industry needs,” according to school officials.
• Northwestern supports industry partners with insights into racial equity issues. In this COVID age of university-industry collaboration, webinars and other virtual events have become more commonplace. Most of those sponsored by universities have seen the institutions functioning as facilitators, bringing together experts from both academia and industry to share their experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. But in a recent webinar, Northwestern University took a different tack: They presented themselves and one of their leading experts as thought leaders, delivering insights into a current “hot” topic that is not without controversy — racial justice and equality — and addressing the latest thinking on.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the August 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.

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University-Industry Engagement Advisor
Vol. 2, No. 8, August 2020

• Washington State widens corporate engagement potential with innovative department. While the term “corporate relations” may traditionally have tended to get the mind focused on a university’s external outreach to industry, there is clearly a myriad of activity that must occur internally to optimize partnership opportunities. Such a holistic approach has gained growing popularity in U-I circles, and it was recognition of these and other factors that led to an external review at Washington State University in 2016, resulting in the creation of the Innovation and Research Engagement Office, or IREO, which was formally launched in January 2018.
• Virginia Tech uses team-based approach to enhance industry engagement. In a few short years, Virginia Tech has transformed its approach to corporate engagement through its “LINK+LICENSE+LAUNCH” approach, a blended model of distinctly titled units that function together as a team. The model is designed to ensure optimal corporate engagement while enhancing the likelihood of bringing new innovations to market.
• Triple Helix partnership seeks to tackle COVID-19 and prevent future pandemics. The collaborations under way to create vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19 are almost too numerous to mention, but one of them, a collaboration of academia, industry and government called the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Discovery Initiative (READDI), is more ambitious than most: The global collaboration has set its goal at raising $500 million to generate five new drugs with human safety and dosing data (up to Phase II clinical trials) in five years to be ready for the next pandemic.
• PFI grants engendering greater university-industry research collaboration. The NSF’s Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) grant program makes no secret that a key part of its raison d’etre is to generate greater research collaboration between academia and industry; in fact, its eligibility requirements spell that intention out clearly.
• Australian university takes industry on virtual tour of engineering labs. Like many universities looking to connect with industry partners, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) had to quickly retool its recent planned industry tour of its engineering labs, pivoting to a virtual “tour” due to the coronavirus. Working with its partner in hosting the event, The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group®), the transformed virtual event and drew 150 attendees and succeed in making some lemonade out of what could have been a sour lemon. Its success offers some key lessons to other universities seeking to maintain outreach efforts despite restrictions on travel and in-person gatherings.