aaas annual meetingst. louis symposium on management and leadership of multi-institutional and...
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AAAS Annual Meeting—St. LouisSymposium on
Management and Leadership of Multi-Institutional and Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations
February 19, 2006
Growing the Capacity to Research, Innovate, and Diversify the S&E Workforce
Daryl E. ChubinAAAS Capacity Center
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• Origin: Established as a S&E human resource development consulting service August 2004 with 3-year, $400K grant from Sloan Foundation to AAAS
• Mission: Through nationally-calibrated research & technical assistance in examining programs & outcomes, foster institutional capacity to . . .
recruit, enroll, & support students diversify the faculty change programs, structures, & attitudes . . .
• Clients/Sponsors: Institutions of higher education corporations, & federal agencies
. . . focus on research, education, and institutional climate
AAAS Capacity Center at a Glance
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Example: Mining Institutional Assets in U.S. S&E
•Legal Primer: Remove barriers•Design Principles: Affirm opportunities•Conference Report: Document trends•AAAS Capacity Center: Embodies resources in Standing Our Ground (legal, cultural, research) for changing policies, programs, and practices re student success and faculty progress
www.aaas.org/standingourground
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Approach
• Practitioner perspective, not research or policy (but attentive to both)
• As a consulting organization, the Capacity Center bridges performers and sponsors (all are clients)
• We provide technical assistance on S&E human resources (by observing department/college practices within institutional culture)
• We take people as the issue—not a by-product of or add-on to other investments and activities
• We are “outsiders” (analytically, if not emotionally)
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Richard Florida’s The Creative Class: Leveraging Talent, not Technology Alone
“The university is perhaps the single most important institution of the creative age. It's certainly what gave the U.S. its huge edge in the 20th century, by virtue of attracting the best and the brightest from all around the world. Unfortunately, it's also the most mismanaged institution in many cases. . . . [T]he single biggest problem with all universities these days is their apparent inability—and in some cases blatant disinterest—in educating our population broadly across all social, economic, and ethnic demographics.”
. . . technology, tolerance, talent
source: www.fastcompany.com/articles/2005/11/fastcities_florida.html
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Cross-cutting Themes/Literatures• Management/organizational behavior
• Interdisciplinary research
• Collaborations partnerships
• Institutional transformation
• STEM careers/workforce
• Leadership
. . . evaluation of process and outcomes
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Outstanding Research Questions about Collaboration in Academic Settings• How do the distinctive strengths of one institution complement the
strengths of another?
• How does an institution (center, team, researcher) advertise the unique assets it could bring to a collaboration?
• To add value, the partners must recognize the collaboration as mutually beneficial. How does that happen? How does it build trust?
• How do private companies and nonprofits bring academic institutions together and create new opportunities? Do personal contacts build bridges or does organizational cachet solidify partnerships?
• At a project level, are collaborations efficient ways of acquiring knowledge and skills not resident in a local team—and of becoming more competitive?
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Barriers to Academic Innovation:Universities . . .
• Are configured in silos with separate disciplinary cultures and national/global orientations
• Don’t readily share best practices on campus
• Treat research/entrepreneurship & teaching as tradeoffs
• Lack campus community commitment to a set of core values
• Don’t reward what they preach & the market seeks, e.g., teamwork, problem-solving, skill-building, and cultural competence
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Types of Collaboration
1. Student-student (undergrad and grad)/faculty
2. Faculty-faculty/administrators/staff (same or different discipline, campus)
3. Inter-institutional (academic only)
4. Cross-sector (academic-corporate-federal-nonprofit)
. . . hard to form, harder to sustain
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Four Examples*
1. Undergrad-focused, public university, STEM careers
Issues: “imprinting” & creation of support groups, incentivizing faculty
mentors, integrating students into research teams
2. Graduate-focused, private university, diverse enrollment
Issues: recruitment sources, faculty as magnets, cost
3. Geographically-clustered universities (public & private), minority participation in STEM research—all levels
Issues: trust, multiple motivations/expectations, mutual accountability
4. Federally-funded program to create alliances (all types to impact participation in “computing”)
Issues: organization/management, defining outcomes & value-add
*based on AAAS Capacity Center projects
Four Examples*
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One Template: Lessons of BEST Program Review
• Building Engineering and Science Talent (public-private partnership derived in 2001 from congressional commission—www.bestworkforce.org)
• 120 experts organized into 3 panels (PreK-12, higher ed, workforce)
• 124 nominated higher ed-based STEM programs
• 12 selected via panel review as exemplary/ promising
• Features distilled into “design principles” that grow capacity (not shown/reviewed here)
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BEST Evaluation Criteria:Implications for Innovative Practice
BEST Evaluation Criteria: Implications for Innovative Practice
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Client-based Conclusions• S&E exhibits the more pronounced version of what ails the
institution—biases, shortcomings, risk-aversion
• Any collaboration or program that defies formal organization lines or relationships takes time to institutionalize
• Collaborations typically begin with soft money—and few survive to become lines in the institutional operating budget
• Innovators are not prophets in their own land—credibility comes from national/international recognition
• Campus leaders (President, Provost) can bless best practices of individual units and elevate them with institutional imprimatur
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Contact
Dr. Daryl E. Chubin
Director, AAAS Capacity Center
202-326-6785
www.aaascapacity.org