Older Centers Aided by NSF Working Well

Long before NSF Director Erich Bloch began beating the drums for multimilliondollar interdisciplinary research centers, foundation officials quietly embarked on a program to provide seed money for smaller cooperative research efforts between universities and industry. The program, which since 1979 has stimulated the creation of more than 40 such centers at schools around the country, offers valuable lessons in how to build industrial ties without sacrificing the quality of scientific research on campus. The keys to success include an attractive research agenda, hard-nosed management, academic independence, and proximity to the companies that foot the bill. Since 1978 NSF has spent $20 million on its University Industry Cooperative Research program. Industry has contributed $86 million and state governments $35 million. The net result of that expenditure has been proof that the academic community can help improve the climate for technological innovation in American industry. Although NSF initially gave out about $1 million over five years to individual centers, current grants average less than one-half of that amount, and can be as little as $50,000 a year. The federal grant is meant to be matched by outside sources; after five years industry and the state are expected to finance the entire program. The average center has eight to 10 researchers involved in up to a dozen research topics focused on a core technology. Success stories aren't hard to find. Ten years ago researchers had only a vague notion of bow computerized graphics could be used. But NSF decided it was a worthwhile idea, and in 1979 awarded a five-year, $1.1 million grant to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Interactive Computer Graphics. Seven industrial firms agreed to contribute a total of $120,000. Today the center has 38 industrial sponsors, including General Electric, IBM, Grumman, Westinghouse and Lockheed, and has attracted a total of $7.5 million in corporate support. In 1980 the Center for University of Massachusetts/Industry Research on Polymers was launched on the university's Amherst campus. A $250,000-a-year NSF grant, matched by industry, has been parlayed into an $800,000 annual contribution from industry, along with $200,000 in laboratory equipment. NSF no longer funds either center. A Winning Profile NSF officials, drawing on an extensive outside evaluation of the program conducted last year, have distilled characteristics important to the success of centers. Each must have a research agenda broad enough to attract a variety of firms but sufficiently focused to appeal to those in particular fields. There must be a place for it on the university campus, and university administrators must be willing to pay for significant portions of the center's overhead to ensure that commercial contributions pay for research rather than paper clips. There are three reasons a company joins a center, explained Ben O'Neil, director of the Center for Communications and Signal Processing at North Carolina State University, which was begun in 1982. The company wants to be a good corporate citizen, it hopes to recruit good graduate students, and it seeks a transfer of technology. An important factor in industry participation is proximity. Westinghouse, for example, has a facility five miles from the North Carolina center, and its engineers are in the labs constantly, talking to researchers and overseeing projects. "Those who don't participate tend to be those who are a plane ride away," said Gene Hayden, manager of systems engineering at Westinghouse, which has given $50,000 each year to the North Carolina center since its inception. "I can send an engineer for a two-hour meeting and it takes two hours. Somebody in another state loses an engineer for two days, plus the costs of the plane ride, hotel and living expenses." In addition to strong advocacy and support with the university's central administration, successful centers also need a director or staff with experience in industry to devise research that will appeal to these clients. Leadership and management skills are critical to the success of any center. "If you don't get good faculty and students, then you don't have a good program," said Mary Johnson, assistant director of the Rensselaer center. Successful centers also demand that researchers adhere to a schedule and that their work remain relevant, an approach that is not typical of universities. "The lack of adequate research management has been a common source of dissatisfaction among industrial participants," according to a 1982 practice manual on the program. "If a university does a poor job and the industry involved doesn't get anything out of it, then it will pull out of the program and brand all universities," said Johnson. "Or if the university gets burned with its companies, there is a danger officials will say they should have stayed in their ivory tower." Westinghouse's Hayden acknowledged the bottom-line orientation of most firms. "Typically, a company will think it's a good idea, and will join for a year or two," he said. "Then it finds out the research programs really aren't of use to that particular industry, and it drops out." Getting Too Involved Although the program is not meant to alter the dominant federal role in funding basic research at American universities, participants generally agree that it has helped open communication between academia and industry. Still, the relationship is not perfect. The transfer of technology has not always occurred as rapidly as companies had hoped. "There is a continual argument between those who feel the university ought to be doing applied research directly of benefit to company products, and those who think the university should only be doing long-range, basic research," explained North Carolina's O'Neil. "Somehow, the various centers have to make peace with these opposing ideas." Tenure is another frequent bone of contention. Researchers run the risk of falling behind their colleagues in traditional measures of academic success if, as Johnson says, "they get too closely involved in widget-making." At the same time, tenure can protect an administrator who needs to take an independent stance in negotiating with representatives from industry. Participants acknowledge that successful centers require major concessions from both sides. "We're dealing in a system where the university's primary goal is to educate and train graduate students who are working part-time on a project," Hayden said. "Industry's goal is to obtain research information they can use." Industry is seen as a collaboration that receives earlier and more detailed results than the rest of the research community. Similarly, most centers give the university first refusal on rights to any invention. But success has come as a cost. The growing number of university-industry collaborations may overwhelm the number of companies interested in participating. "Centers are becoming almost too prolific for industry to handle," Schwarzkopf said. In addition to the industry/university program, NSF operates engineering research centers and plans science and technology centers. The military has already given $125 million to 60 "university research initiatives" in an ongoing program that will compete for industry money. In response, Schwarzkopf has begun to plan consortia in which several centers cooperate on one project or several universities join together in one center. NSF's 1988 budget for the program will probably remain the same—$3 million—as it has for the past four years. While Schwarzkopf expects NSF to support five or six new centers this year, he said the number of future centers is uncertain. "The companies are getting selective," Schwarzkopf said. "So the companies are even saying, 'I don't want centers; I'm going to fund my own projects that I will own.' The centers concept will survive, and some will continue to expand. But there's going to be a shakeout." Turkington is a freelance writer in Reading, Pa.

Older Centers Aided by NSF Working Well

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