Enabling Recognition of Translation for ART Awardee Institutions

This project seeks to support and study the 2024 Advancing Research Translation (ART) awardee institutions and their corresponding mentor institutions, including how they change to better value and support faculty innovation & entrepreneurship (I&E), including in in promotion & tenure (P&T) processes and structures. This work will support our Nation’s economy and higher education’s evolution to respond to modern societal needs, through accelerating research translation. As well, the project will support a greater diversity of faculty work, as solutions for our most pressing socio-scientific problems. Specific examples of these impacts include: (a) the increased level of engagement on university campuses around societally focused work and related faculty advancement, (b) the training of the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and researchers, (c) the societal impact realized from university discoveries through translation to the market, and (d) original research exploring these phenomena and relative efficacy of associated strategies and tactics. In addition, this program could serve as a model for other efforts to reform the academy’s reward structure on university campuses to be more responsive to the needs of society, via necessary, but complex and challenging, cultural change. The project activities cover multiple aspects: (a) site visits to ART awardee institutions for immediate on-the-ground support, (b) cohort-based model for ongoing development and support of institutional leaders, (c) process change pilots through institutional case studies, and (d) longitudinal study of ART institutions and the greater higher education landscape with respect to ART goals. All programming is targeted specifically for the ART awardee institutions (and their mentor institutions) to enable building of scalable models for ongoing support of current and future ART cohorts. This work will significantly advance the understanding of how to accelerate transition outputs on ART awardee institution campuses, including through addressing misalignments with (inter)organizational cultures, functioning and composition, and the reward structures and the processes at play at and between institutions of higher education and its sub-organizations. Case studies will inform national strategies, as well as colleges and universities hoping to advance ART goals and related culture change, including future ART program applicants - thereby increasing the likelihood for successful outcomes of reform efforts broadly. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.