Collaborative Research: EPIIC: Building Institutional Capacity for External Partnerships

Building Institutional Capacity for External Partnerships (BICEP) is a team of four universities with the shared goal of collaboratively building their institutional capacity and knowledge for growing external partnerships that advance key technologies within their innovation ecosystems. Team members include Santa Clara University, Lawrence Technological University, Grand Valley State University, and Minnesota State University Mankato; each member is both a Primarily Undergraduate Institution (PUI) as well as an Emerging Research Institution (ERI). To address common challenges to participating in their regional innovation ecosystems, the BICEP team has identified three specific objectives on which to collaboratively focus through this proposed project: a) Operational Maturity in establishing institutional policies and structure to enable efficient and professional partnering, b) Professional Development to enhance the knowledge of faculty and staff to be better equipped to participate in and contribute to technology partnerships with external organizations, and c) Partner Engagement activities to support managing and strategically evolving partnerships over time. While the benefits of and strategies for developing partnerships are well documented, knowledge on how PUIs/ERIs can best grow a comprehensive array of external technical partnerships is very limited. Focusing on the areas of Operational Maturity, Professional Development and Partner Engagement, BICEP team members will identify a set of strategies, practices, and lessons learned relevant to how PUI/ERI institutions can, in general, build their capacity to support their regional innovation ecosystems. This new knowledge will be codified, documented, and disseminated through publications, workshops and a toolkit with resources that may be used by other PUI/ERI universities. In conducting this work, each institution will benefit from an increase in the number and quality of external partnerships, the ability to secure external funding and resources, and the capacity to grow programs in workforce development, use-inspired research and development, and research translation. This will catalyze faculty research opportunities, increase engagement of underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students within the federal STEM-related funding portfolio, enhance skills within the workforce, and contribute to the economic health of the BICEP team innovation ecosystems. 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.