Culturing and leveraging allied industry support for academic programs

Abstract Text: 

The mission of public universities includes undergraduate, graduate, professional, and continuing education, basic and applied research, and dissemination of information via extension programing.  State-supported funding for academic positions has eroded, but its reductions usually pale relative to the cuts realized by extension departments.  Delivery methods used by extension have changed dramatically in the last 30 years concurrent with the changing structure of the dairy industry (fewer herds but more cows per herd), educational media, access to information, corporate industry support, and shrinking state economic support.  One area of potential support for consideration is allied industry; however, universities are under increasing scrutiny from the public pharmaceutical companies with whom they interact.   How does academia experience productive relationships with industry representatives without appearing to “being bought and paid for”?

Academic and extension programs should consider the synergistic potential that exists for collaborative efforts with allied industry and pharmaceutical companies.  Both industry and academia want to conduct rigorous scientific studies to help improve the level of knowledge and to develop new products or technologies.  Unfortunately, many faculty members see their corporate industry allies only as potential cash cows, ready to donate or pay for product promotion.  However, this viewpoint is problematic and limited in scope.  Consider how many former academics are employed in the corporate world.  Many were hired away from universities specifically because of their talents and abilities.  Some formerly advised graduate students, taught classes, and ran research programs of their own.  There is a wealth of knowledge available to help team-teach portions of courses or to serve as adjunct faculty on graduate committees. Specific collaborative efforts experienced by the authors include the teaching of specialty courses in undergraduate, graduate and veterinary medicine courses, guest authoring for university publications, serving on Masters or PhD committees as subject matter experts, partnering with faculty members to conduct and publish scientific work unrelated to any specific product or technology, speaking at animal health conferences sponsored by universities, and working with a core faculty group at a university on an annual basis for the purposes of simply brainstorming and sharing potential research ideas.  Pre-established boundaries around product highlighting or advertising and an agreement around preservation of the ability to publish negative research findings are both key to high integrity collaborative efforts.  However, there are many additional opportunities to be experienced through healthy collaborative efforts between academia/extension and their corporate or allied industry.

Keywords: Industry support, Extension, Collaboration