Fulfilling the Public Mission of the Land-Grant System: Building Platforms for Collaboration and Impact (2025)
Chapter: 2 Reconnecting the Mission of Land-Grant Universities to Public Values Through Collaborative Partnerships
2
Reconnecting the Mission of Land-Grant Universities to Public Values Through Collaborative Partnerships
Over the course of their long and complex history, the public value of land-grant universities has often been in the eye of the beholder. Constituencies view these institutions through different lenses, and ambiguities in the foundational mission of the land-grant system have resulted in an evolving amalgamation of priorities and impacts across academia, research, society, and the economy. This flexibility has allowed the land-grant system to respond to changing conditions and needs but has weakened the perception of public service as the primary driver of the work of land-grant colleges and universities.
Today, there is new urgency for the land-grant system to rethink its public value in the current societal context, reconnect all its functions with the constituencies it serves, and rebalance its actions and investments to achieve greater impact. This conceptual recentering underscores the critical role of meaningful external collaborations to enable land-grant institutions to be align with and deliver on public values effectively.
RETHINKING THE MANDATE: THE MIXED HISTORY OF LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES
In his keynote presentation, Scott Peters of Cornell University provided context for the dilemma of the land-grant system. He described its complex history and the evolving roles of land-grant universities that reflect the multiple lenses with which the public interest can be viewed.
Peters identified three narratives through which people have interpreted the mission of the land-grant system: the heroic, the tragic, and the prophetic. The heroic narrative, he said, is “told in a way that positions scientists and land-grant faculty members as heroes who are developing new knowledge and technologies that are solving problems for farmers and for businesses and advancing the economic growth.” The tragic narrative traces the origins of land granted to states by the federal government in 1862, highlighting the historical context and implications of how that land was acquired.1 Additional critiques of the land-grant system include “environmental, cultural, and civic destruction,” Peters explained, as highlighted in books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; Jim Hightower’s Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times; and Wendell Barry’s The Unsettling of America. The prophetic narrative centers on pursuing “liberty, freedom, and democracy,” he said; this narrative describes the importance of developing solutions to problems at the local level by those directly impacted, with support from experts at land-grant universities.
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1 See https://www.hcn.org/issues/52-4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities/ (accessed July 12, 2025).
Response to Public Needs
In the early decades of the land-grant system, farming communities led the charge in making the system work for them, grounded in the notion that farmers can solve their own problems but will be most successful when aided by partnerships delivering expert advice and assistance. This perspective is reflected in the “Farm Bureau Creed,” by M. C. Burritt (1922):
We believe in self-help for ourselves, our community, our country; in our own abilities well developed and properly supported to solve our own problems; and in local and voluntary leadership. . . . We believe in a program, a definite, carefully considered plan of work, local in conception and in character, which looks toward the solution of the problems which are vital to the welfare of the farm and the home. This plan of action for the organization should be made at home by those most concerned, but with the best expert advice and assistance. We believe in a partnership between farmers and the public agricultural agencies—between practice and science—for the working out of this program.
The original emphasis on leveraging scientific and technical expertise to support farmers’ needs remains a key focus for many land-grant institutions to this day.
In addition, legislative acts in 1887,2 1890, 1914, and 1994 upheld and expanded the land-grant mission, catalyzed by various unmet public needs, such as economic development and rural education. In each case, the government effectively renewed its commitment to the land-grant system as a vital mechanism for addressing societal needs.
Land-grant universities also have played a leading role in responding to broader shifts in public priorities around education and research impact. For example, they were uniquely positioned to be first movers in advancing basic science research and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce development in response to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Act3 of 1950. They advanced use-inspired science, technology transfer, and the broader impact of research in response to the Bayh-Dole Act4 of 1980. With their comparatively comprehensive nature, experience working with industry, and historic focus on economic development, land-grant universities quickly built faculty capacity, research programs, and technology transfer infrastructure in response to these developments in the second half of the 20th century, ultimately outperforming non-land-grant universities in terms of disclosures, patents, and licensing income (Sternberg, 2014).
Shift Toward Research Emphasis
The latter accomplishments, however, came at some significant cost to the land-grant university charter, character, and connection to the public purpose of its work. As the country entered the industrial age, the land-grant institutions established in the original 1862 legislation (known as “1862s”) responded to the need for expertise in the industrial and mechanical
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2 See https://www.nifa.usda.gov/grants/programs/capacity-grants/hatch-act-1887-multistate-research-fund (accessed August 3, 2025).
3 See https://www.nsf.gov/about/authorizing-legislation (accessed July 13, 2025).
4 See Bayh-Dole Act, 35 U.S.C. § 200 et seq. (1981). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title35/html/USCODE-2011-title35-partII-chap18.htm (accessed July 12, 2025).
arts; this gave rise to disciplines such as agriculture and engineering and greater attention to graduates’ vocational development.
However, by the middle of the 20th century, U.S. higher education institutions had shifted focus toward the Germanic model of higher education, which emphasized the creation of new knowledge through research. This shift was perhaps most pronounced among land-grant universities, which by the end of the century, had changed from being primarily state-focused teaching institutions to globally focused research universities.
As the mission shifted toward research prestige and global market impacts, a direction encouraged by university ranking systems and reinforced by incentives for faculty to secure external grant funding and rewards for publication in high-impact journals, researchers became less engaged with addressing public concerns and less connected to the public education and service missions—which suffered as a result (Anderson, Malone, Akridge, 2024; Moustafa, 2025). The external pressures to focus on fundamental basic scientific research aimed at critical high-technology sectors and commercial outcomes further diminished their attention to solutions needed by the rural, low-income, and disadvantaged communities they were initially designed to serve (Barham, Foltz, and Melo, 2021; Geiger, 2017; Marcus, 2015; NRC, 1995). These changes gradually led the 1862 land-grant universities away from their distinctive strength in community-focused, mission-driven research and teaching (Kellogg Commission, 1999). During a panel presentation, University of Minnesota Professor Andrew Furco observed,
At a public land-grant university where research remains a top priority, fulfilling the public engagement mission is typically ‘relegated’ to an extension unit, or . . . to specific institutes or centers that have outreach and public service as their primary mission. This suggests that at these institutions, addressing the needs of the community and the society can be misinterpreted as being the responsibility of some units and not all units at the institution. . . . in other words, that addressing community or societal needs is not a responsibility of units whose primary work is research and/or teaching.
Conclusion 2-1: Land-grant colleges and universities have evolved in many directions in response to different opportunities and pressures which in some cases have also moved the institutions further from public engagement and collaboration, a situation that may have exacerbated the erosion of public trust in institutions of higher education in recent years.
LAND-GRANT INSTITUTIONS AND A CRISIS OF PUBLIC TRUST
Much has been written about the fissures in support for public institutions of higher education, as the product of multiple causes. These include concerns about the rising costs of tuition, reduced expectations that a college degree will translate into high-paying jobs, perceptions that teaching and learning are secondary interests to research, and doubts about the practical goals of esoteric research aims, as well as the slow pace at which basic science produces return on public investment (Schleifer, Friedman, and McNally, 2022). Further eroding trust in the integrity and quality of academic institutions are unease related to the irreproducibility of scientific studies, plagiarism, and a lack of transparency regarding potential conflicts of interest of research sponsors—all of which leave an opening for misinformation and disinformation to cripple the credible authority of objective inquiry (Baker, 2016;
Korbmacher et al., 2023; NASEM, 2017, 2025a). Growing partisanship in society is also attributed with fostering the perception that universities have departed “from the objective pursuit of knowledge to politically or ideologically driven agendas” (Anderson, Malone, and Akridge, 2024, p. 657).
Amid stressors that undermine public confidence in the land-grant system, the longstanding calls for institutional self-reflection have grown to a chorus. Investors in the future of the system (university administrators, faculty members, funders, collaborators, civic leaders) have called for an elevation of public values in a rebalancing of priorities (such as scientific and market values) (e.g., Bozeman, 2007; see also Box 2-1).
BOX 2-1
Public Values and Public Interest: Rebalancing Priorities
To restore public trust in the value of the land-grant system, there is a need to rebalance the relationships that are at the heart of public engagement to give equal weights to scientific, market, and public values. To understand how land-grant universities have evolved and should continue to evolve, a clear understanding of public values is needed. In his seminal work, Public Values and Public Interest: Counterbalancing Economic Individualism, Barry Bozeman (2007) defines public values as those that “provide normative consensus about (a) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be entitled; (b) the obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another; and (c) the principles on which governments and policies should be based” (p. 13).
Bozeman suggests that what is ultimately pursued (by policymakers) in advancing “the public interest” should be the result of a conscious effort to seek out and understand the values of multiple publics and deliberate on policy decisions in a process that employs fairness and a balancing of societal values. Bozeman’s framework is especially relevant to the land-grant system, which has historically stood at the intersection of education, research, and civic life. Land-grant universities are not just institutions of higher learning; they are engines of regional development, laboratories of participatory democracy, and incubators of public problem-solving. As the 21st century unfolds—with mounting ecological crises, deepening social divisions, and contested democratic norms—there is a pressing need to rethink and rebalance the mission of land-grant universities through a public values lens that takes into account the parts of society which have less agency and economic power to make their voices heard.
In practical terms, elevating public values in the mission of land-grant institutions is not a trivial exercise, but the steps taken to realize that change would set the stage for a renewal of the social contract of the university with the public, one that proceeds in partnership with the public in shaping a shared future.
RECONNECTING THE LAND-GRANT MISSION TO THE PUBLIC VALUE
Now is a critical moment to uplift the full spectrum of constituencies and communities served by the land-grant institution. The effort needed to bring university priorities in line with public values is one of institutional transformation both in what is pursued and in how it is pursued. Two key steps in that journey include:
- Integrating public purpose into the research portfolio and connecting to the teaching and cooperative extension activities.
- Replacing a university-centric modality with one of community engagement and collaboration.
Realigning Research, Teaching, and Cooperative Extension with Public Purpose
Executing the research, teaching, and extension missions entails different types of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary collaborations across programs, organizations, sectors, and constituencies. Rather than viewing these identities as disconnected, competing, and divergent missions, they could be reframed and realigned under a common framework within the university’s public mission, catalyzing a powerful transformation.
Interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral approaches to research show that a convergence of ideas and concepts from disparate fields can produce knowledge breakthroughs and open the door to wide-ranging innovation (NRC, 2014; NASEM, 2019, Roco, 2020) and produce more relevant solutions to complex problems (NASEM, 2021; D’Este and Robinson-Garcia, 2023). Recognizing this opportunity has created a movement in the science and technology community to break down siloed university structures that limit the flow of ideas and the interactions of researchers and educators across the institution and with others outside the academy (NASEM, 2023).
Even as basic research is pursued for its contribution to science globally, research can still be compatible with a more local need or public purpose. Albeit imperfectly and unevenly, land-grant universities have played a vital role in supporting the communities they serve by focusing on family and relationships, and on humanizing research and education. They have continued to attract people who are committed to creating partnerships between knowledge producers and users; between government, universities, and industries; between urban and rural communities; and between their research, teaching, and service missions of land-grant institutions.
The Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA)5 is one example. The idea for the initiative stemmed from a friendship between an accomplished plant scientist and a local farmer. Launched in 1992, MISA’s outcomes bring value to a broad spectrum of invested partners. Key to its success has been the creation of a platform for plant breeders, community partners, farmers, and rural sociologists to bring together technological and scientific advancements with values and concerns that are important to the community.
By taking on this challenge, universities and colleges will reinforce the prophetic mission embodied in the Farm Bureau Creed (Burritt, 1922) and further reflected in the Extension Professionals’ Creed.6 These creeds emphasize integrating sources of knowledge, traditions, and practices, along with partnerships between researchers and knowledge users to tackle the urgent issues and challenges faced by families, communities, and the broader public.
Redefining the Relationship of University to Community
A decade ago, a white paper by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) issued a call for higher education to “move engagement from the margin to the
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5 See https://misa.umn.edu/ (accessed July 13, 2025).
6 See https://extension.msstate.edu/content/extension-professionals-creed (accessed July 31, 2025).
mainstream by fully embedding engagement into the central core of the institution as a scholarly approach to teaching, research and service” (APLU Council on Engagement and Outreach, 2015, p. 2 of Executive Summary). As universities have moved in this direction, the idea of “outreach” as an approach to produce public knowledge is being replaced by engagement and partnership. Outreach is a university-centric model that focuses on transactional relationships in which academic knowledge is privileged and flows unidirectionally (Ostrom, 2020). The shift from university outreach to engagement has signaled a recognition that university community engagement is increasingly based on collaborations with external entities that are working toward common goals to tackle a myriad social, environmental, economic, and health-related issues. This community partnership model emphasizes reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationships (see Box 2-2) in which knowledge is co-created, multidirectional, and shared through collaboration among universities, communities, industry, and other knowledge groups. Meaningful university community collaborations require (1) a commitment to public values as a guiding principle; (2) investments in co-production and civic partnership; and (3) integrating and rebalancing the three core missions: research, teaching, and extension.
Although this shift has been underway for several decades, the transition is by no means complete (Kellogg Commission, 1999). Elements of the outreach model persist in academic culture, and structural barriers continue to impede a full embodiment of community engagement (Saltmarsh, Hartley, and Clayton, 2009). In a panel presentation, Pennsylvania State University Assistant Professor Justine Lindemann described how, for some communities, the outreach dynamic has biased the reach and focus of cooperative extension:
Cooperative extension . . . has consistently underserved, and even disserved, many groups of people, including Black and Brown farmers, including urban communities and populations, including small-scale farmers, and those who are pursuing alternative farming methods like agroecology or regenerative farming. . . . There are individual faculty members and extension educators whose work focuses on reaching communities and populations that are typically underserved by the institution. However, these individual efforts are unlikely to affect significant change without an institutionalized approach.
These statements raise the question of which groups and what topics get the attention of the land-grant institution. In rebalancing priorities in the “public interest” land-grant colleges and universities must therefore develop a broader view of the multiple publics it could serve and evaluate the societal benefits for doing so (see Box 2-1).
Land-grant institutions are in a strong position to serve as hubs for driving systemic societal and institutional change through partnerships. However, the mission alone is insufficient—it must be enacted through practices and embraced in the mindset of the institutional culture and leadership (see Chapter 3). A commitment to shared values—in which what is valued by the institution is aligned with what is valued by the communities it serves—is essential. Such a commitment, if sufficiently embedded, forms the basis upon which system stewards can form collaborative partnerships that endure.
Complexity Requires Tailored Approaches and Flexibility
It is also important to recognize that land-grant universities function as “multiversities,” in that they are engaged in large variety of decentralized activities and are beholden to a
variety of purposes and constituents, each with a different perception of the institution’s identity (Kerr, 2001). For example, these institutions produce research and support its translation to practical applications; they educate and train students; and they act as an economic anchor and engine for the communities in which they are situated. The complex nature of multiversities demands alignment across varied invested partners and purposes; thus, the pursuit of engagement and, ultimately, collaboration will not be one-size-fits-all.
The potential to incorporate partnerships with other educational institutions in the land-grant system can take advantage of the different assets of each. For example, the 1994 Tribal Colleges and Universities have the fewest resources and lack research capacity but, compared with the better-funded 1862 institutions, are more tightly coupled to the members of their tribal nations and their needs. Authentic collaboration can produce impacts for which both institutions can take credit and receive benefits, which would not likely occur in the absence of a partnership (e.g., see Box 2-4). Similarly, the 1890s institutions have networks into small-scale enterprises and disadvantaged communities that could be avenues for broader impact, through collaboration with communities in partnership with other institutions bringing complementary assets.
When viewed broadly, the land-grant system has strong potential for wide-ranging and impactful interdisciplinary research, teaching, and extension. At a minimum, long-term partnerships among land-grant institutions at the state level could drive meaningful change. Examples where this has taken place with deep commitment of unified goals are found in Michigan and Virginia (NASEM, 2022). The Michigan Inter-Tribal Land Grant Extension System (MILES)7 brings together the states’ land-grant institutions, Tribal Nations, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture “to coordinate an integrated land-grant system in Michigan and to promote collaboration to determine how to best serve all Tribal Nations, communities, and their citizens” (NASEM, 2022, p. 16). MILES’s goals include “addressing programmatic and research requests; developing leadership; conserving natural resources; conducting family and consumer science; and promoting health, nutrition, and economic development” (NASEM, 2022, p. 16). The Viriginia Cooperative Extension is a collaborative effort between Virginia Tech (an 1862 institution) and Virginia State University (an 1890 institution), which “welcome all faculty across both institutions, the university presidents talk to each other, and there is recognition that participants must remain mindful of the disparate resource allocations and do not require everything to be ‘equal’” (NASEM, 2022, p. 15). By translating the research from both universities, the citizens of Virginia benefit from their work, as they provide “a comprehensive collection of resources, programs, and services that are research-proven, accessible, and contain actionable information that supports the success and resilience of individuals and communities throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia and beyond” (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2024, para. 1).
Conclusion 2-2: Rebalancing the priorities of the land-grant institutions to align its mission with public values, integrating public purpose into research, teaching, and extension, and transitioning towards a community engagement model offers a way for the land-grant system to reconnect with the public and overcome public skepticism of the value of institutions of higher education.
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7 See https://www.canr.msu.edu/tribal_education/miles (accessed August 7, 2025).
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE LONG TERM
In Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good, Gavazzi and Gee (2018) offer a vision for the land-grant system to continue its relevance in a rapidly evolving society by renewing its mission of “public good.” The authors advocate a return to the foundational mission of these institutions: community engagement, extension services, and applied research. Land-grants can then serve as trusted, long-term partners in advancing higher education, agriculture, and science for the benefit of the broader public.
Keynote speaker Scott Peters, Cornell University, described relationship building as a core value of land-grant universities, as it enables the universities to advance outcomes that are of value to society:
These relationships, these partnerships and collaborations that are built through the relationships are . . . about helping people understand and be engaged as partners in pursuing work that will increase the health and vitality of the things that they care most deeply about. Those things, of course, are our children and our families, our communities, businesses, livelihoods, our natural environment.
To engage in a collaboration, potential partners should see how doing so will help to advance their goals—not only to address a particular problem at hand but to work toward a longer-term vision. Reciprocity, a hallmark of a successful collaboration, is driven by participants’ identity and values. Institutional engagement—in which partners share their respective views of systems-level needs, desired outcomes, and capacities—builds trust that is the basis for successful long-term relationships and collaborative projects. It is also essential to capture and communicate the values generated through these efforts by performing public value assessments and communicate outcomes with purpose, authenticity, and transparency.
Many institutions have formed successful collaborations around projects or programs, but these collaborations come and go as personnel, priorities, and funding shift over time. Deeper and more durable partnerships are required to create robust ecosystems of engagement that will deliver value to the public in the long run. As evidenced by the growing number of universities and colleges that have received the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement, there is recognition that institutional capacity for supporting these types of partnerships is vital (see Box 2-2).
What are the ingredients of staying power for partnerships? Three essential components are shared goals, credibility, and people empowered to do the work. These components are foundational to establishing collaborative platforms, which in turn form the institutional infrastructure to allow collaborative partnerships to grow, evolve, and continue to deliver value as circumstances change in the future.
Shared Goals
One prerequisite of successful long-term collaboration is the recognition of the partnership’s importance in advancing shared goals. To endure beyond a particular project, these goals should address systemic issues important to both parties. While partners need to agree on the focus and goals of the relationship, they do not need to receive the same tangible outcomes from it. For example, an industry partner may be motivated by a workforce shortfall and need for talent acquisition or by a need for new scientific knowledge or technical
BOX 2-2
Community Engagement
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching sponsors Elective Classifications recognizing higher education institutions for their excellence in specific areas and missions. There are three elective classifications: the Elective Classification for Community Engagement, the Elective Classification for Leadership for Public Purpose, and the Elective Classification for Sustainability.a The Elective Classification for Community engagement describes “community engagement” as “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. The purpose of community engagement is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching, and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.”b
a See https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/elective-classifications/ (accessed August 1, 2025).
b See https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/elective-classifications/community-engagement/ (accessed on July 11, 2025).
solutions (see Box 2-3). Similarly, universities may be motivated by a desire to strengthen students’ career prospects or to translate new knowledge or capabilities into practical applications in the marketplace or communities (see Box 2-4). The partners’ goals may overlap or be different but complementary; in any case, clarifying the motivators on each side is important to align structures and activities for mutual benefit. Transparency in recognizing what each party seeks to gain from a collaborative partnership will inform how each party invests in the infrastructure that will allow the partnership to generate the desired outcomes.
Credibility
Partnerships are built on relationships and trust and should be cultivated at all levels. Institutional leaders play a particularly important role as their buy-in is foundational to the credibility of any partnership. From a practical standpoint, it is vital to acknowledge how authority, power, and influence over the partnership are shared among the parties involved. In addition to elucidating the terms of the partnership, fostering a shared sense of expertise—in which each party recognizes and values the unique knowledge and contributions the other brings to the partnership—reinforces the credibility of the authority structures by connecting the sharing of power to the core motivators behind the partnership’s existence.
Dr. Adrian Quijada, director of the Land Grant Office of Sustainability at Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC), described ongoing efforts to foster collaboration between TOCC and the University of Arizona (UA) (an 1862 land-grant university), Northern Arizona University, and Arizona State University. TOCC supports the educational needs of the Tohono O’odham Nation as one of 29 Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) that gained land-grant status in 1994 (the membership has since risen to 35 [AIHEC, 2022]). Quijada noted that the 1862s have historically received more funding than the 1890 and 1994 institutions, creating a mismatch in status and resources that influences power dynamics, with detrimental effects for balanced participation in collaboration and decision making (CRS, 2019, 2022a, 2022b; Lee and Keys, 2013; Smith, 2023).
BOX 2-3
Industry Insights from Procter and Gamble: Technical Needs as the Core of Successful University Collaborations
For companies, a core motivator for collaborating with universities is a need for technical solutions—whether materials, methods, or mechanistic insights—with talent acquisition being a secondary focus.a Procter and Gamble’s (P&G) Connect + Develop teamb highlights what makes for successful partnerships from the industry perspective. In one example, the company partnered with an expert at The Ohio State University c, d to conduct efficacy tests on a new herbicide, accelerating the launch of the company’s first lawn-and-garden product in 2025.
Universities are just one among many types of entities P&G collaborates with; other partners include individual inventors, startups, established companies, national labs, consortia, and funding agencies. In a given year, the company typically conducts projects with 20–30 universities. Some of these engagements take the form of 1-year sponsored research projects.
The company also supports student engagement programs, such as the P&G Digital Accelerator at the University of Cincinnati,e which has provided almost 500 University of Cincinnati students opportunities to perform research with technical staff at P&G since its inception in 2008.f
P&G has also established long-term partnership agreements with a handful of universities. These typically start with an engagement focused on a topic where the university has excellence in an area that fits the company’s needs. The partnership then expands to other colleges and departments to offer enduring value across multiple projects relevant to the company’s strategic priorities. In addition, P&G has participated in several NSF programs to establish industry–university consortia for advancing research in particular areas, including the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers programg and the Molecular Foundations for Sustainability: Sustainable Polymers Enabled by Emerging Data Analytics program.h, i
While public–private partnerships can take many forms, as these examples demonstrate, ultimately, collaborations need to solve problems and deliver value for companies.
a Based on comments Peter Ellingson, Procter and Gamble, provided to the committee on June 12, 2025.
b See https://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/ (accessed July 10, 2025).
c See https://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/what-is-connect-develop (accessed August 14, 2025).
d See https://spruceit.com/questions/ (accessed August 14, 2025).
e See https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2025/06/uc-chemistry-pg-collaborate-on-antibacterial-research.html.
f See https://ceas.uc.edu/research/centers-labs/uc-simulation-center.html (accessed July 10, 2025).
g See https://iucrc.nsf.gov/ (accessed July 10, 2025).
h See https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/mfs-speed-molecular-foundations-sustainability-sustainable-polymers/506227/nsf24-567 (accessed July 10, 2025).
i See https://pgresearchdevelop.com/blog/national-science-foundation-recognition/ (accessed August 14, 2025).
Approaches to community engagement and problem solving can vary between institutions that serve different constituencies, have different priorities, and have different governance and compliance requirements. Despite these barriers, institutional leaders in Arizona recognized the value of combining research capabilities with Indigenous knowledge in partnerships focused on advancing innovations that can address issues such as food insecurity, sustainable agriculture, and workforce development; they continue to work to build collaborative partnerships that can amplify collective impact.
BOX 2-4
Leveraging Strengths, Transforming Communities: The Purdue–Turtle Mountain Community College Partnership
Communities are focused on addressing issues that their members identify as priorities through processes that reflect and respond to the community’s culture, needs, capabilities, and goals. A collaboration between Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC) and Purdue University Center for Regional Development exemplifies how community-university partnerships can leverage the strengths of each party to achieve on-the-ground impacts. TMCC, a private tribal land-grant institution founded by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, identified the lack of access to substance use treatment as a key problem facing tribal residents. Purdue collaborated with TMCC in 2019 through the USDA’s Rural Economic Development Innovation (REDI) program. The funds allowed Purdue to collaborate with TMCC to establish the Turtle Mountain Recovery Center.a
Over the course of a 5-year collaborative effort, TMCC and Purdue established a $15 million substance use treatment centerb. By working as equal participants in a collaborative partnership, unconstrained by institutional hierarchy, the participants were able to focus on strategies that would have the greatest impact. For TMCC, this meant focusing on workforce development to support the center’s operations; for Purdue University collaborators, this meant offering technical assistance to support TMCC partners in developing the clinical program and navigating the policy and regulatory considerations. The recovery center opened in the Fall of 2024 and has been providing outpatient services.c
SOURCES: Adams et al., 2023; Purdue University Extension, 2021.
a See https://extension.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/students-help-design-recovery-center.html (accessed August 14, 2025).
b See https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/thompsonlab/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2025/03/2021_PurdueCCED_TurtleMountainRecoveryCenter-BelcourtNorthDakota_ProjectReport.pdf (accessed August 14, 2025).
c See https://tmrecoverycenter.com/ (accessed August 14, 2025).
Quijada expanded on sustainability efforts between TOCC, UA’s Office of Sustainability, and the Pima Community College. The institutions are pursuing the Carnegie Elective Classification for Sustainability,8 which emphasizes collaboration among educational entities. One of TOCC’s key goals is workforce development. They have established an articulation agreement with the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment that allows their students to transfer based on completed courses. This collaboration also supports their microcertificate program in natural resources, which prepares graduates for field-assistant job opportunities for tribal students.
People Empowered to Do the Work
Organizations do not collaborate; it is the people within organizations who do the work of collaborating. As such, it is imperative for institutions of higher education to empower individuals. To be successful in the long run, collaborative partnerships require people who act as conveners, boundary spanners, and system stewards, and these functions need to operate at all levels, from individual faculty members and project teams to institutional leaders.
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8 See https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/elective-classifications/sustainability/ (accessed August 1, 2025).
Empowering individuals to carry out collaborative partnerships requires a multipronged approach to creating incentives, capabilities, and a culture of collaboration. One way to do this is to create specific roles within the organization dedicated to supporting partnerships. Another way is to embed the expectation to engage in collaborative work within existing roles. Both approaches involve establishing clear incentives that make collaboration core to one’s job performance, rather than treating it as extra or optional. In addition to formalizing the incentives and rewards for this work, it is also crucial for institutions to enable individuals to build the knowledge and skills to do it effectively. Professional development, and especially the opportunity for experiential learning—or “learning by doing”—is essential. Mentorship and communities of practice can enhance this skill building.
Emily Ozer, Professor of Community Health Sciences and faculty liaison to the executive vice chancellor and provost on public scholarship and engagement at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, highlighted the UC Community Engagement Network9 as an example of fostering collaboration to support community engagement across various sectors within the 10 UC campuses. The network brings together community engagement administrators, faculty, and staff to share best practices, methods, and resources in research, teaching, and learning, and to promote alignment of systemwide policies with values in community engagement and public impact. Creating these networks ensures institutional knowledge and structures can carry collaborations forward even if a particular individual leaves the organization.
In many cases, effectively and sustainably empowering individuals to do collaborative work will involve a cultural shift toward embracing an outward-facing mindset in academia. In other worlds, how academic researchers see themselves and their role heavily influences whether collaborations endure or fizzle out. As discussed in the book Reframing Academic Leadership (Bolman and Gallos, 2011), academic researchers and administrators face a myriad of different and sometimes colliding norms and values. To act effectively as boundary spanners or cultural brokers, they need to view their roles and institutions from multiple perspectives, even acknowledging being seen as interlopers or trespassers in communities. This requires recognizing the different domains in which they operate—personal and institutional, local and global—and taking an honest look at how internal and external expectations shape their priorities and behaviors. Being deliberate in reflecting on their own habits, seeking growth opportunities, actively soliciting input from others, and expanding their frame of reference can help academic leaders become better practitioners and partners.
Boundary spanners (Bolman and Gallos, 2011):
embrace the work of an informal educator and diplomat—an emissary shuttling back and forth between two different worlds to facilitate mutual learning and productive agreements. Leaders who see the possibilities and bring the necessary skills assist their institutions in developing creative partnerships. (p. 146)
In essence, to build collaborations with staying power, academics need to not only focus on their own vision for translating research into applications but become diplomats and leaders who can effectively bridge worlds to facilitate mutual learning and productive partnerships. David Weerts, Associate Vice Provost for Public Engagement and Professor of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, shared
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9 See https://uccommunityengagementnetwork.org/ (accessed July 15, 2025).
a “partnership checklist” for partners to state their self-interests, establish a shared decision-making process, and plan to manage the partnership (see University of Minnesota, 2024).
Conclusion 2-3: Authentic engagement and relationship building for the long term sets the stage for successful and thriving collaborations. Institutional partnerships built on shared goals, transparency, trust, and mutual respect are foundational for collaborative projects to have a long-lasting impact.
