Fulfilling the Public Mission of the Land-Grant System: Building Platforms for Collaboration and Impact (2025)
Chapter: 6 Recommendations
6
Recommendations
This report offers a system-level review of land-grant colleges and universities; it shows that, holistically, there is great potential for the land-grant system to be more impactful than the sum of its parts. That potential can be realized by building long-term institutional partnerships inside and outside of the system; by the integration of public value into the core activities of research, education, and extension; through engagement in substantive collaborative projects with community, businesses, and organizations (representing many forms of “the public”); and by the evaluation of those collaborative activities to understand how they benefit the public, make the institution more effective, and broaden the impact of the land-grant system.
For more than two decades, leaders and observers of the land-grant system have been calling for concerted action to prioritize a connection between the value creation that takes place at colleges and universities and the public good, in its various forms. Collaborative projects among 1862 land-grant institutions—supported by legislated funds for agricultural research and frequently involving external partners—represent only a fraction of what is possible. The involvement of faculty from the 1890s and 1994 colleges and universities in 1862-led collaborative projects is rare. The potential to address the public good goes well beyond agriculture, because food, health, economy, and well-being, just like research, education, and public impact, are all closely connected; progress in one area often depends on advances in the others. However, the orientation of research and teaching programs from nonagricultural disciplines in the land-grant institutions toward public engagement and problem solving is currently uneven and constrained by institutional structures that are not consistently supportive of this work. To bring about broader impact, this needs to change.
In pursuit of the public interest, every institution of the land-grant “family” has assets to bring to the partnership table, such as research infrastructure, unique educational models, long-standing industry alliances, social networks, and more. An institutional accounting of those assets would provide universities and colleges with a basis for understanding what they can build on and what complementary assets partnerships with other institutions can provide in advancing their work. The system already has structures and networks attached to the 1862, 1890, and 1994 colleges and universities that open the door to communities—Tribal Nations, underrepresented and under-resourced communities, small to large businesses in their regions—and present an opportunity for disparate land-grant institutions to partner with and support each other in collaborations with different sectors. Although there is no reason that institutional partnerships could not extend beyond states to a multistate or even national scale, the opportunity for long-term collaborative platform building may be most easily attainable at the local, regional, and state levels. The proximity of academic institutions to their communities and the support of state-level political leadership make it a natural nexus for building trust and aligning values.
Building collaborative partnerships requires that land-grant institutions understand each other’s values, are transparent about their purposes, and share similar visions for making
social progress. Authentic engagement is a prerequisite for the pursuit of successful and impactful collaborative activities; it requires dedicated leadership, and the time and effort of people determined, trained, and empowered to engage. Boundary spanners, systems stewards, and conveners play a critical role at both the project and institutional levels.
The ability to make connections with communities, businesses, and other organizations is essential. Land-grant universities can learn from their Cooperative Extension programs and leverage community organizational structures; local community contacts; and relationships with people involved in agriculture, health, youth development, entrepreneurship, and other social concerns. In doing so, universities can expand the dimensions of their research and educational programs.
Finally, a culture that values and rewards engagement and collaboration, and a supportive ecosystem of people and institutions, ultimately makes collaboration possible. These components of institutional transformation must be built intentionally in a sustained manner.
The committee’s recommendations focus on how to make an engaged university a reality; they are directed at actors who can be most impactful in creating the conditions and capacities for the institutional changes needed to open the door to a new future for the land-grant system. Policymakers, university leaders, funders, and other groups invested in the public mission of the land-grant system have a role to play in catalyzing action.
RECOMMENDATIONS
RECOMMENDATION 1: Congress should use its legislative and funding authority to reinforce and provide additional support for the public service mandate of land-grant institutions and the system-wide expansion of institutional partnerships that generate public impact locally and nationally. Congress should require land-grant colleges and universities to assess their capacity for engagement with external partners using a benchmarking tool like the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement and develop action plans for strengthening their capabilities. These assessments and plans will help land-grant institutions coordinate, collaborate, and fill capacity gaps through internal and external support, including through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the administrative body for the land-grant funding.
RECOMMENDATION 2: State, tribal, and local elected officials, working with their in-state boards of regents and with campus-level and systemwide leadership, should pursue the formation of a partnership of their state land-grant and other academic institutions in the state that can establish collaborative platform(s) to facilitate the engagement of colleges, schools, and faculty members/staff with each other and with communities, businesses, and other organizations located in the state. Through consistent and intentional relationship building that removes bureaucratic and technical barriers, such platforms will facilitate collaborative projects by prospective partners (e.g., faculty and staff from different institutions and a community group) and will grow institutional and faculty expertise as a community of practice in integrating the needs and values of the public into research and teaching activities. Involving Cooperative Extension programs in these partnerships, when appropriate, will take advantage of their existing connections to communities across the state.
RECOMMENDATION 3: Leaders of land-grant institutions (university chancellors, provosts, and faculty senates) should formally recognize individuals who serve as boundary spanners or cultural brokers, system stewards, and convenors for their role in supporting the infrastructure and collaborative culture of their institutions, rewarding them through processes such as faculty tenure and promotion, staff annual evaluations, annual awards, and monetary prizes.
RECOMMENDATION 4: Managers of federal programs that fund research, education, and extension activities should pilot the involvement of eligible applicants in co-designing grant solicitations. The purpose of co-design, which would go beyond a listening session, would be to stay abreast of current trends (e.g., emerging issues, urgent needs) that are relevant to achieving societal goals through collaboration. Co-designing grant solicitations could elicit better proposals that result in a higher quality of community engagement and ultimately greater impacts. Scholars and practitioners of impact evaluation could be of assistance to funding agencies in identifying pertinent outcome measures that could capture the impacts of collaboration more fully.
RECOMMENDATION 5: APLU should create a clearinghouse of resources for land-grant institutions seeking to pursue transformation toward collaboration. These resources could include, for example, a list of national organizations, scholarly journals, and funding opportunities, as well as conferences, events, and other professional development opportunities. APLU should connect with national and international organizations such as the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship, Advancing Research Impact in Society, and others that can provide guidance, evidence-based research, and relevant and timely information.
RECOMMENDATION 6: National organizations that work on institutional transformation, together with funding agencies, foundations, companies, and donors, should educate executives and other university leaders about the returns of collaborative partnerships in meeting institutional goals for improving student success, supporting research excellence, building public trust, and increasing awareness of the public value impact of collaborative partnerships. The goal of these efforts would be to elevate leadership commitment to build infrastructure and support for sustained collaboration and engagement that outlasts any single individual.
NEXT STEPS
The following “next steps” are offered as specific suggestions for continued work, but do not rise to the level of formal recommendations. As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen collaborations across the land-grant system, the committee outlined actions and that could advance this work:
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A national convening of relevant academic deans, along with extension and research directors from all land-grant institutions, to support the development of an implementable collaborative platform for each state or small group of states.
- – Designed as a facilitated effort, this gathering could help establish foundational platform structures that promote sustained and intentional collaboration, integrating such efforts into the evolving fabric of the modern land-grant system.
- – The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) could support the convening.
- – Two National Academies publications could inform this work (NASEM, 2022, 2025b).
- Land-grant institution impact and communications professionals could gather to create a national strategy for articulating the historical and current impacts of the land-grant system on the daily lives of Americans. This strategy will aim to raise public awareness of the land-grant system and its value to society.
- – APLU could coordinate this gathering.
- – NIFA could support this gathering.
- Further attention could be given to graduate student training and preparing future faculty to actively support the cultural changes underway in the land-grant system. Educating the next generation of researchers and professionals could be useful for sustaining the efforts described in the recommendations. Ongoing discussions are addressing how to transform graduate education, including models that prepare students from a primarily academic career to those that prepare students for careers in industry and other sectors.
