Trustees discussed IU’s status as a research university at their Friday meeting.
Bill
Stephan and Tony Armstrong from the IU Research and Technology
Corporation said there has been an increase in disclosures, patents and
startups and a simultaneous decline in licensing in recent years.
“I think it’s fair to say there are heightened expectations for research universities,” Stephan said.
The IURTC representatives proposed potential strategies to encourage research and entrepreneurial spirit at the University.
The
first proposed strategy was moving the IURTC to a location on the IUPUI
campus to more directly engage with the University community.
They
also plan to direct more resources to high-potential startups, an idea
they said they plan to bring to Bloomington through the School of
Informatics and Computing.
Additional funding may be raised by work with the IU Foundation to find more seed money for projects.
Stephan and Armstrong said IU is greatly disadvantaged without an engineering program and needs an applied technology program.
“We’ve
got to sit down and look at this thing strategically in terms of what
we have, because there’s a lot of things we don’t have,” Trustee Thomas
Riley said.
Riley praised the SOIC and suggested that the
school’s programs may make up for a lack of engineering programs in the
University.
The last strategy was to encourage more
entrepreneurial spirit in the University, but Stephan and Armstrong said
this effort would depend on cultural changes.
During the meeting
of the Board of Trustees University Relations Committee Friday,
trustees heard about student engagement from Alexa Ardnt and Chelsea
Wheeler, two graduate students at IUPUI.
Wheeler and Ardnt have
conducted extensive research and visits to all IU campuses to determine
how engaged students are in university decision-making.
They
found notable variance in how involved students feel they are from
campus to campus, but did not report conclusions about student
involvement at specific campuses.
As part of their method, they
sent an online survey to key administrators across university campuses
asking about student involvement in governance, including student
advisory boards and student government.
Ardnt and Wheeler are still continuing their research. The trustees thanked them for their work.
“I
think it’s critically important that we never lose sight of the fact of
why we’re here, that you’re the consumers of the product we’re
selling,” Trustee Patrick Shoulders said.
Anna Hyzy
Trustees discuss IU as research university, student involvement at Friday meetings
Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe