From the March 7, 2003, edition of The Triangle Business Journal

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2003/03/10/focus1.html

By Richard R. Rogoski  

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Ties between business and academia have upsides and downsides. But whatever side, the topic often is one of controversy.

An ongoing question of debate is whether businesses – through gifts, advisory board memberships and other such relations – cash in on their access to influence decisions as basic as curriculum selection.

Joe Freddoso, senior manager of external affairs at Cisco Systems in Research Triangle Park, is a member of the board of advisors at North Carolina State University's College of Management. He says that any influence he and others might have on course offerings is indirect at best.

"We work with the universities all the time," he says. "They ask us questions. In terms of influencing the curriculum, we don't. We'll say, 'Here's what we see as trends.'"

Ed Hand, NCSU's director of corporate and foundation relations, says tracking trends works both ways. "We have faculty members who serve as consultants, so they're aware of trends," he says. "But we can't have companies dictate curricula."

Andy Rindos, program director at IBM's RTP Center for Advanced Studies, says universities ask a lot of questions. But they want specific answers, he says. "They are actively pursuing that feedback," says Rindos. "They want the feedback about what skills their students need."

Sara Frisch, director of communications at NCSU's College of Management, says it's the curriculum committee, made up of faculty members, that designs the courses.

But the members do ask questions of the school's advisory board, which is chaired by Brian Connors, chief technology officer of IBM's Personal Systems Group.

"Part of N.C. State's mission is to prepare students for changing trends in business," Frisch says. "We ask very general questions. We do not add courses based on what one business or industry requests."
Maybe not one.

But according to John Gilligan, NCSU's vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, the Master of Computer Networking degree, which is granted by the university's College of Engineering, resulted from the lobbying efforts of a group of companies including Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, IBM and Ericsson.

"The companies came to us and showed there was wide-based support," Gilligan says.

That kind of support also was a factor in the College of Management gaining permission in April to begin offering a Master of Business Administration rather than a Master of Science in management, says Frisch.

"Students, alumni and employers were pushing to change the name," she says.

The students, she notes, were completing an MBA curriculum but not graduating with an MBA. And local employers "had a hard time bringing it back to their HR departments," Frisch says.

DRAWING THE LINE

Rick Staelin, deputy dean at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business stresses that the school does not allow corporations to directly influence the types of courses being offered. "As far as Fuqua is concerned, curricula is designed by faculty, not by corporations," he says.

Yet Staelin admits that the faculty will sometimes go to the Board of Visitors to ask for advice, but he says board members are not there as representatives of their firms.

When it comes to conducting market research on what companies are looking for in new hires, Fuqua's faculty talks to corporate recruiters, not board members, he says.

Every year, between 10 and 15 percent of elective courses offered at Fuqua are new, Staelin says. But all of them are developed by faculty members who have gained their own expertise in these fields, he says.

Gauging how much influence companies have on courses of study often depends on how programs are set up. North Carolina Central University, for example, offers a hospitality and tourism curriculum in its business school that relies heavily on industry insiders, says Susan Hester, director of corporate and foundation relations in the Office of Institutional Advancement.

Hester points out, "The curriculum was formalized in conjunction with people in the industry acting in an advisory role."

The university's new Biomedical/Biotech Research Institute was established under the guidance of a committee whose members came from GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Triangle Pharmaceuticals, National Institute of Environmental Health Studies, the Environmental Protection Agency, NCSU, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, she says.

Mary Anne Rhyne, a GSK spokeswoman, says a major motivator for GSK was "to increase the diversity of scientists out there."

NCCU representatives also are meeting with representatives from Capitol Broadcasting Co., the Herald Sun newspaper and First Citizens Bank "to set up a committee to change our mass communication curriculum," Hester says.

Relying on industry experts to share their knowledge with students is common – even if their role is that of a "volunteer consultant." NCSU's College of Management recently named David Rendall, a former Gartner executive and a telecommunications industry analyst, an entrepreneur-in-residence. And retired GSK executive Sam Straight was named executive-in-residence for the college's supply chain resource consortium.

LINES NOT ALWAYS CLEAR

Sometimes, the role and influence that an individual company gains in academia is not easy to determine.

Cisco, for example, offers a Networking Academy that is "e-delivered" to high schools, community colleges and universities around the world, Freddoso says.

The certification-based curriculum, is offered locally at NCSU, NCCU and St. Augustine's College. "The institutions wanted to offer it," Freddoso says.

In a similar vein, SAS Institute in Cary has forged relationships with a number of area schools. It has a "blanket agreement with the UNC System and a separate agreement with N.C. State," says Jerry Oglesby, director of higher education in SAS's Higher Education Group.

"Our goal is to raise the awareness of SAS in the universities and colleges," he explains. "We have about 65 courses that we offer, and those training materials are available to colleges at no cost." Oglesby says SAS will provide curriculum assistance to any college or university that wants it.

SAS and NCSU also have partnered in a visiting faculty program. In its pilot semester, the program will enable a professor from NCSU's technical communications program to temporarily be relieved of teaching duties and work full time at SAS.

THE GIVING SPIRIT

The influence companies have on a university often comes through monetary gifts.

To help NCCU establish its Biomedical/ Biotech Research Institute, the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation gave $2 million and provided free consultation by GSK scientists and engineers, Rhyne says.

In November, the foundation also announced it had committed $1.4 million over four years to UNC's School of Public Health to support a new program on ethnicity, culture and health outcomes.

In January, the foundation announced it is working with UNC's School of Public Health to create a Center for Excellence in Pharmacoepidemiology aimed at studying the use and effects of drugs in large numbers of people. GSK's gift in this case is $3 million over five years.

Under the agreement, UNC will develop continuing education and distance-learning courses for industry professionals, and GSK will sponsor graduate student internships in pharmacoepidemiology.

While most gifts to colleges and universities have traditionally been monetary, some companies prefer to donate products.

Each year, SAS gives away more than $1 million worth of software. Oglesby says the idea is to "generate use of the software among potential new users," especially after they graduate and start working.

SAS has spent the past year and a half working with Duke's Fuqua School of Business, the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC and NCSU's College of Management to increase partnership opportunities.

Like SAS, IBM prefers to bestow upon the universities gifts of hardware and software, although it also awards grants for specific research projects that could benefit IBM.

"In the future, companies like ours need the best and brightest,"says John Lucy, IBM's spokesman in RTP. "The best way to achieve that is to teach those students at the university level."

Rindos adds that during the current 2002-2003 academic year, IBM's gifts in grants, hardware and software to universities in North Carolina total $800,000. Of that, the value to NCSU is $83,000; for UNC it's $257,000; and for Duke it's $274,000.

Rindos says that over the past seven years IBM has given more than $7 million in hardware to NCSU. And, he says, that's money well spent. "N.C. State was number one last year for student recruits."

AN ONGOING GIFT

Companies that want to make a significant impact on a campus often choose endowments, especially endowed chairs.

According to Hester, the UNC system has a matching program: If a $1 million chair is to be established, the university needs to raise $667,000 from the company, and the UNC system will kick in the rest.

On the N.C. Central campus, there are six endowed chairs. Most have been filled by professors for a long time, Hester notes. But the $500,000 chair endowed by GSK upon completion of the BBRI still does not have a professor to fill the position.

In addition to its software gifts to NCSU, SAS announced in 2001 that it was setting up the SAS Institute Chair in Computer Science. SAS gave $666,666 toward the chair, which was matched by the UNC system to the tune of $333,333.

Jon Doyle is the first professor appointed to the chair. Doyle previously served as principal research scientist in the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

NCSU's College of Management has two chairs that are now filled, Frisch says. The Alan T. Dickson Distinguished University Professor of Technology Management Chair is filled by Michael Rappa, who is heading up the school's e-commerce initiative. And the Bank of America Distinguished University Professor Chair has been filled by Robert Handfield, who is organizing the Supply Chain Resource Consortium.

Duke University's Fuqua School has 17 endowed chairs, but almost all were established from private gifts, says Staelin. Most were the result of gifts made long ago. "The price of a chair has gone up substantially," he notes. "Now it's $1.5 million."

NCSU's Hand says the current recession and a downturn in the tech sector has made fundraising in general more difficult.

Hand says most chairs are now priced at a minimum of $1 million, although he adds that "$2.5 million is the threshold we like to pursue."

© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.

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