A Dynamic Dialogue

This year's Royster Forum explored corporate connections

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Of all the annual forums that the Royster Society of Fellows has hosted, this year’s may have been the most anticipated. Originally scheduled for the day in January when sixteen inches of snow fell on Chapel Hill, the forum was postponed until April 18. Not that it needed the extra build-up. This year’s topic — the relationship between the University and the corporate world — promised to evoke strong opinions and to generate discussion on a variety of levels. After a three-month wait, a diverse audience of students, faculty, and community leaders crowded into the Carolina Inn to listen to and interact with some of the state’s most influential leaders.

Society Director John McGowan’s introductory address encapsulated the forum’s chief objective: "The University’s relations with the corporate world are in the process of dramatic change. Our goal today is to talk about what this relationship has meant in the past, and, more importantly, how this relationship should function in the future." To explore this important question, the Royster Society invited four speakers with first-hand experience in the UNC/corporate connection to deliver some brief remarks and respond to questions from the audience members. The result was a vibrant, dynamic, and, at times, controversial dialogue that encouraged a careful consideration of the issues at stake.

One of these issues involved the benefits that both universities and corporations can derive from working together. At the forum, almost everyone agreed that collaboration of some sort was mutually beneficial. At Carolina, corporations — particularly those in nearby Research Triangle Park — give graduate students the opportunity to learn within a business environment and gain valuable exposure to research applications and cutting-edge technologies. Contact with the University, in turn, enables industry to keep abreast of new research directions and helps them to identify well-trained future employees. Despite strong agreement regarding the potential benefits of partnering, there was some healthy disagreement about the form and extent that those relationships should take.

For instance, some students asserted that many corporations are involved in education to the extent that they derive direct benefit. They argue that corporations have a responsibility to use their considerable resources to support the basic underpinnings of society (like the University) in a more general manner. Dennis Gillings, the Chairman and CEO of Quintiles Transnational Corporation disagreed: "Corporations must spend their money wisely, in ways that will benefit their shareholders. Supporting specialized knowledge rather than general education is more in keeping with this goal." Gillings also pointed out, "While we and other corporations like us have a separate foundation that works on philanthropy, ‘societal needs’ are not something that guide our interaction with the University."

Yet not all members of the university community called for more corporate involvement. "The creative academic research that draws corporations to campuses in the first place," McGowan said, "could be inadvertently stifled by too much corporate influence."

David Lewis, vice president of Lord Corporation, agreed that such creativity is important, but maintained that some corporations can actually foster it. "Corporations sponsor lots of non-contract work at Universities that is more along the lines of traditional academic research." Moreover, he issued a reminder that "universities are not just educating people for jobs in academia, but for outside academia as well."

Another area of discussion was the relative lack of corporate support for programs in the social sciences and humanities. Most corporate funding is directed toward programs in the natural sciences, simply because this is the area of academia that most coincides with corporate research interests. Nonetheless, political science student Christina Ewig worried that this funding inequality could devalue those disciplines that receive less. Rob Fulcher, a graduate student in Microbiology and Immunology who is considering entering the corporate world following graduation, said that "since corporations may tend to under-emphasize the sociological and philosophical ramifications of technology, perhaps they could invest money in other disciplines to study questions of ideology and ethics."

Participants said the forum was especially fruitful because of the differing perspectives. Biology graduate student and Dearman Fellow Joe Thompson reflected that "it was refreshing to hear from those in the corporate world who are involved in these partnerships." The forum demonstrated that collaboration between universities and corporations has great potential to be a win-win situation, although the different missions of corporations and universities means that partners must think carefully about the nature of each relationship.

Nowhere was the potential for success more apparent than in the experiences of one of the four panelists, Elise Jackson. While she was pursuing her doctorate in the Carolina Toxicology program, Jackson worked for a Triangle company called the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology. It is this experience that Jackson credits with the success that she is finding in her new, post-graduation job at Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. "These off-campus interactions led directly to two job offers for me." Jackson explained, "Not only did they help me find employment directly in line with my interests, but they also gave me great preparation for my current job and made me comfortable with my daily tasks and responsibilities." Such success stories help validate David Lewis’ assertion that "the student is the biggest winner" in the corporate relationship.

Ultimately, many of the participants urged moderation as the best approach for reaping the benefits of partnership. Dennis Gillings suggested that "the University must adapt — without compromising its fundamental goals — to expand its opportunities to be excellent." Anthropology Professor Dr. Jim Peacock agreed. "Both universities and corporations will evolve and may discover synergies, but the creativity of both will be enhanced by the distinctiveness of each." It is this perspective — forging a relationship that maximizes the distinctive qualities of each — that seemed to finally unite all of the diverse viewpoints represented at the forum.

- John Adrian

© 2002, The Graduate School, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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