Current Projects

Transforming Land-Grant Universities for Community and Economic Engagement: A National Study of Land-Grant Reform 

In 2012, the Commission on Economic and Community Engagement of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities created the Innovation and Economic Prosperity (IEP) initiative. The goal of the program is for higher education organizations to “know, measure, tell, and maximize” contributions to community and economic development. The program applies an IEP framework that organizes institutional activity across three engagement domains: talent (human capital and talent development), innovation (research dissemination, creative works, problem-solving, and entrepreneurship), and place (community-connectedness and vibrant community development). The IEP program annually selects a cohort of institutions that complete an institutional self-study and internal/external stakeholder analysis aimed at “identifying the strengths of the university’s economic engagement enterprise and areas for growth and improvement.” As of 2019, 55 universities have received the IEP designation.

Through this research, we are exploring the ways land-grant colleges and universities are organizing for community and economic engagement by investigating university reform proposals and initiatives. We will assess what intermediate (university to community links), intramural (internal university processes), and extramural interfaces (Intra-community links) that have been developed to facilitate land-grant university engagement for community and economic development? We will also explore the gaps, tensions, barriers, and discontinuities in land-grant engagement access across intermediate, intramural, and extramural interfaces?