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This paper examines the characteristics and organizational issues associated with university-based research centers. The first section sketches general characteristics and functions of centers. The second section examines major issues concerning the organization of centers, including funding and sustainability, center autonomy, and relations with academic units. Implications for central administration are considered.

Canada's province of Ontario introduced a new policy in 2000 allowing community colleges to offer a new type of undergraduate degree. This decision was a significant policy change for the government considering the nature of Ontario's binary system, where a rigid separation has historically prevailed between the university and college sectors. Drawing on multiple sources of data, this study indicates that the decision to create a new type of applied bachelor's degree generated a series of uncertainties and challenges for higher education institutions, students and government agencies. The paper highlights the need for policy makers to consider the socio-cultural aspects of higher education systems in policy design, particularly the role of legitimacy. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

This paper reports on an empirical study of research planning in Canadian universities. Drawing on data compiled during interviews with senior administrators from 27 academic units in 10 universities, the paper analyses how strategic planning has been applied to the research mission over the past decade. Findings reveal variability in processes and attitudes about planning, while suggesting that the scope of planning activities in most cases has been somewhat narrow and short-term. The implications of these findings for the administration of research are discussed.

Organized research units--also known as centers, institutes, and laboratories--are increasingly prominent in the university. This paper examines how ORUs emerge to promote global agendas and international collaborations in an academic health center in North America. The roles these units play in helping researchers work across institutional and national boundaries are identified and analyzed. The concept of boundary organizations is employed to explain the features of ORUs and the challenges they face. Findings provide insight into how such units operate between local and global mandates, interest groups, and sources of influence, helping to extend university research into the global space.

The goal to enhance the impacts of academic research in the "real world" resonates with progressive visions of the role of universities in society, and finds support among policy makers who have sought to enhance the "transfer", "translation", "uptake", or "valorization" of research knowledge in several areas of public services. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the strategies used by selected Canadian and international faculties of education to mobilize research knowledge. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with senior administrators of 13 faculties of education, the analysis reveals several themes. Academic leaders recognize knowledge mobilization as a desirable institutional mission, but they identify a number of barriers to greater efforts in this area. Although a number of strategies are employed, changes across multiple organizational dimensions to encourage and support knowledge mobilization were reported at only two institutions. These results are relevant to faculty administrators, scholars, and policy-makers interested in understanding the role of academic institutions in the mobilization of research knowledge to the broader education community.

The emerging field of nanotechnology has created a new frontier for the convergence of university and industrial research. In the United States, major federal investments provided a massive boom for this field over the decade. This paper reports on a case study of how the University at Albany came to establish the first college of nanotechnology in the US, as part of a larger R&D complex oriented towards building a regional nanoelectronics cluster. The case points to the role of entrepreneurs in mobilizing ideas and resources to advance novel organizational forms. This study demonstrates how a mode of technology transfer based on research facilities was deliberately used to build a nanotechnology complex at Albany, highlighting the enabling role of state S&T policies in supporting university engagements in regional economic development. (Contains 2 figures and 18 footnotes.)

There is increasing attention to sub-national regions in science and technology (S&T) policy. This paper examines the recent evolution of provincial S&T policies in the Canadian provinces, focusing on how they link university research to regional technological development. Drawing on multiple sources of data and evidence, this study identifies and analyzes trends in provincial policies over the past decade. From the isolated initiatives established in a few large provinces in the 1980s, we are now witnessing a diversification of S&T programmes across the country, along with the rise of a distinctive provincial policy infrastructure. Among the various types of provincial programmes, there is an emphasis on promoting "world class" science in selected fields, bringing targeted investments in universities' research capacity.

Global health is becoming an important area of inquiry and learning in North American research universities, stemming from on-going and new commitments to the field by multiple governmental and non-governmental agents. External demands for research and education in global health require enhanced inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral and international collaborations, all perceived as growing trends but often not easily accommodated in universities. This paper investigates how four leading universities in Canada and the US have entered the field of global health, exploring the relationships among national contexts, academic structures, and institutional strategies. Content analysis of institutional records is triangulated with data from sixty interviews with academic leaders and researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill and Toronto. Resource asymmetries emerge as an important differentiating factor shaping the emergence of global health in the American and Canadian institutions. Domestic sources of support and previous academic structures provided important cumulative advantages to the US campuses in claiming national and international leadership in the field.

This paper examines innovations in strategic faculty hiring emphasizing interdisciplinarity at two major public research universities in the USA. The research investigated how and why the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison chose to pursue interdisciplinary faculty recruitment, how it was structured, and how it was intended to cause changes in academic work at each university. The paper analyzes how the interdisciplinary aims of those innovations intersected with competitive pressures, resource acquisition strategies, and organizational problems. Implications are discussed in the last section. (Contains 14 notes.)

In the context of increasing support for interdisciplinary modes of research, many in the policy, scientific, and academic communities propose that universities should change structurally to reduce the barriers to investigation that involves researchers from multiple disciplines. This paper examines "interdisciplinary strategies" in U.S. research universities--deliberate efforts to spur collaborative research across traditional departmental and disciplinary boundaries, including the creation and adaptation of university policies, practices, and structures. It identifies and analyzes the use of incentive grants to initiate new interdisciplinary units, the establishment of "campus-wide institutes" that steer campus investments in interdisciplinary areas, and new modes of faculty hiring and evaluation. Illustrative examples are provided, and the implications of these strategies are discussed.

This research analyzes the role of experts in the European Union's policy-making process. Focusing on the field of research policy, this study seeks to probe how expert participation in the Open Method of Coordination informs policy decisions. The paper reports on an analysis of the expert group in the European Internationalization Strategy in Science and Technology. Our analysis reveals the dynamics of expert participation at the micro level, as it identifies who these experts are, how they are appointed, and in what ways expert knowledge gets used in policy making. KEY WORDS: governance, regional governance, high-tech, policy learning, expertise, research policy, science and technology policy, Open Method of Coordination, EU, Introduction Expertise has taken a central role in the conceptualization and implementation of a broad range of public policies. An extensive multidisciplinary literature has documented, analyzed, and critiqued this trend [...]

Technology-based economic development programs have become a salient feature of the state policy landscape since the 1980s. While much research exists on the topic, little attention has been given to the processes of policy formation. State programs have moved towards high technology areas emphasized at the federal level over the past decades, and nanotechnology became one of the latest targets. This paper examines the eight-year process through which Pennsylvania adopted a 'state-wide strategy,' culminating in the Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology. In this process, programs that responded to the interests of multiple agents came first, and a state policy was formulated after the fact. This pattern of 'rationalized policy formation,' as opposed to rational policy formation, may be more common than suspected. Its strengths and weaknesses in this Pennsylvania case are discussed. KEY WORDS: state policy, science and technology, technology-based economic development, university, policy formation, nanotechnology, Introduction Technology-based economic development (TBED) programs have become a salient feature of the state policy landscape since the 1980s. Such programs are part of the evolution of state economic development [...]