I certainly am not an expert on outreach or engagement. I’ve never really tried to formulate an overall theory or primer on this subject. But I do have many thoughts and suggestions, and in that spirit, I’m very pleased to be here to share those thoughts and experiences with you.

Before beginning, I have three comments on the structure and theme of this Fall conference.

1. The distinction between business and community development is not necessarily a useful one. In today’s world of limited public resources and initiative, much more change can be accomplished with partnerships -- communities working with business. It is in that spirit and with that philosophy that I direct my comments and lead ITS-Davis. I’ll give some examples later.
   
2. I’m disappointed by the narrow theme: the focus on the capitol region. We are a premier research university; we should be playing in a much bigger pond.

   Let me say at this point that I believe strongly that for UC Davis and other major research universities to thrive, they must be more fully engaged in the world around them. The golden age of "scholarship for scholarship’s sake" is slipping away.

   In my own area of transportation research, I can generate, with little thought, a list of hundreds of interesting research topics. Any professor can. The same applies in the basic sciences. Clearly we want researchers to pursue topics of interest to them. But we as a society cannot afford a large research establishment that is not directed or constrained by any sense of societal need. The modern research university has become inefficient because the reward system is imbalanced and distorted by disciplinary publishing norms.

   What does outreach and engagement have to do with all this -- everything! But before I elaborate on how outreach and engagement can benefit us so much, let me highlight the many downsides and risks of becoming more fully engaged.
   
   Principal Thoughts

   Full engagement with society is desirable.

   1. But...we must never lose sight of the fact that our competitive advantage -- our core competence -- is our cutting-edge research. That’s what makes us special. That’s what motivates communities and business to work with us. That is what imparts the high quality to our teaching (especially at grad level).

   We must be careful not to dissipate our resources -- we must husband our limited human and physical resources. They are very limited! Consider that just down the road is a national lab with an annual budget of over a billion dollars a year and many times more researchers than us. To borrow an ag expression, we must not "eat the seed corn" -- by becoming a contract house to industry and government, nor by elevating the public service goal too high.. We must never let our central research mission be eroded. But we can subtly direct it toward social goals. Work from strength -- with an eye toward how benefits might flow back to university!

   2. Caution
   a) More engagement means more scrutiny.
   The more we get engaged with the real world, the more scrutiny there will be. We must be sensitive to our special situation -- that we, faculty, enjoy a unique and privileged position in society. Because we are independent of vested interests, and because faculty have lifetime security, the media and public look towards us as independent experts in helping steer through the increasingly complex and adversarial public debates that paralyze our society.

   We must be scrupulous in our actions and appearance.

   We need better public skills. We need to learn how to understand industry better and work with issues of confidentiality and property rights. We must be more sensitive to and understanding of conflicts of interest. And we must be more careful in how we manage and use funds.

   b) We need to create a more encouraging organizational culture
   We have two problems in this respect at UC Davis:

   1. a ponderous and conservative organizational structure which discourages initiative (which is what engagement is all about); and
   2. a faculty reward system that does not reward service and outreach.

   We need an administrative system that is not based on the perseverance principle -- that is, responding positively only to those who persevere.

   And we need a mindset among faculty that it is perfectly OK, in fact desirable, to supplement and complement themselves with research and management staff. Those additional researchers, technical, and management staff can perform much of the engagement and outreach.

   In a general sense we need the following changes in organizational structure:

   • a more encouraging culture that rewards initiative (at all levels)
   • a greater willingness to accept an "extension service" mentality (building on our historic mission as a land grant univ)
     --this is relevant for faculty reward system as well as the greater willingness to support outreach activities
   • a personnel process that allows one to create programs around people The current culture is based on the fairy tale that good people are in abundance and that it’s perfectly OK to spend 9 months hiring new management and research staff.

   d) Engagement is not for everyone....so focus on helping those who want to be.

   Let’s figure out a way to support the few who do want to be engaged, and that can help others do so. We need reward systems that are better aligned with goals of engagement, and university funding programs that support those interested in broader pursuits. Keep in mind that few faculty interested, and most are not well suited to doing so.

   3. Why Engage? From a selfish faculty perspective, there are at least three strong reasons.

   a) Engagement Þ Intellectual, Social Leadership

   Many academic disciplines are under fire for degenerating into "trivial pursuits", more so in the social sciences and humanities. Whatever the validity of that criticism, it is clear that academics can play a much stronger role in defining the social and intellectual issue of the day. In of the assigned articles, Ernest Boyer quotes Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, as saying that the most consequential shifts in public policy in recent years had not come from academics -- he noted Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, Michael Harrington and Betty Friedan, to which I would add Jane Jacobs. True leadership in an academic field comes only to those who are fully engaged -- with the exception of some of the most basic research in the biological and physical sciences.

   Consider the following quote from Henry Kissinger:
   "Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts. It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it."

   A more positive way of expressing this phenomena is that true leaders have an understanding of the context in which they work and are better able to transcend conventional thinking than narrow "unengaged" experts.

   b) Engagement Þ Research funding

   Researchers who are strategic in pursuing service-oriented projects can attract and generate large amounts of research funding.

   One example: Several years ago, Caltrans wanted to create a network of telecenters across California -- neighborhood centers where people could go to use computers, photocopiers, fax machines, etc, instead of going to the office. They asked Prof Pat Mokhtarian to manage the program. They gave her several million dollars to do so. She hired some administrative staff to run the centers. But she also convinced them to give her quite a bit of money to evaluate the programs, much of which she was able to use for fairly fundamental travel behavior research.

   The result: full funding of 2 PhD dissertations, and 2 Masters theses.

   Pat Mokhtarian’s story ended well. But someone less disciplined, less effective at hiring and managing administrative staff, and less lucky could have a much less happy ending. One needs to be strategic.

   c) Engagement Þ High Quality Graduate Students

   Many of the best students desperately seek programs that they feel are progressive and engaged. They seek quality and funding, but also "engagement."

   In my own program on advanced vehicle technology, we now regularly out-recruit places such as MIT and UC Berkeley, for both engineers and social scientists, because they want to work with faculty and students that are engaged in bringing about more environmentally benign technology.

   4. Toward a new university order
   In summary, it is possible (and desirable) to wed research and outreach. Most professors are not interested nor skilled at dealing with outside organizations. There are unseen minefields, and profs can overstep their bounds when they become too engaged, to their long term detriment.

   I believe that more outreach and engagement will prove increasingly critical to our success, and that these extracurricular activities will serve as a necessary umbrella for many univ activities.

   Let me now give you some of our more engaging activities at ITS-Davis.

   FOLLOWING NOT USED IN PRESENTATION

   -refer to biography of biologist Edward O Wilson (left wing horror at his sociobiology ideas of 1970s, embrace and advocacy of biodiversity concerns in 1980s)

   (I was dismissed by fellow faculty members when in a meeting I suggested that many ways of gaining programmatic/research success and prominence) -- threatened by needing to move beyond decades-old traditions (but it is only decades old that we’ve become accustomed to being showered with research money)

   -advocacy of ideas that lead to transportation (built) diversity -- implications are generations rather than millennia

   Three weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal in a front page story mocked academic political scientists, arguing that it has lost touch with reality. (WSJ, p.1+, 8/29/97). It is an increasing criticism of the academy in general. The critics have a point

   b) Creating a more encouraging organizational culture
   Two problems here: 1) a ponderous and conservative organizational structure which discourages initiative (which is what engagement is all about); and 2) a faculty reward system that does not reward service and outreach.

   The conservative bureaucracy is the result of the principle of faculty governance (which leads to a proliferation of committees and a lack of accountability), and the normal stodginess of a large public bureaucracy. Being engaged means pursuing new opportunities and doing things differently. It is very different at UC Davis to do anything out of the ordinary. Our bureaucracy is not suited to the needs of an "engaged" university. The problem is not only the intricate set of rules that has been put in place, but the entire mindset of the bureaucracy. It operates according to the principle of perseverance. That is, the governing criteria of whether a request should be approved is the willingness of an individual to persevere. If someone tries hard enough and long enough, then their proposal must be important and valid.

   In a general sense we need the following changes in organizational structure:

   • a more encouraging culture that rewards initiative (at all levels)
   • a greater willingness to accept an "extension service" mentality (building on our historic mission as a land grant univ)
     -this is relevant for faculty reward system as well as the greater willingness to support outreach activities
   • a personnel process that allows one to create programs around people The current culture is based on the fairy tale that good people are in abundance and that it’s perfectly OK to spend 9 months hiring new management and research staff.
     [-new sorts of money and funding]