Editor's Page
Are we doing it right, already? William Simeral is a senior vice president at Du Pont. He recently spoke at the Uni versity of Delaware at a conference on future partnerships among business, gov ernment, and the universities. Here, verbatim, are parts of what he had to say. There should be a greater degree of collaboration between industry and academia in re search. The times call for this, and both industrial firms and universities stand to gain from it. We need to work more closely together and there is a need for greater funding by the private sector for university programs. I do not take the position, however, that radical new approaches are required. Quite the contrary: My view is that universities and corporations already have tried a variety of different approaches. We know what works well . . . and not so well. As I see it, we should build on that experience and expand on our strengths. In my view support of university research should not be based on the desire to solve the current problems of the national economy. Whether the issue is inflation, or the lag in pro ductivity growth, or the declining competitive position of some industries, I do not believe that the current difficulty has been caused by some weakness in the American research establishment, and certainly not by the universities. The problems lie farther down the in novation and commercialization road, in our national ability—or inability—to make really effective use of the science and engineering already produced. We should not expect im mediate payouts—and certainly no saving "miracles"—from any short-term expansion of university or industrial R&D. We ought to concern ourselves with the health of academic research for time-honored reasons: Such research provides much of the base for the advancement of science and its application. I am sure most people in industry agree. In the chemical industry, the leading companies have for many years acknowledged their dependence on academic research. As for the specifics of cooperation and mutual aid, what works best: Fellowships? Seedmoney grants? Unrestricted grants? Research consortia? Co-op teaching and internship programs? Contract research? Which way should we turn? The only generalization I can offer comes in the words of an old song: "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it." What counts most, in our experience at Du Pont, is not the formula you follow (we're not much on formula approaches in any case) but how carefully and clearly the company and the university define goals for their programs and projects. First, we encourage programs with a strong educational component. Second, whether we are involved in a grant of money or a joint research program with a university, we look for a close coupling between our long-term interests—taken in a very broad sense—and the strengths of the particular uni versity and the principal investigators involved. People who have not been close to the research scene in recent years may not appreciate fully how much [industry-academic] interchange there is, through all the established channels of communications. Du Pont research people meet with their campus counterparts at all sorts of technical gatherings. Last year, hundreds of technical articles by Du Ponters appeared in professional journals. Some 185 professors from nearly 90 universities are working with us on a consulting basis. In a year's time, about 130 visiting professors deliver lectures at our Experimental Station, and almost half of the lecturers are people from other nations. As one further point, we are not overenthusiastic about support programs that involve the pooling of funds from a number of companies unless the purposes are very carefully defined, and there are good reasons to believe that the sponsors will accomplish a lot more by joining forces than they can on their own. Always, we have to come back to the question of quality, not just quantity. Π
Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS
April 27, 1981 C&EN
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