Advance Partnerships for Public Good

 

CSULB’s robust portfolio of public, private, government and non-profit partnerships is one of its greatest assets, and a centralized partnership structure will consolidate effort, enable cost-saving economies of scale, help external partners navigate CSULB’s networks and enhance internal and external collaborations campus-wide. Developing our partnership infrastructure will create more opportunities to implement impactful curricula and experiential learning, and open doors for even more ambitious projects for the public good.

Rather than develop new structures, many existing offices within the university which regularly engage the community and partner industries can be restructured to serve as an internal infrastructure to support collaboration and centralize efforts.

To solve regional and global challenges, a Beach Grand Challenge Infrastructure designed to leverage our intellectual capital will serve as a cornerstone that further links education and industry in LA and Orange Counties.

 

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS

1a. Create an institutional structure to develop grand challenge ideas and serve as an entry point for community input.

1b. Embed grand challenge structures within CSULB courses and student experiences, including research opportunities and non-research experiences such as internships, applied learning, and service learning.

1c. Create incentive structures and mechanisms for interdisciplinary faculty engagement and work that benefits the local community. 

1d. Reward faculty, staff, and students who engage in the scholarship of service. 
INFRASTRUCTURE AVAILABLE
  • Office of the President
  • Office of Research & Sponsored Programs
  • Dean of Student Success
  • Office of Government & Community Relations
  • College Deans
OPPORTUNITIES

The many public, private, government, research, and academic partnerships that currently exist among CSULB’s divisions and colleges demonstrate the tremendous potential for success that cross-disciplinary concentration of resources can bring. Leveraging cross-disciplinary and cross-functional teams to address major societal challenges in the Long Beach region will allow CSULB to extend our intellectual, research, and business acumen into the community to solve the problems of tomorrow, today. To accomplish this, we will need to reimagine how we reach out to the community, identify problems to be researched, and how we approach solutions. These new alignments will drive internal structural and systems change for external benefit over the coming decade.
CHALLENGES

Centralizing and coordinating truly cross-disciplinary grand challenge programs will require careful allocation of resources, staffing, and leadership. To develop a culture around grand challenges, participation must be complimentary to current efforts, and not an additional strain on resources, and the sharing of partnership resources must never be a loss to one department, but a benefit to all.
RESILIENCE

Social and economic shifts are already taking place in the post-COVID world, and corporations and communities require creative solutions to novel challenges. The Grand Challenge infrastructure will send a clear message that CSULB is a resource with open doors and the intellectual capital to be a force for public good.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS

2a. Create a Beach Partnerships Collaborative to coordinate consulting, convening, and advancing of internal partnerships across campus.

2b. Create an institutional structure to centralize entry for external partnerships and track, streamline, and extend external partnerships across campus.
INFRASTRUCTURE AVAILABLE
  • Office of Research & Sponsored Programs
  • Center for Community Engagement
  • Office of Government & Community Relations
  • College of Professional & International Education
  • Existing partnerships and liaisons across campus:
    • Colleges (Deans)
    • Division of Administration & Finance (Procurement)
    • Division of Student Affairs
    • Auxiliaries
    • Athletics
    • Academic Senate
    • Associated Students, Inc.
    • Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
OPPORTUNITIES

By coordinating CSULB’s extensive portfolio of internal and external partnerships, we are better able to extend and efficiently utilize existing partnerships in every discipline and department, and to increase the overall number of partnerships on campus. Focusing on these efforts will serve to market and further extend CSULB’s brand as a partner-focused institution to external stakeholders.

Often external parties feel overwhelmed by the number of offices individually reaching out to them and types of partnerships that can happen on campus. A coordinated effort on campus can help ensure the entire portfolio of opportunities available is properly communicated and stewarded.
CHALLENGES

Many partnerships across campus are currently decentralized and unit-specific, creating the potential for duplication of efforts if clear objectives are not established for the Collaborative. Though the use of existing structures will be essential to this effort, a macro-structure would require some funding to establish, as well as support for technology and development of infrastructure, websites, communications, CRM management, and performance tracking.
RESILIENCE

Strong internal and external partnerships and efficient coordination of resources will become increasingly necessary to operation in the wake of COVID-19 budget constrictions and future economic uncertainties.

 

These efforts have the potential to support the campus through revenue-generating partnerships like philanthropy and advertising, as well as through partnerships that advance the academic mission such as internships, workforce pipelines, and research.