The immediate success of a new or prospective ERC depends heavily on the extent to which the Director's vision engages the ERC's team, the university, and industry and also satisfies the NSF Directorate and its site visitors. The short-range continuity of an ERC depends equally heavily on the Director's success in continuously revitalizing the center through the real integration of new faculty from within and outside the university. The long-range success of the center will depend entirely on the extent to which the continuing partners--the university and industry--value what the center has accomplished in interdisciplinary education and team-based research.

Research alliances are essentially ephemeral things. They shift with changing research interests and they succeed in a direct relationship with their success in attracting external funding which suppresses the "lone ranger" tendencies of talented prima donnas. They may inspire but they do not educate students. They attract industry but they do not make common purpose with industrial partners. The long-range continuity of an ERC, which is NSF's objective for each ERC, depends on effecting a cultural and structural change in the university and a real and mutual interdependence with industry. Perhaps an ERC Director will be judged, at the end of the day, on the extent to which s/he has really embedded the center into the functional fabric of the university and into the machinery and the bottom line of industry.

The basic structure of the university has not changed a great deal since the Middle Ages. The university as a concept has survived and thrived because its scholars, arrayed in units of specialization known as departments, can educate students. Research and knowledge acquisition happen in many different frameworks, but formal education occurs in the departmental framework of the university. Strong departments are simultaneously the friends and the enemies of effective graduate education. A strong department of Electrical Engineering or of Physics, for example, provides its acolytes with increasingly specialized and theoretical knowledge of esoteric fields. However, policy-oriented bodies such as the National Academies of Science and Engineering have taken the pulse of industry and of the country and concluded that we need a new paradigm in graduate education, which the ERCs clearly embody. If the Provost, Vice-President of Research, Deans, and Department Heads of a university see an ERC as a successful exercise in interdisciplinary education in an area in which they have world leadership, they have the resources to guarantee its long-range continuity. The Provost has faculty slots, the Vice President has IDC funds, the Dean has control over space, and the departments have students. After Year 3, and certainly after Year 6, the long-range prospects of the center depend much more on the extent to which the ERC's vision has been embraced by the university and the faculty than it does on the evaluation of the ERC by NSF's ERC Program management.

The center's relationship with industry is an equally important component in its long-range continuity, and in its effectiveness in giving substance to its vision. Today's "leaner" companies cannot afford large, esoteric, and unfocused research groups--any more than they can afford to send their people to yet another set of dry academic seminars. However, the fact remains that most of the ground-breaking research on which modern industries are based was and is conducted in universities. The ERC that successfully makes the connection between university-based research and real industrial needs may outlive most of its faculty. A strong ERC will spin off companies with a real chance for survival and/or it will integrate itself into the planning process of companies to form functional strategic partnerships. The Director and the ERC team must have built a broader and deeper contact with industry, one that is fully and functionally connected to the center's education program, if the ERC is to rely on the not-inconsiderable financial resources of industry to ensure the center's long-range continuity.

Education and technology transfer both are inherently long-range undertakings, and they are optimally combined in the ERC Program mandates. Many of the ERCs already are valued very highly by industry because they focus university research at a point where industry can grasp and exploit it, and because they produce a steady steam of uniquely cross-trained, team-oriented graduates who are likely to eclipse their peers in creativity and productivity. There is enough potential at the industrial interface to "power" a center indefinitely, and without NSF funding, but the Director must harness the educational support of the university to preserve the essential strengths and distinctions of an ERC.

The key to surviving and thriving after NSF funding ceases may well be to begin planning early--ideally in Years 4-6--for self-sufficiency. In order to continue the type of culture that the ERC has engendered, it will be necessary to maintain at least the essential elements of the center's infrastructure. As funding tightens, the "refinements"--features such as services (e.g., analysis and demonstrations), shared facilities upkeep, education programs, seminars, etc., that help define the special nature of an ERC--will come under scrutiny as luxuries. Some form of these infrastructure elements will need to be adopted and perpetuated by the university (not industry, as this is part of the university's mission).

There are at least three issues that need to be resolved before an ERC graduates from NSF funding to self-sufficiency. These issues include: funding, space, and administrative position. In the best of cases, it may take a year or more to negotiate a permanent position for an ERC in the permanent university structure. Since resources may be controlled by several different levels in the university (e.g., the Dean and upper administration), there are several negotiations that must successfully be navigated. In addition, with the tendency for shrinking average time in office (it has been noted that the average time in office of a university president today is about five years), chances are the initial agreement may have to be renegotiated one or two times before a stable, long-term agreement is reached. The ERC requires a plan and positive leadership during this period to maintain high morale with the Center faculty moving forward together. Whatever the agreement, get the arrangements in writing. Verbal agreements are easily misunderstood.

Funding. Universities have different ways of creating discretionary funds. These include return on overhead; interest on money in university accounts; and return on tuition, gifts, and income from technology licenses. If given a formula, the ERC can directly influence the income from the first three sources by generating more contracts, banking more discretionary funds, and admitting more students. On these first three, projections can be made and a budget established accurate enough for planning purposes. The latter two categories should not be depended upon for on-going operational expenses. Many universities are familiar with the departmental structure, which is essentially a "no growth" or "slow growth" organization. Budgets may be fixed more or less from year to year. It is important for ERCs to have an incentive-based funding. They need to provide equipment and infrastructure for new projects and new domains. They need to generate seed funding to start new ideas that can eventually mature into self-sustaining multidisciplinary research projects. Yet another issue is "who gets credit" for bringing in the funding. As a multidisciplinary research center with faculty from Engineering and other departments, there should be no tension in determining which department a faculty member initiates a research proposal through. A simple rule applied at some centers is that if the proposal has faculty from multiple departments as Principle Investigators who are part of the ERC, then the ERC is the appropriate organization to receive credit for that proposal.

Space. The first issue is to guarantee that the space the center currently occupies will remain theirs. Since space planning often occurs five or more years prior to physical occupancy, it is important for ERCs to understand what will happen with their space once they transition. In addition, the ERC needs to determine the space allocation process so that new space can be acquired as the ERC grows.

Administration. It is important to establish where in the university hierarchy the ERC Director will continue to report. This has a direct impact on strategic planning and promotion of Center personnel. It is important that center personnel sit on both the faculty and administration promotion committees to represent the unique perspective of multidisciplinary research. Center Directors can educate their colleagues on these committees as well as ensure steady advancement for personnel involved in the ERC. In addition, the ERC should be an integral part of the administrative strategic planning process, not only to ensure stability for the ERC but also to inject new perspectives into the strategic planning process.

It is crucial to begin early building a case for this eventuality within the university. All participants in the center, not just the Director, should be involved. The industrial liaison specialist should become involved with the university's technology transfer people by sharing information, experience, and resources. There are many ways that the education coordinator could share resources with the existing units on campus and make it known. The AD continuously works as a liaison with the university's administrative network and, while constantly compromising to accomplish things, is able to air the center's perspective. If the center has found a better way to do something, share it. At every opportunity, center participants should get others within the university on their side so they would be missed if they weren't there. Everyone has a chance to make themselves indispensable by becoming actively involved in campus activities. Always think beyond the center!

The university has to be reminded constantly of what the center is accomplishing, with the emphasis being on why it is important. Sell the ideal, not the Center. (For example, emphasize that center graduates are very employable because they have interdisciplinary training and can work in teams.) Centers gather a lot of data; probably no other unit on campus has as much tracking information as the ERC does. Share these statistics with the university early and often; the university may become dependent upon it and want to maintain the center's infrastructure partly in order to continue gathering it.

Again, the concept is that of marketing the ideals upon which the center is founded, as opposed to marketing the center itself. If the culture of a particular center becomes too closely identified with the NSF ERC Program, it will die when the NSF funding stops. Therefore the real challenge is to create and continuously showcase a set of values that will be embraced by the center's continuing partners. A center might consider creating a position for a marketing manager. In the short term, these individuals would market the Center itself (through publicity, contacts, recruitment, etc.). But for the long term they would market the ideals and identify opportunities to illustrate how the Center has served as a demonstration vehicle to accomplish those ideals and how the university could build upon that experience.

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