Cantwell: To add one thing: our faculty work together all the time. We may not know it in the public, but scientists will do whatever they need to with the people who are available to them to move things forward. There’ s an incredible number of examples of joint work that has moved our bio economy, in particular, forward, and I would be remiss if I didn’ t acknowledge that.
Share a little about how the private sector and the public sector need to be collaborating to solve the problems of the day.
Cantwell: Sustainable aviation fuel is a great example. We’ ve also done a really significant joint project on salmon fisheries. All across the board, we have made joint differences in the economy, because our faculty don’ t actually ask permission from the presidents as to whether or not they can work with faculty from the other institute. I would love to see the state incentivize, with real research dollars, joint work that attacks these really big challenges that we all face.
Jones: There are opportunities for the state to invest in these big ideas and strategies and lay a framework that in order to get the resources, there has to be this wide, deep collaboration among institutions that have the expertise and the wherewithal to solve the problem. That would be a great incentive to also drive this notion that we’ re going to compete where that’ s necessary, but we are going to collaborate because we must. We have no choice.
How are you working with employers to train your students to meet evolving skill and workforce needs? Under the radical collaboration piece, how can the employer community help you understand their evolving skill needs?
Jones: We’ re going to have to think differently about what it means to be educated in these times. We have a growing cohort of young people who want to be trained to do a specific job. We have to think about our responsibilities in terms of upskilling and re-skilling and leveraging technology to provide education anytime, at any place, for those individuals who want to get a different kind of educational experience.
Cantwell: We are engaging much more intentionally in conversations in the communities where we are physically located about, not what your workforce needs are today, but what they’ re going to be in a decade. Things are changing fast, not just for us, but for all of you. How do we redesign large components of what the institution looks like, and not just once, but on a kind of a continuous basis? Higher ed is a little bit ossified. We don’ t shift major muscles very often, and we have to learn to do that more