Officials finish up details on alliance

The state's top higher education officials are down to the wire on finalizing strategic alliance details between this university and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, but many said they have already developed a slew of research and business initiatives that will benefit both institutions and the state.

Although university President Wallace Loh, USM Chancellor Brit Kirwan and UMB President Jay Perman were given less than three months to craft a strategic alliance plan, the team has been able to stay on track for its March 1 deadline by meeting weekly to discuss several research and commercialization initiatives, Loh said. In the coming weeks, he said the team will hammer out details in administrative changes under the alliance.

Among the plans are commercializing research — meaning taking lab research results and transforming them into market-ready products — and expanding student opportunities by providing students with internships or lab experiences at either institution.

Loh said expanding technological commercialization will allow the university to tap into research by students, faculty and alumni that could propel business growth in the state.

"Universities have been losing millions and millions of potential dollars," Loh said. "It's not going to happen overnight, it's not even going to happen overnight, it's not even going to happen in a year or two, but we'll start seeing new products, new companies, new research."

After the Board of Regents — a 17-member gubernatorial body that oversees the University System of Maryland — ultimately decided to forge ahead with a strategic alliance, which would enable faculty from the two institutions to collaborate on select research endeavors, rather than a full-blown merger, Loh, Kirwan and Perman were tasked with submitting a plan to the General Assembly to carry out this alliance by March 1.

"It's a short time frame but people are just very, very committed, very excited about this and I think are willing to invest the time and energy to get this job done," Kirwan said.

Many UMB officials and Baltimore leaders voiced strong opposition to completely merging the two universities under one name throughout discussions and forums last semester, but have since embraced fostering collaboration and aligning select departments, Kirwan said.

Part of the proposed alliance includes spurring collaborations between the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute — a research center on the campus — and UMB. Loh said he would like to set a "bold, visionary goal" for this collaboration, similar to the target he outlined in his April inaugural address to create 100 more companies in 10 years.

Mtech Director David Barbe said the center produces three to five companies each year, but with a fuller staff, he said the center could produce 10 companies per year.

"We're overworked as it is," Barbe said. "We're fully booked, so we'd have to have increased resources."

Barbe added this university already has several successful programs in place that foster collaborations with other USM institutions.

Through the Maryland Intellectual Property Legal Resources Center — a center which delivers legal services primarily through UMB law students, according to its website — students work on this campus to gain experience with patents and copyrights, and Mtech companies get free legal advising.

Another program on the campus, the decades-old Maryland Industrial Partnerships, has USM faculty and graduate students help companies in the state to create new products.

Barbe said offering UMB greater access to Mtech's resources would be relatively easy and would benefit the state's economy for years to come.

"If you create companies based on research, you're creating jobs and as we know in Maryland — and in the U.S. — we need jobs," Barbe said. "That's like, paramount."

Provost Ann Wylie, who oversees several working groups exploring areas of the alliance, said some aspects of the plan, such as creating and expanding upon programs at this university's Shady Grove campus, will remain relatively simple and have already been in the works for years.

"Its not like were going in there and saying we're going to be doing A and B and C. We're not there yet," she said. "There's a lot of institutions at play and we have larger involvement there than anybody else … so we have a real interest in making sure as we develop over there, we provide a quality educational experience."

In addition to creating new research opportunities, the alliance also seeks to establish joint degree programs by providing students with easier access into graduate programs. Several students said they thought these programs would be popular and enticing options for incoming pre-law and pre-medical students.