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Session 2647

Building Industry Partnerships by Enticing Industry to Work for You

Jerome Tapper School of Engineering Technology Northeastern University

Abstract

Why should industry get involved with you or your college? The answer to this is the key to understanding the mechanisms involved in attracting industrial partnerships and using this relationship to your advantage. In fact, both parties as will be seen here will benefit and prosper by your appropriate application of some simple rules in establishing corporate relationships1. This paper establishes the ground rules for creating and keeping industrial partnerships alive and viable. If the ideas presented here are implemented appropriately, this relationship can prosper for many years to come with some additional positive side effects; continued industrial support. By taking advantage of these partnerships, colleges can gain access to new state-of-the-art equipment for their laboratories. In fact, most companies are more than willing to help if asked properly.

I. Introduction

There are many reasons why the education establishment should align themselves with industrial partners. One of the principal reasons is to gain assistance in the form of materials needed to teach state-of-the-art technologies to their students. For many schools, high tech. teaching materials such as exotic laboratory equipment may very well be out of the financial reach of their particular department. By creating a mutual dependency relationship with industry, engineering technology departments can gain a shot in the arm in the form of an advocate for their program. By establishing this close industry partnership, educators will have direct access to an almost infinite supply of much needed state-of-the-art materials which will have many positive consequences. Among these are a better trained/educated student, a more attractive program to prospective students and their families, an excellent marketing tool for your school and department, possible future cooperative work assignments (for those schools with co-op programs), industry supported capstone projects, employment following graduation, and financial support for industry related projects and research to name a few.

This paper establishes some strategies for gaining access to industry and developing relationships with industry representatives. It is these relationships that will prove to be most valuable.

II. Some Ground Rules

Before establishing a relationship with a potential industrial partner, it is most important that a few necessary rules be understood. Once you have worked with your industrial partners and established an unwritten mutual benefit agreement, which will be discussed later in this paper, you must understand that your partners will expect as much from you as you do of them. As you

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Tapper, J. (2000, June), Building Industry Partnerships By Enticing Industry To Work For You Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8191