Title: The ERC Program: An Assessment of Benefits and Outcomes
Date: February 18, 1998




Engineering Education and Centers Division
Directorate for Engineering
National Science Foundation
Arlington, VA 22230




         THE ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTERS (ERC) PROGRAM:
             AN ASSESSMENT OF BENEFITS AND OUTCOMES


                         December 1997


                          Linda Parker
                        Project Director



           Engineering Education and Centers Division
                   Directorate for Engineering
                   National Science Foundation

                       Arlington, Virginia



                         Table of Contents




                                                             Page

  I. Executive Summary_____________________________________    i

 II. Background:  The ERC Program__________________________    1

III. The Studies:  Program Results After Ten Years_________    3

 IV. ERC-Industry Interaction______________________________    6

  V. Effectiveness of ERC Graduates in Industry and
     Other Sectors  _______________________________________   17

 VI. Findings and Conclusions______________________________   29

        Appendix A:   Engineering Research Centers_________   32

        Appendix B:   Participation ERC Alumni in
                      Graduate Training Activities ________   34




                        EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Engineering Research Centers (ERC) Program was created by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1985 to develop a government-
industry-university partnership to strengthen the competitive
position of U.S. firms in world trade and change the culture of
engineering research and education in the U.S.  The 26 ERCs* (as
of August 1997) discover new industry-relevant knowledge at the
intersections of the traditional disciplines and transfer that
knowledge to industry, while preparing a new generation of
engineering leaders who are capable of leading in industry by
engaging successfully in team-based, cross-disciplinary
engineering to advance technology.

__________________
*19 ERCs have active awards; seven have completed successfully
a full 11-year award.

In 1994, the NSF's Engineering Education and Centers (EEC)
Division initiated study of  key aspects of the ERC Program:  ERC-
industry interaction and the effectiveness of former ERC graduate
students in all sectors of employment.  The primary intent of
this two-part study was to examine the extent to which the
Program was making progress toward its goals.  The purposes of
the ERC-Industry Interaction study were to (1) examine the
patterns of interaction that have emerged between ERCs and
industry; (2) determine which types of interaction were most
useful to industry and brought firms the greatest benefits; and
(3) assess the value of these to the companies.  The purpose of
the ERC Graduate Effectiveness Study was to examine;  (1) the
extent to which masters and doctoral graduates with substantial
ERC experience are more effective than their peers;  (2) what the
graduates did while at an ERC; and  (3) the impact of ERC
activities on the graduates' effectiveness on the job.
Information was obtained from industrial representatives of ERC
member companies, supervisors of ERC graduates in industry and
other sectors, and ERC graduates themselves through written
surveys and telephone interviews.

Interaction with ERCs provides 90% of ERC companies with a wide
range of benefits such as those in the following table:

_________________________________________________________________

Table A:  Examples Of Significant Benefits Received By Firms

Benefit                                          Percent of Firms

Access to new ideas, know-how, or technologies              84
Receiving technical assistance                              63
Interaction with other firms participating in the ERC       50
Access to ERC equipment and facilities                      40
Hiring ERC students and graduates                           40
__________________________________________________________________

Not all companies received every type of benefit; but of the
benefits realized by particular companies, among the highest-
valued were the employment of ERC students and graduates, gains
in intellectual property (product/process development or
improvement, patents, and copyrights), and access to specialized
equipment and facilities.  Nearly a quarter of all firms reported
having developed a new product or process as a result of their
interaction with an ERC.

The impacts on the firms derived from these benefits are
threefold:   A majority of the respondents indicated that their
ERC involvement had influenced their firm's research agenda.  Two-
thirds of  the corporate representatives reported that their
firm's competitiveness had increased as a result of benefits
received and the level reached 80% for firms involved with an ERC
for eight to ten years.  Finally, corporate personnel in firms
hiring ERC students or graduates rated these employees as more
productive and effective engineers than  peers in the same firms.
These are the basic impacts that the Program was designed to
achieve.

The ERC-industry interaction study demonstrated very strongly
that company benefit is directly related to the length and level
of active involvement in a center.  The longer a firm
participates and the more direct personal interaction there is
between corporate and center personnel, the more direct benefits
the firm will have received and the greater the effect on company
competitiveness.  A key finding was that "More Is Better" for
these partnerships.  The more centers can expose the industry
representatives and their colleagues to the variety of ways in
which they can be actively involved in the center, the more the
firms, students, and centers will benefit.  Three factors in
particular are strongly related to the realization of positive
outcomes for companies from their interactions with an ERC:  the
existence of a "champion" for the ERC within the company, the
receptivity of company technical staff to ERC ideas and/or
results, and management support for the ERC partnership within
the company.

Significant involvement in ERC activities during graduate study
builds upon, or is comple-mentary to, traditional graduate
education.  Masters and doctoral degree recipients with ERC
experience take the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and
techniques they learned in ERCs with them to their subsequent
jobs.  Regardless of the nature of their jobs and their sector of
employment, ERC graduates continue working in ways they learned
in ERCs, e.g., in interdisciplinary teams and by engaging in
industry-university collaboration to advance technology.  ERC
firms employing ERC students and graduates value this benefit of
ERC interaction more than any other type of benefit.  As the
following table illustrates, supervisors and other industry
representatives of firms employing ERC graduates judged the ERC-
trained employees to be superior to non-ERC employees on a number
of key performance dimensions. The same was true for ERC
graduates working in other employment sectors.

_______________________________________________________________

Table B:  Supervisors' and Representatives' Rating
          of ERC Graduates As Superior to Peers

Dimension                        Supervisors   Representatives

Overall preparedness                 89.4%           80.2%
Contribution to technical work       84.8            77.3
Depth of technical understanding     85.0            80.2
Ability to work in
  interdisciplinary teams            80.3            64.3
Breadth of technical understanding   80.7            74.3
Ability to apply knowledge and use
  technology                         69.9            72.3

SCALE:  1 = "much worse"; 2 = "somewhat worse"; 3 = about the
same"; 4 = "somewhat better"; 5 = "much  better"
NOTE: Values shown in table are percent responding at level 4
or 5
________________________________________________________________


1.  BACKGROUND:  THE ERC PROGRAM


Program Mission

The Engineering Research Centers (ERC) Program was created by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1985 to develop a government-
industry-university partnership to strengthen the competitive
position of U.S. firms in world trade.  At the heart of this
problem was the need to increase the productivity of U.S.
industry in an increasingly global economy.  The ERC program was
designed to create long-term collaborations between universities
and industry, create new industry-relevant knowledge at the
intersections of the traditional disciplines, and prepare a new
generation of engineering leaders who are more capable of
engaging successfully in team-based, cross-disciplinary
engineering practice.

Individual ERCs provide an integrated environment for academe and
industry to focus on next-generation advances in complex
engineered systems important for the Nation's future.  Activity
within ERCs lies at the cusp of the discovery-driven culture of
science and the innovation-driven culture of engineering,
creating a synergy between science, engineering, and industrial
practice.    ERCs provide the intellectual foundation for
industry to collaborate with faculty and students on resolving
generic, long-range challenges, thus producing the knowledge base
needed to generate steady advances in technology and transition
those technologies to the marketplace.

Background and Goals

The ERC Program grew out of concern expressed in the early 1980s
by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and NSF that:  (1)
rapid technological advances were occurring at the intersection
of engineering and other disciplines, requiring a cross-
disciplinary approach to engineering that had not been
incorporated into engineering research or practice; and (2) a
mismatch had developed between the way engineering was carried
out in industry and the way students were being trained.  At the
request of NSF Director Edward Knapp in 1983, NAE advised NSF on
the mission and operations of the new ERC Program (NAE, 1983).*
The Academy identified two goals for the Program:

- to improve engineering research so that U.S. engineers will
  be better prepared to contribute to engineering practice; and

- to assist U.S. industry in becoming more competitive in
  world markets.

In addition, NAE advised that there should be three common
elements across all ERCs:

- Provide continual interaction of academic researchers,
  students, and faculty with their peers - namely, the engineers
  and scientists in industry - to ensure that the research programs
  in the centers remain relevant to the needs of the engineering
  practitioner and that they facilitate and promote the flow of
  knowledge between the academic and industrial sectors;

- Emphasize the synthesis of engineering knowledge; that is,
  the research programs should seek to integrate different
  disciplines in order to bring together the requisite knowledge,
  methodologies, and tools to solve problems important to
  engineering practitioners; and

- Contribute to the increased effectiveness of all levels of
  engineering education.

_____________________
*NAE, 1983. Guidelines for Engineering Research Centers. Washington
DC: National Academy of Engineering.

Program Operations

The ERC Program is managed out of NSF's Engineering Education and
Centers (EEC) Division. Since 1985, 29 ERC awards have been made;
as of August 1997, 26 centers are receiving ERC Program support
or have successfully completed a full 11-year ERC award period.
(see Appendix A)  Each new center receives a five-year
cooperative agreement stipulating that a formal review including
external site visitors be conducted in the third year for renewal
of support.  Centers passing the third-year review receive a new
five-year cooperative agreement requiring a formal review in each
center's sixth year.   The full term of an ERC is 11 years.  As a
center begins its seventh year, if not before, it should begin to
generate even  higher levels of  non-NSF funding to lay down a
pathway to self-sufficiency after Year 11.  Funding is phased
down in an ERC's ninth and tenth years.  The center is expected
to preserve the ERC culture as it moves into self-sufficiency.
Sub-groups within an ERC may choose to regroup with others to
compete to form a new ERC in the final two years of the ERC's
award.

From the beginning of the Program, each active center has
submitted data about its activities and outputs annually to ERC
Program staff.  For example, in the 1994-95 reporting year, which
included 21 centers, ERCs received a total of $51.7 million from
the ERC Program and $53.7 million from firms in cash, in-kind
donations, and associated grants and contracts.  (Of this, $17
million was cash.)  Other Federal agencies, state governments,
universities, and other organizations provided the ERCs with
$73.5 million.

In that year, there were 708 industrial partnerships with ERCs,
involving 523 companies or industrial consortia.  As of Fall
1996, 228 patents have been granted for intellectual property
emerging from ERC activities and 1142 licenses to patents and
software products originating at the centers were negotiated.  By
the end of the 1995-96 year, 1,808 bachelors degrees, 1677
masters degrees, and 1587 doctoral degrees had been granted to
students who had been involved in ERC activities.



2.  THE STUDIES:  PROGRAM RESULTS AFTER TEN YEARS

In 1994, the EEC Division initiated two studies of key aspects of
the ERC Program: ERC-industry interaction and the effectiveness of
former ERC graduate students in all sectors of employment. The primary
intent of these studies was to examine the extent to which the
Program was making progress toward its goals of developing long-
term relationships between academe and industry and preparing a
"new generation" of engineers who are able to come up to speed
more quickly and effectively in industry.  The studies were
intended principally for NSF program management purposes, as a
component of continuous improvement of the Program and to extend
EEC's knowledge of the benefits, outcomes, and impacts of the
data that centers report in the aggregate about interactions with
industry and student involvement in ERCs.  These initial studies
constitute the beginning of a series that will take a
comprehensive look at the Program over several years.

Data for the first two studies were collected in 1995 and early
1996 as the Program entered its second decade of operation.  This
report summarizes and integrates the results of these studies.
The methodology for both studies is described below.  Results of
the ERC-industry interaction are presented in Section 3, followed
by those of  the ERC graduate effectiveness study in Section 4.
Overall findings and conclusions are presented in Section 5.

Methodology:  ERC-Industry Interaction Study

The purposes of this study were to:  (1) examine the patterns of
interaction that have emerged between ERCs and industry; (2)
determine which types of interaction were most useful to
industry; and (3) assess the value of these impacts to the
companies.

The intellectual framework for the study was derived from the
hypothesis that the greater and broader the types of involvement
between firms and ERCs, the more the firms would benefit.  This
was a founding principle of the ERC Program that could not be
tested until sufficient time had passed for the impacts of these
interactions to become evident.  Because industry-university
interaction is by definition dynamic, the study was designed to
reflect this fact, rather than simply focus on retrospective
consideration of results of the Program to date.

The study contractor, SRI International, began by conducting a
series of case studies within a small number of firms -- each
involved with a different ERC -- to obtain information on
activities within firms that related to their participation in
one or more ERCs.  Information obtained through visits with
corporate representatives was compiled into a preliminary
"process model" of ERC-industry interaction.  The case studies,
the model, and results from a focus group with additional
corporate representatives to ERCs were all used in development of
the survey instruments and in specification of groups of
individuals to be surveyed.

Given the organizational complexity and decentralization of many
firms, the target for the study was the unit that was the primary
direct beneficiary of the firm's participation in a given center.

The Primary Participant questionnaire was sent to the person from
this unit whom the center identified as the corporate
representative to the center.  Names and addresses of company
representatives, corresponding to the list of companies each
center reported in the 1993-94 reporting year, were requested
from each of the 18 ERCs in operation at the beginning of the
study.  (See Appendix A for a list of centers.)  In a number of
instances, a single firm had multiple partnerships across several
centers through different corporate divisions.  In each case, a
separate point-of-contact was requested from centers; they
provided 581 names and addresses to the contractor.  Of those, 81
were not usable due to bad addresses, retirement, and similar
reasons.  Consequently, the survey population was reduced to 497,
of whom 355 returned valid questionnaires for a response rate of
71%.

To broaden the perspective within a single company, a related but
shorter Secondary Participant questionnaire was sent to two
additional people whom primary participants identified as being
knowledgeable about the nature of the firm's involvement in the
center and the impact of participation on the firm.  Of the 266
people suggested by the primary participants, 138, or 52%,
submitted valid responses.  Surveying of both populations took
place during 1995 and, in the case of the secondary participants,
into early 1996.

After preliminary review of the survey data, telephone interviews
were conducted with 20 survey respondents to discuss in greater
detail certain questions and themes that had emerged from the
data.  The results were assembled as mini-case studies and
incorporated in the survey results.

Methodology:  ERC Graduates Effectiveness Study

At the inception of the ERC Program, there was an expectation
that involvement of graduate and undergraduate students in the
full range of ERC activities would expand upon abilities and
knowledge gained in traditional degree programs and result in
more effective new entrants to engineering practice in industry.
A companion goal was to produce new courses and course materials
based on the ERCs' research, so as to expose a broader base of
students to cross-disciplinary, systems-level courses.  As it
happens, some centers have developed new degree programs as well.

The second ERC study in this series, conducted by Abt Associates
Inc., examined:  the extent to which masters and doctoral
graduates with substantial ERC experience are more effective
employees than are their peers; what the graduates did while at
an ERC; and the impact of ERC activities on the graduates'
effectiveness on the job.

The emphasis of the study was on those who were employed in the
industry.  However, two additional ERC graduate populations were
surveyed as well:  those working in academia and those in Federal
or other sectors.  Questionnaires with slight differences were
prepared for each of the three populations.  Two assumptions
determined which centers and which former students were surveyed.
First, it takes a center approximately three years to achieve full
operations and, second, substantial ERC experience as a student
would require at least two years of involvement for there to be
significant impact.  Thus, only individuals who had graduated
from the first 14 centers (see Appendix A) in these centers'
third year or later with two or more years of ERC experience were
eligible for the study.

The ERCs provided the names and available contact information for
eligible graduates.  Using several approaches to find correct
addresses and phone numbers, 720 eligible graduates were
contacted initially by phone; of these, 554 provided the names of
their supervisor(s) and agreed to allow their names to be used
when contacting the supervisor(s).  Sixty percent (433) of the
graduates responded to a written survey about their ERC
experiences, other educational background, and present job.
Eighty-six percent (477) of the supervisors responded to a short
telephone interview about the effectiveness of their employees
with ERC experience in graduate school.  As with the graduates,
slightly different questionnaires were used for the supervisor in
industry, academia, and Federal or other sectors to reflect
differences among the sectors.

Legal reasons prevented inclusion of control group(s) of
engineering students in this study.  It would have been ideal if
individuals with similar graduate education without exposure to
anything like an ERC also could have been tracked and information
about their effectiveness in their respective sector of
employment compared with that of individuals with ERC experience.
However, it is illegal to obtain information from a college or
university about the activities of  someone who has graduated
from the institution without the expressed permission of that
individual.  But in order to determine whose permission would be
required, it would be necessary to see the academic records
first.  An alternative approach, selecting a sample of
individuals from large national statistical databases at the
Department of Education and at NSF and then contacting these
individuals, proved to be methodologically insupportable.
Statisticians in charge of the relevant databases advised that an
appropriate sample could not be drawn.

Thus, the supervisors' questionnaires were designed to obtain a
"proxy comparison," rather than a direct comparison between ERC
graduates and a pre-defined control or comparison group.   In the
proxy, supervisors assess the extent to which ERC graduates are
less or more effective than their peers in the same firm on a
series of capabilities related to the foci of ERC education, as
well as capabilities associated with traditional graduate
education.  To provide a second perspective on the effectiveness
of graduates in employed industry, industrial representatives
surveyed in the ERC-Industry Interaction Study also rated ERC
graduates whom their firm had hired against peers in their firms.
The results of this additional component are presented in Section
3.


3.  ERC-INDUSTRY INTERACTION

Relationships of Firms to ERCs

At the core of the ERC Program is the concept of firms having
membership in a center, which involves them in strategic
planning, joint research projects, mentoring of students, access
to the center's facilities and equipment, access to center
researchers and students, and a number of other things, depending
on the center.  Center membership usually involves payment of a
fixed annual fee that is pooled with cash from other members and
sponsors for support of the center's research and research-
related activities.  In some cases, centers have accepted
specific in-kind donations of such things as software and
equipment in lieu of cash to establish membership.  Centers set
their own membership rates and often have associate memberships
for small firms that cannot afford the cost of full membership,
or for larger firms that are not yet ready to make a commitment
for full membership.  Member companies may also sponsor specific
research projects and some form consortia around larger projects
and testbeds.  Occasionally, centers will introduce potential
member firms to the ERC through project-level support.

A total of 355 valid responses were submitted to the Primary
Participants Survey.  Table 3-1 shows the firms' distribution
across the primary research or product line, as designated by the
respondents:


_________________________________________________________________

Table 3-1  Primary Research/Product Line of ERC Participants

                                                        Percent of
Primary Research/Product Line                   Respondents' Firms

Electrical, electronic, telecommunications                   21.6
Chemicals and allied products, including pharmaceuticals     15.8
Surgical/medical instruments and supplies                     9.1
Petroleum refining and extraction                             6.7
Aircraft and missiles                                         4.4
Machinery                                                     3.5
Building construction                                         3.5
Motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment                    3.2
Primary metals                                                2.9
Professional and scientific instruments                       2.6
Other non-manufacturing (e.g., engineering design/service
     and computer software companies)                         9.4
Other                                                        17.3
_________________________________________________________________

Industry representatives surveyed reported that their firms had
been associated with the ERC for an average of about four years.
Nearly a third had been involved for five to seven years, while
44.9% had newer partnerships that ranged from two to four years
old.

Involvement included providing financial support to centers.  In
1994, nearly two-thirds of the firms had paid center membership
fees, which averaged $21,028.  The remaining firms provided in-
kind support at the center's accepted in lieu of cash
memberships.  Most fees were between $10,000 and $100,000;
however, 19.6% were less than $10,000 and 1.4% were over
$100,000.

In the same year, one firm in five had contracts with a center,
averaging $125,000, for research related to the center's focus;
nearly as many firms provided in-kind donations of such things as
software and equipment averaging $55,000 in value.

Additionally, a small percentage of firms provided unrestricted
grants (averaging $45,000) and other support not specified
(averaging $130,000).  (The latter category is distorted by a $2
million donation to one center.  Without this amount, the average
would be about $60,000.)

ERC-Firm Interactions

Respondents and other members of their firm were involved with
ERCs in a variety of ways; patterns of involvement also varied
considerably across firms.  Keeping in mind that the centers
themselves identified the corporate representatives who were
included in this study, there were some differences in the
"official" roles of these individuals in a given center,
independent of how they actually interacted with that center.
Nearly 82% of those surveyed acted as their company unit's main
point of contact with the center, while more than two-thirds
coordinated or helped coordinate the participation of their
firm's technical staff in the ERC as well as being responsible
for preparing budgets or justifications/recommendations for
continued annual membership in the ERC.  Nearly a third were
responsible for approving the budget for the firm's membership in
the center.  Slightly more than a third were voting members of
the center's advisory body that is responsible for making
recommendations regarding the center's management or research
plans.

Most corporate representatives to ERCs were personally involved
in their ERC in numerous ways.  Nearly three-quarters (71.9%) had
attended or participated in one or more ERC seminars or
workshops, while almost as many (67.9%) had reviewed ERC research
results or publications. Looking at more active forms of
involvement, more than half (59.0%) had received technical advice
or consultation from either ERC faculty or other ERC researchers.
On a smaller scale, respondents reported being involved in
personnel exchanges.  More than a quarter (30.4%) of the
respondents indicated that they had collaborated with ERC
researchers at the company's site, while 23.8% participated in
research at the ERC's site.  About 18% supervised a former or
current ERC student working at his or her company and nearly 15%
co-authored a publication or developed invention(s) jointly with
ERC researchers.  Relatively few respondents (6.9%) had served on
an ERC student's thesis or dissertation committee.

Industry representatives reported that the principal vehicles for
other members of their firms to interact with the ERC were the
same as those for the respondents:  reading ERC reports or
publications, consulting with ERC faculty or researchers, and
participating in ERC seminars and workshops.  Again, however, a
notable proportion were more directly involved:  over a third
reported that at least one other member of the firm had
participated in a joint ERC project at the ERC's site and roughly
the same proportion indicated that a colleague had been involved
in a joint project at the firm's site.  In addition, slightly
less than a third mentioned that at least one colleague had used
ERC facilities and equipment.


Benefits to Firms

Nearly 90% of industry sponsors determined that their firm had
received benefits from ERC participation and over two-thirds
indicated that the participation had had at least some effect on
their firm's competitiveness.  Of the latter, about 40% rated the
impact of ERC participation on corporate competitiveness as
moderate to a great deal.  The major benefits fell in five
categories: (1) access to new ideas, know-how, or technologies;
(2) receiving technical assistance; (3) interaction with other
firms participating in the ERC; (4) access to ERC equipment and
facilities; and (5) hiring ERC students and graduates.  In
addition, over half of the respondents indicated that, as a
result of their ERC involvement, they had influenced their firm's
research agenda.

1.  Access to New Ideas, Know-how, or Technologies

More than 80% of the respondents indicated that access to new
ideas know-how or technologies had been a very important reason
for participating in the first place, and over 80% of these
reported that their firm had in fact obtained access to such
things as a result of ERC participation.  Further, more than a
quarter of those who reported receiving such access reported that
their firm had benefited "a great deal" from the ideas, know-how,
or technologies.  Examples included:

     "The benefits are considered large compared to the limited
     costs of participation.  Of main importance is knowledge
     about personnel to contact.  Participation has also led to a
     substantial increase in knowledge in certain areas of
     importance and familiarized my unit with U.S. research in
     relevant fields as well as led to contact with other
     companies."

     "As a small company (40 employees), we have a difficult time
     accessing technical information.  Through the ERC, we have
     had access to worldwide information in the fields of our
     interest."

     "We get ideas from the ERC which we translate into
     development programs in our department.  We also use the ERC
     to critique some of our ideas."

2.  Receiving Technical Assistance

Over half of the firms benefited from receiving technical
assistance from an ERC.  Examples of the most significant
benefits belonging to this category include the following:


     "At the time we started working with the ERC, we were a very
     small start-up company with few employees.  The
     collaborative research done with the ERC was pivotal in
     establishing the feasibility of our product and defining
     certain technical parameters."

     "Technical advice on a new product concept has been crucial
     - a contract to start next week will provide the important
     information on whether to go forward."

     "...direct technical collaborations.  ERC faculty have
     developed excellent computer modeling and simulation tools,
     which have been of great value in providing deeper
     understanding of device performance limitations and design
     trade-offs."


3.  Interaction with other Firms Participating in the ERC

Over 50% reported that their firm benefited from increased
interaction with other firms participating in the same ERC.
Industrial representatives described a variety of particularly
significant benefits that resulted from opportunities to interact
with other participating firms, which are often competitors:

     "The ERC has served as a networking forum in which to
     discuss issues critical to our industry with competitors and
     customers."

     "...contact with U.S. competitors in a non-competitive
     environment."

     "As a small company, we have had access to people that were
     not available to us, such as technical personnel from large
     multinational corporations in our industry."


4.  Access to ERC Equipment and Facilities

ERC facilities and equipment also proved useful to 40% of the
respondents' firms, with over a quarter finding the facilities
and equipment to be of great benefit to their firm.

Descriptions of significant benefits from access to ERC equipment
and facilities include:

     "Cross-training of company technicians in ERC facilities has
     shown improvements in laboratory analysis accuracy and
     throughput.  In one training session, immediate results were
     observable."

     "...access to $28 million in instrumentation that can be used
     for evaluation - in some cases the benefit has caused us to
     purchase capital equipment."

     "The opportunity to participate in joint projects at the ERC
     site.  ERC services and workshops are particularly
     beneficial to our company."


5.  Hiring ERC Students and Graduates

One especially beneficial outcome was hiring ERC students while
still in school or graduates as soon as they received their
degree.  While less than half of the firms (39.9%) did so, more
than half of those who did received "a great deal" of benefit as
a result.  The benefit received from this outcome was more highly
rated than was the benefit from any other outcome of ERC
participation.   As the following figure shows, there was
substantial variation across the centers in the percent of firms
that received this benefit:



                           Figure 3-1



Section 4 provides detail on the benefits to firms of hiring ERC
graduates, the graduates' capabilities relative to peers without
ERC experience, and the impact of ERC and non-ERC graduate school
activities on their job performance.

While firms frequently initiated interaction with a center in
order to receive one or more of the five benefits described
above, they often experienced benefits that they had not
anticipated.  This was true in the case of access to ERC
facilities and equipment in that  far more firms ultimately found
such access valuable than had originally intended to make use of
it.

Other Benefits

As a result of having received these benefits, over half of the
firms were able to improve an existing product or process.  The
following figure illustrates the substantial difference across
centers in the extent to which participating firms reported this
occurrence:


                            Figure 3-2

Additional benefits related to intellectual property and
product/process development  were reported by smaller proportions
of respondents, but in each case, firms valued them among the
highest of all types of benefits received from involvement with
ERCs.  More firms benefited from these results than had
anticipated doing so.   Nearly a quarter of corporate
representatives indicated that their firm had developed a new
product or process as a result of their interaction with an ERC.
A quarter of these firms characterized the outcome as being of
great benefit to their firm.  Similarly, of the nearly one-third
of respondents reporting that their firm had patented or
copyrighted technology or software developed on the basis of
interaction with the ERC, the same proportion indicated that
their firm had benefited a great deal from this result.
Licensing of ERC-developed software was reported by slightly over
a quarter of respondents, with 11.8% of these people reporting
that their firm received great benefit from having done so.

Factors Affecting Receipt of Benefits

1.  Length and Nature of Participation

Companies receive benefits in direct relation to the number of
years they participate in an ERC and the extent of active
involvement with the center:  the longer a firm participates and
the more direct personal interaction corporate and center
personnel have, the more direct benefits the firm will receive
and the greater the effect on company competitiveness.  While
three-quarters of firms participating in an ERC for less than a
year experienced at least some benefit in that short time period
- and 22.6%  had received a great deal of benefit - over 90% of
industrial representatives from firms involved with an ERC for
eight to 10 years report at least some benefit, with 47.2%
reporting moderate benefits and another 36.1% reporting a great
deal of benefit.  The same basic pattern holds true for
competitiveness.  Firms with a year or less participation in a
center reportedly had experienced little or no effect on the
firm's competitiveness, although 12.5% of the respondents
indicated that the center had already contributed a great deal to
their firm's competitiveness.  By eight to ten years of
involvement, the industrial representatives reported that more
than 80% of their firms had already experienced at least some
positive effect and 10.4% reported a great deal of effect on
their competitiveness.

Overall company benefits from participation in an ERC also are
almost directly proportional to the extent of interaction between
company employees and the ERC.  In particular, active interaction
on the part of the industrial representatives and others in their
firm with ERC personnel and facilities led to substantially
greater benefits to the companies.  Active interaction includes
such things as participation in research at the ERC site,
collaboration with ERC researchers working at the company's site,
supervision of a current or former ERC student working at the
company's site, use of the ERC's facilities or equipment, co-
authoring publications or developing inventions jointly with ERC
researchers, or receiving technical advice or consultation from
ERC researchers.  Nearly a quarter of the representatives who
engaged in none of these things reported that their company
received no benefit from involvement with the ERC.  On the other
hand, 52.0% of respondents who were personally involved in at
least four of these activities reported that their firm had
received a great deal of benefit from participation in the
center.   When reporting on the involvement of other members of
the firm in the center, 38.2% of the respondents reporting that
their colleagues had engaged in six to eight different types of
involvement indicated that their firm had benefited a great deal
from participation.

In terms of quantitative ratings, representatives who reported no
active personal interaction with the center rated their firm's
overall benefit as an average 2.2 on a scale of 1 (little or no
benefit) to 4 (great deal of benefit).  The rating of benefit
rises to 3.3 when either the industrial respondent or others in
the firm are involved in at least four different types of
personal interaction with faculty, researchers, and students in
the center.  Attendance at ERC seminars and workshops, as well as
reviewing ERC research results or publications were excluded from
this analysis because they do not involve active participation in
center activities.

2.  Corporate and Center Characteristics and Activities

A number of factors contribute to the receipt of benefits from
interaction with ERCs.  The most notable of these relate to the
centers themselves.  One of the most important is the closeness
of the ERC's technical focus to that of the company unit that is
involved; this factor was rated as very or extremely important by
58.3% of the industrial representatives.  Additional factors
identified as very or extremely important include the
responsiveness of the ERC faculty and other researchers to the
needs of the company (49.2%) and efforts by the ERC to
communicate and stay in contact with corporate participants
(48.1%).

Another group of factors relate to company activities that
contribute strongly (very to extremely important) to positive
outcomes for the companies from interactions with an ERC.  Three
such activities emerged:  the continuous existence of a
"champion" for the ERC within the company unit (43.1%),
receptivity of company technical staff to ERC ideas and/or
results (41.7%), and management support of the ERC within the
company (38.1%).

3.  Barriers to Receiving Benefits

Corporate representatives reported that there was no particularly
strong barrier to their firm's ability to benefit from its
involvement with the ERC.  On a scale of 1 to 4 from "not a
barrier/doesn't apply" to "major barrier", the primary problem
was that other company priorities preempted involvement with the
ERC.  This item was considered a major barrier by 21.1% of the
respondents and a moderate barrier by 23.7%.  The next most
frequently cited "major" barriers pertained to differences in
approach to work and values between individual ERCs and
companies:  (a) different conceptions of time between project
initiation and completion (13.9%); (b) ERC research is not
sufficiently relevant to the company's needs (13.8%); (c)
differences between the ERC and the company in values, mission,
or priorities (12.3%); (d) intellectual property issues (12.2%);
and (e) different conceptions of the importance of meeting
project deadlines (12.2%).  An additional 14.7% to 28.9% of the
remaining respondents rated these items as moderate barriers to
receiving benefits from involvement with the center.

On the other hand, over half of the industrial representatives
indicated that a number of things did not cause a problem or were
not applicable in their relationship with the center:  (a) poor
communication between the ERC and the firm; (b) internal company
"politics";  and (c)  geographic distance between the company and
the ERC. Approximately a quarter of the other representatives
identified these things as minor barriers to receiving benefits
from the center.

Similarly, "lack of awareness about the ERC within my company"
and "insufficient influence on the ERC's research agenda" were
viewed as inapplicable or not a barrier by approximately a third
and as minor or moderate problems by approximately half of the
respondents.   The latter is consistent with only 38% indicating
that they have moderate to great influence on their center's
research agenda.

While the level of influence that corporate representatives have
on a center's research agenda does not appear to be major
hindrance, the proportion of representatives describing their
influence as minimal appears to have grown over the years.  In an
early study of the ERC Program by the U.S. General Accounting
Office (GAO, 1988),* 16% of industry representatives reported
little or no ability to influence the research agenda.  This
compares with 31% in the present study.

This increase is important to note because the level of influence
appears to be related to a firm's receipt of benefits. As the
following table illustrates, those describing their influence on
the center's research agenda as moderate to great reported
greater benefits than did those with little or no influence.

_______________
*GAO, 1988. Engineering Research Centers: NSF Program Management
and Sponsorship (GAO/RCED 88-177).  Washington, DC: Government
Accounting Office.


_________________________________________________________________

Table 3-2: Overall Benefits to the Company from ERC Participation,
           by Company Influence on the ERC's Research Agenda


Influence on    Little  Some  Moderate   Great     Mean
the ERC's         or           Amount     Deal   Rating**
Research         None
Agenda
__________________________________________________________________
Little or none   26.9   40.7    25.0      7.4       2.1
Some              6.5   30.6    50.9      12.0      2.7
Moderate Amount   1.0   14.1    52.5      32.3      3.2
Great Deal        0.0   3.2     48.4      48.4      3.5
__________________
* Chi-square analysis shows differences to be significant at
.05 level or less
**Items were rated on a 4-point-scale, with 1="little or none",
2 = "some", 3="a moderate amount", and 4="a great deal."
_____________________________________________________________________


Industrial representatives identified some of the barriers that
hinder or prevent their firm from receiving full benefits as a
result of participation in the ERC:

     "We have not yet been actively involved in mentor programs
     and/or significant collaborative research.  We are hoping to
     be much more involved in ERC Programs in the future.  We
     have increased our hiring to allow support of this
     objective."

     "We would like to have collaborative projects, but our
     declining budgets and misalignment between the ERC's
     strengths and our short-term needs have made coordination
     difficult."

     "The research had better reach fruition of the objectives
     outlined or we will discontinue our association."

     "The technology is excellent in theory, but there was not
     the same energy to see if it works and what it takes to make
     it work."

Firms' Future Expectations and Plans

At the time the survey was conducted in 1995, two-thirds of
industrial representatives identified their firm as likely or
planning to, continue participation in their ERC in 1996, while
over half were probably or definitely going to continue doing so
in 1997.  The proportion definitely not continuing in either year
is essentially constant (16%-17%), but the group that is
uncertain grows in the out-years.

A number of statistical correlation's emerged connecting future
plans with benefits firms had already received, impact of center
interaction on the firm's competitiveness, length of involvement,
and ease of receiving approval within the firm for center
membership fees:


-    Nearly two-thirds of the industrial representatives
     from firms having received moderate to a great deal of
     benefits indicated in 1995 that they probably would continue
     participation in 1996 and were nearly as certain about
     involvement in 1997.

-    Over 80% of firms experiencing moderate to a great
     deal of impact on their firm's competitiveness as a result
     of benefits received from center involvement were probably
     or definitely going to continue participation in the
     following year, compared with 53% of firms experiencing less
     impact on competitiveness.

-    On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = no likelihood of continuing,
     5 = definitely will continue), the mean ranking of
     likelihood of continuing rises according to length of
     participation in a center from 3.2 for firms with one to two
     years of involvement to 4.3 for firms with eight to ten
     years of participation in 1996.  Means are similar for
     likelihood of involvement in 1997.

While all of these relationships are statistically significant,
overall, firms are statistically less likely to continue for one
or two more years than was the case in the 1988 GAO study of the
ERC Program.  In particular, fewer firms are definitely
continuing and more are either uncertain or likely not to do so.
Beyond the correlations described above, additional factors
contributing to this difference may include recent shifts in
patterns of funding and conducting R&D in industry and business
cycle changes since 1988 within the various technology sectors of
firms participating in ERCs.

Secondary Participants' Responses

To obtain a broader understanding of the extent and impact of
firms' interaction with ERCs, this study included a survey of
individuals whom the corporate representatives of participating
firms indicated were knowledgeable about or personally involved
in the firm's interaction with the ERC and the results in the
firm.

These secondary individuals were surprisingly similar in many
ways to the corporate representatives.  Although they were less
likely to have a formal role with the center (e.g., as the firm's
main point of contact with the center or as a voting member of a
center's industrial advisory board), the secondary participants
were as actively involved in the centers as were the primary
representatives.  Ironically, they were less likely to do passive
things, e.g., reviewing ERC research results, than were the
formal representatives!

Overall, secondary participants confirmed findings obtained from
primary respondents.  In fact, the former tended to be even more
positive about center involvement, especially concerning:

-  influence on the center's research agenda;
-  benefits received;
-  impact on the firm's competitiveness; and
-  likelihood of continuing involvement.

Secondary participants were also more apt to identify involvement
in joint projects and obtaining licenses to intellectual property
developed in the center as being important reasons for
participating in ERC than was the firm's representative to the
center.  Similarly, secondary respondents were statistically more
likely than their colleagues to report that their firm benefited
from hiring ERC students/graduates and from patenting or
copyrighting intellectual property developed by the company as a
result of ERC interaction, and that their firm was going to
remain involved in the ERC in the following two years.



4.  EFFECTIVENESS OF ERC GRADUATES IN INDUSTRY
    AND OTHER SECTORS


One of the three common elements identified for all ERCs under
the 1983 NAE guidelines for the ERC Program was the mandate to
"contribute to the increased effectiveness of all levels of
engineering education."  In the first years of the Program, the
latter came to be associated with creating a "new breed" of
engineer.  Drawing from the principle that the ERCs were to act
as change agents in academic and industrial culture, this new
type of engineer should reflect the features that make ERCs
distinctive.  That is, he or she should be adept at working in
collaborative teams on interdisciplinary topics, approaching
problem-solving from an engineering systems perspective, and
staying attuned to the needs of industry.  The new engineers were
also expected to use an integrative approach to their work and
have technical breadth as well as depth.

Involvement of students in ERC activities was intended to augment
graduate and undergraduate education, adding dimensions to the
students' capabilities and knowledge that are necessary for
successful engineering practice in industry.  ERCs do not grant
degrees; students remain affiliated with a home department, from
which they receive the degree and in which they continue to take
many of the courses in the required curriculum.  The ERC
experience is an enhancement, but (especially for graduate
students), it is intended to have a major impact on the
perspectives and capabilities of the student.  While ERC
experiences are intended to prepare individuals for industrial
employment, those graduates who work in other sectors are
expected also to apply the skills and approaches to engineering
problems that the ERC Program aims to instill.

Assessments of the extent to which the Program is succeeding in
preparing graduates who are effective in industry were obtained
from two independent sources:  (1) the industrial representatives
to ERCs whose firms had hired ERC students or graduates;  and (2)
the supervisors of engineers who had had ERC experience in
graduate school.  Both groups compared specific skills,
capabilities, and knowledge of  ERC graduates with those of
peers.  The views of industry representatives whose firms had ERC
students as temporary employees (21.8% of the firms) and
graduates as full-time employees (27.3% of the firms) were
obtained as part of the study reported in the preceding Section
3.  Supervisor's assessments were obtained in a separate survey
process under this Effectiveness study that included surveying of
the graduates as well.  Four hundred thirty-three ERC graduates
working in industry, academia, the Federal government, and other
sectors responded to a written survey.  At the time that these
surveys were conducted, a typical ERC graduate had been working
for the same organization for an average of about four years and
had had the same supervisor for an average of two to three years.
While the primary interest was in the effectiveness of ERC
graduates in industry, individuals employed in other sectors and
their supervisors were surveyed as well.  Table 4-1 provides
demographic data on graduate survey respondents.

Where findings relating to individuals working outside industry
differ from those for individuals employed in industry, those
findings are noted.

________________________________________________________________

Table 4-1:  Demographics of Graduate Survey Respondents


                      Percent of Graduates
              Gender                  Race-Ethnicity

                       African Asian        Native Pacific
Degree Level Male Fem. Amer.   Amer.  Hisp. Amer.  Islander White

  Masters
  Graduates   88    12    1     23     1      0       1       72

  Doctoral
  Graduates   90    10    0     30     2      0       0       66
_________________________________________________________________

Overall Assessment of ERC Graduates

As Table 4-2 shows, supervisors of ERC graduate and corporate
representatives of firms that had hired ERC graduates or students
judged their ERC-trained employees to be better than peers in the
same organization on six key performance dimensions; between a
third and a half of the same respondents characterized their ERC-
trained employees as "much better" overall than their peers.
__________________________________________________________________

Table 4-2:  Supervisors' and Representatives' Rating of ERC
Graduates As Superior to Peers

Dimension                          Supervisors   Representatives

Overall preparedness                  89.4%           80.2%
Contribution to technical work        84.8            77.3
Depth of technical understanding      85.0            80.2
Ability to work in
   interdisciplinary teams            80.3            64.3
Breadth of technical understanding    80.7            74.3
Ability to apply knowledge and
  use technology                      69.9            72.3

SCALE:  1 = "much worse"; 2 = "somewhat worse"; 3 = "about the
same"; 4 = "somewhat better"; 5 = "much better"

NOTE:  Values shown in table are percent responding at level 4 or
5.
_________________________________________________________________

On all other performance dimensions - familiarity with
engineering systems approach; ability to use knowledge to develop
technology; the amount of training the employees needed when
hired; and ability to solve problems within time, money, and
human restraints - half to two-thirds of supervisors and
corporate representatives rated their employees with ERC
experience as superior to their peers (4 or higher).  There is
little overlap between supervisors and industrial
representatives, as only 17.5% of the latter had supervised any
ERC students or graduates.

Corporate representatives whose firms received significant
benefit from hiring ERC students and graduates described the
results of such hires in a variety of ways, including:

     "We have had a significant technology transfer through a
     recent graduate from the ERC.  This has given us new and
     better approaches to R&D (product development) and a new
     focus on claim substantiations."

     "Since the formation of the ERC, we have hired four of their
     graduates.  They are top contributors to our R&D and were
     well prepared to work and contribute in industry.  This is
     the primary benefit of the ERC."

     "The most significant benefit has been access to students
     for cooperative education programs and full-time employees.
     ERC students have excellent applied skills in our company's
     competencies as a result of the academic and research
     environment of the ERC.  The ERC is the best source of
     technical talent we have experienced."

     "As a small company, we have had relationships with graduate
     students that have been powerful for them and us.  Students'
     projects at our company have educated both the students and
     our employees.  We have been able to develop practice-
     oriented engineers."

Graduates' Employment Characteristics

Career Paths

A number of differences exist across employment sector with
regard to graduates' career paths up to the time of the survey.
Nearly all of those working in industry and most of those in
academia at the time of the survey - 92% and 86%, respectively -
began work in that sector following their final degree.  In
contrast, less that three-quarters of those employed in federal
laboratories or other sectors began work there.  Of those moving
into these non-industry, non-academic sectors, nearly two-thirds
had previously been in industry and the rest came from academia.

Overall, ERC graduates had developed stable but varied career
paths with the same organization. Graduates employed in industry
and academia in 1995 had worked on average around four years with
their present employer, while those in federal laboratories and
other sectors had been with the same employer for an average of
five years.  The extent to which they identified the field in
which they were working as the same as that of their final degree
varied.  Not surprisingly, 86% of academics were working in their
field of education.  However, graduates in non-academic sectors
were more likely to have shifted to another field, as 75% of
those in industry and 70% of those in federal laboratories or
other work settings no longer considered the field of their work
to be the same as that of their highest degree.

Job Activities

ERC graduates working in industry* reported responsibilities in a
wide range of activities, with the emphases being process and
product engineering, manufacturing, fundamental or basic
research, and technical management.  Marketing/sales and general
management were not prominent among their responsibilities.  In
their current jobs, they were most likely to use knowledge or
techniques learned through their ERC work and to make use of
specific ERC research results.  They are unlikely, however, to
continue working on things that they had been doing at the
center.  This is not surprising, given the variety of their
current responsibilities and the likelihood that their jobs fit
in with a broader corporate strategy or agenda that has little
relation to ERC activity.  In addition, since the graduates had
worked an average of four years with their existing industry
employer at the time they were surveyed, most had moved on in
their careers and were not new degree recipients.
____________________
*The analysis of employment characteristics focuses on graduates
working in industry, unless otherwise noted.


Graduates working in industry engaged in a variety of activities
with and without academic involvement.  Approximately half of
these graduates reported having both applied for patents and had
articles accepted for publication, and over 70% also made
presentations at professional meetings that did not include
academic participation.  On the other hand, more than two-fifths
also indicated that they were involved in collaborative work with
university researchers and over half have obtained technical
advice from academic faculty or research staff; approximately one-
third of those involved in such activities were collaborating
with ERCs.  Finally, approximately a quarter of the ERC graduates
had made presentations based on collaborative work with
university researchers or were co-authors of publications with
academic researchers.  The majority of these activities were
performed with individuals and groups not associated with an ERC.

In certain respects, graduates working in federal laboratories
and those in industry were similar.  For example, those in
federal laboratories were even more likely than their colleagues
in industry to collaborate with university researchers and to
make presentations at professional meetings about work not
related to collaborations with universities; but those in
industry generally had a higher level of involvement with ERCs
than did those in federal laboratories.  Additionally, two-thirds
of federal laboratory employees established or participated in
cross-disciplinary research and nearly half carried out
engineering systems-based research.

Those employed in academia identified their primary job
activities as conducting their own research and supervising
research performed by students and, where applicable,
postdoctoral fellows.  Less important duties included
administration not related to research, industrial liaison, and
outside consultation.  Faculty had, on average, a medium level of
responsibility for teaching; but individuals tended to have
either a high or relatively low level of teaching
responsibilities.

As with those working in federal laboratories, those in academia
participated in activities involving industry and the general
approach to research espoused by the ERC Program.  Over half
pursued collaborative research with industry, served as a
consultant to industry, and received research support from
industry.  Most indicated that these activities were encouraged
at their institution.   Additionally, nearly 80% had established
or participated in cross-disciplinary research groups and about
60% had worked on engineering systems-based projects.  A majority
also indicated that their research was focused to a substantial
extent or entirely on problems directly relevant to industry.

Graduates' Self-Assessment of Job Performance

Using the same list of 16 job capabilities and skills with which
supervisors rated their employee(s) and that graduates used to
identify the items that are valuable in their present job (see
below), the ERC alumni also assessed themselves relative to peers
in their own organization.

Using a scale in which 1 equaled "much worse than average," 3
represented "about the same," and 5 was "much better than
average," graduates ranked themselves highest (mean values of
4.20-4.34) in general capabilities.  These include:

-    ability to grasp quickly the key features of new problems;
-    contribution to the firm's technical work;
-    breadth of technical understanding; and
-    ability to define the steps needed to solve new problems.

The group of capabilities immediately below this (mean values of
4.02-4.18) included:

-    ability to communicate ideas in writing;
-    creativity and innovativeness;
-    depth of technical understanding;
-    integrating and synthesizing information from different
      fields;
-    ability to work in interdisciplinary teams; and
-    ability to communicate ideas verbally.

The items in the remaining group were less positively rated (mean
values of 3.54-3.90):

-    understanding the relationship between work and customer
      needs;
-    meeting business goals while satisfying technical
      requirements;
-    leadership ability;
-    solving problems within the constraints of time, money, and
      human resources;
-    ability to transfer outside technology into the firm; and
-    networking within the company.

The list was modified for graduates working in academia and other
sectors.  Graduates working in academia rated themselves slightly
lower on these skills and capabilities in the final group listed
above than did those employed in either industry or federal
laboratories and other sectors.  The general pattern of strengths
and weaknesses across all groups, however, was essentially the
same.

Overall, ERC alumni in industry gave themselves a mean ranking of
4.32 in job performance compared to their peers.  Supervisors
assessed the overall performance of their ERC-trained employees
slightly higher, at 4.35.  In 12 of the individual skills and
capabilities as well, the graduates ranked themselves slightly
lower than their supervisors did. The biggest differentials
occurred with three items on which the graduates rated themselves
lowest:  networking, transferring outside technology into the
firm, and understanding the relationship between work and
customer needs.  Similarly, ability to work in interdisciplinary
teams was rated notably higher by supervisors than by graduates:
4.27 compared with 4.11.

Average ratings by ERC graduates working in industry were closest
to those of their supervisors.  In contrast, ratings by
supervisors of those graduates working in federal laboratories
and especially in academia were more favorable than those of the
graduates themselves.

Graduates in industry and their supervisors had slightly
differing views of the amount of post-employment training the
graduates needed to do their job.  Using a five-point scale in
which 1 meant "much less training needed than average" to become
a net contributor to the company's work and 5 meant "much more
training needed" than average, the mean rating by the graduates
in industry was 1.96.  Their supervisors provided a slightly
higher mean ranking of 2.09; although they still placed their ERC-
trained employees in the category of needing less training than
their peers, supervisors did not see the difference as being
quite as large as did the graduates themselves.

Graduates' Most Valued Job Skills and Capabilities

As Figure 4-1 shows, (see the following page) the sector of a
graduate's employment had a considerable influence on the skills
and capabilities that were deemed most useful in his or her
present job.

In the case of each skill or capability, however, there were
individuals for whom it was very important.  These results
reflect variation in both the numbers of those for whom each was
valuable and the extent of the value to each.  (Similar patterns
emerged in Section 3, "ERC-Industry Interaction," in discussion
of the range and extent of benefit each firm received from
interaction with an ERC.)


ERC Experience and Job Performance

Impact of ERC and non-ERC Graduate Experience on Job Performance

One of the underlying assumptions of the ERC Program has been
that significant involvement in ERC activities during graduate
study builds upon, or is complementary to, traditional graduate
education.  To examine the extent to which this has been the
case, graduates rated separately the impact of their ERC
experiences and non-ERC graduate experiences on their performance
in each of the 16 capability or skill areas listed in the
preceding section.

Using a 1-to-5 scale in which 1 was defined as "very negative"
impact and 5 meant "very positive," graduates in the industry
described the impact of their ERC experiences as ranging from
neutral to somewhat positive, while their ratings for other
graduate training experiences were slightly negative to positive.
The impact of non-ERC experiences on those working in industry
was most noticeable in six capabilities and skills:  contribution
to the company's technical work; breadth of technical
understanding; depth of technical understanding; ability to grasp
quickly key features of new problems; ability to define the steps
needed to solve new problems; and ability to apply knowledge from
different disciplines in an integrated fashion to solve problems.
On average, the impact of non-ERC experiences on the graduates'
job performance in these six areas was rated by those in industry
approximately 0.25 higher than was the impact of ERC experiences.
Performance in two other skills - creativity and innovation plus
being able to communicate ideas in writing - also was slightly
more affected by non-ERC graduate training.

Conversely, ERC experiences had a greater impact on performance
of the remaining half (8) of the skills and capabilities, all of
which were consistent with ERC Program intentions.  The four with
the greatest difference between ERC and non-ERC experiences were:
ability to work in interdisciplinary teams; ability to develop
solutions that meet business goals as well as satisfying
technical requirements; understanding the relationship between
their work and the needs of the company's customers; and skill at
networking in the company.  The differences between ERC and non-
ERC impact were smaller in the remaining four items: ability to
communicate ideas verbally; ability to identify and transfer
useful technology from outside sources such as universities or
national labs; leadership ability; and ability to solve problems
within constraints of time, money and human resources.  Looking
across graduates in all employment sectors, the impact of ERC
experiences on these items was strongest among those employed in
industry.

Graduates also rated the overall impact of both types of
experiences on their job performance.  Non-ERC experiences were
deemed to have had a higher overall impact on performance,
compared with the impact of ERC experiences.  Finally, looking at
the ERC and non-ERC experiences across each of the 16 skills and
abilities plus overall rating, the grand mean for non-ERC
training was fractionally above that for ERC experiences.  Given
the greater amount of time students spent in non-ERC experiences
while in graduate school, these difference are not surprising.
Looking at the relative impact of ERC and non-ERC experiences on
graduates across employment sectors, the ERC impact was greatest
among those working in academia.

An additional factor was the level of involvement of masters
students in ERC activities.  The finding is deceptively simple:
the more extensively masters students engaged in ERC activities,
the greater influence their ERC experience had on their
subsequent performance in terms of ERC-related capabilities.
While this is to be expected, it proved to be a major determinant
of the overall influence of several ERCs on their graduates'
capabilities.*    Centers with similar participation profiles for
masters and doctoral students have a much greater overall impact
on graduates' performance than those centers with less masters
involvement.  Given that there have been more masters than
doctoral students involved with ERCs over the course of the
Program,  this finding carries major implications.
_______________
*A few ERCs operatein areas with no masters programs at their
institution that are directly relevant for connections with the
ERC.  Thus, this finding applies to those ERCs that already
involve masters graduates or could do so.


Graduate School Activities

Examination of what ERC graduates did while in graduate school
sheds additional light on how ERC experiences add value to the
rest of their graduate education.  Masters and doctoral degree
recipients in this study did substantially different things while
in graduate school, and with notably different frequencies (see
Appendix B).  Of the 23 activities in which they might have
engaged, only three were identified by more than half of those
pursuing a masters degree while participating in an ERC they had
done: while studying for that degree they worked on research
projects with ERC faculty, attended one or more professional
meetings, and took non-ERC cross-disciplinary or
interdepartmental course.  Note that there is a roughly equal
balance between ERC-related and non-ERC activities in which 25%-
49% of the masters students engaged.  Those pursuing a doctorate
while at an ERC were split relatively evenly between ERC and non-
ERC activities throughout the full range of possible activities.

Note that the second most frequent activity for both masters and
doctoral graduates was attending professional society meetings,
and that in many cases respondents from both groups also
presented papers at such meetings.  While the graduates were not
asked how the trips were financed, it is safe to assume that at
least some of the graduates received funds from their ERC to
attend such meetings.  This is particularly likely if the
individuals were making presentations about their ERC research
projects.

Looking across all of their graduate activities, ERC graduates
engaged in a surprising amount of ERC-like activities outside of
ERCs as well.  Table 4-3 provides some comparisons for both
masters and doctoral graduates in terms of rates of participation
in ERC and non-ERC activities.

_______________________________________________________________

Table 4-3:  ERC and non-ERC Graduate School Activities of ERC
            Graduates

                                    Percent or Graduates

Activity                    Masters Graduates      Doctoral
Graduates
                              ERC  non-ERC       ERC  non-ERC

Collaborated with Corporate
  researchers                  24     15           37    30
Made presentations to
  industrial audiences         23     24           50    55
Published papers with
  industrial co-authors         5      5           21    15
Industrial internships
  - 18% of doctoral             -      -           48    52
Cross-disciplinary/
  cross-dept. courses          28     50           44    63
Presented talks at seminar
  series                       18     25           45    60
_________________________________________________________________


The following section will examine the extent to which there are
in fact differences in the impact of these seemingly similar ERC
and non-ERC activities on graduates' subsequent job performance.

Statistical Relationships Between Graduate School Experiences and
Job Performance

None of the results presented thus far dealing with the impact of
ERC and non-ERC activities on graduates' job performance has been
statistically significant.  Thus, the possibility that they might
be due to chance cannot be ruled out.  However, more complex
analyses (stepwise regressions) have identified statistically
significant relationships between graduate school experiences and
job performance.

Looking first at ERC-educated masters degree recipients who went
to work in industry immediately upon receipt of the degree, those
who took at least one ERC-developed or sponsored course while
pursuing that degree rated their communications and leadership
abilities somewhat higher than did those who did not take such
courses.  Among those who received a Ph.D. and took a position in
industry, there were several relationships between activities
engaged in while pursuing that degree and subsequent job
performance.  Looking at ERC-linked activities, the following
relationships emerged:

-    Those involved with ERC prototyping projects assessed
     their performance in a number of technical areas to be
     superior to that of peers.  Specifically, 60% of those
     previously involved in such projects identified their job
     performance as "much better than average" in their
     contribution to their company's technical work.  They also
     rated themselves comparatively highly on their overall
     ability to carry out their job responsibilities and their
     breadth of technical understanding.

-    Doctoral recipients who took ERC courses as doctoral
     students rated their ability to work in interdisciplinary
     teams significantly higher than did those who took no such
     courses.  Over 40% of all doctoral recipients who took
     courses developed or sponsored by an ERC while pursuing a
     doctorate rated themselves "much better than average" in
     interdisciplinary team work.  Conversely, only 28% of Ph.D.
     graduates who did not take any ERC courses rated their
     performance as highly on this dimension.

-    Ph.D. recipients who had co-authored papers with
     corporate sponsors of the ERC while in their doctoral
     program rated themselves relatively higher than did those
     who did not engage in such co-authorship in their ability to
     apply knowledge from different disciplines and their ability
     to transfer useful technology from outside sources.

Several relationships between non-ERC activities and job
performance also emerged.  Specifically:

-    Those who gave talks in non-ERC seminar series and
     published papers with non-ERC corporate authors while in
     doctoral programs rated themselves significantly higher in
     two areas - their ability to communicate ideas both verbally
     and in writing and their leadership abilities - than did
     doctoral graduates who did not engage in these activities.

-    Ph.D. recipients who presented talks at non-ERC seminar series
     also rated themselves relatively higher than did those who gave
     no such talks on (1) a variety of technical capabilities and
     skills, (2) their ability to apply knowledge from different
     disciplines, and (3) their ability to identify and  transfer useful
     technology from outside sources.

ERC Aspects with Greatest Career Impact

First, the ERC graduates who participated in this study looked
back over their various experiences with an ERC and made their
own lists of  the aspects of their ERC involvement that had the
greatest impact on their careers.  Table 4-4 contains these
aspects in order of frequency of identification by the graduates:

___________________________________________________________________

Table 4-4:  ERC Features with Most Impact on ERC Graduates'
            Careers

                                                    Percent of
ERC Feature                                         Respondents

Internship in industry, "real-world" experience           31
Specific courses, faculty, advisors                       23
Multidisciplinary; exposure to different disciplines      21
Good facilities and equipment                             19
Teamwork                                                  16
Research focus                                            14
Contacts, networking                                      12
Presentation, oral, or writing skills                      7
Mention of a specific substantive area                     6
__________________________________________________________________


Graduates' Recommendations for Program Improvement

ERC graduates identified three generic improvements that would
enhance the value of center involvement.  Three-quarters of the
ERC graduates now working in industry recommend that students
have enhanced industrial involvement.  Keeping in mind that less
than a quarter of either the masters or doctoral graduates had
had any industrial internships while in graduate school and that
less than 30% of ERC graduates had been involved in collaborative
projects with industry, there is clearly room for increasing the
amount of students' active involvement with industry.

The second area for improvement of the ERCs' value to graduate
students is providing more experiences in making presentations
and general training in communications.  This is not surprising.
Graduates rated themselves less highly in these areas than they
did technical capabilities, yet supervisors identified
communication and presentation skills as most important after
technical competence.

Third, ERC graduates identified a large number of specific
courses in their home ERC that would benefit from improvements of
various kinds.


5.  FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

ERC-Industry Interaction:  More is Better

By examining specific impacts of the ERC Program, the two studies
provided a critical look at the validity of the assumptions
underpinning the Program.  The ERC-industry interaction study
shows in numerous statistically significant ways that company
benefit is directly related to length and level of involvement in
a center.  Major impacts are generally unlikely to be realized in
the first year or two of a company's interaction with a center.
From their interaction with ERCs, companies receive a wide range
of benefits that are improving their competitiveness and level of
operation.  Of these benefits, the most important are in the
areas of:

-    Access to new ideas, know-how, or technologies;
-    Receiving technical assistance;
-    Interaction with other firms participating in the ERC;
-    Access to ERC equipment and facilities; and
-    Hiring ERC students and graduates.

Those who hired ERC students and graduates rated this benefit
higher than did recipients of any other outcome of ERC
participation.  In addition, two-thirds of firms experienced
gains in competitiveness as a result of ERC participation and the
majority of the respondents indicated that their ERC involvement
had influenced their firm's research agenda.

How much a company benefits is directly related to the number of
years it participates in an ERC and the extent of active
involvement its employees have with the center:  the longer a
firm participates and the more direct personal interaction there
is between corporate and center personnel, the more direct
benefits the firm will have received and the greater the effect
on company competitiveness.  The longer a firm has had active
participation, the more likely it is to continue supporting the
center for up to two years more.

The key, then, is for centers to make participating firms
understand that "sweat equity" is important for the partnership
to be fruitful.  The more centers can expose the industry
representatives and their colleagues to the variety of ways in
which they can be actively involved in the center, the more the
firms, students, and centers will benefit.  With the realization
of benefits comes a greater likelihood that a firm will continue
the collaboration for years.  Sitting on the sidelines for three
to four years before deciding to increase activity and get other
members of a firm involved delays the receipt of results and
threatens the longevity of partnerships.

Three factors are strongly related to the realization of positive
outcomes for companies from their interactions with an ERC:  the
existence of a "champion" for the ERC within the company, the
receptivity of company technical staff to ERC ideas and/or
results, and management support for the ERC partnership within
the company.

The biggest barrier to firms' participating in and benefiting
from ERCs is that various other company priorities preempt firms
from taking advantage of ERC involvement.  Other major barriers to
company participation are inherent in the differences in mission,
values, and perception of project goals and timelines between
industry and universities. These factors are largely out of the
center's control.  As a result, there may be a limit to what
centers can do to ensure that firms get the most out of their
involvement.

Impact of ERC Experience on Graduates

Regardless of employment sector, masters and doctoral degree
recipients with ERC experience take the knowledge, skills,
capabilities, and techniques they learned in ERCs with them to
their subsequent jobs.  Regardless of the nature of their jobs,
ERC graduates continue working in ways they learned in ERCs,
e.g., in interdisciplinary teams and by engaging in industry-
university collaboration.  ERC firms employing ERC students and
graduates value this benefit of ERC interaction more than any
other type of benefit.  Supervisors and other industry
representatives of firms employing ERC graduates judged the ERC-
trained employees to be superior to non-ERC employees on a number
of key performance dimensions.  With the demand for ERC graduates
by companies consistently exceeding the supply, it is evident
that ERC graduates are living up to the Program's intention that
they be successful in industry.

Significant involvement in ERC activities during graduate study
builds upon, or is complementary to, traditional graduate
education.   The skills and abilities in which ERC experience had
more impact on performance - e.g., technology transfer,
understanding the relationship between work and clients' needs,
and ability to work in interdisciplinary teams - are consistent
with the way ERC research and related activities are conducted
and with the Program's goal of preparing engineers who will be
able to work successfully in industry.  The dimensions in which
non-ERC experiences had a greater impact on performance - general
technical competence and ability to contribute to the employer's
technical work - are areas in which non-ERC training would have
been expected to have more impact, given the longer time that
graduate students spend in non-ERC education.  Thus, ERC
experience added to the breadth of capabilities of those who
spent time in an ERC while in graduate school.

While the ERC Program was a pioneer in developing this new mode
of education, its goals for graduates are no longer unique to the
Program.  There are now other efforts underway at engineering
schools designed to achieve the same goals.  The growing
prevalence of similar non-ERC educational programs and activities
that have ERC-like characteristics may contribute to the relative
difficulty in finding statistically significant differences
between graduates' perceptions of the value of ERC versus non-ERC
activities in their impact on their job performance.  At this
point, we do not know whether this is due to ERC students seeking
ERC-like experiences, e.g., coops, etc. in their non-ERC
education or whether it is due to a pervasive change in the
engineering education experience for all students.  NSF is
looking at options for examining  whether self-selection or
changes in educational opportunities for graduate students may
contribute to this situation.

Ways to Increase the Impacts of ERCs

The core of the ERC "culture" - interdisciplinary teams, research
relevant to industry, direct involvement of industry in ERC
activities - has produced a wide range of outcomes and benefits.
Ultimately, corporate partners and students will benefit most
from greater involvement of corporate staff in ERC activities.
The adage "More is Better" is the main message of these studies.
ERCs that approach their interactions with industry and graduate
education from this perspective will go a long way toward
ensuring that firms and students benefit from the ERC culture to
the greatest extent possible.

Firms can maximize the probability that they receive benefits
that have demonstrable impact if :  (1) their representatives to
the ERCs are actively involved in the ERC; (2) other members of
the firm also participate actively; and (3) this level of
participation begins when the ERC-firm partnership commences.
Corporations need more reasons than ever before to justify their
ERC membership fees and related costs.  Evidence of a firm
benefiting from an ERC membership need not take many years.  ERCs
need to emphasize that sitting on the sidelines and watching what
happens for four or more years decreases the probability that the
kinds of benefits they need to justify future membership
investments.  While the ERCs intend to develop long-term
relationships with firms and focus on long-term technical
challenges, the results show clearly that firms begin to benefit
early in their involvement - but only if their level of
interaction with the center is considerable.

Across  masters and doctoral graduates, there is clearly a link
between level of involvement of ERC activities that allow
exposure to the ERC "culture" and subsequent attribution of the
impact of such experience on their performance in areas that ERCs
seek  to foster.   ERCs can increase their impact on these
performance areas by broadening masters and doctoral students'
participation in those activities and ways of conducting research
that are distinctive.  Since the establishment of the ERC
Program, there has been a major growth in the number of  industry-
university research centers, many of which are now emphasizing
interdisciplinary.  Similarly, working in teams has become
increasingly important within and outside academia.  Students now
have more options than just ERCs for such experiences.  To make
ERC involvement most meaningful and useful to them, they must
have experiences that capitalize on the defining features of
ERCs, especially their real-world, industry focus.  Individual
centers that include masters students  must involve these
students - not just doctoral students -- in the kinds of
activities that typify an ERC, that can not be found in other
centers or institutes in the engineering school.  By doing these
things, individual centers can maximize their impact on all
levels of students, which translates to maximum impact on job
performance.

For continuous improvement of the ERC Program, results of these
studies and findings relating to maximizing the Program's impact
will be disseminated not only to the ERC Program Leader, but also
to the individual ERCs at their annual meeting.  In addition, the
ERC Program Directors will be using this information to work with
individual centers to implement changes reflecting the study
results.



                           APPENDIX A
                  ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTERS


1/CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY BENIGN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING (1996)
University of Arizona/Stanford University/Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

2/ADVANCED COMBUSTION ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER (1986)
Brigham Young University/University of Utah (in both studies)

CENTER FOR NEUROMORPHIC SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (1994)
California Institute of Technology

2/THE ENGINEERING DESIGN RESEARCH CENTER (1986)
Carnegie Mellon University (in both studies)

THE DATA STORAGE SYSTEMS CENTER (1990)
Carnegie Mellon University (in industry interaction study only)

CENTER FOR OPTOELECTRONIC COMPUTING SYSTEMS (1987)
University of Colorado/Colorado State University (in both
studies)

2/CENTER FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH (1985)
Columbia University (in both studies)

CENTER FOR EMERGING CARDIOVASCULAR TECHNOLOGIES (1987)
Duke University/University of North Carolina and other North
Carolina Universities
  (in both studies)

CENTER FOR PARTICLE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (1994)
University of Florida

CENTER FOR LOW COST ELECTRONIC PACKAGING (1994)
Georgia Institute of Technology

2/CENTER FOR COMPOUND SEMICONDUCTOR MICROELECTRONICS (1986)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (in both studies)

2/ERC FOR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR LARGE STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS (1986)
Lehigh University (in both studies)

2/INSTITUTE FOR SYSTEMS RESEARCH (1985)
University of Maryland/Harvard University (in both studies)

CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY PROCESS ENGINEERING (1985)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (in both studies)

1/CENTER FOR COMPETITIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT (1996)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1/CENTER FOR RECONFIGURABLE MACHINING SYSTEMS (1996)
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

CENTER FOR INTERFACIAL ENGINEERING (1989)
University of Minnesota (in both studies)

CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL FIELD SIMULATION (1990)
Mississippi State University (in industry interaction study only)

BIOFILM ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER (1990)
Montana State University (in industry interaction study only)

CENTER FOR ADVANCED ELECTRONIC MATERIALS PROCESSING (1989)
North Carolina State University (in both studies)

2/CENTER FOR NET SHAPE MANUFACTURING (1986)
Ohio State University (in both studies)

CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE MANUFACTURING (1985)
Purdue University (in both studies)

1/INTEGRATED MEDIA SYSTEMS CENTER (1996)
University of Southern California

OFFSHORE TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH CENTER (1989)
Texas A&M University (in industry interaction study only)

1/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON ENGINEERED BIOMATERIALS (1996)
University of Washington

CENTER FOR PLASMA-AIDED MANUFACTURING (1989)
University of Wisconsin, Madison (in both studies)

________________________
1/The ERC awardee classes of 1994 and 1996 did not participate
in the surveys for these studies.

2/Will have graduated from the ERC Program and become self-
sufficient during FY 1996 or 1997.




                           APPENDIX B
   PARTICIPATION OF ERC ALUMNI IN GRADUATE TRAINING ACTIVITIES


                                        Percent of Graduates by
                                        Sector of Employment
Activities as a Master's Student      All   Industry Other  Academic
                                      Alumni

Worked on research projects with
   ERC faculty                        54.9   61.2    46.4   40.8
Attended one or more professional
   society meetings                   51.0   55.6    44.6   40.8
Took other cross-disciplinary or
   interdepartmental courses          50.1   54.7    42.9   40.8
Based thesis on ERC-sponsored
   research project                   39.3   43.1    30.4   33.8
Published papers in refereed
   journal                            35.9   39.2    35.7   25.4
Took any courses developed or
   sponsored by an ERC                27.9   34.1    19.6   14.1
Attended more than half of an ERC
   seminar series                     26.7   28.9    25.0   21.1
Made presentation at professional
   society meetings                   25.6   27.2    19.6   25.4
Presented talks as part of non-ERC
   seminar series                     24.8   25.9    25.0   21.1
Collaborated with researchers from
   ERC corporate sponsors             24.2   28.9    17.9   14.1
Presented research to non-ERC
   industrial audience                24.2   27.6    19.6   16.9
Presented research to ERC corporate
   sponsor                            22.6   24.6    17.9   19.7
Published papers based on an ERC
   research project                   21.4   25.0    16.1   14.1
Presented talks as part of an ERC
   seminar series                     18.4   18.5    16.1   19.7
Worked on ERC-sponsored prototyping
   project                            17.3   18.1    14.3   16.9
Collaborated with non-ERC
   researchers                        15.0   16.4    14.3   11.3
Worked on research using ERC-based
   test bed                           14.8   16.4    17.9    7.0
Published papers with non-ERC
   corporate co-authors                5.0    6.0     3.6    2.8
Published papers with co-authors
   from ERC sponsor                    4.7    5.6     3.6    2.8
Applied for patent                     3.1    3.4            4.2
Applied for patent based on ERC
   research project                    1.1    1.7
Applied for patent with non-ERC
   sponsor co-applicants               0.8    1.3
Applied for patent with ERC sponsor
   co-applicants                       0.6    0.9




                        APPENDIX B, Cont.
   PARTICIPATION OF ERC ALUMNI IN GRADUATE TRAINING ACTIVITIES



                                        Percent of Graduates by
                                        Sector of Employment
Activities as a doctoral student      All   Industry Other  Academic
                                      Alumni

Published papers in refereed journal  88.1    91.0    79.5    86.3
Attended one or more professional
   society meetings                   86.0    88.6    79.5    83.6
Worked on research projects with ERC
   faculty                            85.3    87.3    79.5    83.6
Made presentation at professional
   society meetings                   78.4    82.5    61.5    78.1
Published papers based on an ERC
   research project                   63.7    67.5    48.7    63.0
Took other cross-disciplinary or
   interdepartmental courses          62.9    63.9    64.1    60.3
Based thesis on ERC-sponsored
   research project                   60.8    63.9    48.7    60.3
Presented talks as part of non-ERC
   seminar series                     59.4    62.0    41.0    63.0
Presented research to non-ERC
   industrial audience                55.4    62.0    53.8    41.1
Presented research to ERC corporate
   sponsor                            50.4    55.4    43.6    42.5
Attended more than half of an ERC
   seminar series                     48.9    51.2    43.6    46.6
Presented talks as part of an ERC
   seminar series                     44.6    45.2    41.0    45.2
Took any courses developed or
   sponsored by an ERC                43.9    54.2    23.1    31.5
Collaborated with researchers from
   ERC corporate sponsors             36.3    42.2    30.8    26.0
Collaborated with non-ERC
   researchers                        30.2    30.7    30.8    28.8
Worked on ERC-sponsored prototyping
   project                            21.2    22.9    15.4    20.5
Published papers with co-authors
   from ERC sponsor                   20.9    24.7    10.3    17.8
Worked on research using ERC-based
   test bed                           20.1    21.1    20.5    17.8
Published papers with non-ERC
   corporate co-authors               14.7    18.1    15.4     6.8
Applied for patent                    10.8    11.4    10.3     9.6
Applied for patent based on ERC
   research project                    5.0     4.8     5.1     5.5
Applied for patent with ERC sponsor
   co-applicants                       1.4     1.8     2.6
Applied for patent with non-ERC
   sponsor co-applicants               0.7     1.2




NSF 98-40