That s what makes us special. That s what motivates communities and business to work with us. Consider that just down the road is a national lab with an annual budget of over a billion dollars a year and many times more researchers than us. We must never let our central research mission be eroded. But we can subtly direct it toward social goals.
More engagement means more scrutiny.
The more we get engaged with the real world, the more scrutiny there will be. Because we are independent of vested interests, and because faculty have lifetime security, the media and public look towards us as independent experts in helping steer through the increasingly complex and adversarial public debates that paralyze our society. We must be scrupulous in our actions and appearance. We need better public skills. We need to learn how to understand industry better and work with issues of confidentiality and property rights.