Building an “Impact Ecosystem”
Universities have many strengths, but one that is often overlooked in public life is their convening power. Universities can engage broad sectors of society and work collaboratively to solve problems, working with diverse disciplines within academia as well as with other universities, government agencies, and public and private organizations across the state, nation, and world. Universities are uniquely positioned to create and drive change by leveraging both their expertise and their capacity to do so in education, research, innovation, health care, and community engagement. By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and deepening engagement with local and global communities, universities can leverage their strengths to create what the University of Washington calls an āimpact ecosystem.ā
The Impact Ecosystem allows us to foster and accelerate applied research and community/social action programs in areas where we can make the most difference based on our strengths, geography, and partnership opportunities. A prototype of this strategy was developed and implemented in the Population Health Initiative (PHI), launched as a presidential initiative in 2016. Rather than focusing on individual health, as in the traditional medical model, the goal of this initiative is to improve the health of all people. Initially, we often struggled to explain this model and received questions such as, “Why should we spend taxpayer money to fight disease on the other side of the planet?” However, when the pandemic hit, the logic of this approach suddenly and urgently became clear. Someone's health is inextricably intertwined with everyone's health.
Through PHI, we have leveraged the deep expertise and vast service capacity of an academic health system, augmented by one of the densest global health organizations in the country, right here in Seattle. We brought together stakeholders to co-create a pilot program and then learned how to accelerate and scale it once it worked. Since its launch in 2016, the initiative has engaged more than 18,000 students and 1,800 faculty members. We have funded 364 student awards and 196 faculty projects. It has also led to engagement with nearly 200 separate community-based organizations. For example, this fall we launched the Center for Disaster Resilient Communities, a collaboration that brings together more than 100 UW faculty and their students, including disaster researchers, engineers, data and environmental scientists, and experts in public health, medicine, nursing, public policy and planning.
“The need for this kind of discovery and innovation is urgent as we witness the devastating effects of the Maui wildfires, the most destructive storm of a century that has hit the coastline and inland of California, and flooding of New York City streets. Just a few months ago, Florida International University, one of the largest public minority-serving universities in the United States, launched its own population health initiative, and we look forward to collaborating with them.”
We ourselves are using the lessons we learned from PHI to expand our impact ecosystem into three areas:
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Applied AI and Fair Computing
Our students constantly remind us of the urgency of these issues, urging us to move faster toward carbon neutrality, calling for more investment in mental health resources, and increasing demand for courses in computer science, data science, and AI literacy. Their interests go far beyond the personal or theoretical; they are interested in making a difference in the world, even as they, and we, continue to debate the most desirable outcomes and effective strategies.
Leveraging our experience in research
Early in my college career, I became interested in issues of bilingualism, immigration, and acculturation and their impact on education, mental health, and family relationships. This interest stemmed largely from my own experience as a Cuban refugee arriving in Miami at age three, at the beginning of the mass exodus that would change the face of the city. I witnessed the struggles of many of my friends trying to carve out a future in a world their parents could barely understand or help, and I saw how the mental health and education systems all too often failed them.
Some of my mentors, professors and colleagues encouraged me to pursue these interests, but some sarcastically called my work āsoul-searchingā rather than research, and the truth is, it was my own lived experience. did It calls into question some of the conventional wisdom of the time, such as that being bilingual leads to cognitive confusion and that immigrants are less intelligent than native-born people.
Looking back on my career almost 50 years later, I am glad that I resisted the advice to focus my teaching and research in areas where some thought I could better practice scientific neutrality and objectivity. In fact, it was my deep passion for the work that allowed me to continue my research even in the face of a family tragedy that nearly led me to drop out of graduate school. And my work, which began by focusing on the populations I know best, quickly led to collaborations that have informed prevention programs and interventions that support thousands of Latino families from various cultural backgrounds across the country, as well as programs that support refugees and immigrants from Asia and Africa. Deep engagement at the local and individual levels can be a good test bed for designing strategies that can be leveraged at the national and even global levels.
This is not to say that we should not aim for neutrality and objectivity in our research. But that does not mean we should ignore or suppress our own experiences and deep compassion. We can balance these aims by cultivating self-awareness, adhering to disciplinary protocols, and building partnerships with others who bring different perspectives and lived experiences to our research and program development. We must always be open to our preconceived notions being proven wrong. But passion, lived experience, connections to community, and the desire to play a role in creating change play powerful, positive roles in increasing engagement in education, inspiring discovery, and generating solutions. These are things that should not be discounted but embraced.
Universities must create courageous spaces
At a time when young people are rethinking the value of higher education and many in the wider community are questioning our very purpose, it would be a mistake to signal a retreat from community-engaged research and engagement with society's most salient issues, even if it is sometimes disruptive. To serve the public interest locally and globally, universities must create not only safe places but also brave ones. Now is the time not to retreat from the fight but to move forward with due caution.