Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Conference

Introduction

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Award # CNS-1936073 and hosted by Oregon State University, the Promotion and Tenure – Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PTIE) Conference will be held on July 25 to 27, 2022 (Application deadline extended to May 6). This conference will convene key stakeholders to discuss the value and inclusion of evidence-based data, experimental knowledge and impact outcomes derived from innovation and entrepreneurial (I&E) achievements as additional components in promotion and tenure (P&T) decisions for higher education nationally.

Overarching Goals

• To broaden the bar of promotion and tenure to make the process more inclusive of innovation and entrepreneurship impact by university faculty.
• To improve the transparency and fairness while reducing bias in the promotion and tenure process.
• Provide a super structure to support concurrent efforts to recognize other forms of evolving impact.

Goal of PTIE Conference

• Share the findings from the PTIE Coalition on how to inclusive recognize innovation & entrepreneurship impact within promotion and tenure policies and practices.
• Provide case studies from individual faculty, administrators and industry leaders demonstrating the impact of I&E within P&T.
• Foster communication and information sharing among the higher education ecosystem on I&E.
• Develop best practices and road maps for individual universities to consider augmenting their individual P&T guidelines to more inclusively support I&E among their faculty.

Overall Structure of Effort

In order to frame the conference, here is reminder of the overall approach used by PTIE organizers:

• Summer 2019. Oregon State University receives a grant from the National Science Foundation entitled “Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Summit: A Seismic Shift in Promotion and Tenure.”
• Late 2019. A nationwide survey was conducted to evaluate the current paradigms for recognizing I&E impacts within promotion criterion (see link to findings).
• Early 2020. PTIE organizers met individually with representatives from universities across the nation as well as key stakeholder organizations to build a coalition of over 65 institutions to approach this program in a collaborative manner.
• Summer 2020. A series of small group conversations were conducted with PTIE coalition members and stakeholders around a series of five related topics with structured outputs for each discussion. The preliminary findings from these discussions are being shared with coalition members and stakeholders to provide the foundation for the recommendations by the group.
• September 2020. A virtual conference will be held (September 16-18) to provide opportunities for additional institutions and organizations to learn more about the effort and to finalize the non-binding recommendations from the coalition.
• Fall 2020. Submission for publication of the findings from the conference for broad dissemination.
• Spring 2021. Work with PTIE coalition member institutions to support implementation. An in-person conference in Fall 2021 was tentatively planed to share lessons learned and foster continued engagement. This was pushed to 2022.
• Fall 2021. Publication of an article entitled “Innovation, entrepreneurship, promotion, and tenure” in Science Magazine (DOI: 10.1126/science.abj2098).
• July 2022. PTIE Conference to be held at Skamania Lodge July 25-27.