Inventor Views on University Innovation: a Survey of National Academy of Inventors Fellows

Innovation in universities serves many purposes: helping society through technology transfer, building economies, supporting the aspirations of faculty and students to be entrepreneurs or make an impact, and generating revenue. Such outside-focused innovation is complemented by inside innovation, which aims to improve the practices of the university; to better serve society through education, research, and clinical care; and to remain competitive in the face of changes in technology and society. In this paper, we investigate how university innovators— represented by the Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors—are supported in outside innovation and how Fellows view university culture's support for inside innovation to improve university practices. Our survey received responses from 339 Fellows. Inventors indicated that they were helped in various ways and not just through traditional patenting and licensing. Help in creating a start-up, promotion of inventions in the media, and the consideration of inventions in promotion and appraisal contributed the most to their satisfaction, whereas royalty distributions had no significant effect on satisfaction. Overall, respondents were only mildly satisfied with institutional support for innovation as well as the pace of innovation at their institutions. While respondents generally agreed that their institutions were receptive to implementing faculty ideas, they were less likely to agree that their institutions were willing to take risks or try approaches not used by peers. Most respondents did not indicate that faculty satisfaction was a top-three institutional priority for innovation. They also were unlikely to indicate that disruption in education, research, or clinical care was a top institutional priority

Infobuttons for Genomic Medicine: Requirements and Barriers

Objectives The study aimed to understand potential barriers to the adoption of health information technology projects that are released as free and open source software (FOSS). Methods We conducted a survey of research consortia participants engaged in genomic medicine implementation to assess perceived institutional barriers to the adoption of three systems: ClinGen electronic health record (EHR) Toolkit, DocUBuild, and MyResults.org. The survey included eight barriers from the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), with additional barriers identified from a qualitative analysis of open-ended responses. Results We analyzed responses from 24 research consortia participants from 18 institutions. In total, 14 categories of perceived barriers were evaluated, which were consistent with other observed barriers to FOSS adoption. The most frequent perceived barriers included lack of adaptability of the system, lack of institutional priority to implement, lack of trialability, lack of advantage of alternative systems, and complexity. Conclusion In addition to understanding potential barriers, we recommend some strategies to address them (where possible), including considerations for genomic medicine. Overall, FOSS developers need to ensure systems are easy to trial and implement and need to clearly articulate benefits of their systems, especially when alternatives exist. Institutional champions will remain a critical component to prioritizing genomic medicine projects.

The Emerging Problems and Challenges Faced by Sino-foreign Cooperation Education: A Case Study from Students’ Perspective

The internationalisation of higher education has become a recognized development trend, and international cooperation in running schools has become an important feature of international education exchanges. Universities and colleges are increasingly focusing on becoming global institutions and place global education as the most important institutional priority. With this context in China, this paper explores the emerging problems faced by the Sino-foreign cooperation universities, such as quality insurance, employment related issues, and cultural-related issues. The findings show a clearer map of the situation of the Sino-foreign cooperation education in China and help these organisations better manage and improve their competitiveness in the global education market.

The perils of notional membership during a pandemic

PurposeIn this essay, the authors will describe several facets of their experience as women faculty of color in the academy during the pandemic, in order to explore how institutions might think of equity and diversity initiatives during the pandemic time.Design/methodology/approachThis essay discusses structural, leadership and individual considerations in supporting faculty from diverse backgrounds during the pandemic and beyond, by considering the typical strategies used by faculty of color to maintain active organizational memberships and how the pandemic has shifted those strategies.FindingsUltimately, this essay grapples with diversity as an institutional priority during the unique and shifting circumstances of remote work and teaching and research during the pandemic.Originality/valueThis essay provides insight into how institutions who want to maintain diversity progress during and postpandemic must be more thoughtful about the hiring structures, decision-making spaces and overarching missions.

The challenge of multilingual ‘plain language’ in translation-mediated Swiss administrative communication

Barrier-free communication should be an institutional priority when drafting administrative texts. These not only deal with legal content, but they often address the lay citizen and may provide general information on services and reforms or simply instruct on a specific procedure to be followed. Our study investigates Swiss insurance leaflets in three languages (French, German and Italian) and aims at evaluating language clarity on the basis of ‘plain language’ guidelines, thus also considering the translation variable. However, our preliminary results show that ‘plain communication’ is not always the case. We applied a quantitative and qualitative triangulation methodology: firstly, we measured readability with the help of readability indices; subsequently, we used computational tools to highlight common linguistic gaps whose quality was also explored manually by taking textual aspects into account.

An Animal Welfare Risk Assessment Process for Zoos

There is a growing interest and need for zoos to develop and implement welfare assessment tools that are practical to use and provide meaningful results that can inform management decisions. This paper presents a process that was developed to support this type of evidence-based management in zoo animal welfare. The process is configured to facilitate institutional risk assessment, using an adapted version of the Five Domains Model for animal welfare assessment. It is designed to systematically analyse information gathered from zoo personnel in order to highlight areas of welfare risk, as well as areas that are performing well and areas requiring further investigation. A trial was conducted on three zoos over three years. Results of the trial suggest the process developed is practical and effective in identifying areas of welfare risk in a wide range of species in a zoo setting. It represents a further step towards achieving high-level animal welfare in zoos by integrating animal welfare as an institutional priority. The more zoos that employ such strategies, the greater the ability of the sector to advance the welfare of the animals in their care.

It’s Up to the Librarians: Establishing A Statewide OER Initiative

Academic librarians increasingly adopt roles as campus leaders to promote the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and other strategies to encourage making textbook affordability for students an institutional priority. When it comes to a statewide strategy to support academic library efforts for textbook affordability, Pennsylvania is lagging more progressive states such as Oregon, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and Louisiana. This article makes a case for and lays out a strategy by which Pennsylvania’s academic librarians can develop a statewide initiative to tackle the challenge of textbook affordability together in order to achieve substantial progress.