Building Sustainable Industry Partnerships That Engage Faculty and Prepare Job-Ready Students

There is growing pressure on colleges and universities to better prepare students for the workplace and to measure the value of academic programs by the number of students hired after graduation. At the same time, educational institutions are facing deep budget reductions and reduced levels of support from both State and Federal governments. Additionally, employers are demanding that graduates from a university program have more real-world integrated experience. Feedback gathered from academic program advisory boards and findings from literature reviews on university and industry partnerships indicate that increasingly, there is a growing gap of technology knowledge between industry and academia. One such view is that universities tend to stop at the introductory or theoretical levels of technical education, giving students solid academic knowledge, but not the practical world-of-work skills that industry demands. This paper will present in detail how a partnership model developed at East Carolina University successfully builds and manages sustainable industry partnerships. It will also give concrete examples of how collaboration can build successful relationships between universities and industries in order to help students be successful upon graduation.