Building International
Partnerships
William Mitchell & Andrew Roadnight
International Office
Research Support Services
Warwick Network, 12 April 2010
Overview
• Core partnerships
• Corporate partnerships
• Discussion
International university
partnerships
Types of partnership
Research (research centre/team, individual
levels
Student exchanges (mainly departmental level)
Teaching (much lower volume, mainly
departmental level)
Core partnership approach began in 2007
to develop long-term, institution-to-institution
level relationships, rooted in research
collaboration, with a limited number of leading
international universities
Taking forward core
partnership
 Unable to fund individual research
 Concentrate resource (staff and
funds) on core partnerships
 Int Office (Strategic Partnership Fund)
 IAS (e.g. Visiting Fellowships)
 RSS (Research Development
Managers)
Core partnerships progress
Monash University (Australia)
Strategic alliance agreement
Joint funding initiative
Broad-based across faculties
Work jointly on lessons learnt/
communication about the partnership
Boston University (USA)
Working on setting up a joint fund
Broadening across faculties
Core partnerships progress
Jawaharal Nehru University (JNU) (India)
signed agreement but no fund
Humanities and Social Sci.; inter-disciplinary
Vanderbilt University (USA)
English & History, broaden across humanities
Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
(Singapore)
Neuroscience, Politics; One-to-one?
Partnership building
Communication
“Ways Ahead” documents
Funding and advice to Faculties/Depts
Strategic Partnership Fund
Monash–Warwick Strategic Funding Initiative
Spotting opportunities
Processes
Selection criteria – strategic fit, reputation
Exit strategy
Evaluation
Future
Core partnership approach
Learn lessons - from Monash partnership
Identify institution level objectives/benefits
Wider than research – teaching, administrative
links?
Collaborative PhDs
Institution-level objective?
Double PGRs; enables collaboration; achievable
Should we use core partnerships as test beds
and focus activity on this area?
3 Challenges
1. How do we identify university-level objectives and
benefits that are rooted in departmental
objectives?
2. How do we work long-term given some of the
short-term constraints (e.g. financial years)?
3. How can we act strategically/pro-actively while
staying true to Warwick’s strength of being
opportunistic?
Corporate Partnerships
Why?
Diversification/leveraging of research funding
Knowledge transfer/joint research
Impact
Providing services to business/industry
Reputation
Corporate Partnerships
How?
Business Engagement Unit (RSS)
Departments/Administrative Offices
Existing contacts (admin/academic)
Alumni
Approaches from businesses
Corporate Partnerships
What?
Santander UK
Science City
Strategic partnerships
Corporate Partnerships
Issues
Capacity:
- how many can we manage?
- where should relationships be managed?
Client Management
Ensuring correctness in a commercial world
Discussion
What is a partnership?
How do you go about building a partnership?
How do you measure the success of a
partnership?
What are other questions you think should be
asked about building partnerships?