2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In September 2024 Lawrence Technological University (LTU), in collaboration with three other universities, Santa Clara University, Grand Valley State University, and Minnesota State University, Mankato, were independently, and collectively awarded a three-year NSF Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC) grant in the form of a consortium program titled “Building Institutional Capacity for External Partnerships (BICEP)”. Per the NSF, the objective of EPIIC grants are to support the growth of innovation capacity-building efforts at institutions of higher education with limited research capacity to prepare those institutions to participate in more and larger NSF opportunities in the future. This includes increasing industry engagement of these universities in their respective regional innovation ecosystems. The BICEP project is a specific collaboration of these four universities to address common challenges faced by Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) and Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs) in building capacity for external partnerships. BICEP focuses on the core objectives of Operational Maturity: Establishing institutional policies and structures to enable efficient and professional partnering; Professional Development: Enhancing the knowledge and skills of faculty and staff to effectively participate in technology partnerships; and Partner Engagement: Supporting the strategic management and evolution of partnerships over time. The ultimate goals of the NSF EPIIC program and the BICEP project are to enhance the overall educational and research environment of these four universities. LTU's and BICEP's results of the initial efforts of this still on-going, three-year program are presented, along with preliminary faculty assessment data and organizational mapping defining existing organizational capabilities and gaps that need to be addressed to meet the needs of the Operational Maturity goal. Also presented are the first year of faculty Professional Development activities that provided faculty the skills, tools and knowledge for engagement with possible external research funding groups in industry. The initial approaches and methods to foster external Partner Engagement and increase university participation in regional innovation ecosystems are reviewed. And lastly, a summary of overall first-year accomplishments are discussed and second-year initiatives are also presented.