Association of Public and Land-grant Universities

So NAWG has doubled down in focusing on the research message.

We work with the National Weed Improvement Committee and the National Barley and Scab Initiative to make sure that those programs continue to see federal funding and try to build that relationship between APHIS and the Agricultural Research Service at USDA and the land grants and trying to work with their representatives in town, like the Association of Public Land Grant Universities, so that we can, again, not just coexist, but apply rocket boosters to our own individual efforts by partnering with with the other voices to make sure that if there's a researcher on the hill that somebody is also providing the grower perspective as if it's not a farmer him or herself that it's a farm advocate who knows the value of the research and how it applies to the farm not just that the research is being done

No, I appreciate that.

I think I broke a promise to you and that within your first year, we're going to have you out to the Kansas Weed Innovation Center and see the work that's going on here in Manhattan.

And all four of those lawsuits were led by the AAU.

We joined with APLU, the Public Land Grant Universities.

And the AAU is the American Association of

Universities.

Who represent the big research universities.

APLU, similarly big publicly funded research universities.

And then the Association of Medical Colleges, who have a big stake in research funding.

We sued the government.

It's about how we work collectively with our community partners to help our institution and our community thrive economically.

And so the APLU really focuses on those three pillars that Lindsay just mentioned, innovation, workforce development, and community or sense of place, and how the university contributes to the collective growth of those areas.

So where do the students come into play? I know they are the pipeline, as you mentioned, but do they have to have relationships and partnerships in the community or does AU kind of facilitate that and then they just go to work?

Yes and yes.

The work broadly

is thought of as public impact research, utilizing the definition offered by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, APLU.

And this program of Penn State faculty student teams have been partnering with community organizations across Pennsylvania to address locally identified challenges.

So these range from health access to food security and public safety to education, responsible technology use.

So higher ed ought to go first, and This can come in the way of associations.

There are six associations of higher ed like ACE and ASCU and APLU, different associations of the 3,000 plus higher ed institutions in the U.S. that can start to define as relevant for their particular type of schools because research schools, research colleges may be different from technical vocational, may be different from the big states.

So we can have some variation, but this notion of some outcome measure, not just for the student, but for the institution is super important.

In terms of outcome testing academically, I think there's an amazing opportunity for that too.