UNC Charlotte was founded as a school intended to serve returning veterans and eventually became a modest school for locals–now, it’s a leading research institution of nearly 29,000 students that has an estimated regional economic impact of $2.1 billion annually.
With this, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) designated UNC Charlotte as an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University, a recognition created for universities that promote leading edge economic development within their regions and work with local organizations to stimulate development inside and outside of the collegiate community.
This means that UNC Charlotte has not only created opportunities for its own students to pioneer and implement new ideas, but also incited growth in industries in the greater Charlotte area.
The designation involved a 10-month self study with a specific methodology that schools use to self assess. The study surveyed the community, both internally through the faculty and staff and externally through businesses and organizations throughout the region.
Dr. Bruce LaMattina, Director of Research for the Charlotte Research Institute (CRI) and part of the team that led the school to this achievement, noted that the self-study ultimately helped us not only recognize our own strengths, but helped develop growth plans to make further progress.
“We sent a survey out to 500 folks who gave great feedback and provided the basis to go even deeper during in person focus group sessions. This process led us to identify three areas of improvement: research growth, entrepreneurism and communications. The value of this designation is that it gives us an immense basis for growth in these areas,” said LaMattina.
He explained that much of the large-scale infrastructure that the university has invested in is closely tied to this economic development and associations with local industries.
The EPIC building, for example, originated from demand coming from the energy sector. LaMattina explained that the school’s leadership wanted to make an investment that not only fills the needs of the students, but the greater community and industry as well.
LaMattina also described the PORTAL building as the innovation center, where students are able to lay the groundwork for their own companies, as well as interact with outside entrepreneurs, small businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. LaMattina pointed out that one of the unique attributes leading to the Innovation and Economic Prosperity University designation is ability of our faculty and students to work across disciplines to create what he called “combinatorial innovation.”
The school has also been tremendously successful in developing specialized curricula to support the growing demands of Charlotte’s biggest industries, such as advanced manufacturing, motorsports engineering, bioinformatics, data analytics and more.
“Our research base is growing rapidly,” said LaMattina. “With the help of a support structure with organizations on campus, such as the Office of Technology Transfer, the Charlotte Research Institute and Ventureprise, we’re able to transfer our research to commercialization.”
He noted that the biggest challenge that UNC Charlotte has in this realm is keeping up with the exceptionally fast-growing economy of Charlotte as an urban domain and that any growing university faces this predicament. However, he believes that the students and faculty at the university embody the attributes necessary to be on par with this growth.
“We have a unique mindset toward use-inspired research which has a significant impact on the commercial sector,” LaMattina said. “Our students mirror that same mindset and companies love our students. Our students are very special in that regard and they should be really proud.”