STAID

Abstract

There has been increasing recognition of the role played by higher education institutions (HEIs) in fostering regional economic development. Concurrently, regional economic development strategies have emphasized targeting economic clusters. This underscores the need for a structured operational framework to guide the efforts of a HEI that wishes to engage with a focused economic cluster in its service region with the intention of fostering regional economic growth. We introduce such a framework in this article that is referred to by its acronym STAID (Select, Tailor, Ascertain, Implement, and Disseminate). The exposition of STAID is annotated and illustrated with examples from two community-engaged projects at a public research university in North Carolina that were undertaken with two different regional economic clusters.

Keywords

community-engaged scholarship clusters North Carolina

Background and Literature Review

The long-term economic prosperity that results from economic development is well known and studied in the economics and economic development literature (Bartik, 1991, 1993; Rodrik, 2012; Schulman, 1994), including in underdeveloped rural areas (Lambe, 2008). It is also well known that higher education institutions (HEIs) play an important role in fostering regional economic development. It has always been accepted that the most important contribution of HEIs to regional economic development is through its two core activities—teaching and research—that lead to knowledge production and supply of human and intellectual capital for the economy. Perhaps in recognition of the same, most HEIs do not officially list economic development as a component of their mission statements. Instead, many public HEIs in the United States have chosen to fold it within their teaching, research, and service activities (Gumport, 2002; Lane & Johnstone, 2012). One manifestation of this is the emergent practice of “community-engaged scholarship” in many HEIs (Giles, 2008; Sandmann, 2008; Sandmann, Thornton, & Jaeger, 2009). In recognition of the same, Molas-Gallart et. al. (2002) refer to economic development as the “third mission” of HEIs, in addition to the two traditional missions of teaching and research. Numerous studies (Arbo & Benneworth, 2007; Bercovitz & Feldmann, 2006; Huggins & Johnston, 2009) also testify to this positive impact of HEIs on regional economic development, as do reports from foundations and think tanks (Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities, 1999; U.S. Council on Competitiveness, 2008). Two reports that contain specific examples of such contributions of HEIs to regional economic development in the United States are Shaffer and Wright (2010) and Axelroth and Dubb (2010). In particular, the first report surveyed university-sponsored economic development efforts in all 50 states and found that these efforts fall into four major categories: advancing innovation through knowledge creation, helping employers prosper and grow through knowledge, active participation in the community, and most important, creating an educated population.

It is important to understand the reasons behind this surge of HEIs asserting their role in regional economic development. Besides improving our understanding of this phenomenon, this helps a HEI develop an evidence-based rationale for including regional economic development as one of its goals. Drucker and Goldstein (2007) summarize the factors behind this as follows: economic transformation that has led to a greater emphasis on the “knowledge economy” and innovation, and the recognition that HEIs play a natural role in the same, a recognition by economic development practitioners that the presence of research institutions and a highly skilled workforce is a top attractant for today’s companies seeking relocation, and finally, the passage of the Bayh-Dole Patent and Trademark Amendments Act of 1980 that permits HEIs to benefit commercially from the commercialization of the research they produce. In contrast, Choueiri and Myntti (2012) suggest that an increasing awareness by HEIs about their social responsibility to the regions they serve is another reason why some HEIs see regional economic development as an integral part of their missions. Yet another factor may be the growing support among faculty for inclusion of regional economic development as a part of a HEI’s goals (Goldstein, Bergman, & Maier, 2013). Finally, as per Adams (2003) and Arnone (2004), the most significant factor in driving this phenomenon at HEIs may be that the long-term decline in public finances in the United States, worsened by the Great Recession, have increased pressure to “demonstrate positive economic returns from public investments in tax-exempt educational institutions” (Drucker & Goldstein, 2007, p. 21). Irrespective of the reasons behind this trend, it is unarguable that there has been a sharp rise in the number of HEIs in the United States that have adopted regional economic development as a part of their missions. One key evidence of the same is the increase in the number of HEIs that have applied for and were awarded the recently-introduced elective classification of “Community-Engaged Institution” from the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching (http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/): As of 2010, there were 117 such HEIs across the United States.

Notwithstanding the discussion above, due caution must be exercised in discussing the “impact” of HEIs on regional economic development. Although some posit that under certain conditions universities can improve their regions (Feller, 2004), it is important to remember that HEIs are but one of multiple institutions that foster economic development (Feldman & Francis, 2004; Porter, 2000). Therefore, it is not surprising that concurrent with the above literature is another recent stream that pertains to outcomes assessment of these efforts; in other words, quantification of the economic benefits that accrue to a region from the efforts of a given HEI. Two well-known approaches are laid out in Molas-Gallart et al. (2002) and Charles, Conway, and Benneworth (2009). A comprehensive reference on the different methodological approaches can be found in Drucker and Goldstein (2007) and Bhadury et al. (2010). The second reference lists three models/approaches (in addition to the traditional approach of conducting economic impact analyses) that demonstrate the most potential for adoption by HEIs. These three models are the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification on Community Engagement, the Institutional Self-Assessment Tool developed by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the Pascal Universities Regional Engagement Project launched in 2008, based on the work of Charles et al. (2009). More recently, an interesting pre-assessment model has been developed for the U.S. Economic Development Administration in Watts et al. (2011).

Suppose that a HEI wishes to adopt regional economic development as a part of its institutional mission. Given this, a salient institutional issue is how does the HEI adopt and enact the same in an expeditious manner with the (increasingly scarce) resources available and without unwanted distraction from its core activities of teaching, research, and service. One response has been the emergence and acceptance of community-engaged scholarship or engaged scholarship across HEIs, especially in U.S. public universities. Given that creation and dissemination of knowledge and service remain the core missions of a HEI, encouraging, incentivizing, and rewarding community-engaged scholarship by its faculty, staff, and students ensures that fostering regional economic development becomes an integral part of the these three core activities. In other words, much of the HEI’s economic development efforts are implemented through projects and engagements in teaching, research, and outreach that are done by HEI faculty, staff, and students in partnership with the community. These range from service learning projects required in different curricula to centers or clinics established for the general public and managed by the university. Thus, the organizational changes and adaptations of HEIs that practice community-engaged scholarship seem less a function of mission change and more an issue of redirection and management of the HEI’s core activities.

Interestingly, the concept of community-engaged scholarship is not new—an early description of this was as “scholarship of engagement” in Boyer (1990); usage of the term community engaged is more recent in Barge and Shockley-Zalabak (2008). References on the adoption of community-engaged scholarship at U.S. HEIs may be found in Sandmann (2008), Giles (2008), and Sandmann et al. (2009). Additionally, several helpful case studies are also available from sources such as the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (http://www.nerche.org).

Shifting the narrative to the practice of economic development, that discipline has also seen the emergence of a new paradigm, namely the increasing recognition of economic development strategies that are focused around targeted clusters of economic activity (Ketels, 2003; Porter, 2000). Although the usage of the term cluster itself has been varied among researchers (Vom Hofe & Chen, 2006), a standard definition that we use in this article is from the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School (http://www.isc.hbs.edu/), which defines a cluster as

a geographically proximate group of interconnected companies and associated institutions in a particular field, including product producers, service providers, suppliers, universities, and trade associations. Clusters arise out of the linkages or externalities that span across industries in a particular location.

A prominent study of U.S. economic clusters is the “The Cluster Mapping Project” undertaken by the Harvard Business School (see http://data.isc.hbs.edu/isc/). Cluster-based economic development has also been adopted in a wide variety of projects—Centonze (2010) and the projects funded by the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative undertaken by the U.S. Department of Labor (http://www.doleta.gov/wired/about/). It must be noted, however, that despite its adoption in practice, the concept of cluster-based economic development has not been without its critics (Asheim, Cooke, & Martin, 2008).

Examining all the trends noted above, it is reasonable to expect that HEIs that wish to adopt contribution to regional economic development as a part of their missions should increasingly adopt a cluster-based strategy in implementing community-engaged projects. As previously noted, numerous economic models exist to assess the outcomes of such efforts. To the best of our knowledge, however, what does not exist in the literature is an operational framework that serves as a guide to HEIs for such efforts by giving them a step-by-step set of directions for engaging with focused economic clusters. We posit the need for such a framework based on our hypothesis that engagement with select clusters entails two significant risks for a HEI. The first of these risks emanates from the fact that the regional business community generally expects taxpayer-funded public HEIs to be equitable in their outreach efforts toward all clusters in the region they serve. Focusing on a few select clusters risks accusations of favorable treatment from noncluster members of the regional business community. The second risk is that emergent clusters are inherently risky in terms of their long-term feasibility; this calls for considerable forethought on the part of HEIs before investing resources, increasingly scarce for public institutions, into select clusters. These factors underscore the need for such a guiding framework.

This article describes such an operational framework that we refer to as Select, Tailor, Ascertain, Implement, and Disseminate (STAID), where each word represents a successive step. STAID was created by the authors based on prior experiences accumulated in the course of implementing community-engaged projects undertaken by them on behalf of their HEI, which is located in the Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina. As an operational framework, STAID draws on principles from business-related disciplines such as project management, operations management, human resource management, and business communications. This article illustrates two applications of STAID with two different economic clusters in the region: the regional wine industry-based cluster and the logistics/transportation industry-based cluster. As mentioned above, notwithstanding the heterogeneity of interpretations of the word “cluster” in the economic development literature, we have chosen to adopt the Harvard Business School’s definition. As mentioned, clusters tend to feature linkages or externalities that span across industries in a particular location suggesting the presence of numerous heterogeneous institutions whose collective interactions define the cluster. In that context, the two clusters we have chosen in the Piedmont Triad Region have numerous regional institutions with different missions that are entwined and operate as an integral part of each cluster. Take, for example, the wine industry–based cluster in the Piedmont Triad Region; not only does it consist of regional wineries but it also consists of grape growers (suppliers to the first group), hospitality- and tourism-based businesses such as hotels and restaurants that often operate in conjunction with local wineries, state agencies such as the North Carolina Department of Agriculture that have oversight over the wineries, and educational institutions that provide training and research support to all the aforementioned participants in this cluster. Each such interacting entity is a part of and affects the entire economic ecosystem of the wine industry–based cluster. Given the difficulty of analyzing all entities that are contained within each of these two clusters in a single study, we chose to focus instead on specific institutions within each of these two clusters. For the wine industry, we focused on the wineries and the grape growers. Similarly, for the transportation/logistics cluster in the Piedmont Triad Region, we focused on the regional educational institutions with academic offerings in logistics and not on other entities within that cluster such as providers of logistical services (e.g., regional transportation companies), consumers of same (e.g., regional manufacturing companies), or government agencies (e.g., North Carolina Department of Transportation) that regulate them. Our purpose in maintaining such focus was not only to ensure manageability of each study but to also illustrate how HEIs that are situated within dynamic economic environments with multiple interacting entities within different economic clusters can positively engage with a cluster and navigate the same.

The next section of this article gives the economic backdrop of the two applications and a general description of STAID. The following two sections illustrate the application of STAID to each of these two illustrated clusters and include discussions on the outcomes of these applications and estimates of the total costs of implementation. The final section summarizes the article and mentions some avenues for future work.

Piedmont Triad Region and Introduction to STAID

For purposes of regional economic development, the North Carolina Department of Commerce (http://www.nccommerce.com/) has divided the state into seven distinct geographic regions, each with an established “Regional Partnership” agency to foster a collective approach to regional economic development (see http://www.thrivenc.com/ for a complete listing). The Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina is one of these seven, which comprises 12 counties in the heart of the state (see Figure 1, which depicts the region and its major cities). The region’s economic development agency is the Piedmont Triad Partnership (http://www.piedmonttriadnc.com).

Figure 1.

The Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina.

Historically, three traditional industries have driven the economy in the region: tobacco, textiles, and furniture; the region has enjoyed a worldwide reputation for production of these products. Over the past several years, however, these industries shifted production to facilities overseas and the downturn in the economy further eroded jobs in these industries. As a direct result, more than 90,000 jobs were eliminated in the Piedmont Triad Region in the past decade. This job loss underscores the need for the region to undergo an economic transformation to explore new ways to create jobs and stimulate the economy through targeted cluster development. Two clusters of significance to the region are logistics and distribution and the wine cluster.

Among the assets of the region are its HEIs—7 community colleges and 11 universities, including The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG; http://www.uncg.edu/). UNCG has 18,000 students in six colleges and schools and is classified as a research university (high research activity) by the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching. UNCG is also a significant player in the Piedmont Triad community—attested by the fact that it has achieved the “Community Engagement” designation from the Carnegie Foundation and that contribution to regional economic development is a significant component of UNCG’s 2009-2014 Strategic Plan (see http://uncgtomorrow.uncg.edu/plan).

Within UNCG, the Bryan School of Business and Economics (BSBE) is one of the five professional schools. It has more than 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and more than 100 full- and part-time faculty members housed in six departments and programs. In a continuation of the UNCG’s commitment to community engagement, BSBE faculty and students are active in community-engaged scholarship. For example, in 2011-2012, 642 distinct forms of engagement occurred (course consulting projects, internships, applied research projects, etc.) with a total of 233 different external organizations.

We now turn our attention to a description of the STAID operational framework. As mentioned before, each alphabet in STAID denotes a successive step in operationalization and implementation of the engagement process. These steps are as follows:

Step 1: Select an Appropriate Cluster

This is the foundational step where the HEI must begin by selecting an economic cluster that is of interest to a substantial part of the region. A critical success factor here is to select a cluster that already has some infrastructure in place that can support the effort and has significant growth potential, at least some of which is demonstrable in the short to medium term (1-3 years). Having immediate potential is important since working with a selected economic cluster, especially if it is a nascent one, carries significant institutional risk of the loss of investment. An already existing level of synergy for that cluster in the region needs to exist or the project is less likely to succeed. Also, the effectiveness of the study is enhanced if the project has a “champion.” The champion can be either a regional organization or an individual. The educational community, the business community, interest groups, and economic development organizations must support the project and see the need for its success. One of the best ways for this to happen is if the participants in the project recognize that the success of the project will most likely result in new or better jobs for the region and help retain graduates of local HEIs. Finally, and most important, the selected cluster must be one whose needs can be met by the expertise and skills available at the HEI.

Step 2: Tailor an Appropriate Team

The next step for the HEI is to put together a high-performance team that has the necessary skills and expertise to work with the chosen cluster. Of critical importance here is to ensure that this team also contains representative(s) from the major stakeholders in the selected cluster.

Step 3: Ascertain the Project Goals

The foundation of this next step in STAID is to conduct necessary background and field research through interviews with key stakeholders. The interviews help the researchers better understand the major issues affecting the cluster (economic, political, social, etc.) and the challenges being faced by the cluster (economic, social, and/or competitive). This step is critically important for two reasons: First, it helps the team thoroughly understand the economic and sociopolitical landscape within which the selected cluster operates. Second, meeting with key stakeholders and interviewing them gives the team much needed credibility with the stakeholders, and this is critical to ensure success of any community engagement project. Based on this preliminary assessment, the final outcome of this step should be to develop project goals—goals that are achievable and incorporate some level of flexibility.

Step 4: Implement the Project

This step consists of essential principles of effective project management. Based on the project goals established in Step 3, it is important to establish timelines and project management principles. The first part of the process is to create a dynamic recruitment plan that is relevant to the project audience. Since most engagement projects involve surveying and data collection, it is important to select survey participants carefully. Once completed, the team should finalize the analysis to achieve the project goals—this is also where it helps to have experts on the team with complementary expertise. When some of the major conclusions from the data analysis begin to emerge, it is also important to establish a clearly understood and enforced process for sharing that with selected stakeholders and seeking their input. Unlike conventional academic research projects, community-engaged research requires establishing trust with the stakeholders and getting their buy-in for a project to be effective; seeking input at every step is a key part of achieving both. Finally, when the project goals are long term, it is important to ensure long-term sustainability; hence, in such cases the recommendations must incorporate a method for continuous improvement that is based on the assessment of outcomes.

Step 5: Disseminate the Project Findings and Recommendations

One truism of community-engaged projects conducted by HEIs is that perceptions are critically important; therefore, they need to be managed positively. With that in mind, it is imperative that this last step involve the production of a well-written report that is understandable by all stakeholders regardless of their level of competence in the technical details. The report then needs to be disseminated, in writing and/or through presentations, where necessary, to the key stakeholders in the selected cluster. Wherever possible these presentations should include representatives from possible, funding sources, including legislators.

The above description of STAID is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

Essentials of the STAID Framework.

	Step	Critical factors
1	S ( S elect)	• Existing infrastructure
		• Growth potential, especially in shorttomedium term
		• Existing “champion” (organization or individual)
		• Match with expertise and skills available at the higher education institution
2	T ( T ailor)	• High-performance team
		• Necessary skills and expertise to work with the chosen cluster
		• Include representative(s) from the major stakeholders in the selected cluster
3	A ( A scertain)	• Necessary background and field research, including interviews with key stakeholders
		• Establish credibility with the stakeholders
		• Develop project goals—achievable yet with some flexibility
4	I ( I mplement)	• Establish timelines and project management principles and assign a central project manager
		• Recruitment plan that is relevant to the project audience
		• A clearly understood and enforced process for sharing emerging conclusions with selected stakeholders and seeking their input
		• Project recommendations must incorporate a method for continuous improvement and continuity of enforcement over time
5	D ( D isseminate)	• Positive management of perceptions of the project by cluster stakeholders
		• Production of a well-written report that is understandable by all stakeholders. Where applicable, it should include a plan for continuous improvement based on outcomes assessment
		• Dissemination of report to the key stakeholders in the selected cluster, including, if possible, funding sources

In the next two sections we will explain how BSBE engaged with two regional economic clusters in the Piedmont Triad Region—the North Carolina wine industry–based cluster and the logistics and transportation industry–based cluster. Furthermore, the first engagement will be discussed in the context of engagement in a broad and comprehensive study of the business development needs of the North Carolina wine cluster. The second will be in the context of a focused project to design and develop a Virtual Regional Campus to serve the workforce development needs of the Piedmont Triad Region’s logistics cluster. This choice of illustrations is deliberate to emphasize that STAID is general purpose and may be applied as effectively to engagement projects that are broad in scope as ones that are more narrowly focused.

STAID as Applied to North Carolina Wine Cluster

North Carolina has a rapidly growing wine cluster, with the number of wineries having increased fivefold over the past decade (see Taplin, 2011). Grape production has also grown significantly over this period. As a result of this trend, North Carolina was ranked 10th in the nation for wine and grape production (see http://www.nccommerce.com/wine/) in 2011. Also, according to a 2011 study, the wine cluster has an estimated annual economic impact of nearly $1.3 billion and supports nearly 7,600 jobs (http://www.ncwinegrowers.com/recent-news/north-carolina-wine-industry-generates-128-billion-in-economic-impact). Much of the growing wine cluster is located within a 120-mile radius of the UNCG campus (see Figures 2 and 3 for illustration) that forms the service area of the institution. All three North Carolina American Viticultural Areas are primarily located within the Piedmont Triad Region, making the cluster especially significant for UNCG’s primary service area. With the above as backdrop, in 2008 a team of faculty from BSBE and North Carolina A&T State University came together to conduct a community-engaged research project to determine the business development needs of the wine cluster in North Carolina. This was focused on the vinifera wine cluster, which is predominately represented in the Piedmont Triad Region. Below, we present a step-by-step application of STAID to this project.

Figure 2.

The North Carolina wine industry in Piedmont Triad Region (East).

Figure 3.

The North Carolina wine industry in Piedmont Triad Region (West).

Step 1: Select an Appropriate Cluster

As mentioned, a cluster should be one that fits the mission for economic development for the region. In addition, the cluster should be one in which the research performed has the opportunity to enhance job growth and tax revenue for the region. In that regard, the wine industry–based cluster was selected because of several reasons. First, it had demonstrated a significant potential for future growth among the various clusters or industries in the Triad. Second, our examination revealed that whereas this cluster enjoyed considerable support from state universities and organizations in the science and engineering of viticulture and enology, it had relatively less support on issues such as enterprise management and business development. These last two, in turn, were areas in which local HEIs could provide expertise. This led us to believe that this cluster was an excellent fit to the criteria stated above.

Step 2: Tailor an Appropriate Team

As mentioned, the importance of assembling a comprehensive team that is capable of looking at all facets of a cluster cannot be overstated. The team needs to understand the mission of the study, the desires of the stakeholders—especially the economic developers in this case—and have the expertise to conduct all facets of the study. In keeping with this, the team selected representatives from government, economic development, and agricultural economics; international and domestic marketing; and transportation/logistics. As a direct result of the team’s broad spectrum of skills, all facets of this cluster could be researched.

Step 3: Ascertain the Project Goals

The application of this step involved the following:

Conducting desktop research of available information on the cluster under study: Background research came from periodicals, newspapers, and specialty-industry publications. Industry officials also provided additional sources of information. Finally, information was obtained by attending and participating in the 2008 annual meeting of the North Carolina Winegrower’s Association and the 2008 North Carolina Wine Summit.

Meeting with key stakeholders that have eminent knowledge of the cluster: The research team met with key stakeholders in the North Carolina wine cluster, including representatives from state associations and agencies such as the North Carolina Winegrower’s Association, North Carolina Wine and Grape Council, North Carolina departments of Agriculture and Commerce, North Carolina Muscadine Growers Association, Viticulture and Enology program at Surry Community College, and area economic development officials and individual stakeholders in the wine cluster. The research team learned of issues involving government regulations, distribution and sales, education of the public and government officials, wine quality, marketing/brand management, financing, and time management.

Learning who would be interested in sponsoring cluster-related research and learning specifically what might interest potential sponsors: The research team found that Carolina Farm Credit was interested in factors that would enhance the profitability and growth of this cluster. Furthermore, Surry Community College was interested in a feasibility and business plan to create an outreach center in viticulture and enology to positively affect the wine cluster in its service region.

Identifying basic goals of the research project and seeing how the proposed project aligns with cluster needs identified in the above steps: The research team settled on answering three basic questions: What was the profile of the cluster? What were the primary barriers to profitability and what could be done about them? What would a business development center for the wine cluster need to know in designing its services?

Creating an initial questionnaire and field testing it with some sample respondents: The research team developed a draft questionnaire and then field-tested it with owners of two different wineries. Their comments were incorporated into a modified survey.

Step 4: Implement the Project

This step involved the following:

The team formulated a survey mechanism, developed a timeline for completion laying out specific targeted completion dates, established activities to be performed while at the same time identifying associated costs, and assigned specific tasks to the appropriate team member or members. As a result of the input, the research team decided to do the survey as quickly as possible before harvest season hit its prime and finished the survey in October 2008. October and November were devoted to data analysis, and December and January were spent writing the final report. To the extent possible, resources were used that were cost-efficient yet possessed the appropriate skills. To illustrate this point, prior to conducting telephone interviews, the survey questionnaire was mailed ahead of time with a letter delineating the respondent’s part in the process and the importance of completing the survey. Although more expensive to conduct, interviews were done by telephone, resulting in a near 100% response rate.

Also, the team determined a need for face-to-face interviews with some key respondents and that these interviews should include some unstructured questions. The Piedmont Triad Region wineries primarily encompass three specific wine producing areas: the Yadkin Valley, Swan Creek, and Haw River. As a result, the team made it a point to interview at least one prominent winery operator from each area. Wineries that were poised for growth were also identified and interviewed. Overall, questions asked were unstructured and open-ended but did follow the general outline of the written questionnaire to allow for a free-flowing discussion on the North Carolina wine cluster.

Adherence to well-established principles of project management as exhibited by the following:

In this case, the team decided that the first author of this article would serve as the central project manager, schedule and hold regular meetings, and make decisions about task assignments. Meetings were designed with clear objectives and projected accomplishments.

The team divided the data analysis among the research team and decided to analyze the survey data set from different but complementary standpoints. One member of the research team studied the profiling of wineries and grape growers, another examined marketing/distribution issues, and a third researched the needs of the wineries that would need a business development center. At the same time, another group of researchers focused on the face-to-face interviews and performed qualitative data analysis of the interview transcripts.

To help eliminate groupthink and bias, actions were taken to ensure that all qualitative data analysis was reviewed by an external person who was not involved in the primary research. This nonteam member was made responsible for reviewing the notes from all the interviews and also checking for omissions and oversights from the data compiled from the telephone interviews.

For report writing, the project manager asked each researcher working on a specific topic to provide written reports summarizing results and explaining the importance of their findings to the wine cluster. Once the team compiled the individual reports, each person read reports from the others, made comments, deliberated, and made changes to individual reports. Finally, the research team agreed on the final organization of the report and what it would look like. This included the presence and content of an executive summary as well as the teams’ agreed-on salient recommendations.

Step 5: Disseminate the Project Findings and Recommendations

The first step was to obtain the team’s primary recommendation and/or conclusions. With regard to the wine study, the research team found that

The majority of the area wineries are relatively new (at most 10 years), small, family-operated, entrepreneurial businesses that must be all things to all people. Like other small enterprises, they are severely affected by time constraints and cash-flow problems, whereas the latter is exacerbated by the long lead time, from planting the grape vines to selling the finished product several years later.

Regulatory burdens and misunderstandings in areas such as the cost of tourist-related signage, disposal of waste, and the distribution system, also inhibit growth.

The cluster would benefit from additional projects on issues such as better time and cash-flow management strategies for winery operators and efficient distribution strategies.

Finally, one of the most significant findings was that there is a strong need for widespread education for officials and the general public about the wine cluster in North Carolina, especially on the substantial impact of the cluster on the state economy.

The next crucial step in the process was to disseminate the research report (Dobie, Ofori-Boadu, Williamson, & Yeboah, 2009) to appropriate parties. To accomplish this, the team arranged meetings and organized mailings to the appropriate people and organizations. Presentations were made to the annual meeting of the North Carolina Winegrower’s Association and the North Carolina Wine and Grape Council. In addition, personal presentations were made to the secretary of transportation and secretary of commerce and related staff. Results were also sent to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, the research sponsor (Carolina Farm Credit), and winery and grape growers. The report was also featured on the UNCG website.

Since this was a short-term project with a firm deadline, no plans for continuous improvement beyond the completion date were necessary for achieving the project goals. Nonetheless, even in the few years since its publication, there is ample evidence of the greater awareness in the state to attend to the business management and development needs of this cluster. First and most important is the subsequent establishment of the Shelton–Badgett Center for Viticulture and Enology at Surry Community College to serve the wine cluster in the state. Additionally, based largely on the recommendations of the report, the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center supported BSBE for a study to identify the most salient regulatory issues facing the North Carolina wine cluster. Finally, in a realization of the substantial impact of this cluster on the tourism industry, the North Carolina Department of Commerce engaged BSBE to conduct a statewide study on wine tourism and build a profile of tourists that may be used by wineries for business development.

This section concludes with an estimate of the costs associated with implementing STAID in the application described above. The project involved a team of six researchers collectively working for approximately 250 hours over a period spanning 8 months. The total cost of implementing such a project was approximately $45,000, not including facilities and administrative (overhead) costs incurred by the different institutions involved. Including the latter, the total cost would be around $65,000, assuming an average charge of 44% for overhead costs by the participating institutions.

STAID Applied to the Piedmont Triad Logistics Cluster: The “Virtual Regional Campus” Project

As the Piedmont Triad Region’s economy has undergone transformation from traditional manufacturing industries to industries more in line with the new economy, the logistics and distribution cluster has become increasingly important. According to the Piedmont Triad Partnership, the region’s strategic East Coast location and its extensive network of supply-chain support capabilities makes it a preferred location for logistics and distribution operations. In addition to the region’s physical location, several major interstate highways intersect in the area and major logistics and transportation resources are readily available to support further growth for this cluster. As a result of this, the region has nearly 1,000 firms in the Supply Chain, Logistics and Transportation Management (SCLTM) cluster, employing almost 16,000 workers (Brod & Debbage, 2007) in areas such as air cargo services (e.g., FedEx, UPS, Continental Air Cargo), third-party logistics (e.g., Best Services, M33 Integrated, New Breed Logistics), and trucking (e.g., Old Dominion Freight Line, Epes Transport System, FedEx Ground). Additionally, several major corporations (e.g., Polo Ralph Lauren, Harris Teeter, Hanesbrands, Kmart) have distribution centers and warehouses in the region.

As also pointed out in Brod and Debbage (2007), however, the SCLTM cluster has significant workforce training and education needs. With that in mind, in 2009 the Piedmont Triad Partnership awarded BSBE and Guilford Technical Community College a research grant funded by WIRED to develop a “Virtual Regional Campus” for SCLTM education in the Piedmont Triad Region. The idea was for the HEIs in the Piedmont Triad Region to come to an agreement on some basic courses required for entry-level jobs in the emerging SCLTM cluster., This agreement would ensure that students anywhere in the region would be able to take any course covered under the agreement, would be assured of having achieved a standard set of learning outcomes, and thereafter, would be able to transfer these credits to another participating institution if they decided to move. Given below is a step-by-step description of the project within the STAID framework.

Step 1: Select an Appropriate Cluster

As mentioned above, the SCLTM cluster is recognized in the Piedmont Triad Region as an important one for job growth. As a result, it is vital to the success of our local educational institutions and to the success of the cluster itself to train students for careers in SCLTM. Several HEIs in the region offer curriculum related to this cluster; however, the SCLTM-related companies believed that the curriculum should better meet the needs of the workforce and that there should be greater harmonization among the disparate academic offerings across the HEIs. This is why both public and private institutions came together to partner in the effort to create and support the project and why BSBE was selected to lead the project because of its experience with the cluster.

Step 2: Tailor an Appropriate Team

The Virtual Campus team was primarily composed of people who had worked together on previous projects. Members included people from public and private, 2-year and 4-year institutions, along with representatives from leading private supply-chain companies. All members had a thorough knowledge of the SCLTM cluster and held positions sufficiently high enough in their respective organizations to speak for them. Many of the members also served on numerous regional SCLTM-related boards and economic development committees. Their service on these boards and committees allowed the team to promote/receive input on the project and obtain buy-in to the concept.

Step 3: Ascertain the Project Goals

This step consisted of the following.

Conducting background field research to thoroughly understand the issues, challenges, and competition: To determine what should be included in the “core” courses, the Virtual Campus team researched SCLTM course offerings from institutions throughout the region, state, and nation. The Virtual Campus team immediately sought out industry executives to determine what SCLTM expertise was needed when companies hire new entry-level employees. Interviews were also conducted with other stakeholders to assure that the courses developed filled a void that would help the economic development needs of the Piedmont Triad Region. In addition, interviews were conducted with marketing experts to assure that the recruitment plan for the program used the most effective media for the targeted audience.

Establishing timelines and project management principles: A project timeline was developed that clearly demonstrated the need to create subteams that worked simultaneously on different parts of the project. This was done and each subteam posted its progress on KnowledgeTree (a shared-platform document management system). This enabled every member of the team to track the progress of the overall project and provide comments on the specific pieces of the project. In addition, regular face-to-face meetings of the Core group were scheduled to further facilitate discussion and input. The openness of the project helped the team more easily achieve consensus on the various parts of the project. All these actions together—timelines, a central document management system, and open communication—kept the project ahead of schedule.

Setting achievable goals that incorporate flexibility: Achieving success with the Virtual Campus SCLTM project required project coordinators to think “outside the box.” Some 15 institutions, all with different articulation and curriculum requirements, had the potential to participate in the project. Project coordinators quickly realized working simultaneously with all 15 was not realistic. Therefore, the coordinators decided to focus on the institutions that had the largest existing SCLTM programs—Forsyth Technical Community College, Guilford Technical Community College, North Carolina State A&T University, and UNCG. These four institutions became the Core members for the project along with three industry representatives. It was felt that once consensus was reached among the four core members, it should be easier to “sell” the other participants on the project and demonstrate how it could work on their campus. As soon as key parts of the Virtual Campus were developed (core courses, recruitment plan, letter of intent, etc.), however, they were shared with the other institutions for comments and feedback. As appropriate, their input was incorporated into the project. Program flexibility was also an important component of designing the Virtual Campus. Although course content may vary slightly at each institution and the courses may articulate differently into each institution, the basic knowledge delivered remained consistent. This assures industry that students are obtaining consistent fundamental knowledge of SCLTM and the students are assured they receive credit for their work at any participating institution. Ultimately, selecting a team with a common goal and incorporating flexibility into the program allowed the team to design a four-course curriculum, leading to a Certificate of Career Readiness in Supply Chain, Logistics, and Transportation. Finally, it is important to note that not all the potential HEIs ended up participating in the project. Nonetheless, they were continually given the opportunity to provide input into the process and were sent the final report. Now that the Virtual Campus is operational, nonparticipating organizations are regularly encouraged to participate as it becomes practical for their institutions. For example, since the agreement was implemented, East Carolina University, located outside the Piedmont Triad Region, has joined the project and other universities have also expressed an interest.

Step 4: Implement the Project

As in the case of the North Carolina wine cluster project, the essential steps adhered to well-established principles of project management. This step was accomplished as follows:

Selected a coordinator for the project: In this case, the team selected the second author of this article to serve in this role; he scheduled and held regular meetings with clear objectives and tracked accomplishments to keep the research on track.

Created a dynamic recruitment plan relevant to the specific audience. This was unique to this project since its eventual success depended on the recruitment of students. Not only did the project team need to develop an agreed-on curriculum, but they also needed to figure out a way to recruit students into the program. Therefore, a key component of the Virtual Campus was to develop a recruitment plan to attract students to the certificate program. After talking with people currently involved in recruiting students into existing programs, it was evident that there are at least four different audiences involved in recruitment: high school students, their parents, school counselors, and company recruiters. The team quickly learned that each audience reacted to different media. Therefore, an integrated recruitment plan was developed that used a wide spectrum of diverse media. Given the fact that the students themselves are the primary target audience, social networking media was a significant part of the recruitment effort. A website for the certificate program serves as the primary vehicle to deliver the message; however, as the project is further developed, it will be supported by using a combination of blogs, Facebook, and perhaps Twitter. More traditional media forms are used for the other audiences and to supplement electronic and social media.

Established a clearly understood and enforced process for obtaining input and feedback from internal and external stakeholders: The central idea behind this step was to continually post and distribute drafts of the various parts of the project as they were developed to the team and externally. This process of sharing and seeking input from outside groups allowed the team to incorporate the best ideas into the project and, at the same time, let contributors know you listened to their comments. Internally, the Virtual Campus team was updated on the project progress by posting documents on KnowledgeTree. In addition, regularly scheduled meetings complemented frequent e-mail communication and document posting. Externally, the Piedmont Triad Logistics Roundtable served as a sounding board for presenting draft parts of the project and as a vehicle to obtain additional feedback. Once feedback was provided, the project was revised as appropriate. The revised plans were again circulated to demonstrate that the team was listening and to obtain further buy-in to the project.

Developed an agreement that incorporates a method for continuous improvement and a structure that assures continuity: Unlike the project done with the North Carolina wine cluster, this project was long term and it was therefore necessary to incorporate into the plan a structure for continuity and continuous improvement of the program. This was especially important for this project because institutional accreditations standards needed to be recognized and upheld as participating institutions are not all accredited by the same organization. Hence, the letter of intent created by the project team for the Virtual Campus required signatories to name a school advocate to promote the Virtual Campus project—an individual who would be responsible for ensuring that agreed-on courses are incorporated into the institution’s curriculum and the articulation remains viable. The advocate’s responsibilities also included meeting regularly with the coordinator of the Virtual Regional Campus program to provide updates on course offerings, monitoring the articulation agreement, and assuring continuous improvement of the program and core courses.

Step 5: Disseminate the Project Findings and Recommendations

The final project report (Bhadury, Chinnis, & Troy, 2010) was distributed to a wide audience including all stakeholders, media contacts, supply-chainrelated industries, and economic development groups. Spokespersons for the Virtual Regional Campus were made available to the media for interviews, visited companies to explain and promote the program, and spoke to local economic development groups, including the Logistics and Distribution Roundtable of the Piedmont Triad Partnership, the board of the Piedmont Triad Partnership, and the WIRED Capstone event, along with chambers of commerce and civic organizations.

We close this section with a discussion of the final outcomes of the application described above and the implementation costs of same. As for the former, the Virtual Regional Campus is now under the purview and management of the North Carolina Center for Global Logistics (http://www.nccgl.com/). In terms of the costs involved, this application of STAID described above involved a dedicated team of three faculty and onefull-time graduate student working collectively for approximately 150 hours over a period spanning 5 months. The total cost of implementing this project was approximately $90,000, of which approximately $20,000 was donated by the HEI (UNCG).

Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Work

It is now well recognized that HEIs can play an important role in fostering regional economic development especially through the community-engaged projects undertaken by its faculty, staff, and students. Additionally, the theory and practice of regional economic development has increasingly focused on economic clusters. With these two trends as backdrop, this article presents an operational framework that serves as a step-by-step guide to a HEI wishing to engage with a focused economic cluster in its service region. This operational framework is referred to as STAID and was developed and used at the affiliated HEI of the authors. The application of STAID is also illustrated through implementation of two community-engaged projects with two distinct economic clusters that were undertaken by the HEI in the North Carolina Piedmont Triad Region.

Avenues for future work abound that are specifically engendered by the limitations of this article. This article is the equivalent of two initial case studies on STAID and demonstrates that STAID can be applied to two widely different clusters and contributes as one of several factors that determine their success. However, this must be viewed in light of other facts not the least of which are that the HEI in this case has long viewed economic development as an important part of its institutional goals and the clusters chosen have been in existence before the two projects were initiated. As a result, this article does not prescribe institution-specific or cluster-specific guidelines for adopting and implementing STAID. Therefore, one strand of future study could be devoted to customizing STAID for different families of economic clusters to guarantee high levels of impact. For example, it is quite conceivable that different processes are needed in a cluster such as pharmaceuticals than one that is focused on petrochemicals or nanosciences. In an extension of the same idea of customization around STAID, while this article does not study the role that institutional attributes play in the adoption and success of STAID, that could become another important area of further study. For example, can differences in institutional attributes (e.g., regional vs. national focus, private vs. public, or research vs. teaching focus) influence the adoption, implementation, and success of STAID? Finally, another important avenue of research is the empirical analysis of STAID to establish outcomes that define a successful engagement project and associated metrics that are backed by empirical studies.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments; incorporating them has considerably strengthened the article. Also, thanks are due to Dean James K. Weeks and Dean McRae C. Banks II for providing the institutional support that is critical to the success of these community-engaged projects.

Authors’ Note

An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual conference of the Southern Regional Science Association, March 2012.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The projects described in the article were supported, in part, by funding available from the following agencies: Carolina Farm Credit, Piedmont Triad Partnership, and the U.S. Department of Labor (WIRED Program).

Author Biographies

Joyendu Bhadury is an associate dean in the Bryan School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research has appeared in outlets including the Journal of Regional Science, Local Economy, and Annals of Regional Science, and supported by organizations such as the U.S. Department of Labor and the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Samuel Troy is the executive-in-residence of the Bryan School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His work with industry has won him numerous awards, including North Carolina’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma and Pi Sigma Alpha.

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