An innovative and innovation-focused National Science Foundation grant will promote interdisciplinary collaborations between SUNY Oswego’s School of Business and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as with four similar universities.

Bringing about $400,000 to Oswego over the course of three years, the “Cross-Continental Collaboration Coalition (C4)” grant is the first ever from the agency to Oswego’s School of Business, and represents a different type of opportunity, explained principal investigator Prabakar Kothandaraman, dean of the School of Business.

“NSF is a known entity in supporting scientific research, often for highly research-intensive universities,” Kothandaraman said. “This one looks at how to promote innovations and entrepreneurship, and how to put that research to good use by practitioners.” 

Co-principal investigators also include Michele Thornton and Mohammad Tajvarpour from the School of Business as well as College of Liberal Arts Sciences professors Mohammad Islam and Hui Zhang. Islam, from the Physics and Astronomy Department, and Zhang, from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, are both active researchers working on projects related to sustainable energy.

“Institutions such as ours, who take pride in high-quality teaching, supply students in many of these areas,” Kothandaraman noted. “The NSF also recognizes that SUNY Oswego is not alone in this. Other institutions that emphasize high-quality teaching are into this as well. They wanted like-minded institutions interested in coming together to solve a problem, so they brought them together in such a cohort.”

Another unique connection is the collaboration with schools with similar profiles in California State University, Chico; University of Central Oklahoma; Central Washington University; and Weber State University in Utah.

“It’s a pretty unusual NSF grant. They were very open to schools of business taking the lead on it,” Thornton said. 

“The NSF was very encouraging, and wanted to be very supportive and collaborative,” Thornton said. “It was a little like speed dating. Normally in this process, every other university is one you’re competing with for that grant. The NSF made it clear when we made it to the next round that they had enough support for 50 universities. You were there to literally help and cheerlead for each other.”

New business center

“You need to have an entrepreneurial lens and a STEM connecting platform for researchers,” Kothandaraman said. “The team that put together this proposal reflects this idea.”

A new Center for Business Excellence and Transformation (CBET) in the School of Business would play a crucial role by building external collaboration with other research institutions, businesses and alumni. The center also would work with internal stakeholders –- faculty, staff, students and campus leadership –- to provide community value and enhance student success.

“The center idea has been evolving over the past two years at least. We have started some exciting projects, even though the center has not officially come into being,” Kothandaraman explained. “What this particular opportunity has done is elevate this center to something that goes above and beyond supporting businesses and entrepreneurship. There is an institutional commitment to supporting this program.”

With Micron Technology bringing Central New York’s largest economic development project ever to the region –- a $100 billion investment over the next 20 years –- the center and SUNY Oswego’s faculty and students can support many other startups to enhance the region’s ongoing revival.

“Whenever you create capacity that brings newer technology, people are looking to try out newer pilots or projects to support this effort,” Kothandaraman said. “That’s where our students come in. The students are called upon to do various projects within their curriculum. The center will connect students with what businesses need in these projects. It also will move the needle on economic development, which is something the NSF is looking for – economic development and workforce readiness.”

Collaborations beyond borders

Thornton finds all the collaborative opportunities exceedingly exciting.

“Our team is very interdisciplinary at SUNY Oswego,” Thornton said. “I think that kind of collaboration is really unique. I’m looking forward to getting to know people across campus and know how we can better support colleagues across campus too.”

The other co-PIs bring their backgrounds in research, finding grant support for projects and outstanding teaching, Thornton noted. Islam has an ongoing grant-supported project that involves developing sodium batteries in support of clean and renewable energy solutions. Zhang has been working on an NSF-funded project creating technology that can help electric vehicles charge faster. Tajvarpour has been a pioneer in exploring and teaching about the potential, promise and pitfalls of incorporating artificial intelligence into business operations.

Thornton looks forward to making more connections with colleagues from the four other institutions and talking about how they can support one another.

“While in some ways we’re working independently here, we’re building strong ties and we can see where those collaborations go,” Thornton said. “It’s an unexpected opportunity to bring groups together, involving players we would never have expected to work with before, so that really opened up some exciting doors.”

Along the way, Oswego and the four other institutions will have regular check-in meetings to share progress, challenges (and how they are overcoming them), best practices and support. Beyond that, these additional connections and resources can bring knowledge to each others’ campuses.

“The potential impacts for Oswego students and the local community are amazing,” Thornton said. “In the second and third year, we’ll be putting together a student regional professional development conference. Speakers could be people we’ve met in the cohort process, and we can find ways to connect the dots. I think that’s going to provide opportunities for a lot of students.” 

“For us, it’s more about how we can bring our STEM, entrepreneurial and business faculty together and how we can make our students part of the equation,” Kothandaraman said. “We want to leverage student talent and work with our local communities to put this into use.”