Reports the experiences of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University (Oregon), formed seven years ago in an effort to connect higher education resources to critical issues facing communities in a six-county metropolitan area. Eight lessons learned concerning the institute's role, its operation, staffing, local…

Examines the challenges and opportunities faced by the University of Washington's Institute for Public Policy and Management, a university-based applied-research institute that has grown through intellectual entrepreneurship into an organization that shapes policy for the state of Washington and the Northwest. The institute and its specialized…

The University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government, one of the nation's oldest and largest university-based public-service organizations, provides a case study of the problems and challenges for these organizations, one of which is to mix and match institutional and personal objectives and capabilities to optimize the contributions of…

Public-policy centers and institutes are a growing, visible part of many universities. A cross between think tanks and academic units that provide public service, they focus on policy research and facilitation of public discourse. A national survey reveals faculty's role in their work, the applied multidisciplinary nature of their activities, and…

The Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois, Chicago is a high-visibility urban-policy research center that is sometimes drawn into controversial issues. University leadership must defend academic freedom vigorously, but that freedom cannot be used indiscriminately for faculty pronouncements; faculty and administrators must ensure…

For 27 years the Florida Atlantic University Florida International University Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems has made major contributions to issues associated with rapid urbanization in southern Florida. Maintaining political support, both in the community and within the two universities, has been crucial to sustaining…

British higher education has expanded substantially and experienced major changes in funding and structure since 1987, including merger of university and polytechnic systems into a single system. These changes have not been matched by appropriate internal changes of values, purpose, and activity. Britain now has a massive system that remains…

The Center for California Studies, a unit of California State University, Sacramento, focuses on governance issues and depends on state funds for administering four fellowship programs. It exists in a borderland between academe and state government, public policy think tanks and interdisciplinary studies, graduate education and career training.…

The California Education Round Table has been the principal organizing entity for much of the collaboration between precollegiate and postsecondary education systems in the state. A cornerstone of this system, the California Subject Matter Projects, a K-18 entity, provides discipline-specific, standards-based professional development for teachers.…