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The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges defines an advisory board as having selective membership, primarily individuals from outside the university campus, and operating at many different levels of the university. They can serve an entire university or individual programs, and can help with fundraising, curriculum advice, accreditations, industry relationships, recruitment, and retention. [1] ABET, one of the most important international accrediting associations for engineering and technology has recently incorporated some form of stakeholder advising as a requirement for accreditation. As stated in their Accreditation Policy and Procedure Manual for 2018-2019 [2]:

I.E.5.b.(3) Evidence that the program educational objectives (PEOs) stated for each program are based on the needs of the stated program constituencies.

I.E.5.b.(4) Evidence of a documented, systematically utilized, and effective process, involving constituents, for periodic review of the PEOs stated for each program.

These constituents are not necessarily only industries, but most universities seeking ABET accreditation are giving serious thought to how to best systematize their advisory councils to meet these requirements. A couple of authors have given this discussion more room than we can here: Sener [3] and Craig [4].

The Triple Helix conceptualization of the interplay between University-Industry-Government has been well established since the 1990’s and was championed by the Stanford Triple Helix Research Group, although at the time of this writing the group had not updated any recent academic work past 2016. [5] In this model, the Entrepreneurial University was a central concept to the Triple Helix. UPAEP was a further innovator, introducing the concept of the Tetra Helix, adding civil society as a key stakeholder in creating a better society and world.

Back in 2008, the National System for Technological Institutes in Mexico (SNIT, now rebranded as the National Technological Institute of Mexico, TECNM) ruled that by 2012, a full 75% of the public schools under its charge would be required to have an advisory council that included industry leaders and members. [6] While a great idea, it is very difficult to find evidence of the members and activities for these boards. For example, a search for our home state of Puebla produces a news article with some photographs of a board, but no details on the members. [7] A similar search produces a much more detailed result for UPAEP, with details on the expectations, function, individual members, and period for the board. [8] The findable link for the largest state school in Puebla detailing the function of individual councils and advisory boards is outdated and empty. While many individual news articles can be found on individual boards throughout Mexico, they rarely offer a better insight as to the actual function and effectiveness of the boards. In one example, the board for TECNM national system was described as consisting of 7 people, only 2 of whom were outside of Mexico’s academic infrastructure and were presidents of industrial groups. The rest of the academic representatives were all heads of their own divisions such as the president of the TECNM, and two leading figures from CONACyT. [9] While an impressive, if small, list of members, it is very difficult to imagine this working group being much more active than a wonderful photo op, as a minimum due to their large national responsibilities.

Though I have not performed an in-depth study, on the surface it appears that in many places these councils are at best Presidential councils that advise a university president and board on general policies for university-wide strategy, and at worst, merely excellent photo-ops for fulfillment of specific accreditation requirements. Offering university-wide strategy is not meant to be under-valued by this paper. Indeed, it is one of the functions called for by the AGB above. [1]  However, as we have discussed relative to strategy, for it to be truly effective, we must be able to granularize said strategy to individual plans and actions at the department and program levels. [10] This in no way means that every single program or discipline must have an entire council at its disposition, but it leads to questioning the apparent dearth of such granularity across Mexico’s academic institutions.

To put this advisory role into a global context, we can look at a sampling of major universities around the world:

Oxford University, Environmental Change Institute

14 members, including faculty, industry, visiting scholars, and civil society

Deusto, Orkestra Basque Institute of Competitiveness

Four members representing public policy, government, industry, and academia

MIT, School of Engineering

32 members to cover the many disciplines that a wide-reaching school like MIT would have to offer in engineering. This council is interesting in the extremely high percentage of MIT graduates within the council, demonstrating a long history of cultivating important relationships with their graduates who can then serve the university again with their growing leadership roles. The council consists of multiple investment and capital firms, as well as major technology firms and industrial representatives.

Johns Hopkins, Whiting School of Engineering

Johns Hopkins is the worldwide #1 player in my own field, Biomedical Engineering. Its board consists f 38 members, and the website has short biographies for each member. Like MIT, many are graduates of the institution they now serve. Board serves to advise, bring closer to industry, and increase resources. They serve 3-year terms, may be called upon individually to offer specific advice. This board meets more frequently than many, a twice a year vs. the more common once-per-year schedule. Members are often specifically tasked to help to increase financial and charitable support for the various programs.

Purdue, OrthoWorx Advisory Board

This is an interesting example which gives insight into the formation of cross-university boards that can serve more of an industry cluster needs such as the work at Sintonía

I recently had the opportunity to give a workshop to a large group of Puebla business leaders. As one of the discussions on horizontal integration and stakeholders, I asked how many had experience as advisors to the academic/research side of an institution given that the employees these institutions are educating – and these businesses are hiring – constitutes an important area of synergy and opportunity. Only one person had such an experience, through a business cluster initiative. It may be difficult to bring together such a diverse group of talents as volunteers in a country which does not routinely do so at an effective level. However, it is critical to the best possible execution of a transformative UPAEP that at least our major programs and activities, academic decisions and curriculum design, research focuses, and knowledge transfer efforts are the direct beneficiaries of focused and motivated advisory councils. A more pragmatic consideration may be that in many cases these boards help raise program- or discipline-specific financing – the lost opportunity cost of ignoring this type of focused board is not easily dismissed. If we are truly to be the embodiment of the university that launched the Tetra-Helix concept and movement in Mexico, we need to boldly lead the way in this recruitment to more granularized boards that truly participate in shaping the academic, knowledge transfer, and financial future at UPAEP.

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