 All right. Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to get started now. My name is Megan Lowry. I am a manager of media relations at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Thank you for joining us today for a webinar on the report that was just released this morning titled, Enhancing Coordination and Collaboration Across the Land Grant System. You can now download a copy of the report and other supporting materials at www.nap.edu. And we're also going to chat that link out to you during the webinar. And a recording of this session will be available in the coming weeks on the National Academies website. For those of you who are not familiar with the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we are private non-profit institutions that provide independent objective analysis and advice to the U.S. to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. For each requested study, panel members are chosen for their expertise and experience, and they serve pro bono to carry out the study's statement of task. The reports that result from the study represent the consensus view of the entire committee and must undergo external peer review, as did this report. Before I introduce a few members of the committee that are joining us today, I'll just go over a few quick reminders. Please note that this webinar is scheduled to last one hour, so we'll start off with a presentation from the committee. And then afterwards, we'll open it up to any questions you may have. To ask a question, just click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and you can submit a question at any time during the presentation. So now I'll introduce the members of the committee who are joining us today. We have Katherine Bohr, Chair of the Committee and Dean of Cornell University Graduate School, Karen Plout, Dean of Agriculture and Professor of Animal Sciences at Purdue University, and Steve Ianni, Land Grant Director and Accreditation Liaison Officer at Bay Mills Community College. So with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Bohr. Thank you, Megan. And again, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for tuning in to our report release webinar. First, I'd like to say a few words about the origin of this study. A congressional directive in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 called on the USDA Undersecretary for REE, which is a position that was vacant at the time, to establish a blue ribbon panel of representatives from Land Grant College and universities, including the 1890 institutions with an explicit emphasis on the legislative language and their stakeholders to examine how to better integrate and coordinate research and education across the Land Grant system and to assess their collective economic impacts. Congress provided NIFA with $300,000 for this purpose, and NIFA turned to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine for help in addressing the directive. And to that end, the academies established the Committee on Enhancing Collaboration Between Land Grant Universities and Colleges, also called the Blue Ribbon Panel, to begin this work. So next slide, please. So on this slide, you'll see a brief outline of today's presentation. I'll start with some background on the way in which the panel approached our task, which is quite important for the context for this particular report. Then I'll briefly discuss the organization of the report. Then two of the committee members, Steve Gianni from Bay Mills College and Karen Plout from Purdue University, will present the key takeaways and the recommendations from the report. Finally, I'll describe what we hope will happen to keep this important conversation going, and then we'll take questions as Megan mentioned. Next slide, please. So on this slide, you'll see a list of the members of the Blue Ribbon Panel. I won't read the list, but I'll mention that our members included leaders from 1862 and 1890s institutions, one Hispanic-serving university, and a 1994 institution. The members included a university chancellor, deans of agriculture, research directors, and a dean and associate dean for research, deans of graduate studies, directors of land grant programs, and some individuals with ties to the land grant system but outside of academia, such as the executive director of the New Mexico Beef Council, the commissioner of agriculture for Kentucky, and a former corporate science officer now a venture capitalist. Next slide, please. The Blue Ribbon Panel was given a statement of task, which you see here, and I will quickly summarize. So the statement of task pulled together an ad hoc study committee also called the Blue Ribbon Panel to identify key factors for successful outcomes of coordinated and collaborative projects between colleges and universities in the land grant system, including those historically black colleges and universities and other institutions, which address national challenges and global food security. The committee will prepare a report recommending actions to enhance the success and impact of inter-institutional activities, and specifically the panel will use case studies from multi-state research and extension activities, AFRICAP grants, and other examples to identify principles for fostering success and diverse outcomes. We'll present stakeholders with an overview of principles at a workshop. We'll use stakeholder feedback to inform a short report that recommends actions to reduce barriers to effective coordination and to foster impactful collaboration, and also the report will recommend processes that land grant schools can use to capture and share successes, outcomes, and impacts of joint projects. This charge proposed a very novel prototype for a fast-track National Academy's consensus study in which the panel was to share its initial views on the relevant issues in a workshop with stakeholders and then use the feedback from the participants at the workshop to shape its recommendations and its final report. Now this proposed approach is unlike any typical National Academy's consensus study in which the deliberations of the committee are not disclosed with others before the committee's report is developed, and in a typical study only the final consensus findings of the committee is released. As you'll see in the next slide, for a couple of reasons, the study committee didn't adhere strictly to the proposed process, but we used a little innovation of our own. So next slide, please, yes. So this is an overview of the study process which began in the conventional way with a public meeting with NIFA and USDA leaders. Later, the panel held several meetings of its own in closed sessions to try and wrap our arms around the legislative intent of the charge and to share the collective knowledge of the panel about collective activities in the land-grant system. The panel felt that simply organizing a workshop to share its ideas about how collaboration could be enhanced would likely leave out some of the voices from people that the panel wanted to hear from. So it opted instead to use an online platform to post 17 preliminary observations on collaboration in land-grant system and then to request public comment on those observations. NIFA publicized the existence of the platform. We briefed the S-COP and E-COP leaders and put out an announcement from the National Academies, and the platform was open for about three and a half weeks in April for comment. And then informed by that feedback, the committee organized several follow-on workshop sessions or many workshops that ran from May through August of 2022 after which we aim to consolidate what we learned into our report. Next slide, please. Very briefly, I'd like to share a few slides on the backgrounds of the individuals who commented on the preliminary observations that were shared. We had 78 respondents who had the option to comment on each of the 17 preliminary observations, so there were many comments. We asked individuals to indicate the type of institution with which they were associated and their location. As you can see, most of the respondents were from the 1862 institutions, but also a few from the 1890s and the 1994 Senate diversity of other organizations. Incidentally, the preliminary observations of the committee are reproduced in Appendix C of the report, and a short encapsulation of the types of comments received on each of the observations are contained in Appendix D. Next slide, please. It was optional for respondents to provide their job titles, but 53 respondents did provide them. So you can see that we had a good diversity of job types represented, at least in academia, that included faculty, administrators, and others. Next slide, please. Finally, the respondents came from institutions located across all quadrants of the country, including one from American Samoa. Next slide, please. After receiving comments on the preliminary observations, the panel decided to hold some additional webinars and mini workshops to explore the following topics. The first was the science of team science, which is the study of what researchers observe about the dynamics of collaboration. We also looked at the value of platforms such as the artificial intelligence institutes that are funded by USDA and NEPA for enabling collaboration across diverse land-grant institutions. We looked at building the culture of collaboration and trust between institutions across the land-grant system that truly featured in trust state collaborations. And finally, we examined how capacity affects the ability of an institution to be able to collaborate with others. Members of the blue ribbon panel participated in these sessions as moderators and co-panelists in these sessions and of course as discussants. These sessions are recorded and are stored on the project website. Next slide, please. So now on to the report and a bit about the structure. There are five chapters and four appendices. Briefly, we started with some history. In chapter one, we looked at examples of collaboration in chapter two and discussed why collaboration is of value in chapter three. In chapter three, we also looked at research findings regarding the nature of team dynamics and the skills and the personalities of team members that help a collaboration succeed. And the report also examines the financial realities of funding related to the capacities of 1890s and 1994 institutions to be able to partner in collaborations. In chapter four, we provide our view of some basic requirements for the success of large-scale collaboration and the committee makes seven recommendations for enhancing collaboration across the system, five of which are related to overcoming barriers and two are related to communicating impacts. In chapter five, we suggest next steps and then as you can see, there are four appendices in the report. Next slide, please. Some things that I would like to mention before we walk through those chapters are the following. And in this report, the panel took a high-level approach to set the stage for needed conversations and for continued exploration. We focused on collaboration inside the land-grant system as the charge requested, but we recognize, however, that our research systems across the United States and around the world are part of a much broader research ecosystem. We did not suggest a reinvention of the land-grant system. We did not review or rank or grade specific collaborations or collaboration categories. We did examine collaborations from the perspective of their different roles. We did explore key ingredients that are needed to position collaborations for success. And we did identify barriers to collaboration both for institutions and for individuals. And now, I would like to turn the presentation over to Steve Bionni. So, Steve, please. Thank you, Catherine. The Morrell Acts of 1862 and 1890 and the Equity and Educational Land Grant Status Act of 1994 created three institutional categories of the land-grant system, now known as the 1862s, the 1890s, which are the historically black colleges and universities, and the 1994s, which are the tribal colleges and universities. In total, 111 land-grant institutions have been established across all states and many territories. Land-grant institutions are notable for the tripartite mission of research, extension, and education. The panel found that the identity of each land-grant entity is one of an independent enterprise rather than as a member of an integrated national system. In large part, each is dedicated to serving the clientele of its home state. The panel found that agriculture and food production are complex activities. No single institution can provide all the solutions to the challenges that today's agricultural producers face, much less satisfy all the society wants and needs from the agriculture and food system. Next slide, please. The panel found that there is significant amount of collaboration happening across the land-grant system today in the form of multi-state research activities, grants, and other national and regional committees, centers of excellence, and other activities. In general, collaborations are dominated by the 1862s. The panel noted that last year for the first time, a CAP award was made to an 1890 institution to lead a collaboration that involves 1890s, 1862s, and 1994s. The panel found that multi-state projects mainly involve individuals from the 1862 institutions. Hatch funds provide capacity funding for multi-state research to the 1862s, but not the 1890s or 1994s. For example, there are 247 projects in the national information management and support system for the multi-state research projects and activities. A look at 50 projects from the southern region revealed only eight participants from 1890s and none from 1994s. These activities have value in different ways. They address subjects of local, regional, national, tribal, and sometimes global concern. They advance knowledge. Some are designed to provide practical, science-based tools for users. Others support commercial innovation, produce economic benefit, build human capacity, and facilitate communication among groups, among other things. Questions remain about the definition of or appropriate metrics for success, in part because there are different outcomes and outputs associated with collaborations. And partnering institutions also have different expectations for what they hope to accomplish through the collaboration. For example, student training versus publications. Interstate collaboration is more likely to involve a diversity of institutions. Examples include extension activities in Virginia and Alabama. In Michigan, all four land grant colleges, the 1862 and 3994s, along with 12 tribal nations and NIFA, have established a true statewide land grant system to better meet the needs of tribal nations, citizens, and organizations. This collaborative effort serves an important relationship and trust building function. In spite of the fact that there appears to be great collaborations happening, it is not clear that one could say that the land grant system is addressing the needs of the nation and global food security as a system through collaboration, especially when faculty and staff from all types of institutions are missing from the collaborations. Next slide, please. Scientific progress in food and agriculture can be enhanced by transdisciplinary conversions, systems-level thinking, and collaboration involving individuals from diverse backgrounds and experience. Convergence is an approach to problem solving that cuts across disciplinary boundaries and integrates knowledge, tools, and ways of thinking to tackle scientific and societal challenges that exist at the interfaces of multiple fields. Systems approaches go beyond the pursuit of incremental solutions such as increasing productivity by approaching them in a larger context, for example, social, economic, environmental sustainability, and resilience to the system. Diversity brings novel insights to the solution space and enables connections to a broader community of stakeholders. The field of research on team science shows that team cohesiveness, satisfaction with one's role in the collaboration, confidence that collaborators are pursuing a shared vision, etc., are associated with success and this can be proactively cultivated by teams that are self-aware. Individuals play different roles, for example, disciplinary boundary crossers, data crunchers, scientific visionaries, coordinators, etc., in collaborations. Leaders of collaborative efforts need to adapt a mindset that allows them to recognize and cultivate the mix of talents that make collaborations successful. Next slide, please. Collaboration requires financial resources for planning, for science, for management and administration, and coordination of participants. In addition to the science that must take place, funding for program management is essential to keep complex projects on task. Administrative capabilities are not strong at all institutions or aligned toward collaboration with other institutions and this needs attention. This is one of many capacity-related issues. Capacity also affects the amount of time and commitment that faculty and staff can put into a collaboration. Regardless of the institution, if faculty and staff are completely booked, wearing several hats, or otherwise over-committed, they will need ways to be released of some duties to allow them to participate meaningfully in a collaboration. The different legislative authorities for capacity funding of land-grant institutions affect the ability of its faculty and staff to participate in collaboration. Historical and, more importantly, current funding inequities impede the ability of 1890s and 1994s to collaborate. The HBCUs and TCUs have little capacity for collaborations, both in terms of the bandwidth of faculty members and staff, many of whom are actually educated at the 1862s and their administrative capacities. We have to begin to tackle these issues head-on or the status quo won't change. Public funding for agriculture research has declined in real dollars over the last decade. Yes, private funding has increased, but USDA's research suggests that those dollars don't fund the kind of research that are related to the public goods and services we need from agriculture and the food systems, social, environmental, economic, nutrition, and health research issues, for example. The point is that, relative to other fields in countries, the U.S. seems to be devaluing research at a critical time in our global history, given the challenges we are facing. So it is not just 1890s and 1994s and their capacity issues. Collaborative platforms may offer novel approaches for achieving multiple goals and overcoming barriers. The workshop on the artificial intelligence institutes were interesting because they offered a model that could accommodate partners of different kinds, all bringing data to the table and with the diversity of research interests and using it. But the platform offered all participants access to tools, computing tools, and data that they would not individually have otherwise. And also a place to find partners. So these are intriguing opportunities, especially as we think about what sorts of models are needed to address big picture issues in food and agriculture, like climate change, water, resilience, and health. And now we'll turn the presentation over to Karen. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Next slide, please. The panel was asked to develop a framework for principles around collaborations. As the panel contemplated what was essential for large-scale collaborations, several principles rose quickly to the surface. One, support and advocacy is needed from the highest administrative levels of partner institutions. Two, as noted earlier, planning is essential, as are the financial resources necessary to enable planning among institutions. There's often insufficient time to meet, plan a collaborative activity, and sometimes that leads to last-minute requests for participation. For example, from faculty from an HVCU, just to make a proposal more competitive. Planning is also a way to articulate expectations of partners for outcomes in the metrics for evaluating outcomes. Operating resources should be adequate to support project participants, including administrative support, project coordination support, and data management support, in addition to directed funds to support research, teaching, and outreach. Number four, incentive structures are needed to enable faculty to participate in large-scale projects without compromising on other responsibilities. Number five, uniformed shared data management systems are needed that enable seamless access to information. And six, communication support is needed to inform the public, including legislators, of the outcome of their financial investments. Next slide, please. So now I'll turn to the panel's recommendations from chapter four. It is urgent that Congress take action to facilitate the participation of all land-grant colleges and universities in multi-state research and extension projects. Currently, inter-institutional collaborations of the multi-state research project do not routinely engage faculty from the full-range events institutions across the land-grant system. Different authorities guide the allocation of federal funds to 1862, 1890s, and 1994 institutions respectively, with different requirements for state matching support of federal dollars and different stipulations for the use of the funds of collaboration. Historical and current funding disparities have prevented many 1890s and 1994s from being full partners in collaboration with the 1862s. If unifying the land-grant system around common national pursuits is important, Congress should address the need to provide dedicated funding to support participation in collaborative activities. Number two, land-grant administrators should examine how to reduce the variability in committed support for faculty participation in collaborative activities. For example, some institutions use multi-state research funds to support salaries, while others may use them to support travel to participate in meetings. The panel recognizes that the Experiment Station and Extension directors have reasons for managing their funds as they do, but expectations for the level of participation in a collaborative activity need to be made clear by parties involved, along with decision making around the value of the time spent on collaboration. Three, faculty members in academic departments should reflect on how collaborative activities fit into an academic career and advocate for their reward. Academic institutions have traditions emphasizing and rewarding competitive rather than collaborative research projects. Pre-tenured faculty in particular may encounter strong disincentives for pursuing collaboration. Time has come for departments to modify evaluation criteria for promotion and tenure to ensure that achievement and team science are appropriately recognized and rewarded. Funding agencies should help faculty find partners for collaboration. To increase knowledge of where there's relevant expertise across the land-grant system, NIFA could encourage collaboration by convening information exchange or sandbox workshops. These could highlight funded research projects or new areas of research and allow investigators to share information about work they may be doing in topical areas that are of interest to other scientists in the system. NSF and NIFA fund research coordination networks that support groups of investigators to communicate and coordinate the research across disciplinary, organizational, divisional, and geographic boundaries. These could serve as models for addressing the need for investigator networks. Number five, land-grant colleges and universities should help build capacity for collaboration by introducing faculty to the science of team science. Academic institutions generally only aim to train students in their scientific disciplines, not in understanding the human behaviors that foster successful themes. There's a scientific basis for understanding these dynamics in collaboration and academics should use that knowledge to inspire more explicit thinking around team dynamics and self-awareness by leaders and participants in collaborative activity. Next slide, please. Impact. Impact can take many forms. It can catalyze behavior change. It can create commercial opportunity and many other things. But having impact is also associated with recognition and awareness of the work that contributed to these outcomes. Documenting the economic, environmental, and social and society impacts and benefits of collaborative research is important. NIFA knows this already. The shared your science workshops are helpful in getting scientists to produce socially relevant information about their work. Of course, it is not just the description of the outcomes that are important, but it also is important to get the message out to the people in the way they connect with it. The panel felt that the constituents may be more likely to recognize the impacts and benefits of collaborative activities among land-grant colleges and universities if communication strategies are tailored to their interests and levels of understanding. Communicating results to producers may need to target their specific concerns. Policymakers may have different concerns, such as the economic benefit of a project, while members of the public may care about other things such as food prices or environmental effects. The panel had two recommendations, one to NIFA, one to the land-grant system. The first is that NIFA should support a collaborative research and extension activity of social sciences and science communicators in the land-grant system to develop outreach strategies. The second is that land-grant colleges and universities should create novel messaging vehicles to reach specific outcomes, to reach specific audiences about the outcomes of collaborations. So the idea here is to take a scientific approach to communication and include efforts to understand who is getting the message and what works for different audiences and to recognize that people are bombarded by so much information that there needs to be a hook. And there is nobody more in turn tuned with how to disseminate information than the younger generation at colleges and universities. Currently, there's an award for the best multi-state project every year, but maybe we should also have a prize for the best communication of an impact of a project. With that, I'll turn back to you, Catherine. Thank you, Karen, and thank you also, Steve. And so if I could have the next slide, please. So we identified a number of next steps as a part of the process of creating this report, and I'd like to present those to you right now. And so first and extremely importantly, this report is just the beginning of an important set of conversations on these topics. We recognize that there are barriers to collaboration, and some of those are seriously not trivial to overcome. We know that funding resources are needed, and the capacity for collaboration needs to be expanded. It became clear to us throughout all of our deliberations that trust is an essential element of effective collaborations. And so trust needs to be intentionally built and maintained throughout the process. We need a growing awareness or a greater awareness of potential partners both inside and outside of the land-grant system. And finally, the community needs to think about forward-looking mechanisms and platforms for nationwide coordination and cooperation on topics of critical importance to food and agriculture. And this is the subject for a second blue ribbon panel study. And so now on to the final slide, please. And at this point, we are, as the slide says, happy to take any questions that you may have regarding this report. So thank you very much for your attention to this point. Great. Thank you so much to the committee for that presentation. As Dr. Burr said, we're going to open it up to questions at this point. So as a reminder to ask a question, just click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and type in your question there. Our first question today is going to be one prominent challenge in agriculture now is increasing the resiliency of our food system in a changing climate. How do you think increased collaboration and land-grant system can help us prepare U.S. agriculture for climate change or any other challenges that you think are top of mind? So I'll start with some thoughts along those lines based on the findings of the committee. And then I'll return to my fellow committee members. Among the ideas that really came to the surface very quickly is how important it is to have multiple points of view with regard to identifying problems and challenges and the creativity that comes from multiple points of view with regard to developing answers to those particular challenges. So the role of collaboration to a very great extent, one of the most critical elements is that nature of the creativity that comes from taking multiple perspectives on these big problems. And I turn to either of the other panelists for any other comments that you'd like to move. I'll add one quick one. The impact of climate and variable climate may be very different in various communities. And without that collaborative approach, we may be approaching the solution from a very limited set instead of understanding the impact on many different communities that exist around the country. I will add that the partnerships could include a better recognition of the role of historical information and knowledge in terms of combating some of today's challenges such as climate change, whether they be traditional ecological knowledge or other types of information that we can bring to the forefront more easily through collaborative efforts. I think these are really important points made by Karen and Steven. I'll add one more, which is that through collaboration we can also bring more resources to bear on these really large-scale questions in addition to the creativity and the wisdom that comes from multiple areas. Great. Thank you all so much. Our next question, I am not sure if this is something the report addresses, but perhaps you can clarify for our audience. Should the government distribute funding equally among land-grant institutions or should the funding be based on merit? So I'll start with this one too. And it's really important to say that this question falls outside of the scope of the work that we were doing. But I would like to acknowledge the importance of this question. And I would like to say that our report highlights the importance of addressing this question in a systematic and thoughtful and careful way. So a subject for future work. And I open the floor to my other panelists. Yeah, I will answer this. I think one of the other things to consider is right now agriculture is being underfunded. And Congress needs to consider a serious infusion into an area that's so important. Food security is so important to the future of our country. And across the system, and looking at this as a global system, we really need more resources to go into these big problems for agriculture at this end of the time. And I would quickly add that when we look at the funding coming into the land-grant system, oftentimes we describe them as capacity funds or competitive funds. And we need both. The challenge oftentimes is with the capacity funding creating a equitable playing field in terms of the ability of the smaller institutions to be effective and meaningful collaborators. If they do have that basic capacity to be effective and meaningful collaborators, then everyone becomes more effective in the competitive realm. Thank you, Steve. And I see we have another question that has come in, which I will read. It says, given the large aims and scale of many multi-institutional land-grant projects, for example, Africa projects, how can large impact over longer time scales best be assessed for shorter grant-specific timelines that are often required to move forward? What types of intermediate indicators of impact are key to the audiences you survey? And so thank you, Heather, for asking this question. And in fact, an issue that is in the report, it's touched on in the report, is that notion of the short-term timeframe for the competitive grants and then the opportunity for those to feed into these larger scale grants. And in fact, I would say, and perhaps Karen and Steve can expand on this a little bit further, one of the most important elements of the opportunity for collaboration is to provide a measured trajectory of progress across institutions. And that is absolutely a big goal of the type of systems thinking that was described earlier in this presentation. I think it's a really important question. And I think as we move forward and look at future resources for agriculture, NSF, for example, has some long-term funded projects that do represent those kind of efforts. And I don't know what, with a larger portfolio, when you need that, because NF is pretty limited on what they can fund, you can do some of those kind of things more long-term, where it has some short-term objectives with which scientists need, so to get some of those publications out. But it gives you that longer-term trajectory that's really, really important for these questions. So really appreciate the question. Yes. And just one more perspective, when we're talking about long-term activities and outcomes and aspirations, sometimes we need to think about other than individual grant projects and individual grant timelines. We need to think more about creating relationships and trust. And we need to think more about creating structures and systems for collaborations at different levels, rather than specifically tackling this particular grant project or another particular grant project. So that's maybe a different take on it, but one that I think is really important if we're really going to start looking at a collaborative system, be it at the state level or nationwide. Steve, I think that really adds to what I was talking about, because some of these resources are central resources where we can all work together on these projects, get that trust, continue to develop. People can have different projects, but the results then are the bigger impact of the whole group. And I really appreciate what you said, because that's really, really important. Thank you. All right. Our next question is, if HBCUs and TCUs are better included in collaboration, what are some examples of how this might improve research in the land grant system as a whole? What do we have to gain from this? So again, I'll start. But the idea being to think of the land grant institutions as a system and making sure that everyone has a place at the table so that we are taking into account multiple points of view that we are really building from, again, the creativity of those who are seeing challenges in different ways and may have different types of solutions for solving them. No one person or one entity or one institution can possibly have the answers to all of those types of questions. So again, inclusion is a critically important aspect of addressing these large-scale challenging problems. People come with many perspectives. Bringing those perspectives together is really the important to get to some of the best solutions. Also, if we have TCUs and HBCUs collaborating on projects, and we talk a lot about research, but we also have extension projects that we might be working on, right? But one thing that smaller institutions bring is access to communities, access to histories, access to knowledge that might not otherwise be easily available to a particular project. And I think that's a really important benefit when we look at the effectiveness of the system overall. Great. Thank you all. And Dr. Yanni, your mention of extension programs is a great lead into our next question, which is, how do you think improved collaboration research might impact the way that land grant systems work with communities and work with people who are actually working in agriculture, for example, through the extension services that you mentioned? So, Steve, if you'd like to start with that one, that would be great. Well, I think, you know, if the research is collaborative and involves all members of the land grant family or the land grant system, it's more likely to be impactful. It's more likely to be meaningful to the various communities, the various stakeholders whom we serve. For example, if the research collaboration involves members of the African American community or members of the various tribal nations around the country, those tribal nations, those black communities of stakeholders are much more likely to be interested in that information, because it has meaning to them that perhaps is more there's more depth to the meaning that they might derive from that particular activity. And when we talk about these smaller institutions, their linkages to the communities are so direct and drive everything that the smaller institutions do in terms of the land grant work. So, in order for the work to be meaningful to these communities, the research needs to be certainly including all aspects of these communities as well. Yeah, often the 1862s don't serve all communities. We would love to, but we don't as well. And so partnering with 1890s or tribal colleges gives us an opportunity to reach communities that we haven't reached before. Many more people are doing that. We have different programs to do that, but there's lots of opportunities to really reach much broader into the communities. Terrific. And I think we have another blue ribbon panel member raising her hand. Dina, if you would like to add to this conversation, that would be great. Hi, Catherine. Thank you. I'm Dina Chaco and Reitzel, and I serve on the panel. And I think as was stated earlier, I am the executive director of the New Mexico beef council. So I think as a stakeholder, I want to comment on this. And I think very often we think of research coming from the top pie in the sky thoughts and not from grass roots that we're looking for solutions. So I think, you know, quite often and most of the time in all of my experience with land grants, the researcher, the problems are expressed by grassroots organizations and stakeholders. And from there, it goes on up to address those solutions. So if we are not including grass roots and stakeholders in looking at this, and we're probably not solving the solutions that are coming forth from that segment and on the ground, and quite often I think the land grants are solving those issues from grassroots up. So it just has to include stakeholders and those folks that are bringing these problems to be attention of land grants. Thank you, Dina, for the points. Thank you. All right. Our next question is, but what do you hope most hoping that researchers who are actively working in the land grant system, perhaps actively working on research projects or the multi state research projects that you mentioned in your report? And what are you hoping that they take away from your report? Well, I'll start with my wish list and then turn things over to other panel members right at the very top of my wish list is the wish that our faculty will carve out enough planning time on the front end in terms of building collaborations and actually take the time to build the partnerships that they need to move forward with successful projects in a thoughtful way and to reach out across institutions with enough time to have built those collaborations really before those proposals go in for evaluation. That's probably my number one wish. And then my number two wish, which I think has been reflected in multiple comments that we made here today is that re-evaluation of the resources that are being directed toward these really critical issues in food and agriculture and across our systems that focus on publicly relevant questions. So I'll add to them, I think something that I hope they take away absolutely the planning but in their planning that they start to understand the science of team science. So going to bring in multiple partners you've got to understand the dynamics of the group because as we mentioned it's not just bringing in an HBCU or a tribal college so that they're on the grant. It's actually making sure that everybody on the team has a vital role to play understand those roles and bringing that together with the science. So it gets to Catherine's planning and then doing that in a systematic way using the science we know about team science to make sure everyone has an opportunity to be at the table and to develop then the best solutions. Very quickly adding that takeaways need to include understanding understanding of the realities of the various institutions, their maturation as institutions, their capacity both in terms of human resources and financial resources and also understanding that the HBCUs in 1994 is in particular are so connected to the communities that they serve and sometimes that's difficult for our 1862 colleagues to really understand that everything we do has to be driven by the communities that we whom we serve and the last piece is long-term relationship building really has to be at the forefront as has been mentioned numerous times here. Great thank you all. Looks like we have one more question that has come in from the audience. Often disadvantaged communities and individuals are challenged to be able to participate because of resources and day-to-day demands they have for example more difficult transportation to meetings or less flexibility to participate costs of child care etc. How can land grant collaborations that must start to engage all stakeholders structure themselves to include these stakeholders in their interests in innovative ways using technology or local representation in optimal ways does the report address this type of challenge. So the report did not explicitly address the issue of collecting feedback from a variety of communities for input into decision-making and so I just want to be explicit that that is not in the report per se however one thing we learned from the report process was it was quite valuable to for example lay out our 17 building principles there are preliminary observations and to use technology to gain input again we showed that we gathered input from around the entire U.S. all the quadrants and from America and Samoa and so there are ways in which we can help inform the community about opportunities to provide feedback and input and ways in which we can take them into consideration my opinion is that the process for the creation of this report modeled that to some extent and perhaps that model can be used for future endeavors. Great thank you well it looks like we have one more the person that just asked a question just said thank you I thought we had got another question it looks like we have addressed all the questions that our audience has for us today so I'll just pose one last one to wrap us up here is there anything else that you want people to be thinking about as they read your report over the next few weeks whether or not they are currently working in the land grant system. So my number one wish there is that that this report inspires thoughts about where we need to go we really spent our a lot of time and effort to identify challenges and principles that start the foundation for the conversations that need to happen and so we hope we hope we inspire people to be thinking about now let's start to aim for solutions. I completely agree this report it was done we had a short timeline a short report and it provides a framework. Framework is where you start if you can use this framework to move on to the next step I think that's would be a fantastic outcome for this the work of this panel. Well thank you all so much for taking these questions today I'll note again that a recording of the session will be available on the national academies website in the coming weeks so you will be able to go back and reference it there we've got lots of other materials on the report that you can look through you can download the report for free and in full at www.nap.edu so with that I'd like to thank our speakers and thank you all again for joining us today.