Two university presidents hosted a conversation at the Ion Feb. 24 to discuss how American research universities serve the public. Rice University President Reginald DesRoches and Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University (ASU), shared how research universities are engines of innovation, economic growth and social mobility while educating millions and driving scientific and technological discovery to help sustain U.S. global competitiveness.
To help drive home the message, the event was held at a site built specifically to turn that discovery into purposeful, private-sector ventures capable of benefiting society.
“(The Ion) is designed to fuel collaboration and drive innovation by bringing people together, such as yourselves, making it a perfect setting for tonight’s important discussion on innovation and the future of U.S. research universities,” said Paul Cherukuri, Rice’s chief innovation officer who leads the university’s engagement with the Ion.
The conversation could not be more urgent due to increasing public skepticism of the value of higher education, Cherukuri added.
“We believe that Rice’s position both in research and public service leadership is vital for ensuring science and innovation that serve our economy, our society and our democracy,” he said.
Co-hosted by Rice Innovation and the Science and Technology Policy Program at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, the event underscored Rice’s commitment to public service and engaging with communities. The health and well-being of its community are integral to the success of a university, Crow said.
Crow, an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader, became ASU’s 16th president in 2002 and has spearheaded its rapid and groundbreaking transformation into a major public metropolitan research institute. Under his leadership, ASU has advanced its model as a “new American university,” emphasizing excellence, inclusivity and societal impact. Like Rice, ASU has its own innovation initiatives with seven innovation districts in Phoenix located in seven different communities.
“Each one is a place where we’ve secured hundreds of millions of dollars of investment from others,” Crow said. “We’ve worked with the private sector, worked with local municipalities, worked with every organization imaginable, all with the objective of driving two things as the outcome — one, driving the university and its advancement, and second, driving the economic success and vitality of the community.
“The No. 1 lesson is partner, partner, partner. The No. 2 lesson is patience, patience, patience. Because we are not profit-seekers, we can take a very long-term view. But when we work with profit-seekers as our partners, they need to take a shorter-term view, so we’ve found ways to design unique financial instruments.”
He added that the third lesson is to communicate that universities are more than “just egg-head, bean-counting professors.”
DesRoches, who became Rice’s eighth president in 2022, has guided its growth as a leading research institution with a focus on excellence, inclusion and societal impact. He brought the conversation to how universities affect economies through discoveries and things we use in our everyday life, yet there are now potential cuts and reductions in federal funding on the horizon. He asked Crow if universities have done a good enough job communicating their roles in the process of U.S. innovation.
“We have to make the case, not just to the elected executive, but to everyone else that knows they’re relying on us,” Crow said. “Everyone thinks this iPhone 16 was the product of the genius — and he was a genius — of Steve Jobs. Hardly. There were probably, by my estimation, 5,000 academic research groups through the decades that had something to do with the technology I’m holding in my hand. Nobody even knows they exist. Nobody knows the hundreds of patents in here and the thousands of articles that back up the patents that are in here. I’m not just talking about the chips, the billions of transistors that are on a single chip, but the gorilla-glass that’s on the cover here and the surface ‘this’ and electronic ‘this.’”
Crow further elaborated that the iPhone was “deeply enabled” by academic research activity — but the general public doesn’t know that. There are talented executives who are “genius” at integration, but the actual technology is based on the tens of thousands of discoveries that happen at research universities, he said.
To learn more about ASU’s innovation initiatives, visit here. To learn more about Rice’s commitment to innovation, visit here. To join more events at the Ion, visit here.