The North Carolina Collaboratory: Science for Hyperpartisan Times

The North Carolina Collaboratory is a science policy and research/development funding model unique to this nation. Authorized by the NC General Assembly in July 2016 to be headquartered at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Collaboratory’s goal is to utilize and disseminate research expertise across the UNC System’s 17 campuses, as well as other institutions of higher learning within North Carolina, for practical use by State and local governments and the communities they serve. As the Collaboratory approaches its eight-year anniversary, it will have funded more than 500 research projects using almost $225 million in State appropriations. The Collaboratory’s establishment within a university campus is critical, with its statutory authorizations enabling it to rapidly distribute funds across the UNC System and to both public and private partners, and operational support from UNC-Chapel Hill allowing it to minimize administrative overhead and dedicate all State appropriations to research and development projects.

The unique authorities the legislature conferred upon the Collaboratory enables it to be highly effective at responding to legislative requests for research, providing long-term support for research partnerships, and ensuring the research leads to direct benefits for people in North Carolina. Further, the legislature allows all Collaboratory funding to not revert at the end of any given fiscal year but carryforward and remain available for research projects of opportunity as well as supporting multi-million-dollar, multi-year investigations such as ongoing campaigns studying PFAS ($50M), COVID-19 ($59M), opioids ($17M), and flood resiliency ($4M), many of which are featured elsewhere in this conference. While this model—the only one of its kind in the nation as far as scope and funding—is broadly supported by policymakers and faculty alike as nonpartisan, this was not always the case. In fact, after its creation by North Carolina’s Republican-majority legislature, both skepticism and criticism dominated as numerous “media outlets, nongovernmental organizations, UNC faculty, and Democratic legislators seized on the emergence of the Collaboratory as a partisan attempt to co-opt academic research and thereby undermine academic freedom and institutional autonomy.” The purpose of this talk will be to present this history with examples of how the Collaboratory emerged as a trusted and efficient institution bridging academics and policymakers thus creating a model of conducting science for hyperpartisan times.