83: Steve Currall (Harvard) on Building Corporate Relations

Dave Ikenberry 0:13 Welcome to Dean's Council, a podcast aimed at supporting university leaders holding one of the more critical jobs on a university campus. Your panelists, Ken Kring, Jim Ellis and davinberry, engage in conversation with highly accomplished deans and other academic leaders regarding the ever complex array of challenges that Deans face in one of the loneliest and most unique jobs in the Academy. Today, we build on an idea we've discussed in several episodes as to how universities can and should leverage and engage with the corporate community.

Our guest today is Steve Carell, Executive Director and Associate Vice Provost for Academic corporate initiatives at Harvard University, where he leads that school's efforts to build multi dimensional collaborations with major corporations and external stakeholders in support of research and innovation, a job that fits hand in glove with Steve's academic career. Trained as a psychologist. Steve previously served as president of the University of South Florida, Provost of Southern Methodist University, and Dean of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California.

Davis in his early years, Steve helped drive the formation of the rice alliance for technology and entrepreneurship, an experience which helped inform his long career in academic leadership, as well as enlightened him as to the role universities can play in advancing society. In some ways, these ideas harken back to some of the key principles undergirding the formation of the Morrill Act in 1862 and the explosive growth in the formation of land grant institutions shortly after that.

In addition to hearing Steve's advice on building corporate relations, a topic we first studied in Episode Seven with shareese here from Minnesota, we also hear insightful reflection on academic leadership. Interestingly, we also hear Steve's counsel for those interested in advancing into higher levels of academic leadership by gaining exposure to cross campus initiatives. This echoes similar advice we heard from Judy ohlian, former president of Quinnipiac, in episode number 37 and Rachel croson, Provost at Minnesota in Episode 43 as always, we hope you benefit from today's interview with Steve Carell.

Ken Kring 2:31 We're really excited to be here today with Steve Currall, who's executive director Vice Provost for Academic corporate initiatives at Harvard University, Steve, you've had a wonderful, rich career. We're really excited to hear about your new job, which has, you know, a big to it. I mean, fostering university wide initiatives, coordinating those initiatives, sort of across all engagement activities that support the research and innovation at Harvard very much aligned with Harvard's mission.

So we can tell you're you're doing some things that are quite important, quite if not groundbreaking, you know, fascinating in terms of new initiatives and some breakthroughs. So really looking forward to this conversation with you here today. Steve Currall 3:22 Well, thank you so much. Ken, it's a joy to be with you and Dave, you all are great old friends.

Ken, you and I have worked together on several projects over the last 10 or 20 years, and Dave, you and I were together at Rice University as senior faculty members, and I, I think very fondly on those days we had together at Rice, Dave Ikenberry 3:43 yeah, yeah, I agree. Ken Kring 3:47 But maybe just to kick things off, fascinating to hear, sort of what brought you into this current role, what piqued your curiosity to make this initiative go and then we'd love to sort of get into the, you know, the finer details about how you're doing what you're doing.

Steve Currall 4:05 Sure you bet Ken. So the role that I have now at Harvard University is actually an inaugural role. So Harvard has never had this role in the past, and it came out of some deliberations that started back in 2023 so of course, we're all familiar with the recent challenges of federal funding for higher education research, but the the idea of deeper engagement with industry and corporations dates back to 2023 when then Provost Alan Garber, of course, Professor Garber is now president of Harvard, but at the time he was provost, and he kicked off two committees, faculty led committees.

One was the corporate relations, Research Policy Committee, and the other was corporate relations. Researcher Engagement Committee and and so the charge of those committees was to explore ways that that Harvard could more deeply engage with with industry. So it's your listeners may find it a little bit surprising, because a lot of universities are have recently redoubled their efforts to engage with industry as a result of the transitions in federal funding. But this dialog at Harvard started back in 2023 and predated that.

I was actually on sabbatical at Harvard in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2022 and 2023 and as a result of that affiliation, I got acquainted with John Shaw, who is the Vice Provost for Research. And so then John engaged me in advisory role to support the two committees. And so I helped collect data and help write the report there. And as a result of the work of the committees, there was a recommendation that a new role be created at Harvard, and that is the role that I have now as Executive Director of Academic corporate initiatives.

So so so that that's the origin Ken of how we got to this point. So maybe I'll just say a word or two about what I'm doing now in the role. So I'm overseeing all of industry engagement across the university, includes the Harvard Medical School and the life sciences, of course, which has a large footprint at Harvard, in part because of the 15 Harvard affiliated hospitals that that we work with. Those are separate legal entities, and so they don't report up through the Harvard administration, but they're, they're affiliates.

And so what we're trying to do is, I'm, I'm focusing my efforts on two main categories. One is in kind of a more operational approach to a new intramural funding program that we start. So it's the, it's called the Frontiers of Innovation for societal impact fund, and I'm overseeing that, and it's it's several million dollars of intramural funding that the university has made available to support faculty research that explicitly has engagement with industry as part of its work.

So the faculty are proposing research projects, and we'll assess their scholarly merit, of course. But the thing that's a bit different about this intramural funding program is that to get an award, faculty member has to show evidence of industry engagement. So that's one major operational issue that project that I'm working on. I'm also supporting endowed graduate fellowships for PhD students and postdocs, and I'm supporting the industry affiliate programs that we have at a number of schools and units around the university.

So that's the operational side of the job. The more strategic element of the job has to do with engaging corporations in large, multi faceted relationships with university. So those relationships may involve, for example, engagement with executive education with Harvard Business School. It might involve sponsored research of in the say, in the STEM or medical areas, it might involve philanthropic support of the University.

And so I'm focusing my time and effort on relationships with large corporations where we have those multiple elements of engagement. And two examples of those corporations are Roche, the European pharmaceutical company that where we have one of these multi faceted relationships with and Amazon Web Services, where we also have a multi dimensional relationship with them. So on the on the Roche side, may obviously supporting some areas of life science research, but also the application of artificial intelligence to drug discovery on the Amazon Web Services side that's supporting activities around quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

So So Ken, that's that's kind of a quick summary of both the operational and strategic elements of my role. Dave Ikenberry 9:39 You're almost tailor made for this kind of a role. You know, when I think back to those years where your hall, your office, was directly across from mine, you were, you were, you were aggressively engaged in the rice Alliance, which was a town and gown you. Type effort as well.

Take us through the trajectory of your career a little bit and and I know that these experiences informed your leadership over time, you were a dean in the UC system and went on to be a provost and a president. How? How does your outlook on corporate relationships and how it defines, or should define, maybe a little bit more emphasis on the should, how should it define academic life and academic relationships going forward? Steve Currall 10:36 Well, Dave, I'm glad you asked about that.

And in fact, the rice alliance for technology entrepreneurship was an initiative that we started back in rice during rice days, and maybe the the origin of that is we're sharing with the listeners. I read a Fortune magazine article in 1997 about the role of Stanford in the development of Silicon Valley. And I got very energized by that article, because it opened up a new view of universities and business schools to me, and illustrated the possibilities of not only are universities and business schools providing workforce training and supply of talent to employers, but I but, but it also showed how Stanford had been such a player in the in regional economic development.

Of course, we're all familiar with the history of Silicon Valley, which really started with founding of Hewlett Packard by those two engineering students at Stanford. And so I got very energized about that aspect of higher education, and we then started reaching out to friends and faculty colleagues in science and engineering and some local venture capitalists and alums. And essentially we wrote a business plan for a new center that would elevate Rice University's footprint in Houston with regard to regional economic development, and do so through innovation and entrepreneurship.

And one of the key kind of pivotal events in that activity for me in my career, was a spontaneous conversation I had with one of my MBA students who had who was a rice alum and gone to Carnegie Mellon to get a PhD in material science and come back and was doing some startup activity in Houston, And we literally ran into each other in the hallway near our offices. Dave and I mentioned this article for some reason, he said, Well, that was interesting, and he had observed what Carnegie Mellon was doing, technology, entrepreneurship.

So we decided to get together for a coffee, and that led to the discussions with the others and developing a business plan. And that it was really not intentional on my part, but the the work in technology and entrepreneurship and innovation allowed me to engage more deeply with folks in science and engineering at Rice and with people in academic Biomedicine in the Texas Medical Center and so Dave that that brought it out, broadened my experience outside of the my business school faculty duties, and that actually it positioned me well later on as a department chair and then as a dean, and especially then when I went on to other roles, like provost and president.

So those early days of engagement with science, engineering, medicine and also the humanities and the Visual and Performing Arts and Social Sciences as well that that broadening, I think, was part of what started to equip me, Dave with the interest of having broader administrative roles. Ken Kring 14:07 Steve, we often talk with our guests about transitions, and you know, the first 100 Days and strategic planning and yours is interesting to Dave's point. You know your whole career has, in some ways, pointed towards and you bring a lot of bandwidth about what your job is about.

However, you also are in a new institution with new set of stakeholders, with ways that things have been done. Be interesting to hear, sort of how you've made that transition, and how you've thought about what you import versus what you recognize and mobilize Steve Currall 14:47 sure you bet Ken. So I started this position in mid June of 2025 and I have, in fact, I just finished a report that I submitted to the University in. A week ago, on my first 100 days in the job, and I actually had my assistant count up.

I've I've engaged with over in over 340 meetings since since June, and I have been getting out and and meeting with deans and vice presidents and the provost and and I spend about a quarter of my time just meeting with other faculty, Ken and just trying to understand the their their areas of focus. And Harvard is quite a decentralized University, and so I've been out in lots of different academic units. Of course, met with Srikant datar, who's the Dean of HBs more than once, and a number of HBs faculty, but of course, also engaging with science and engineering faculty and arts and humanities and the Graduate School of Design and the Graduate School of Education.

So I'm really, I'm really enjoying that kind of outreach, and I'm listening a lot. As I mentioned before, I was on sabbatical in 2022 and 2023 so that gave me a little bit of a leg up in understanding the university. But I've really been a student of the culture and history and practices here at Harvard to try to understand the institution. And I have not just been listening in these meetings, though, I've also been advocating and promoting the importance of industry engagement, because it helps expand the impact of our research and academic programs, and and it also can open up new avenues of funding for the academic enterprise.

And I see part of my job as being a fundraiser and helping to engage companies and encourage encourage them to support the academic enterprise. So so my transition Ken was a little I had a little bit of a leg up from the sabbatical, but then I've tried to stay humble and understand, you know, what the boundaries are of my knowledge of this institution. This is a new institution for me, even though I'm working in areas of industry engagement and innovation and entrepreneurship, where I've worked for many, many years already, I need to learn how that works in this particular institution, and how we can better knit together in a more coherent, more strategically coherent way, the overall innovation ecosystem at Harvard.

Dave Ikenberry 17:41 Steve you, you've had a remarkable trajectory over the last 20 years. You were a very successful business school dean. You later became a provost, and then went on to become a university president. So you've, you've seen life, administrative life, on a variety of levels, I was wondering, and that gives you some great perspective.

I was wondering if you could give our listeners some advice as to how to be a successful, enriched Dean. What's the right way to do this? You know, words of wisdom, so to speak, at any rank, whether it's a dean, a provost, a department chair or president. Steve Currall 18:27 You know, being being a dean or a provost or a president is a a kind of paradoxical mix of both confidence and courage and humility.

And I've, I've found that to do any of these jobs, I mean, it does take some courage, yeah, but, but, but I've, I think the one of the key learnings over the years was the importance of humility and the importance of trying to stay focused as a servant leader. Some of your listeners may have read that great, old classic book called servant leadership by Robert Greenlee, and it's, it's a wonderful book. I've read it more than once. It's just, it's so thought provoking, and I've found that when I've when I've stayed focused on that, that servant role, and understanding that being a dean is or any administrators, you know, it's really not about me.

It's about my service to the institution and the faculty and the staff and the students. And I think I'm most effective then at times, when I I've been kind of accidentally get more focused on the fascination I have with my strategy for the institution. I think I get less effective at that point because I'm I've sometimes found myself getting more i. I focused on just trying to see progress on what I see as my own strategic vision.

And when I when I kind of recalibrate and get my feedback on the ground, I find I'm even more effective. So even as I had roles, institution wide, roles as provost and president, that sense of humility and that sense of service has been probably the greatest learning that I've had during my career, Ken Kring 20:34 building on that, you know, one of the unique, outstanding aspects in your career has been the interdisciplinarity from your scholarship, from your in the classroom to your administrative breadth of responsibility.

Be interested to hear whether you have some insights, pointers to share in terms of that sort of ever changing demand of interdisciplinarity and everything the university does Steve Currall 21:03 well, I would encourage our listeners to reflect on this and look for opportunities for engaging with other parts of of campus, and I can think of really lots of ways to do that. So my field is organizational behavior, which is a natural connection to, say, a psychology or a sociology department in the university, and I've really enjoyed those affiliations in the past.

I once had a courtesy appointment psychology department, and I've learned a great deal from interacting with those colleagues and thinking more broadly in terms of business school faculty, faculty who are in, say, operations, operations research, Operations Management, there are some really exciting opportunities of engagement with an engineering school, say, if there's a Department of Industrial Engineering or systems engineering, and so there's lots of great, you know, synergies there across business school faculty and faculty and other fields, if for Business School faculty and finance or accounting.

Of course, the economics department is a natural connection statistics, in terms of econometrics and so on. So there's lots of opportunities there. Marketing faculty often have close relations with, again, with psychology and and faculty who do decision making research. So I would, I would just encourage our business school colleagues to to get out.

And one thing I found that's, it's quite tangible in terms of joint projects, is working together on grant proposals. So there's lots of funding opportunities out there in National Science Foundation or private foundations, where business school faculty can come together with engineering or economics or psychology sociology faculty to put together really fascinating proposals for funding, and so that's Ken, that's one mechanism that I've seen work very well to build those bridges across disciplines in business schools and in other academic departments in the University.

Dave Ikenberry 23:19 Steve, I'd like to draw on your that broad perspective that you've gained over the years. I was wondering, and I don't want to put you into a tight spot here, but I was wondering if you could comment a little bit on some of the trends that you see in higher education today. And this is the sticky part, I would like to hear your perspective on and what's happened in the last 24 months with respect to the current administration, the impact that you see it maybe for better, maybe for worse, and how that but more importantly, how should that shape our business model here, either at a university level or most of us are running business schools.

What's going you know? What are these big trends? And also, what are we getting right and what are we getting wrong today? Steve Currall 24:17 Well, Dave, what a fascinating cluster of topics, and of course, there are many transitions in higher ed nowadays, and I get, I get somewhat impatient when I read the polling results saying that the public is is losing trust or perceived esteem of higher toward higher education, because I think we're doing extraordinary things to develop the lives of young people and to give back to society.

And for gosh sakes, the business school community maybe has the most compelling narrative of any. Academic Year in showing how we're providing talent to employers, how we're providing real world, practical education to our students through degree programs or through non degree education, executive education. And I just think that we have a very compelling story about our service to society. And I, I would just urge the business school leaders to redouble their efforts to convey that package, that information in a way that's accessible to to folks from all kinds of different backgrounds and geographical locations and so on.

So I just think we have a great story. There's there's a lot of transitioning, especially with respect to federal funding, some of which affects business schools, but frankly, more of it probably impacting science, engineering, medicine, and I would urge the business school leaders to to collaborate with their colleagues across campus in developing narratives about the impact that we're having in higher education and what we're doing to give back to society. So I think there's a great opportunity here, Dave and I think business schools are really perhaps at the core of the narrative of how higher ed is delivering value to employers, to regional economies and to people actually, of all ages who are wanting to develop their skill sets and develop their careers.

Ken Kring 26:40 Steve on a on a related note, we need to take advantage of your background as a psychologist, and just really, I mean, I think we've seen and heard from a number of our constituents who are a bit weary with the with the job of leadership in the academy. So sort of related to those comments, are there insights, words of wisdom that we can share with others about sort of how to build resiliency and a sense of satisfaction with this very important work that you all are doing?

Steve Currall 27:18 Well, Ken, I have sometimes asked to briefly summarize the job of University President or Provost or Dean, and my answer is that these jobs are often about dilemmas. So as as one is in increasingly responsible leadership role, a lot of times the day to day work is resolving dilemmas, and there are dilemmas in terms of budgetary decisions and marketing and visibility and student recruitment and faculty recruitment, and frankly, a lot of the easy dilemmas get solved by folks that doesn't come up to the dean's office or a provost or a president.

So the ones that do come up are often really complicated and really challenging. And I think that that one thing we can do as leaders to both successfully discharge our responsibilities and manage the stress Ken is to just get comfortable with the fact that we're going to face dilemmas on a very frequent basis, and that leads us into, you know, discussions about being evidence based in our decision making, and who do we draw upon for counsel and advice and analytics that can that can help us resolve these dilemmas?

So I think that over time, as as leaders, as we develop those resources of people and analytics and information, it gets easier to resolve the dilemmas, not easy, but easier to resolve the dilemmas. And that, of course, allows one to kind of manage the stress level and be resilient in these jobs and and keep one's energy and spirits up as we all face lots of sequential and closely occurring challenges and crises. So I think getting comfortable with those dilemmas and building the support team around us is one way that I would encourage people to develop that resilience.

Dave Ikenberry 29:22 Good advice. Ken Kring 29:23 Well, Steve, it's been delightful to have you here with us today. You're a wonderful role model to many of us, and doing a superb job and getting a chance to hear some about it and your background has been absolutely delightful. Steve Currall 29:39 Well, Ken, it's been a joy to be with you and Dave, and I'm so glad that you all invited me to join you.

Lots of fun to work again with both of you. Dave Ikenberry 29:49 That was great to see you as well. Steve, thanks for your comments today. All right.

Thank you. You. Ken Kring 30:01 Davis, so Dave, you perhaps have known Steve even longer than I have. Oh, I Dave Ikenberry 30:08 I do know and have known Steve for a long time, if memory serves correct, we both showed up at Rice in 1990 and and our offices were literally across the hall from each other, so I got to know him well, and I watched him build that Rights Alliance.

And so it was fascinating to see that while his career took him off in so many different directions, he's back at Harvard today, almost right where he started with corporate engagement. And of course, personally, speaking, I I think we as as academicians, really have, there's just so much opportunity there, and I'm glad to see that he's moving aggressively in that direction. The only other comment that I really wanted in resonated with was right at the very end, when he talked about dilemmas these jobs.

What's nice about sharing that framework? I had never heard the jobs described as just a series of ongoing dilemmas, but it is quite true, and I think related to this issue of dilemmas, if you walk into the job knowing in advance that there will be decisions that have to be made that have opposing viewpoints. It helps you deal with the stress that oftentimes comes with these jobs, because sometimes we focus on the stress part or the confrontational part that these jobs have. And if you walk in understanding, hey, dilemmas is a part of the game, and you need to be comfortable with it, and you need to know that that stress is not aimed at you personally.

It's just a function of your job being a leader. And you need to get comfortable with stress. And I've, I've met, and I'm sure you know of leaders can who are very uncomfortable with confrontation and try to avoid it and and unfortunately, that's not a great way to view life. That's very long winded, but I it all his sharing that viewpoint of dilemmas just opened up a floodgate of ideas for me.

Ken Kring 32:30 Well, yeah, and you play that against the backdrop of your early comment in our discussion with him about how many relevant experiences he's had across such a wide variety, and so you can focus for the moment on competencies of skills and sort of technical competencies. But in fact, that riveting moment was also around sort of the soft the soft skills, the temperament, the disposition, the perseverance of good ideas, and recognize recognizing that it's people that help to deliver these great ideas.

Dave Ikenberry 33:07 Yeah, it was a great interview. It went by fast, good. Thank you for listening to this episode of Dean's Council. This show is supported in part by Korn Ferry leaders in executive search.

Dean's Council was produced in Boulder, Colorado by Joel Davis of analog digital arts for a catalog of previous shows. Please visit our website@deanscouncil.com if you have any feedback for us, please let us know by sending an email to feedback@deanscouncil.com and finally, please hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player so that you can automatically receive our latest show you.

Transcribed by https://otter.