Building an Innovation Campus? This President Has 3 Tips

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Virginia Tech is building a $1-billion innovation campus in Northern Virginia, and expectations are high. The state is investing hundreds of millions of dollars and anticipates that new and expanded programming will help expand the regional technology work force. The project helped lure Amazon’s second headquarters to the region, and campus officials hope to pull in corporate collaborations to do cutting-edge work.

Similar things could have been said years ago of Cornell Tech — the applied-sciences collaboration between Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, now located on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan.

The parallels are not a coincidence. Timothy D. Sands, Virginia Tech’s president, told The Roanoke Times that plans for the Washington, D.C.-area venture were “inspired” by Cornell Tech, whose first buildings opened in 2017.

Ties between the two projects go deeper. In 2015, the Virginia team hired two Cornell employees who worked on Cornell Tech. Charles D. Phlegar, Virginia Tech’s vice president for advancement, advised Virginia Tech in its proposal, based on his experience as Cornell’s former vice president for alumni affairs and development. There, he worked with Tracy Vosburgh, who is now senior associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech.

And both research universities had the buzz of competition to propel their projects. The Cornell Tech collaboration was picked in 2011 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City. The Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, as it will be called, was part of a package that urged Amazon, after a highly publicized competition, to select the region over many others nationwide that were vying for its second home. A new neighborhood, to be called National Landing, will be developed as part of the project.

The Chronicle asked Martha E. Pollack, Cornell’s president since April 2017 — several months before its new campus opened — about lessons from the Cornell Tech project. Here are three pieces of advice she has for Virginia Tech’s team.

1. ‘Be open-minded’ about faculty hiring

In the fall of 2017, 30 faculty members began work on Cornell Tech’s new campus on Roosevelt Island, after several years in another building in New York City. Pollack said one reason Cornell has been able to hire “amazing faculty” is because the university has allowed them to spend significant time working with industry.

For example, she says, Daniel D. Lee was hired as a professor at Cornell Tech in 2018. Lee, who did not respond to an email seeking comment, works half-time at Samsung Research leading a new AI Center in Manhattan, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Who cares that in the past, that wasn’t how it had been done?” Pollack said. “Be open-minded.”

Virginia Tech expects to hire 45 faculty members in Northern Virginia by 2025. In a proposal document, the campus said it seeks to serve as a home for tenure line, research, and instructional faculty, as well as professors of the practice from industry. (Separately, the university expects to hire up to 140 faculty members in Blacksburg, Va.)

2. Break down silos

Many universities call their programs interdisciplinary. Use a new campus as an opportunity to actually break down silos on a broad scale — not just for the occasional course, Pollack said.

One program that pulls that off at Cornell Tech, she said, is the “studio,” through which graduate students develop new products and start-ups. Students lead regular discussions, too, with local technology and start-up leaders.

The program brings together lawyers, entrepreneurs, and engineers, Pollack said. “Particularly at the graduate level, learning to talk to people in these different backgrounds is really important.”

The Virginia Tech proposal stresses the priority of interdisciplinary work. It aims to bring together faculty from many disciplines who will help students tackle complex challenges with interdisciplinary technical and soft skills.

3. Stick to the plan

Don’t do too much too quickly, Pollack advised.

Pollack said Cornell Tech’s founding dean, Daniel P. Huttenlocher, was “laser focused” on digital technology and a relatively narrow set of academic programs, along with the touted studio — in the original plan submitted to New York City.

“Now we can expand,” she said. “Everyone wanted to rush in to be part of it.” But “people who have done start-ups will tell you it’s the kiss of death to get too diffuse too early.”

Dwayne Pinkney, Virginia Tech’s senior vice president for operations and administration, said at a recent town hall that the university intends to be deliberate as it makes decisions. First, it will build an academic building and an innovation building, and that construction will be under way in the next three to five years, he said.

“We’re moving fast, but we’re being deliberate,” he said. “We intend to be in the place for a long time. We’ve been here” in Blacksburg “for close to 150 years. We’ll be celebrating that soon. We have that kind of horizon and vision for the facilities we’ll be building in National Landing.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.