Addressing State and Local Problems: how universities can accelerate public impact research through Public Affairs

Addressing State and Local Problems: how universities can accelerate public impact research through Public Affairs

Stephanie Moulton & Jodi R. Sandfort

Final Essay prepared for workshop held in Seattle in November 15-18, 2025

1. Introduction

Historically, public universities have played a foundational role in the civic life of their states. From providing high-quality educational programs to translating research through university extension and economic development offices, from operating service learning to continuing education initiatives, there are multiple channels for universities to engage and serve communities (Boyer, 1996; Fitzgerald, et al, 2010). Yet with the documented erosion of trust in higher education (National Academy of Science, 2025), scholars and leaders are now seriously considering anew how higher education contributes value.

One important channel for rebuilding trust is through the systematic inquiry we carry out through our research. The Association of Public Land Grant Universities (APLU) recently embraced the broad term ‘public impact research’ to highlight how university research impacts society (APLU, 2019). Research funders and academic associations increasingly consider how to accelerate the creation of research that centers public impact (Bednarek, et al; 2025; Redd, et al 2024; Renoe, et al 2023). In these conversations, institutional barriers within higher education are often highlighted, such as promotion and tenure practices, financial support, and scholar capacity (Sdvizhkov, et al 2022). Although these institutional barriers certainly exist, there is often a more fundamental limitation. Scholars outside of public affairs tend to not know very much about the state of the ‘public.’ How do local communities define their interests, commonalities, and boundaries? What are the roles played by state agencies, local municipal boards, or the relationships between counties and nonprofit service providers? What are the implications of public financing and philanthropic practices for change making? These and other important questions shape the construction of the public square, creating opportunities and constraints that affect any attempt to use scholarly research to address societal challenges.

Schools of public affairs are uniquely equipped to provide answers to some of these questions. Here, we use the term public affairs as a broad umbrella to include schools of public policy, public management, governance, and public administration. As a field founded on the traditions of pragmatism (Ansell, 2011; Bardach, 2004; Barzelay, 2019; Carboni, et al 2019; Schneider and Ingram, 2003; Whetsell, 2023), public affairs should be well-versed in balancing scholarly and public impact. Yet, in efforts to build our legitimacy as a social science, we sometimes have lost sight of that critical role. A recent study of published articles in leading public affairs journals from 2015 to 2019 documents that fewer than one-third of authors indicated that their research was attempting to influence practitioners or be used in policy or administrative decisions (Bozeman, et al. 2025). Yet, at the same time, a researcher’s motivation to impact practice was found to be the most significant predictor of research use in practice. This suggests that, rather than attempting to translate findings for practice ex post, strategies to enable public impact need to be considered at the start of a research endeavor alongside research design. But how does one do this?

The November 2025 workshop is an opportunity to position our field so that we can lead the way in defining, enabling, delivering, and documenting public impact through our research done with state and local leaders, policymakers and program implementers. In fact, we argue that public affairs scholars must name and accelerate knowledge sharing about the essential roles we already play in our states’ ecosystems. For one, we understand policymaking and implementation processes and teach about the daily operations of public, nonprofit, and private institutions. We also regularly help practitioners with program design and evaluation across many topical domains. We appreciate the importance of context in shaping understanding of problems and viable solutions and often draw upon multidisciplinary theories for insights in our scholarship. We also draw upon diverse methodologies for inquiry and communication. Many scholars have rich professional relationships based on substantive engagement with policy practitioners and program implementers. We have a unique role in supporting research that centers the people and places most geographically proximate to our universities. We see the public impact of research for our communities as an outcome that is of equal importance to universities as our basic research focused on discovery.

This positions our field to be able to contribute significantly to higher education in this moment. In fact, we are poised to serve as intermediaries within R1 universities, investing in an ecosystem that is more responsive to public needs and demonstrating how research is part of our universities’ public charters to deliver public value. At the gathering, we will begin to consciously design a scholarly community among public affairs researchers (faculty, staff, and doctoral students) from large, public R1 research universities to accelerate public impact. We have concentrated our invitations among those who work at flagship universities who collaborate through the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Together, the consortium brings together institutions across 13 states, representing a combined population of 147 million people. The Academic Alliance already supports a network among the public affairs Deans which potentially makes coordinated action easier. But because R1 public universities are geographically located in unique state contexts, our universities do not compete for public impact. Rather, we can benefit from strategic collaboration that accelerates our collective capacity. While we center state and local communities, we also recognize that effective local impact often requires scholars to have a national or international presence and reputation in their areas of expertise.

To help us embark upon this work, we wrote this essay to articulate the serious intellectual agenda underpinning this vision. It is founded on the philosophy of pragmatism in social science that weaves through our field (Ansell, 2011; Bardach, 2004; Barzelay, 2019; Carboni, et al 2019; Dewey, 1938; Rorty 1982; Schneider and Ingram, 2003; Whetsell, 2023). We synthesize prior insights from the vast literatures on engaged scholarship, research translation, knowledge utilization, philosophies of science, and community-research partnerships, to suggest a theoretical and methodological foundation and develop a shared language to ground our discussions and action planning.

While we nod to various traditions, we do not spend time summarizing the many toolkits and best practices that describe techniques and core skills for carrying out community engaged research such as building trust, engaging with stakeholders, and producing practitioner friendly reports (Burns et al 2021; Hoyt, 2011). In fact, in our conception, public impact research does not presume a particular form of engagement or a particular type of deliverable. Instead, we believe it is anchored by a process of inquiry – learning about the context, designing and implementing a research design, creating materials to help others act, reflecting and adjusting given what is learned – that creates different forms of public impact. This work is grounded by a fundamental commitment to helping everyday people – program operators, public managers, community leaders, state policymakers – make progress on a problem at hand. Yet, this process and its results need to be more widely understood, embraced, and resourced. While not often recognized, we also know from our own experiences that this approach is a way to enjoy both an intellectually fulfilling and a practically satisfying scholarly career.

2. Shared Language: Defining Public Impact Research—Isn’t this Just Engaged Scholarship? Or Research Translation?

Because of the incentives created by our disciplines, academics are well versed in parsing concepts and constructs. Various terminology is employed and careers made arguing about ontological and epistemological distinctions. Here, our intention is not to continue that intellectual exercise for its own sake, but instead to clarify the boundaries of the form of public impact research we believe public affairs schools are uniquely positioned to carry out.

Often, thinking about research is influenced by conventions in the natural sciences. Historically, there was a distinction made between ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ sciences. Basic science focused on advancing knowledge for its own sake, often in a laboratory setting, to generate discovery and understanding of fundamental principles. Applied science focused on practical problems or achieving specific goals. Yet the boundaries between basic and applied science are often blurred, particularly as public and private funders push basic science researchers to articulate the ‘broader impacts’ of their research for society (Bednarek, et al; 2025). In fact, the range of approaches for research that benefit society is vast with varying degrees of public interaction (Drahota et al. 2016; Boyer, 1996; Van de Ven 2007).

For example, one approach to benefitting society is participatory action research. It focuses on the direct engagement of people who are involved in the domain of interest – schoolteachers; neighborhood residents; teenagers or retirees – to shape research questions, data collection protocols, analytical processes, or research products (Cornish, et al 2023; Drahota et al. 2016; Lee et al. 2024). Scholars focus on the processes of engagement and their agency to create change in society through their research. Researchers are expected to not simply document problems, but to advocate for social change (Ospina, et al 2008; Lee et al 2024).

At the other end of the spectrum, research to societal benefit can also be interpreted to mean translation. Most fundamentally, translation seeks to make the results of basic research more accessible to non-researchers, including policymakers and practitioners. Activities focus on methods of communication to bring research insights to the public domain and frame it in a way that it might be what is needed or useful. Indeed, there is an entire field of study of translational research that brings together theories of innovation diffusion, social marketing, and persuasive communication (Ashcraft et al. 2020). Often, research translation is concentrated in domains where technological innovations, novel solutions, and inventions need to be deployed. Tools such as test-beds (an environment in which new solutions are tested in controlled environments), technology sandboxes (that enable the integration of component parts), and other forms of industry-university partnerships are common. In this vein, higher ed institutions and scholars focus attention on tactical issues related to communication, such as white papers and op eds, that help disseminate research to external audiences.

Both participatory action research and translational activities focus scholars’ attention to the methods of interacting with the public. In this regard, both can be understood under a broader umbrella of engaged scholarship where varying degrees and forms of engagement reflect distinct assumptions about how knowledge is produced and communicated (Van de Ven 2007). One approach assumes that research will be more useful and relevant if it is co-produced with the community, while the other assumes that research will be most useful when it is appropriately communicated to external stakeholders. The central defining feature of both is the method of engagement used by scholars.

By contrast, the approach we take here is to prioritize the purpose or use of the research in practice, which may or may not require specific forms of engagement. Decades ago, when the causal social science boom was underway, Argyris (1993) called attention to the importance of producing actionable knowledge rather than knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Actionable knowledge is implementable and can be used to make change in the external world. It aligns with a methodology of pragmatism and intentional design, which we describe in more detail later in this essay. While engagement may be necessary to produce actionable knowledge, the methods of engagement are a means to an end rather than an end in and of themselves (Lemos et al. 2018; Mach et al 2020; Oliver et al. 2019).

As scholars at public R1 universities with a core mission to serve our communities, it is critical that we center outcomes. An overemphasis on engagement, coproduction, or participatory action research can unintentionally burden our communities with asks of their time and talent without obvious returns (Barnes, et al, 2009; Lemos et al. 2018; Oliver et al. 2019; Park et al. 2024;). For example, in a recent study of community perceptions of engaged research with a large land grant university, Park and colleagues (2024) found that community members often had difficulty distinguishing engaged research activities from numerous other activities initiated by the university such as outreach services, service-learning, and professional services. While some community members were able to recall specific positive examples of long-term reciprocal research engagements, others expressed concerns about the short-term, transactional nature, remembering interactions with other university researchers in the past. For these community members, there is significant time and resource costs associated with such activities.

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities has also embraced a shift from methods to outcomes in their intentional use of the term “public impact research.” According to their definition, public impact research is “a broad label to describe how university research improves lives and serves society—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally” (APLU 2019). They emphasize “drawing upon deep understanding of specific areas [of research] to build new knowledge and engage with stakeholders to identify and address societal issues.” Thus, rather than presuming that scholarly attention should focus on the processes and methodologies of engagement, the definition highlights the central purpose: to benefit the public.

3. Research Use as Public Impact

Centering the public impact of research requires an understanding of how research is used to create value in society—and in this case—in our state and local communities. In this approach, while research use is a necessary condition for public impact, it can take many different forms. In fact, there is an entire field of scholarship that interrogates knowledge use. It describes different types as well as factors that enable or hinder use, and a related literature examines different ways of conceptualizing research impact. We draw insights from these literatures to become more precise in our thinking about what we mean by the public impact of research for state and local communities.

While there are numerous ways to think about research utilization, most frameworks generally differentiate three main types of use: instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic (Amara et al. 2004; Beyer 1997; Beyer and Trice 1982). Instrumental use is the most conventionally understood way that research is expected to affect policy and practice. Research offers knowledge or specific insights that are used to solve a particular problem. This was the classic understanding of the policy sciences, where knowledge generated through systematic scientific inquiry could be brought to bear to develop solutions to wicked public problems (Weiss 1979). This understanding of research led to the development of policy schools and applied policy research and consulting firms in the mid to late 20^th century, such as the RAND corporation, MDRC, Urban Institute, and Abt Associates, espousing values related to “evidence-informed policy and practice.” These entities built a robust industry around responding to the pressing questions faced by government, often through technically sophisticated analysis that generates evidence for policymakers and practitioners (Burkhauser and Burkhauser 2024; Radin, 2013).

It is also the understanding that motivates the contemporary field of implementation science concerned with the evidence-practice gap that breaks down during the implementation process (Greenhalgh et al. 2004; Westerlund et al 2019). In this conception, research should be used to identify the most scientifically effective practice (e.g. vaccine distribution practices, job training programs, or eviction prevention), to isolate the implementation barriers that get in the way of using what is proven to work in causal evaluations. Scholars in this tradition call attention to the political and organizational factors that prevent or facilitate the direct translation of research ‘evidence’ to policy (Ashcraft et al. 2020; DellaVigna et al 2024; Cairney et al. 2016; Cairney and Oliver 2017). When instrumental use is the goal, part of the role of an impactful researcher is to not only discover novel evidence, but to situate or frame that evidence in a way that is politically feasible and operationally doable.

While scholars in this tradition often lament the fact that evidence is not reflected in policy or reportedly directly used by practitioners, this instrumental understanding overlooks other uses of research in broader policy and governance systems. Conceptual uses of research are more indirect and diffuse. Research is used to shape ongoing conversations and frame issues rather than solve concrete problems (Amara et al. 2004; Beyer 1997; Beyer and Trice 1982; Mach et al. 2020). In an early study, Weiss (1979) called attention to this as the ‘enlightenment function’ of research. Under this conceptualization, research does not need to be politically feasible or reflect shared values; research that is used can even be ‘social criticism’ to push forward new ideas or shape conversations. Interestingly, there is consistent evidence across studies and context that respondents associated with government are more likely to report conceptual rather than instrumental research uses (Amara et al. 2004; Crowley et al. 2021; Nelson et al. 2023).

The third type of research use, symbolic, is sometimes criticized as a less intended byproduct of scholarly inquiry. Symbolic use does not offer new knowledge or insights to solve problems but instead provides legitimacy for predetermined actions or solutions to problems (Amara, et al. 2004). For example, consider a case where a school district decides that charter schools are (or are not) the solution to improve education for residents. Research evidence can be found to support either decision and may be leveraged symbolically to help justify or legitimate the district’s decision. Decades ago, in her seminal work on the role of the policy analyst, Alice Rivlin (1984) noted that no serious policy debate occurs without someone citing ‘research’ or evidence.

In our conceptualization, we do not presume that a particular type of use is more important than another, nor that uses are mutually exclusive. Filling an evidence gap, framing a problem, or providing legitimacy for solutions are all ways that research can be utilized to impact state and local communities. But what is public about public impact research? If research is used by state and local stakeholders, is it always for public impact?

There is a burgeoning body of literature examining the social and political impacts of research (Bednarek et al. 2025; Boaz et al. 2009; Hansson and Polk 2018; Reale et al. 2018). Whereas scientific impact is defined by advances in new lines of inquiry or analysis, social impact is defined by changes to the “cultural, economic, and social life of individuals, organizations, and institutions”, and political impact is defined by the use of research for “political decisions, and motivations and rationales for political action and priority setting” (Reale et al. 2018). While these alternative forms of impact make sense theoretically, there isn’t a clear approach to their measurement. Social and political impact cannot be evaluated with bibliometric analyses (e.g. citation networks) and journal publication metrics. Instead, emerging measurement approaches attempt to link evidence of research use with specific policy decisions, changes in understanding of a problem, or even societal conditions.

In a pragmatic sense, the public impact of research may not be the result of specific research products but may instead be created through the research process itself. The process of conducting research may activate or mobilize a group of public stakeholders around a particular public problem. Indeed, the mobilization of an interested and informed public is often considered a core feature of democratic governance and is perhaps the most important public impact our research can have on society (Dewey 1927; Moore 2021; Whetsell 2024).

This is perhaps why so much scholarly attention has focused on the processes of engagement, as we have discussed in participatory action and translational activities. Yet sometimes, a mobilized public already exists around a problem and this engagement throughout a research process is not necessary. At worst, it may be disingenuous and exploitive (Lemos et al. 2018). In our minds, it is not engagement for the sake of engagement that creates public impact. Instead, the public impact of research for state and local communities emerges through a process of systematic inquiry that centers a public problem and works towards positive change. When researchers can play a role as part of the social learning ecosystem around the problem to advance collective understanding around a societal problem, they will be impactful.

Taken together, we view public impact research as inquiry that is used to address public problems—which could include problem framing, problem legitimizing, or problem solving. For public affairs schools in public universities, we focus on public impact in our state governments and local communities. Research usefulness requires intentional deployment of a methodology that involves in-depth understanding of place, problems, and trusted relationships with the affected organizations and communities.

4. Methodology of Inquiry for Public Impact

Fundamentally, the value of public impact research lies in its ability to support the emergence of insights and inquiry, things that help people and institutions move beyond the doubts that often surround real world problems to act with more confidence. As such, it allows us to break apart the false dichotomy often applied to scholarly research between rigor and relevance. As suggested earlier, it does so by drawing principles from pragmatism, a core, intellectual orientation within the philosophy of science. It also employs a multi-disciplinary approach to research methodology. It is shaped directly from the thinking of John Dewey (1910; 1927; 1938) and other pragmatist philosophers (Peirce, 1998; Parker-Follett, 1995; Rorty 1982), as well as writings of public affairs scholars (Ansell, 2011; Schneider and Ingram, 2003; Shields 2008; Whetsell 2024). Pragmatist philosophy emphasizes inquiry as an interactive, experimental driven process situated in how people interact with their contexts. The meaning or truth of an idea lies in its practical consequences. For pragmatic scholars and leaders, inquiry is deeply shaped by human agency, democratic health, and the active creation of publics where interactions among people create collective or state action.

Figure 1 illustrates a pragmatic methodology of inquiry for public impact research. Our approach recognizes there is complexity in the processes of creating public impact through research and that various activities interact in nonlinear and emergent ways. However, there are core elements, such as deep understanding of context and problem centering, that are necessary for research to move beyond explanation to address public problems.

The methodology of public impact research is problem oriented– with inquiry centered around a real-world problematic situation. This problem orientation is embedded in and defined by the context but also emerges and is refined through the process of inquiry. Sometimes, the role of the researcher is to elevate a problem that has been under-recognized or under-resourced and conduct inquiry in a way that brings new ways of thinking about the problem to the agenda. Dewey (1938) talks about this as “calling people into action” around the problem and sees it as improve to promoting democratic capacity. Other times the role of the researcher is to elicit and respond to problems that are elevated by the community—by local, state, or even federal practitioners and policymakers. In either case, the focus is not on inquiry for the sake of building or testing theory, but on bringing tools and methods of systematic inquiry, including theory, to the benefit of a problem. In this practice, problematic situations are approached with critical optimism, “the belief that the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered” (Dewey 1938, 179).

These types of opportunities for systematic inquiry are grounded in a particular place and at a particular time (Dewey 1927; 1938). Contextual grounding is fundamental in public impact research as it shapes the understanding of the problem, nature of the inquiry, interpretation of findings, and research use. Context knowledge includes deep understanding of the policy and program environment surrounding a problem at the local, state, and national levels. Context knowledge also includes deep understanding of a particular geographic community, nonprofit organization, or state agency—understanding the governance and power dynamics within the particular place. In earlier writings, we conceptualize this as ‘strategic action fields’ where actors build power and influence how events unfold (Moulton and Sandfort, 2017). As researchers understand the context, they come to understand what is viable and useful to respond to the presenting problem. Some researchers gain this contextual knowledge over their careers as the engage in the field and place. But there are also systematic tools to help researchers new to a setting learn about it, including policy field analysis (Sandfort and Moulton, 2015), stakeholder analysis (Bryson, 2004), operational process audits, or critical design ethnography (Barab et al. 2004).

When engaging in public impact research, there are various ways a researcher can design and implement inquiry into a problem. Designers who develop products or buildings recognize that effective design is crafted in relation to presenting constraints– in supply chains, materials, or the geography at a building site. Similarly, the methodology of public impact research recognizes there are real world constraints that surround presenting problems, such as short timelines, limited data availability and cleanliness, and constrained financial resources. There are tradeoffs to be weighed and decisions to be made. While the range of potential research designs are almost infinite – from randomized control field trials to descriptive ethnographies – the design of public impact research is shaped in relation to the other elements, including context and intentional decisions about use. Because understanding often is emergent, designs that are sequential or phased may be particularly appropriate. Mixed methods for data collection, documentation, and analysis are often helpful and can benefit from the talents of interdisciplinary teams.

A pragmatic approach to public impact research also often requires continuous reflection and interpretation to inform the next right thing to do. Rather than starting with a particular set of tenants to test (deductive) or building insights entirely from the context (inductive), both types of logic can be present and inform each other. For example, researchers may start out analyzing a particular problem situation using one set of metrics and learn through the analytical process that other indicators are actually more appropriate and develop an alternative research design. In this sense, scholars are engaged in active learning. Access to an interdisciplinary team who possesses a range of skills in facilitation, documentation, and analysis of both numeric and unstructured data is invaluable given the iterative nature of inquiry.

Finally, public impact research is constantly attuned to enabling the use of research to frame, legitimate, or provide ideas about potential solutions at multiple steps in the process. Importantly, this use is not limited to the end product of a study, such as a published research article or report. Instead, research use can include valuable interactions, tools, and artifacts that generated at various stages. For example, as we approach a research problem, we often write glossy reports filled with photographs and descriptive data tables for practitioners. We make research presentations for policy makers and funders unlikely to ever read such reports. We also have created web-based apps for frontline staff, worksheets for supervisors, and conducted trainings for program operators. We craft toolkits and resource guides for citizens. Each type of product is shaped in relation to our assessment of the context, what is feasible and of the most value in the moment. We have come to refer to this as a process of creating “implementation resources” through the research process that help our partners move forward solutions in very concrete ways (Hill, 2003; Moulton and Sandfort, 2020). This aligns with the pragmatists vision that scholars should frame problems and inform public conversations rather than to direct policymaking (Dewey, 1938).

This attention to use and the associated practices is perhaps the most distinguishing ingredient in our methodology of inquiry for public impact research. While peer reviewed research is often ultimately created from these projects – because it provides a means share our knowledge development process with other scholars and support teaching the next generation – it is not the ends. In fact, rather than viewing public impact and scholarly impact as oppositional, we find that the pursuit of both types of impact is mutually beneficial. Yet there are distinct capabilities needed to work in this way. Certainly, individual researchers shoulder some of the responsibility for developing this capacity. But without institutional support, they face an uphill battle. Institutions, particularly public R1 universities, have an essential role in building and reinforcing a public impact research ecosystem. We believe, given their unique expertise, schools of public affairs are important intermediaries who can accelerate universities’ capacities at this time.

5. Building Institutional Ecosystems that Support Public Impact Research

There is increasing recognition that universities—particularly R1 public universities—have an imperative to increase the public impact of their research endeavors. This push has been institutionalized through several large-scale field building efforts, including through the coalition of public land grant universities (APLU 2019), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS 2025), new government university partnerships (Doleac and Harvey, 2025), and public and philanthropic funder networks (Bednarek et al. 2025). Schools of public affairs can step up in this moment to play a unique role in a public impact ecosystem, both within their own universities and in coalition with others, to more effectively serve our state and local communities.

There are some precedents. For example, University Extension Services in public, land grant universities were originally created through government appropriation to assist with the translation of agricultural innovations for wide-scale adoption by local farmers. Working with farmers, researchers led the development of disease resistant crops adapted to various locales that helped increase agricultural productivity. Other extension researchers established seed banks to ensure that seed variants developed in geographic ecosystems were preserved, ensuring that public values were not overshadowed by market values (Peters, 2010). Now extension offices exist in every county in most states and provide much more than agricultural programming; there is also a national network that connects scholars and staff across institutions.

Within R1 Public Universities

The decentralized nature of universities is a design strength; it can enable faculty to pursue research that aligns with their unique curiosities, research approaches, and motivations, including those to partner with external entities. Yet decentralization without coordination undermines coherence, communication, and impact. In relation to our interest here in enabling strategic relationships around public problems, the challenges are well understood. External organizations find it difficult to approach the university with their questions, secure appropriate resources, or navigate to aligned researchers where there is capacity and shared interests. Researchers across R1 campuses need training, support, and incentives to invest in public impact research. This is often referred to as the ‘two cultures’ or ‘two communities’ problems (Bednerek et al. 2025; Hoyt, 2011; Isett and Hicks 2020; Landry et al 2003).

Public affairs schools already bridge the two cultures through their role in training the very practitioners and policymakers who may be the users of university research. Many of the graduates of our programs go on to work in state and local governments, nonprofit, and community organizations. Public affairs schools also provide non-credit professional development and training programs for state and local public affairs practitioners. And we often run student consulting labs, research centers, and intern programs that benefit state and local organizations. Yet oftentimes, these efforts are operated as one-off activities, not coordinated with other campus-activities in the same partner organizations or recognized as part of a suite of resources that our schools and universities can provide to state and local communities.

Through increased coordination, schools of public affairs can play an important intermediary role within universities to accelerate public impact research, building capacity for and brokering relationships with state and local government entities and civic institutions. The literature on community-academic partnerships is clear that intermediaries are often an important component of enabling research utilization (Crowley et al. 2021; Isett and Hicks 2020; McNall, et al 2008; Nesbit and Jones 2025; Oliver et al. 2022). Along with our sister disciplines of city and regional planning and public health, our schools have expertise in state and local government contexts that can help train and equip scholars at all levels (students, post-docs, assistant professors, tenured faculty, research scientists, research staff) to engage more intentionally and skillfully with external partners.

This intermediary role can be formalized through the creation of public impact research (PIR) hubs within schools of public affairs. As Figure 2 summarizes, the hubs can provide staffing for a range of essential functions: curating knowledge about public governance structures in the state and local communities; facilitating the design of projects and support effective community engagement; activating scholars from other academic units with relevant content or methodological relevant to the specific problems brought to the university; deploying multi-media communication to share with state residents the results of these projects; attracting philanthropic support for new projects; and implementing catalyst funds to inspire public impact research to spread across the campus.

Within universities, sustainable funding for PIR hubs can be built like other important university functions: dedicated line-item investments from general funds or endowments; ‘taxation’ from funding pools such as contracts for services or indirect costs; fee for services revenue generation; or philanthropic social impact investments. Some combination of funding mechanisms is likely the most sustainable. For example, the University of Georgia uses institutional funding to match fee for service revenue from state and local partners 3:1 (Nesbit and Jones, 2025).

PIR hubs can take different forms depending on the needs and capacities in each context. The hubs can work with established university or college centers already working in topical areas (e.g. education, public health, mental health services). These centers often are shaped by the vision of a particular principal-investigator, a talented scholar knowledgeable about the policy and practice issues in that domain. However, these topical centers often struggle to be sustained when that investigator retires or leaves for another job. By coordinating with the PIR hub, their important work can be enhanced and supported by university-wide investments and enable other investigators to benefit from their impact-oriented work. Each PIR hub can also build close working relationships with relevant membership associations in the state’s ecosystem, such as chapters of the international city/county manager associations, state and national association of counties, and state and national nonprofit associations. These entities often have a trusted role in helping leaders learn about promising practices and other ways to address local problems.

In the last decade, some universities have tried to address this problem in a different way, by establishing university-wide ‘outreach’ or ‘community engagement’ senior administrator or offices. However, these are often notoriously underfunded, unable to weather changes in top administration. Because they do not have a disciplinary home, they have not garnered the authority needed to drive systematic change within universities. By necessity, they have focused on training individual investigators in techniques of engagement. While techniques for cooperative goal setting, sharing power, developing group cohesion and managing partnerships is important (Boyer, 1996; Drahota et al 2016; Nesbit and Jones, 2025), these engagement practices are insufficient to ensure impact and use of research by state and local practitioners we have discussed here. In fact, the very terminology used – and the structural position in senior administrative offices – artificially brands this work as ‘service’ in the minds of faculty.

In contrast, unlike these anemic outreach offices, many universities now have well-staffed and resourced commercialization or technological transfer and innovation offices. These offices have a similar goal to bring research innovations to practice as what we are discussing here. But the focus is on the private market– assisting researchers in securing patents, making connections to industry, and commercializing returns on their research (APLU, 2023). Certainly, investments in private market innovation can also benefit the public while producing a “win-win” return to universities, communities, and business partners. Yet, as the University Extension example of the seed bank suggests, there is also a role that universities play in preserving public value even when there isn’t immediate market value. Thus rather than viewing “outreach and engagement” and “innovation and discovery” as siloed endeavors that are weighted and rewarded disparately, we view both as critical components of the public impact research ecosystem within R1 public universities.

Making Change across Universities: Designing a Public Impact Research Accelerator

The vision laid out here requires a fundamental shift in how research is conceived, carried out, and rewarded at public R1 universities. It involves elevating this work and investing in it as a core and legitimate part of the research enterprise. It involves public universities prioritizing– like they do for discovery, translation, and marketization – research intended to directly create societal value for the states within which the universities exist, including the residents, civic associations, networks, and government entities. We optimistically believe this shift is possible. And we know that to realize this vision in the current environment, we must accelerate visibility, learning, and capacity across the country.

Drawing from our understanding of social systems, we recognize that this scale of change can be accomplished through system level interventions. We can accomplish more as a collective of public affairs schools in public R1 universities than we can acting individually. Public affairs scholars also know quite a bit about the formation of collaborative, voluntary interorganizational networks and their impacts (Emerson and Nabatchi, 2015; Huxham and Vangen, 2000; Sandfort and Milward, 2008). Motivation for action and shared understanding of a common vision and goals are critical, as well as processes and structures for governance.

In our case, we are motivated by the researchers (our colleagues) who do this ‘hidden work’ every day, running uphill against institutional constraints to create public value for our communities. If you are reading this essay in preparation for the November workshop—we are talking about YOU. Your tenacity, pragmatic optimism, and commitment to public impact through your research is inspirational. In a moment when higher education is under attack and the value of our work to society is in question, you are the lighthouse that shines the path forward amidst the storm.

We see at least three broad goals that could shape the activities of a PIR Accelerator. These goals are subject to refinement as we together develop our shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities that can benefit from strategic, field-wide intervention. But at a minimum, they give us a starting point for discussion at the November workshop.

1. Grow shared resources and capacity for public impact research

   Oftentimes the pursuit of resources for research is a competitive endeavor, where scholars compete for a limited pool of prestigious funding. Research programs and centers are launched to have a competitive advantage in a particular problem area or policy context, to set their work apart from their national and international peers. A fundamental premise that guides the vision of our potential collaboration is that we are not in competition with each other for public impact in service to our state and local communities. The University of Washington is uniquely positioned to serve King County, Spokane, Yakima or the Coville nation in Washington. Ohio State is uniquely positive to serve Franklin County and Holmes County, or Cincinnati in Ohio. We have unique contextual understanding about and trusted relationships in place. However, deep understanding about common problems and their national policy context can be shared across place—from economic and workforce development to housing supply, food insecurity to child care affordability or mental health services. Further, the tools and practices we develop to conduct inquiry in Yakima, Washington can help inform the tools and practices to conduct inquiry in Holmes County, Ohio. We can share rather than duplicate resources to build our collective capacity for public impact. We could leverage existing resource repositories and assess their effectiveness in a diverse array of public impact research projects with state and local leaders across policy and program areas.¹ We can easily imagine sharing effective materials and tools through open access repositories and toolkits.

   In recent years, other communities like this have emerged, often among individual investigators who have received a specific source of funding. For example, the NSF’s “Accelerating Research Translation” program brought together grantees to build capacity around technology transfer. In the last five years, William T. Grant Foundation built a Use of Research Evidence (URE) Methods Repository—primarily focused on youth-oriented programs and education scholars. In fact, public and private research funders have themselves coordinated their own actions and developed coordinated strategies to fund people and projects that integrate community engagement, translational research, or research use in the Transforming Evidence Funders Network (TEFN) (Bednarek et al. 2025). The actions of these funders are strategic and honed to make changes in the universities’ research ecosystem. Many now include assessment of engagement processes as part of the funding rubrics and criteria to evaluate proposals; some offer funding for capacity building for engaged research partnerships; they describe a need for rigorous studies of whether and how engaged research leads to improved outcomes; and they appear interested in funding capacity building, shifting incentives for researchers within academic institutions and supporting development of boundary spanning intermediaries.

2. Develop approaches to measure and reward the public impact of research in place

   In the national conversation about public impact research, there is a vibrant discussion about the importance of measuring public impact. The current practice of assessing scholarly impact using bibliographic indices, such as h-index, i10-index and journal impact factors, were developed in the mid twentieth century and institutionalized by the 1990s. While offering comparable standards in many fields, these tools incentivize scholars to share research exclusively in scholarly outlets.

   Public impact is not so readily measured. Evidence about public impact and the full implications of research use takes time to appear. Despite these constraints, we recognize the importance of developing shared standards by which to assess public impact research. Shared standards and ways of communicating impact can support learning, strategic planning, accountability and public relations. In the United Kingdom, public financial investment in higher education led to the development of a conceptual model, methodology and tracking system to measure the social impact of research.² Called the “Responsible Research Assessment”, the methodology takes an extensive narrative-based approach that seems promising when applied to our work focused on state and local problems. Other scholars have been exploring other models as well (Bornmann, 2013; Thelwall, 2021)

   Shared standards and approaches for assessing public impact can enable our universities to tell a collective story of how our research is impacting our state residents and addressing the problems they face. Shared standards are also a critical component for assessing faculty performance, providing criteria for the granting of tenure and subsequent promotions (APLU, n.d.; Rushforth and De Rijcke, 2024; Sdvizhkov, et al 2022). Public affairs schools often struggle with the limitations of bibliographic impact measures in assessing faculty performance, given the importance our field places of reaching audiences outside of academia with our research. We could work together to elevate and systematize this alternative, as shared standards for public impact could help accelerate it as a rigorous alternative in other academic fields as well. These shared standards can also pave the way for national awards through prestigious public affairs associations that recognize scholars in the field for their public impact, particularly in service to their state and local communities.

3. Apprentice the next generation of public affairs scholars to conduct public impact research

   There are a range of practices underlying the methodology of public impact inquiry. Most are currently passed to graduate students through mentoring or through an informal apprenticeship model in which a principal investigator brings students alongside to work on public impact research projects. While training initiatives have emerged for natural scientists in public engagement, most focus upon the communication techniques such as writing, storytelling and use of multimedia tools (Muindi and Luray, 2023).

   We could begin by co-designing a doctoral seminar and offering it (virtually) at multiple universities. We could create learning materials, such as case studies and simulations from real projects, to support larger scale training. This content could be further developed into certificate programs or micro-credentials. Campus-based training also could be implemented by the PIR hubs for graduate students and faculty within and across the participating universities. Within universities, we could work with offices of academic affairs to offer PIR training as a formal faculty professional development opportunity. The professional development network within the Big Ten Academic Alliance also could be activated to share trainings and resources across institutions. We also could envision graduate student and faculty PIR scholar in residence programs across partnering institutions to help grow and disseminate shared practices.

The November Public Impact Accelerator Workshop

We need collective capacity to shift our field aligned with these ideas. The November workshop is gathering a diverse array of scholars to begin to refine these ideas. As formal leaders, faculty members, researchers, and graduate students, you all have established track records and interests in public impact research. We will be learning together about the practices that underpin the work we have described here. We will also design together the structures that shape a cross-university network that can accelerate the abilities of public affairs schools to function like intermediaries in their universities.

When we gather, we will have honest conversations about this work. Established trailblazers in public affairs will share their professional stories. How did they become scholars who have both high scholarly and high public impact? How do they approach their work and how has it evolved over their careers? How have institutions supported and hindered their activities? They will also share a specific example of where they sensed they had public impact through their research – and bring in the voice of a community partner. We will all be listening carefully to these narratives, harvesting ideas about how the practice aligns with and improves upon the conceptual ideas shared in this essay. We will reflect upon the courage it takes, as well as the resources and institutional support we might build to accelerate this type of practice within our schools and across our universities.

6. Conclusions

As we’ve worked together on this essay, we’ve unearthed some underlying assumptions that drive our sense of the collective opportunities for our field in this moment. First, it is undeniable that there is a significant disconnect when universities focus only on traditional academic research for scholarly audiences. We are living in an increasing complex time with significant public problems created by income inequality, climate change, political polarization. Evidence abounds that the typical academic approaches to knowledge development may no longer be sufficient to respond adequately to these complex challenges. Yet, the uncertainty caused by loss of trust in public institutions and rapid technological change is creating an opportunity to lead in addressing long-standing, systemic failures.

Second, public R1 universities and public affairs schools hold important resources that can be deployed to respond to these challenges, particularly as felt by residents in our states. Our alumni and their professional networks are the very people being asked to address complex, societal problems. Students are eager to engage in practice-based learning. Many scholars are already trained in multiple methods of inquiry that can be directed toward public problems and are motivated to help.

Third, although these resources exist, universities have not effectively centered or made visible the results of public impact research in our states or what it takes to produce this at high quality. There is not an inherent tension between relevance and rigor, between public impact and scholarly impact. But we need to be able to better articulate a shared understanding of how we do this work and why it matters.

Finally, while public R1 universities have embraced their unique roles in creating economic impacts through our education of students and marketization of discovery, we have not done so as directly with our unique abilities to strengthen civic health and create public value These opportunities – clear in this moment when the roles and legitimacy of higher education are being challenged – are too significant to overlook.

As we have made clear, pragmatist philosophy and methodology, underpins the scholarly agenda we have discussed here. For Dewey (1927) and the other pragmatists philosophers, inquiry is a critical ingredient in a healthy democracy. It is what calls people together and it is how we refine knowledge. People must encounter each other, engage in collective dialogue, and undertake experimental problem solving. We hope to focus the attention of public R1 universities on this important calling to help respond to the questions in our country at this time.

References