Supporting Partnership for Advancement, Research, and Knowledge (SPARK) is a joint effort of four geographically diverse and primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Each SPARK institution seeks to overcome its unique challenges by developing the capacity to facilitate innovation and knowledge creation by building and sustaining partnerships with industry and innovation ecosystems in its region. These efforts will also pave the way for each institution to develop intellectual property rights policies and construct partnership agreements while also positioning itself more favorably than heretofore to pursue external funding opportunities.

Working together as a community, the SPARK cohort will focus on four primary objectives. First, each institution will improve how it supports research and community partnerships by identifying and fixing areas where policies or processes are lacking or are not helpful. Second, each will provide professional development and incentives for faculty and staff to expand their involvement in use-inspired research and institutional capacity building. Third, each will build stronger relationships with local industries and innovation ecosystems with the help of dedicated liaisons or individuals adept at building relational assets to function as catalysts of this effort. Finally, each will create a center or hub designed to sustain the efforts achieved by the cohort even after the cohort ceases to exist.

Along the way, members of the SPARK cohort will support each other, learn from one another, and empower all so that each institution may leverage its specific resources and expertise and address its region's challenges. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.