Building Bridges between Researchers and Policy Makers

When I first joined the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, I was both inspired and slightly skeptical about its ambitious goals. The newly established Luskin Center sought to “create a new model of problem solving to permanently alter how scholarship impacts society.” Three years later we are still learning how best to translate research into real-world policy solutions in the areas of environment, energy and sustainability. Yet through it all, I am confident that our business model is both effective and replicable.

The Switzer Foundation suggested that I share with other Switzer Fellows a little about the Luskin Center’s model, which might be useful to others seeking to build bridges between academia and civic leaders. In this post I also share an example project and lessons learned. Most importantly, I invite you to share your thoughts, lessons learned, and best practices for translating research into results.

What we do:

Established with a gift from Meyer and Renee Luskin, the mission of the Luskin Center is to unite UCLA’s intellectual capital with civic leaders to address pressing issues confronting our community, nation, and world. We strive to achieve this mission through a combination of applied research, strategic communications, public events, and sustained engagement with policy makers. We work within initiative areas where UCLA has strengths and where we can maximize likely success. We define success not by the number of articles in scholarly journals, but rather through new knowledge created and the translation of this knowledge into policy and institutional innovations. Current initiative areas include: Sustainable Energy, Smart Water Systems, Sustainable Mobility, Green Chemistry, and Climate Action Planning for Local Governments.

Our organization:

Within these initiative areas, nearly all of the work is done in partnership with Civic Partners positioned to lead policy or organizational changes informed by research-driven information that the university can provide. Our partners include government agencies, elected officials, nonprofits, and business leaders.

The governance of the Center involves:

1. An Advisory Board whose members are visionary executives in private, public and non-profit organizations that are strategically positioned to influence policy adoption and public opinion. They provide critical advice on the relevance and design of proposed initiatives.
2. An Executive Committee whose members are drawn from UCLA faculty representing intellectual and administrative leaders in areas related to environmental sustainability. They assist Luskin staff leadership in staying abreast of UCLA’s emerging strengths. They include deans, institute directors, as well as center and program directors, who are selected to provide the center with a network of supporters within UCLA.
3. Luskin Scholars represent UCLA’s intellectually talented and civically-minded faculty who are selected to lead center research initiatives.
4. Center Staff comprised of the faculty director, deputy director, external affairs officer, project managers, and staff researchers.

How we work:

Each of these bodies discussed above plays an essential role in the Center’s ability to translate new research ideas into real-world solutions. This process generally consists of the following six dynamic steps.

Step 1: Center staff and Executive Committee members identify areas of expertise within UCLA while also identifying prospective civic partners who may lead policies. Relationship building with civic partners begins with step 1 and continues through step 6. Often this is done in conjunction with Advisory Board members.

Step 2: Center staff recruits Luskin scholars and associated teams of faculty and staff who develop research proposals based on areas in which UCLA strengths match the knowledge needs of civic partners.

Step 3: Advisory Board members provides feedback and prioritize the areas to focus.

Step 4: Center staff and scholars implement the initiatives. Depending upon the needs of each initiative, this could involve co-sponsorship between the Center and the civic partner for funding research, publications, internships, and events such as conference and workshops.

Step 5: Center staff and scholars then support civic partners as they seek to implement the policy proposals that emerge from the initiatives.

Step 6: Measure of success for the Luskin Center include 1) new knowledge created, 2) organizational innovation implemented, and 3) policy adopted.

Example project:

The Center’s first major research project was conducted in partnership with the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC). The LABC, one of the most progressive and environmentally-minded business groups, commissioned the Center to investigate best practices for solar power incentive programs. The research partnership was so successful that it has continued and expanded for three years, now culminating in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s groundbreaking CLEAN LA (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now) solar program. The first 75 megawatts of the CLEAN LA program are expected to come on line this year, with an additional 75 megawatts expected by 2016. The full 150 megawatts will power the equivalent of 34,000 homes in Los Angeles.

Luskin Center research has helped shape the CLEAN LA policy and program, advanced by the LABC and coalition partners. The program will allow local property owners to sell solar power generated from rooftops and parking lots back to the DWP, using a mechanism called a feed-in tariff, or FiT. Los Angeles is the largest city in the nation to adopt such a program, which will supply renewable energy at a reasonable cost while spurring private investment, creating high-quality jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and helping the state and city meet renewable power requirements.

“Through research and engagement with policy makers, the Luskin Center has been integral in shifting the debate around sustainable energy policy in California and contributed to the CLEAN LA solar program,” stated Mary Leslie, president of the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC). “The ground-breaking research conducted by the Luskin Center has provided the foundation for the advocacy of our broad-based CLEAN LA Coalition, and has contributed to the creation of a robust and cost-effective local solar energy program in Los Angeles this year.”

The Center has published five reports in the past two years related to solar power for Los Angeles. Three of these studies, commissioned by the LABC, investigated the rationale for, and viability of, an in-basin solar FiT. In the report “Bringing Solar Energy to Los Angeles: An Assessment of the Feasibility and Impacts of an In-basin Solar Feed-in Tariff Program” authors J.R. DeShazo and Ryan Matulka evaluate the solar capacity of the Los Angeles region and recommend how it can be harnessed in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. The authors conducted comparative analyses to determine program features that could be designed to maximize environmental and economic development benefits while minimizing the costs of an in-basin solar FiT.

Some lessons learned:

Sustained engagement is critical. According to Arthur Purcell of Sustainable Resource Management, “the concept of engagement is at the forefront of public policy making in the digital age.” The Luskin Center lives this concept. We find that effective policy development requires sustained engagement of appropriate parties and perspectives.

Four elements of engagement (adopted from a list created by Arthur Purcell) that the Luskin Center employs via lessons learned:

• Interdisciplinary. Without a full range of appropriate disciplines for consideration, engagement will have limited value. Some goes for environmental sustainability. Environmental challenges of the 21st century are complex and cannot be solved with a narrow perspective. Engineers and economists, scientists of the hard sciences as well as political sciences, communication experts, and urban planners all must come together to address complex issues. The Luskin Center builds bridges across disciplines. We learned that this can be challenging and time intensive, but worth it in the end.
• Inclusiveness. For the Luskin Center, engagement involves adequately bringing to the table leaders, not only of different disciplines, but different sectors―academics as well as the practitioners and policy makers within and across the fields. This is why the Luskin Center is so focused on partnering with civic leaders who can take our research findings and apply the knowledge to inform policy and institutional innovations (see 4th step below, integration).
• Intensive interaction. Real engagement is an intensive and long-term process. In initial meetings with civic leaders we learned the importance of building relationships. Many civic leaders were not accustomed to a university representative asking “How can I help you?” They then struggled to articulate their research needs and how a university partner could help address research needs or fill a knowledge deficit. We invested in sustained relationship building, which involved sharing examples of the Center’s work and capacity with civic partners. This helped build trust with a variety of government agency leaders while building awareness for how we could make a valuable contribution to the mission of their agency. Once a project is identified, the parties should agree to a manageable scope of work within a given timeframe. During implementation, continued communication between the parties is critical.
• Integration. Integration is where tradeoffs are finalized and, information and perspectives are folded into a detailed and coherent program. We have learned that activists are often our most effective partners for ensuring integration of our research findings into policy innovations. Since the Luskin Center does not advocate, our nonprofit partners can go a step further to push policy makers to integrate our research-based recommendations into their policy decisions.

More practical advice can be found in an article in Ecological Management & Restoration by Gibbons et al titled “Some practical suggestions for improving engagement between researchers and policy makers in natural resource management.”

There are other resources and lessons that I could share, but I believe that the most valuable advice could come from other Switzer Fellows. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences on this general topic of bringing our research to policy makers. And for partnership opportunities, please contact me and/or go to www.luskin.ucla.edu.