Establishing an Institute at Wake Forest

Wake Forest defines Institutes on the Provost Office website, as shown below.

Institutes: Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, scholarship and education are hallmarks of Wake Forest University. Institutes are critical for our goal of bridging knowledge gaps and fostering collaboration to solve current and future grand challenges facing society.  They allow faculty and students to tackle complex problems by integrating knowledge and approaches across multiple disciplines, leading to more holistic and innovative discoveries and solutions that are impossible within a single field. 

These guidelines apply to Wake Forest’s College, Graduate School, School of Law, School of Business, School of Divinity, and the School of Professional Studies. These guidelines do not preclude carefully delineated partnerships with the Medical School, future university academic entities, and partnerships outside WFU.

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Institutes at Wake Forest are led by a visionary faculty director and staff with a broad mission and complex interdisciplinary focus extending beyond department, school and college boundaries. This definition is in contrast to a Center, which is led by interdisciplinary faculty teams around a clearly defined topic or question. Institutes foster and support scholarly inquiry, research, and creative activity, inspire new directions in teaching, and engage in public service activities and actions.

1. An Institute’s mission lies in an area of sustained and decided interest to the University as a whole.

2. Institutes must be mostly self-supporting. In recognition of the exceptional effort required to run a successful institute, the university will provide support as described below.

3. Institutes will undergo an annual review and will be formally reviewed every 5 years to assess their impact and self-sustainability and their renewal will be contingent on a positive review.

4. Institutes must provide a plan describing under what conditions it would make sense to make it time-limited, or sunset the institute.

Exceptions to these guidelines may be granted at the discretion of the Provost.

Expectations

Similar to Centers, Institutes cannot establish independent degree programs, majors, minors, or courses for regular University credit, nor can they hire tenure-track or tenured faculty.  Faculty and staff in an Institute may offer courses or programs through an existing department and/or school. 

Institutes are more substantial and interdisciplinary than Centers. They should strengthen existing and build new signature areas of excellence in research, scholarship and creative work that cross academic and institutional boundaries to address issues of importance to humanity with broad societal impact, positioning Wake Forest as a thought leader in important national and international dialogues.

The expectation is to grow the visibility and recognition of Wake Forest in an area of long-term societal need that already has several successful constituents within the University. The area identified must be broader than individual Wake Forest departments and schools. It must encompass the broader needs of society (either in specific ways such as climate change, equitable distribution of wealth, human rights, preservation of democracy, clean/affordable energy, housing equity, human health (mental and/or physical), water resources, food security, etc. or in broadly humanistic ones).

The full proposal for an Institute should address seven critical success factors:

1. Purpose/mission of the Institute. This is important to communicate the core ideals of the institute that form the foundation that should inform the structures, activities, and membership of the Institute.
2. Proposed activities and objectives, including assessments to evaluate how well objectives have been met. It is important to have a clearly defined set of activities and objectives so members will know the concrete goals planned for the Institute and will determine which faculty and staff in the university are already participating and who might be interested in joining. Assessments are necessary to ensure continuous improvement of the Institute’s activities in reaching its objectives.
3. Proposed Institute leadership, its governance structure, and a leadership succession plan. The success of large initiatives, like an Institute, is determined by the quality of its leaders and the equity ensured by its governance structure.
4. Communications plan including how to raise visibility of the Institute regionally, nationally, and internationally. Communication is key to increasing and maintaining visibility for all organizations, so thinking explicitly about this aspect of running an Institute should be a core expectation to help ensure success in impact, recruitment, continued funding, etc.
5. Description of operating costs and reliable funding source(s) – must demonstrate ability to be mostly self-supporting for the lifetime of the Institute. University resources are precious and the ability of an Institute to be self-supporting adds resources to enrich the university. It also demonstrates that external parties recognize and value the contributions and impact of the Institute.
6. Expected lifetime (duration) of the Institute. This expectation significantly helps the university in its planning in terms of resources, e.g. university advancement personnel commitments, staff support, areas of faculty recruitment, space needs, etc.
7. Description of how the proposed Institute differs from others in the US at other non-profit institutions that might seem similar based on their mission. This expectation is important in helping the reviewers understand the potential impact and novelty of the proposed Institute.

The format for Institute applications can be found here.

Interested parties that are thinking about submitting a proposal to establish an Institute must first discuss the proposal idea with the Provost and the Vice Provost for Research, Scholarly Inquiry and Creative Activity.