STAID

Abstract

There has been increasing recognition of the role played by higher education institutions (HEIs) in fostering regional economic development. Concurrently, regional economic development strategies have emphasized targeting economic clusters. This underscores the need for a structured operational framework to guide the efforts of a HEI that wishes to engage with a focused economic cluster in its service region with the intention of fostering regional economic growth. We introduce such a framework in this article that is referred to by its acronym STAID (Select, Tailor, Ascertain, Implement, and Disseminate). The exposition of STAID is annotated and illustrated with examples from two community-engaged projects at a public research university in North Carolina that were undertaken with two different regional economic clusters.