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Abstract:
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"There is a concentrated number of potential women entrepreneurs of diverse races among faculty in the United States’ Historically Black Colleges and Universities (known as HBCUs and are called ‘Black Colleges’ herein). This study describes the potential for developing university technology transfer in these Black Colleges as a strategy for increasing diversity among women entrepreneurs in high growth, high tech fields using female academic entrepreneurs. Currently, Black Colleges lag behind their peer non-Black Colleges in technology transfer because historically they have been under, served and were originally established largely as teaching and blue-collar trade schools. Although Black female STEM faculty comprised less than 2% of the US faculty, they are 22% at HBCUs (Mack, 2011).
Using a novel theoretical framework, 24 Black Colleges with doctoral programs were compared to five (5) non-Black Colleges’ technology transfer programs. The results of a correlation analysis support hypotheses regarding the relationships between tech transfer resource inputs and outputs. It was discovered that the size of technology transfer support and licensing staff relates to the number of invention disclosures and startup formations. The amount of legal support investments did not relate to the number of licensing agreements. Further, the amount of legal support investments or patent applications filed did not relate to faculty size per program.
The number of licensing agreements did positively relate to faculty size per program. Further, faculty size per program and total research expenditures positively related to total licensing agreements. There was no support for the hypothesis that the relationship between non-tenured faculty would be negatively correlated to the number of licensing agreements and start-up business formations. Publications, honors and awards are some measures of faculty quality. Gross licensing income did not correlate to the amount of faculty publications or percent of faculty with honors and awards. Interestingly, the number of invention disclosures, patent applications filed, or percent of faculty with honors and awards did not correlate to faculty with research grants. Instead, revenue from licensing and publication citations were related positively to faculty with research grants. Lastly, the more female faculty researchers there are, the more faculty honors and awards, gross licensing income and number of start-ups.
These findings were used to develop a model intellectual property (IP) policy for Black Colleges. The Model IP policies can help these institutions improve their technology transfer and academic entrepreneurship endeavors. Ultimately, this will likely increase the diversity of women researchers, inventors and academic entrepreneurs in high growth, high tech fields."
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