4 Questions with Matt Kramer
Position: Director, Academic and Corporate Relations Center, University of Minnesota
Role: Educating Minnesota business leaders about how they can capitalize on the University of Minnesota’s resources and services to help their companies survive and thrive.
What is your primary job function?
Essentially, my job is engaging with businesses statewide to assist them in accessing all of the University services that help Minnesota businesses be successful. That’s everything from a job search site where employers can post their needs for University graduates, to use of the University’s state-of-the-art research facilities. If you’re a modest-sized business and you need a scanning electron microscope, you can’t order one from JCPenney, but you can come to the University of Minnesota and use one here. If you’re doing research, you often can combine that research with something a faculty member or graduate student may be doing here to get the proverbial “two plus two equals five.”
What wisdom gained in your previous roles at DEED and as the governor’s chief of staff has made you better prepared for this new position?
It’s all about partners. There’s always a tendency to think that you can go this alone. That’s wrong. We have to make sure that everybody who can is equipped and willing to tell the University story. Local economic development officials, for example, need to know our message so when a business says, “Boy, I’m struggling,” or “I’m succeeding, and if only I could do x,” [those officials] can jump in and say, “Here’s where you go to get help.” In my experience, it’s all about making sure your partners have a reason to be invested in your success. I’m going to make sure that happens.
What will be the Matt Kramer touch on this? How will people in the business community get a different sense of your job function than it has been perceived in the past?
Large companies either have an existing relationship with the University of Minnesota or know how to gain access to the U of M. In a year from now, I hope that small and medium businesses across the state will say, “I had no idea what the University can offer us.” My touch will be to reach out to chambers, rotaries, communities and local economic development associations to let businesses know that the U is part of their business success. Manufacturers should know about the tremendous opportunities at the Carlson School of Management for everything from pricing studies to supply chain management to procurement. There are also lots of resources here from an R&D perspective for manufacturers that may very well apply to what they’re making or how they’re making it.
How will you assess your success?
It will be both in a big picture sense and through metrics. We measure the inbound traffic count of people gaining access through our Web site. We have what we call the Front Door. It’s an e-mail question line where you can just send any question. We’ve got a 1-800 number. We’re clearly going to measure whether we see an uptick. We’re going to look at GoldPASS, which is our online hiring Web site for employers and our students around the state. Did we see a dramatic uptick in people using that service? It won’t just be the generic “do you feel better?”