A Quarter of a Century of Academia–Industry Interfacing: The Alabama Productivity Center

Academic outreach and interactions with industry can take on many faces and delivery modes. Some of these efforts focus mainly on student learning, others on supporting faculty research interests, whereas others are primarily university service in nature. This paper reports the experiences of a 24-year initiative that has been successful in touching all three of these bases. We report on the model we have followed, on what has worked for us, and on what has not; we also discuss the lessons we learned that may benefit other universities with initiatives designed to provide a win-win outreach outcome.