Corporate-Student Engagement in the Classroom, Guidelines for

Corporations can offer a wealth of scientific, technological, management and career planning resources to Boston University students, and corporate-student engagement has the potential to greatly enhance the University’s educational mission. Corporate-student engagement plays a significant role in certain University courses, particularly in business, engineering and the sciences. Opportunities for exposure to corporate expertise and mentorship vary.  Some of the more complex interactions, such as student competitions and capstone projects, involve student receipt of corporate confidential information and student agreement to provide their resulting inventions and other intellectual property to the company. Companies often require written agreements to protect their interests.  Faculty should plan and manage such corporate-student engagement with care, keeping the following basic principles in mind:

1. The University cannot enter into contractual agreements on behalf of students; the students must sign on their own behalf. The University is legally responsible for advising and guiding faculty and other University employees in their University work and can review nondisclosure and intellectual property agreements for them. But the University does not represent students as individuals in a legal capacity. The company may assume BU can enter into agreements for students; we cannot. When a student signs an intellectual property or nondisclosure agreement, even in conjunction with University educational activities, the student is individually responsible for the consequences.
2. The University does not own student intellectual property emerging from coursework. Under the University’s Intellectual Property Policy, although the University owns intellectual property created by students in the course of University sponsored research, the University normally does not own intellectual property that the student creates in the course of their educational work. The student owns it.
3. Deal carefully with requests for confidentiality of information. In an academic environment dedicated to the broad dissemination of knowledge and results, it is preferable to avoid nondisclosure agreements of any type. If the receipt of confidential information cannot be avoided, many companies will require both faculty and students to sign an agreement prior to the engagement. Nondisclosure agreements come with different labels – they may be referred to as an NDA, a Confidentiality Agreement, an Agreement Governing Proprietary Information, etc. Frequently, important obligations relating to confidential information appear merely as provisions in a more general document. Imposition of proprietary information and attendant obligations of nondisclosure – which often last for years – should not interfere with educational objectives or the full expression of academic results and should not interfere with future educational activity (i.e. sponsored research in the same field) or with future employment opportunities.
4. The University should, as a condition of corporate involvement, require companies to offer fair and simple agreements to students that minimize risk and are reasonably protective of student interests (see examples: where confidential info is needed | where confidential info is not needed)*. Faculty should make clear to corporate partners that corporate-student engagement is an academic undertaking; student work product, including any intellectual property produced, should carry no warranty, and, if provided to the company, should be provided strictly “as-is.” Disclosure of confidential or proprietary information to students should be subject to the prior review, assessment, and approval of the faculty member. The University prohibits agreements that allow disclosure to students of any export controlled corporate technology in academic programs.
5. Entering into a legal agreement with a corporation should not be mandatory for students in a required course. Student concerns about the burdens of confidentiality and the giving away of intellectual property may be both understandable and prudent.  The University must afford students a pathway for completing their degree program without entering into a contract with a company or other third party.  Accordingly, for required courses, students must have the option to complete coursework and course objectives through alternative assignments and projects that do not involve such contracts and that provide them with a substantially equivalent educational experience.  Less complex forms of corporate engagement, such as lectures, site visits, and workshops, that do not involve legal agreements, may be mandatory. For elective courses, corporate engagement involving such agreements may be mandated without option, but only if the requirement is clearly spelled out prior to registration in both the course description and the syllabus. It should be noted that the restrictions on mandatory engagement cited in these guidelines are mainly directed to instances in which students would be required to receive corporate confidential information or required to assign their intellectual property to a company. The guidelines are not meant to restrict agreements required for student practicums or to excuse students from compliance with HIPAA or other regulations, nor do they excuse students from adherence to licensing terms associated with use of copyrighted educational content, data use agreements, software programs and the like.
6. Let students know what’s coming – corporate engagement and any agreements it entails should not be a surprise. As noted above, mandatory corporate engagement involving contractual agreements must be made clear prior to registration in both the course description and the syllabus. But even optional corporate engagement involving such agreements should be announced well in advance, preferably in the course description or the syllabus, and faculty should provide any corporate agreements to students at the earliest possible time, preferably at the first class or, at a minimum, several weeks before the agreements must be turned in. Students will need time to review and understand these agreements; the terms and conditions will be unfamiliar to most.
7. Take the opportunity to provide education about confidentiality and intellectual property. Corporate engagement can be an opportunity for faculty to expose students to the importance of proprietary information and the emphasis placed on the ownership and protection of intellectual property in the corporate world. If the course will involve legal agreements on confidentiality and intellectual property, faculty should provide some basic educational materials on these topics.
8. Manage real or apparent conflicts of interest appropriately. A faculty member’s familiarity with a company interested in engaging with students is to be expected, and is conducive to synergies that can make the engagement successful. Nevertheless, faculty should remain mindful of the appearance of conflict if the corporate engagement is with a company with which the faculty member has a consulting arrangement or other financial interest. In such cases, faculty should consult with their Dean, and, in appropriate cases, with the Associate Provosts for Graduate and Undergraduate Affairs. Although presumably not necessary for simpler engagements like guest lectures or site visits, in instances where the company may come away from a more complex engagement with something of value – work product, IP, etc. – the faculty member with a financial interest in the company may also need to clear the engagement through the University’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

Corporate-student engagement is an increasingly attractive and effective means of meeting academic objectives as well as fostering occupational opportunity for students and productive collaborations for the University and its faculty.  Following these guidelines can ensure that such activities remain consistent with the University’s educational mission and the welfare of our students.

* The form agreements linked above are examples. They contains terms and conditions to protect BU and its students. Each assumes that the student’s participation is optional, which is reflected in a Student Agreement and Acknowledgment at the end of each form. The first form agreement assumes that the corporate participant in the student educational project seeks rights to intellectual property that may be created in the course of the project. The second form agreement assumes both that the corporate participant seeks rights to intellectual property created in the course of the project and that the project requires the corporate participant to share information it considers confidential. Not all corporate-sponsored student educational projects require the sponsor to provide confidential information and not all corporate sponsors will seek intellectual property rights. The form may need to be changed to reflect the particular circumstances of a project.