Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson, left, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon, center and University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel at the Detroit Policy Conference on Mackinac Island. Courtesy of Michigan's University Research Corridor
—As bitter and cold as the rivalry between MSU and the University of Michigan can get, the two universities are capable of setting aside their differences to better the community.
The University Research Corridor, or URC, is a Michigan-based research coalition that teams the two rivals together with Wayne State University on a number of collaborative research and development projects.
According to the URC's website, the organization ranks second in several categories between the top-eight academic research clusters in the nation, which they benchmark themselves to every year.
In 2015, the URC contributed $16.8 billion to Michigan's economy, according to MSUToday.
URC Executive Director Jeff Mason said the organization is working in many different areas to advance not only Michigan's economy, but to help people around the world.
"The universities have great strengths, but when you actually try to put the three universities together and get collaborations going on, not only between the universities but also with business partners, and they’re even stronger when they’re working together,” Mason said.
An example of this collaborative strength, Mason said, is their contribution to Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes, or ECHO. The universities recently received 4.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to explore the factors in early development that affect health outcomes throughout one's life.
Other recent developments by the URC include receiving $9 million to support an Alzheimer's research center and contributing nearly $1 billion to Detroit's economy in 2015.
U-M Vice President of Government Relations Cynthia Wilbanks said she was a part of discussions and deliberations leading up to the formation of the URC.
“We have long had ways to interact with one another, and I think part of the rationale to support the formation of the URC was to really fully leverage the benefit of having three strong research universities in the state,” Wilbanks said.
Wilbanks said the athletic competition between the two schools is exciting, but the URC shows collaboration is more consistent and fruitful.
“The athletic competitions occur a couple of times a year, but the real work of collaboration, looking for ways to work with one another, isn’t relegated to two or three times a year," Wilbanks said.
Wilbanks shared an adage she said she likes to say around this time of year.
“Go blue, go green and everything in between,” Wilbanks said.
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