Michigan’s URC consists of Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. The other research clusters are spread across the country and include groups in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Northern California, Southern California and Texas.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said the URC helped maintain Michigan’s economic and educational relevance, even during recession periods.

“When the URC was formed in 2006, the attitude was everywhere but Michigan,” Simon said. “That preceded the recession.“

So the URC was important and the benchmarking report was very important in order to show that Michigan, represented by the three research universities, was producing as much talent, had as much innovation and research that other key parts of the United States were.”

The report measures many metrics, including the universities’ collective impact on states, URC program manager Britany Affolter-Caine said.

The economic impact is an estimate of a number of topics, starting with the jobs of people employed by the university, the alumni who stay in the state and the activities and operations of the universities.

“We measure the economic impact of the three URC universities in the state of Michigan,” Affolter-Caine said. “We also benchmark ourselves to other university research clusters across the country, just to see how we’re performing and how we stack up to the best.”

Simon said the advancement continues to inspire further growth within the university and the URC.

“The URC cluster is already high in graduates and STEM graduates, and that reflects our capacity to accommodate more students interested in science and technology,” Simon said. “We do need to continue to grow engineering because that’s one of the high-demand areas both for employers … and it shows the importance to continuing to grow our research portfolio.”