University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has achieved regional and national prominence in the US for its remarkable success preparing African American students in the STEM fields. The success is the result of the institution’s approach to innovation - framing challenges as researchable questions and testing to see which strategies work and replicating them. It has fostered a culture of curiosity and mutual support that makes the pursuit of excellence an ongoing collective effort.

Concepts of labor and democracy have infused the theory and practice of higher education in the USA since the development of the modern university in the late 1800s and the early 1900s.Higher education’s social role in promoting the common good in a democratic society is linked to its internal labor model that provides faculty with academic freedom and collective self-governance. These are contested institutional goals and structures, however, in tension with the competing use of higher education to serve the private interests of industry. This chapter explores the ongoing push-pull between private economic interests, on the one hand, and higher education’s contribution to wider democratic political culture and its correlative internal commitment to its faculties’ academic freedom, tenure, and rights to govern jointly with administrators, on the other.

We discuss the factors influencing the relationship between government policy-makers and scientists and how they affect the use of science in policy. We highlight issues related to context, values, culture, timeframes, communication and interpersonal relationships, providing insights from policy-makers and scientists. A spectrum of working strategies is given with examples of practical mechanisms that improve the effective use of science in policy. The shared governance model is a relatively mature approach with the potential to overcome many of the barriers discussed. At its core, shared governance, or co-production, invites policy-makers and scientists to develop and manage research priorities collaboratively. We explore the primary features of a successful shared governance arrangement, exemplified by the collaborative working model between the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis. We conclude by outlining the advantages and disadvantages of the co-production of research priorities by scientists and policy-makers and present the learnings from its implementation in the biosecurity sector in Australia.