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Credit: Photo by Nick Romanenko
Francine Newsome Pfeiffer has been named
to direct Rutgers' Office of Federal
Relations
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Seeking to maximize its relationship with the nation’s capital, the university is working with a boutique lobbying and government relations firm to help raise the Rutgers profile among Washington agency heads.
Rutgers retained Lewis-Burke Associates, a firm with a 10-member staff located just three blocks from the White House, earlier this year to supplement the work of the university’s Office of Federal Relations, which has had a Washington presence since 1994.
April Burke, the firm’s principal, founded Lewis-Burke in 1992 after finding that universities had good relationships with their state congressional delegations and with traditional research agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, but weren’t necessarily tapping all of the capital’s resources.
“One of the reasons we take a look at where the White House is putting its emphasis, and where the Congress and bureaucracy are putting their emphasis, is to try and predict where the next opportunity is going to come,” Burke said. “We’re halfway between lawyering, influencing and investigating.”
Lewis-Burke also works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of energy, defense, agriculture, homeland security and education. The firm’s university clients include California Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, University of Cincinnati, University of Houston and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs, said that when these agencies are charged with nationwide missions that reflect Rutgers’ interests and prominence, Lewis-Burke would promote Rutgers faculty as a resource of expert researchers. The firm will play a role in seeking support for areas of emerging excellence at Rutgers, including early education, transportation, homeland security, business and materials science, Furmanski said.
“For example, the Department of Homeland Security has been charged with developing methods for monitoring and examining the many thousands of trucking containers that come into the country every day,” Furmanski said. “Lewis-Burke will be aware of our strengths and will help identify Rutgers to the department as one of the national centers of expertise in transportation, computer science, nanotechnology and sensor development, energy, and food supply maintenance and protection – all of which are critical elements in this problem. It’s about making matches.”
Furmanski said Rutgers paid Lewis-Burke a $150,000 yearly retainer fee. The money comes from non-state, non-tuition funds. Burke said that on average, an institution could begin to see firm results and financial benefits in about three years. The firm’s work is particularly important because both the Clinton and Bush administrations have sought to fund multidisciplinary scientific research projects, Burke said.
Although Lewis-Burke does handle traditional lobbying for some of its clients, Rutgers already has the Office of Federal Relations to work with the 15 members of the New Jersey congressional delegation to help secure directed funding and budget line items for university projects.
Led by Francine Newsome Pfeiffer, a Rutgers alumna and former White House intern, the federal relations office approaches representatives on Capitol Hill when Rutgers is looking for federal backing of a new initiative. The office also attempts to influence legislation and policy in the areas of student aid, immigration and student visas, security and privacy issues, taxes and charitable giving. Newsome Pfeiffer said her office was recently victorious in securing a $500,000 earmark from the House of Representatives for the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station to study blueberry and cranberry disease. The annual award is typically $200,000, she added.
Newsome Pfeiffer said that with her office working on Capitol Hill and Lewis-Burke mining agencies for information, Rutgers will have Washington covered. And Lewis-Burke’s other clients, which include about a half dozen universities and several independent research centers, will provide potential collaborations for Rutgers in developing multi-institutional programs.
“That’s really where I think April is going to be tremendously helpful,” Newsome Pfeiffer said. “There’s a way to be successful in those grants when you can put an effective and unique partnership together.”
Lewis-Burke’s approach is threefold. First, the firm assesses what its clients are working on. Staff members from Lewis-Burke have made trips to Newark, Camden and New Brunswick to speak with deans and faculty members and learn their interests and plans. Firm lobbyist Mark Marin said the team has met with faculty in applied mathematics, advanced computing, neuroscience and psychology. Second, the firm’s members attend open meetings of federal agencies and try to gauge what their priorities are. Then they match those with the work going on at client institutions.
Last, the firm decides whether an agency should be encouraged to focus their resources in a particular direction, Burke said. “All of our institutions have, in the past, relied on getting public information” – calls for grant applications – “out to faculty to allow them to choose the opportunities and things they might be interested in,” Burke said. “It’s like a library, and saying to faculty ‘Go and pick what you want.’
“Now we’re saying, ‘This section over here is in nanotechnology, and when you get to that section of the library there’s going to be somebody there to tell you what the best books are’,” Burke said.
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