Michigan State University is one of the nation’s pioneering land grant universities and a leading research institution. The College of Engineering partners with hundreds of companies through sponsored research, recruiting, philanthropy and student projects.

These partnerships fund research and place graduates in the industry. They are also used to keep courses aligned with the needs of employers. Information about each partner lives in many separate systems and spreadsheets. Currently, building a complete picture of a specified relationship takes up too much time and effort.

Our Engineering Engagement Hub brings these sources into one connected view of every company and contact, through a single intuitive platform.

Our system builds a relationship graph, through which partner connections between people, programs and university units are readily available. The temporal graph shows the college’s engagement with a company over an extended period, and summary of main touchpoints. This enables staff to quickly see when a partnership is growing or shutting down.

The company page summarizes points of engagement with a partner, including sponsorships, events, research funding and a timeline of a recent activity. Users input specific outbound events through the company view, while person pages display a contact’s level of education, employer and history with the university. Staff use them to invite alumni to meetings and events.

A portfolio view lets staff monitor the partners they manage and check the health of each relationship. A stewardship view helps staff confirm which records from different sources describe the same company or persons. Staff approve or reject each match, review recent decisions and undo them when needed.

The front end uses React with CSS. The back end is a Python Flask RESTful service backed by a PostgreSQL database. Cytoscape.js renders the relationship graphs.