What if you could pull expertise out of the ivory tower and deploy it in the real world? What if top St. Louis academics were encouraged to direct their attention to the region’s problems not as a subject of historical inquiry but in real time?
Those are the questions being asked by a new initiative launching today at Washington University’s Brown School, and it’s already working to help St. Louis recover from one of its most challenging springs in recent memory. Called the Public Exchange, it was inspired by an initiative at the University of Southern California that’s had a big impact over its five years in Los Angeles.
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USC’s exchange describes itself as “the first-of-its-kind matchmaker and A-to-Z project manager that enables partners working on complex problems to tap the entire spectrum of academic expertise at a world-class research university.” The Brown School’s dean, Dorian Traube, came to WashU from USC, where she worked with its Public Exchange as an investigator on a project. She says the idea of creating an exchange here—the second in the nation after USC’s—had been on her mind from the beginning. In fact, she approached WashU’s provost to pitch her on the idea during her first month in St. Louis.
“Because I came here and I saw this city that, I think, has struggled for a while,” she says, “but has all of this amazing infrastructure and is so influential, in the heart of the United States. I knew it could be a connector and a conduit if the right infrastructure was in place.”
The “right infrastructure,” as of press time, is really just one guy: Chris van Bergen, who came on full time in July as the WashU Public Exchange’s first executive director (he’s also joined by a part-time support staffer). A former professional trumpet player (he was an extra for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra), van Bergen later earned an executive MBA from New York University Stern School of Business and spent more than a dozen years on the operational/financial side of the national nonprofit Nest, which connects artisans in the developing world with training, tools, and resources. Living in St. Louis with his wife since the pandemic incentivized a move from New York City, and he was excited about the chance to build something from the ground up—especially something that could make a big difference. He wants to grow the Public Exchange in a smart way, adding project managers once initiatives are chosen, not staffing up just because funding is there. USC, he notes, now has a team of 15 people employed by its Public Exchange. He hopes to learn from the model they’ve built. “We’re not wanting to reinvent the wheel,” he says.
Van Bergen’s goal is to have four projects up and running by next May, coordinating among on-the-ground nonprofits and WashU professors, and he’s already one-fourth of the way there. After starting part time at the Public Exchange this past May, he had a listening tour underway to identify priorities when the tornado ripped through town on May 16 and rendered one big priority crystal clear.
As van Bergen and Traube looked for a way to dive into post-tornado realities, Traube was inspired by a project that USC’s Public Exchange had commenced to test soil quality in the wake of the wildfires there. The Contaminant Level Evaluation and Analysis for Neighborhoods (CLEAN) offered rapid-response soil testing free to all interested residents of L.A. County, assessing soil for lead contamination after the Palisades and Eaton fires ravaged two different swaths of the city.
It felt so applicable to St. Louis, they even took the name. In partnership with neighborhood-based organizations, CLEAN STL is gearing up to engage community members to test soil and air for toxicity in areas hit by the tornado. WashU will provide engineers, earth scientists, and social workers; the nonprofits will provide a conduit to the affected communities; everybody gets real-time information about the conditions on the ground (and the air, too). Testing should be underway next month.
To Traube, it’s a great example of how the expertise at WashU can assist with a real-world problem, and do it much more quickly than under the traditional model. “Some landmark studies have pointed to the fact that it takes about 20 years for a university-developed innovation to reach the market,” she says. “And that is way too long.”
It’s a bonus that Public Exchange projects don’t wait for federal funding—which, current events have shown, can no longer be counted on regardless—but seek out other partnerships to move more fleetly. Both Traube and van Bergen say the Public Exchange will find funding and add new partners as each project comes into focus. Says Traube, “It allows us to have more flexibility with the projects we do.”
And with each project, van Bergen hopes, will come more attention, more energy, and a greater sense of what can be achieved. “We want to really blow this out and connect the dots in a real way,” he says.
If they do, Traube is hopeful they can build on the model USC debuted to show how it can be adapted in a red state in the Midwest, perhaps creating a model that other universities can emulate. She’s been heartened by the reception the Public Exchange has gotten within WashU.
“I thought there would be a lot of resistance and reluctance, but people have been so supportive and excited about this idea,” she says. “Nobody was like, This isn’t how we do work around here. Which I think speaks to the way that WashU is currently positioning itself both as a community entity and a community good, and also a place that wants to catalyze innovation.”
