ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights successful, long-standing researcher-policymaker partnerships. It explains how individuals and teams who are situated in different sectors such as academia and policymaking manage to build relationships and work together over long periods. A policymaker who needs help exploring or understanding an issue of importance to constituents might consider reaching out to a university researcher for assistance. Using specific seminar to illustrate the partnership, Karen Bogenschneider and her colleagues describe its origins and share the attributes of this partnership that has sustained its place in Wisconsin's policymaking landscape. To extend Bogenschneider, Shager, Little and Eddy's metaphor, Wisconsin's soil was fertile for the work thanks to the rich history of engaged scholarship set forth early by the University of Wisconsin's President Van Hise. The perception of the legitimacy of research is also essential. Legislators are willing to listen and participate in meaningful discussions around potentially contentious policy issues in part because the university is a trusted source of unbiased research.
