The academic literature on NSF's Engineering Research Center (ERC) program to date has been characterized with an emphasis that is somewhat disconnected from the stated goals of the program. The ERC program was established to accomplish two main goals: to improve engineering research and...

We examine the effect of a Congressionally mandated multidisciplinary center program on the careers of affiliated scientists. Important to the research evaluation design, we incorporate a control group of researchers who are not affiliated with these centers. We collect curricula vitae from both...