Big business getting cozy with nation's universities.

A prescription mixing boardrooms and classrooms, annual reports and syllabi, has higher learning and big business dramatically accelerating their relationships--one that transcends the research parks that popped up in the 1980s.

Express Scripts, a leading manager of pharmacy benefits plans, is relocating its 360,000 s/f corporate headquarters on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, becoming the first Fortune 500 company on the campus of a college or university research park. The headquarters is expected to be occupied in March of next year.

The vision of welcoming a major corporation onto a university campus location is one of ambition, as well as a desire to be at the forefront, according to Thomas George, chancellor of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. And it's a collaboration that George Paz, president and CEO of Express Scripts, expects to flourish and serve as a model for public-private initiatives.

While most research parks were remote university outposts and have crept closer and closer to campuses, Express Scripts is leading the way in bringing corporate casual closer to college chic.

Typically, universities created research parks as a service to their regions, fostering growth of small start-up companies. For Express Scripts, locating 1,200 employees and a $15 billion-a-year company on campus is a maturation of the model. The two players believe the marriage between academia and business is a strategic fit that will serve as a model for public/private initiatives throughout the United States.

Express Scripts is making a $50 million investment to move its headquarters closer to dormitories than business parks. A handful of colleges have lured smaller companies to their campuses, and even divisions of larger companies like IBM, BMW and ERC, but nothing of the magnitude of Express Scripts, which ranks No. 137 on the Fortune 500 list and is the St. Louis region's second-largest public company.

With a diverse body of more than 15,000 students, UMSL is the largest public university in the area and the third largest in Missouri.

Think of the synergies, said Bill Drohan, executive director of the Association of University Research Parks in Reston, Va. Colleges are ready-made bastions of creative thinking and new ideas, he explains, and companies on campus have well-trained work forces eager to push conventional wisdom out their back door--literally.

"This relocation is impressive in that it will serve as an eye-opener for other major corporations to maximize collaborative opportunities on campus," Drohan said. "Express Scripts and UMSL are at the leading edge of marrying corporations and universities, not only in research but in location. Universities are laboratories of new ideas. Businesses locating in university research parks find this environment stimulating and an important part of their corporate culture."

It's a relationship that extends beyond bricks and mortar, facilities and faculty. In short, it's a mutually beneficial and cost-effective relationship in education, research, training and recruitment. Colleges hope to supply jobs for alumni. Professors could double as consultants or research partners. There's an opportunity to build real-world laboratories for business schools. And companies can align their civic, business, and research resources.

"Universities have become the major generators of U.S. research," said Elson Floyd, president of the University of Missouri System. "That has created an opportunity and an obligation to turn that research into results, putting research and education together."

Express Scripts expects the move to meet a fundamental and critical challenge of any growing company--aligning itself with a diverse, talented employee base. With construction in the early stages, the company is already structuring an internship program to tap the university students and hoping to benefit from the fact that 75 percent of UMSL graduates still live and work in the region. And U.S. News and World Report recently ranked UMSL's international business program the 8th best in the nation.

After considering the synergies and millions of dollars in tax incentives, the Express Scripts-UMSL partnership was struck. The university campus beat out finalist sites in South Carolina and Nebraska, among others. Key to the decision was Missouri's new Quality Jobs Act--an act lobbied for by Express Scripts. The agreement between Express Scripts and the state maintains the current Missouri work force of more than 1,100 corporate headquarters workers and supports the creation of addition jobs over the next five years.

According to state authorities, Express Scripts will receive $1 million annually in tax credits for five years under retention provisions of the act. The company will also receive new jobs incentives estimated at $7.5 million for five years in a combination of retained state withholding taxes and tax credits.

If the relationship between UMSL and Express Scripts is as fruitful as both parties expect, look for more corporate CEOs to go back to school--to work.

BY DICK FLEMING, PRESIDENT & CEO, ST. LOUIS REGIONAL CHAMBER ASSOCIATION.