Launching a university-wide research effort also provides an impetus for bringing together faculty from around the campus with diverse, complementary interests, and for creating unique academic experiences for the students. Research on a university-wide scale provides visibility to showcase the importance of research at universities to incoming students who may be less aware of universities' research missions and more narrowly focused on their classroom learning opportunities when they first start college. It also provides a platform for initiating discussions about important health-related issues among college students, including how genetic and environmental factors contribute to health-related outcomes, and, in the case of our project, initiating discussions about substance use and emotional health on college campuses. Accordingly, although considerable resources are necessary to organize such an effort, it can be a win-win-win situation for the researcher, the students, and the university.
