Big Ten universities may clash on the playing field, but when it comes to promoting leadership, they’re all headed toward the same endzone.The Committee on Institutional Cooperation, an academic group of Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago, began a three-day meeting Thursday to discuss how to encourage their best faculty members to become leaders in research and administration.This is the first time the committee has met at Ohio State in four years. The committee meets three times per year and has been meeting for the past nine years. In his keynote address to the committee, OSU President E. Gordon Gee stressed the research values of universities.”We must reassert the notion of research in teaching,” Gee said. “As research universities, it is important that we stick with the three points of our mission; teaching, learning and outreach.” Gee also emphasized that universities must be willing to alter existing policies.”Change is at the center of what we are all about,” Gee said. “We live in a world of instant gratification, and we are a long term investment. If we don’t educate the people, we will lose.”Universities have to change or they will become modern day “Academic Jurassic Parks,” he said. They will be wonderful places to visit, but extinct to the real world. Although Gee emphasized research, committee members are concerned with other issues as well. “We foster collaboration in many areas, such as a library initiative, learning technology, minority access and faculty development,” said Jean Girves, committee associate director from Michigan State.During the last 10 years, a majority of member schools have been refocusing on the teaching and learning side of the three part mission, Girves said. There are 100 groups that meet to discuss these issues, Girves said. The groups include department chairs, deans and faculty members as part of a sharing process to foster better leadership skills, she said.The biggest obstacle facing higher education is not money, it is the challenge to change, said Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee to a group of academic leaders Thursday.There are 65 academic leaders attending the meetings.