Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994                   TAG: 9403160057
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

ALLEN SAYS PANEL MUST EXERT ITSELF FOR THE ECONOMY

"We're going to call on you all to be proactive . . . in helping us find ways to expand existing ones," Allen said at the first meeting of theO revamped CIT board.

Six new board members, appointed by Allen last month, were sworn in by Secretary of the Commonwealth Betsy Beamer. Patricia Woolsey was elected chairwoman of the 15-member board.

Allen told the board that developing a comprehensive economic development policy is one of the goals of his administration.

"A hit-or-miss strategy is not the approach to take. If we carry on the way we have, we'll just wither," he said.

The General Assembly created the CIT in 1984 to serve as a science and technology research link between private corporations and state universities. The nonprofit center has endured some rocky times caused by budget cuts, staff turnover and criticism from some legislators who said the CIT was not living up to expectations.

"We've had ups and downs, we've had different approaches to budgets and management," former Gov. Linwood Holton, the CIT president, told the board.

The hiring of Holton in 1988 brought some stability to the Herndon-based center, and Allen said he expects the new board to build on that even after Holton leaves. Holton said when he was hired that he would stay for five years, but he agreed to keep working until a successor is found.

Allen said he wants CIT to be more visible over the next four years.

"We just want to utilize it better than in the past," Allen told reporters after leaving the board meeting. "We see it as a tremendous resource."

He told the board that CIT's mission "is virtually the same as always, but we need to focus on new challenges that face us in the '90s."

Among those challenges, he said, is helping defense-related businesses cope with military downsizing.

Holton told the board about some of the CIT's successes. He said the CIT gave a Northern Virginia group $250,000 to develop the Pegasus rocket a few years ago, and now Orbital Sciences Corp. is a publicly traded company employing more than 200 engineers.

Since its founding, CIT has spent $64 million on 780 cooperative research projects between industries and universities. More than 570 companies have participated.