Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410030015
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DEBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They attract industry.
"The university is the source of new ideas, creative people and technology that many new and growing companies base their growth upon," said a recent report by Cognetics, a Massachusetts research firm headed by David Birch.
The report's conclusion was that the presence of a university is an important site-selection factor among the progressive, growing firms that Birch calls "Gazelles." Joining universities on Birch's list of five "hard determinants" are interstate highways, airports, advanced telecommunications and "a nice place to live."
"Universities are the feedstock for most Gazelles," the report states. It cites a study showing that 70 percent of growing Seattle-area companies "had a direct, active role in the operation of the University of Washington."
"At one point, the two-thirds of a square mile next to MIT in Boston was creating more jobs than 13 states; it is still creating more jobs than six or eight states, depending on the time period observed."
Schools can attract industry for a number of reasons: their research; their cultural assets; their role as producer, trainer and re-trainer of workers for what former Virginia Economic Development Director April Young has called "the knowledge economy" of the future.
Large research universities, such as Virginia Tech, are appealing because of the commercial potential of their research. The school carried out more than $130 million in industry-funded research in 1992, placing it 16th in the nation.
"A research university is as good as the tourist industry in bringing in dollars," Tech business professor emeritus James Lang said.
Companies may sponsor university research, commercialize it or engage in it jointly with the university. Sometimes they hire professors as consultants. Sometimes the researchers themselves become entrepreneurs through companies formed to develop and market products arising from their work.
Almost 20 small companies in the Blacksburg area are based at least partly on technologies originating at Tech, according to a recent report by Ted Kohn, director of Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc.
VTIP is a Tech-affiliated nonprofit corporation formed to evaluate promising technologies and help patent them. Tech's Center for Innovative Technology does the same thing, and the Virginia Tech Business/Technology Center exists to help connect new companies with capital, management personnel and other start-up needs.
A number of the companies have set up shop in Tech's Corporate Research Center, which occupies 120 acres of former farmland near the campus. It was established in the late 1980s by the Virginia Tech Foundation.
Sometimes a company will have no formal relationship with the local university, but chooses to be near it anyway so employees can take classes, attend concerts, visit art shows and the like.
"It brings up the cultural base of what is there for the employees," said Franklyn Moreno, executive director of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance. "It adds to the general quality of life."
Beth Doughty agreed. "Aside from the high-tech angle," she said, "there is a group of people that just likes to be close to a university. They just like the energy of being around one."
Doughty is executive director of the Economic Development Partnership of the Roanoke Valley. She and Moreno spend considerable time trying to interest companies in moving to the region.
Neither could name an instance in which the presence of Tech or any other school was the deciding factor in site selection. But they say it's often a consideration and can be what Doughty called "a narrowing factor."
"Virginia Tech's research capabilities are what's important to the work we do," Doughty said.
Both she and Moreno fashion their target-industry list in part to reflect research going on at Tech in fiber optics, transportation, composite materials and other fields. Industrial prospects frequently are taken to meet the relevant professors, and Doughty and Moreno maintain contact with faculty and staff at all area colleges and universities.
They also try to keep up with Tech alumni who are on the site selection committees of their companies. Sometimes, Doughty said, "that's how we get into the equation."
Colleges and universities "help educate the local population," said Robert Koepke, editor of Economic Development Review.
That's important to companies, because they're on the lookout for "knowledgeable, creative and trainable" labor forces.
Moreno agreed. He said industrial prospects regard Tech, for example, as "a source of technical assistance and potential technical staff."
Even while in school, students and their spouses are seen as attractive part-time employees because they tend to be computer-literate, trainable and available for work at most times of the day.
Institutions of higher education are sources not only of new employees but of training and retraining for people who are already at work. In the face of rapidly changing technology - a phenomenon felt keenly in the workplace - it's a pressing need.
"In a knowledge economy," Young, the former Virginia Economic Development director, said, "you don't ever finish going to school."
In Virginia, the task of training industrial workers has fallen largely to the state's 23 community colleges. They handle it through for-credit curricula and through contracts with local business and industry.
The latter arrangement is increasingly common - and the source of a problem for the colleges. Many of the contract courses are not taken for credit and therefore are not reimbursable by the state under existing rules. That leaves the college stuck with whatever expenses its clients don't pick up, and the schools are feeling the pinch.
At the same time, the state is pushing the colleges to be ever more responsive to corporate and industrial clients as a means of furthering economic development in Virginia.
"What's lacking is the financial commitment to provide high-class technical training statewide," said Charles Downs, president of Virginia Western Community College.
The state is aware of the problem and has appointed Karen Petersen to work on it full time as "special assistant to the chancellor of the community college system for workforce service initiatives."
Petersen said the aim is to improve the quality of industrial development training; to make it accessible to all, including small businesses; and to make sure it meets the future needs of business and industry.
Virginia Western is carrying out industrial training under contracts with about 10 local companies, according to Mike Byrd, director of business and industrial training. About 450 students are involved.
In addition to better state financial support for industrial training, Virginia Western officials hope for funding of a proposed "advanced technology center" in which to centralize the training that takes place in a number of locations around the campus.
"We have the infrastructure," Downs said. "The thing we don't have is the facilities."
The proposed center would headquarter the interactive video instruction being carried out at Virginia Western in cooperation with Old Dominion and Radford universities and perhaps other cooperative higher education ventures as well.
Dublin's New River Community College, which also is a major regional industrial training site, looks forward to completion of a $4-million building where the activities will be centered. Financed by a state bond issue, Edwards Hall will have training and computer labs, classrooms, conference/seminar space and a 10,000-square foot multipurpose training area. In addition to training and educational facilities, the center will have temporary office space for new or expanding business and industry.
The area's private colleges also see themselves as helping in economic development beyond simply pouring money into the local economy.
Hollins College, aiming to focus increasingly on community outreach, envisions training programs with what President Maggie O'Brien calls "a liberal arts slant." She cited the hypothetical example of an extended seminar on "creativity in the workplace," a timely subject as the principles of Total Quality Management continue to spread through business and industry.
Danville's Averett College offers bachelor and master's degrees in business administration at classrooms in Roanoke. Aimed at working adults, the evening programs take 21-24 months to complete.
"This kind of program is very helpful in terms of economic development," said Jon Crispin, Averett's director of recruitment and development. "It taps into the current working population and enables them to upgrade their skills" without missing work. "That's very attractive to business."
Roanoke College also offers continuing education for middle management and, like Hollins, regards its cultural programs as an important attraction for business and industry.
"Roanoke College is not the Silicon Valley of Roanoke in terms of high-tech research," President David Gring said, "but in terms of the arts and quality of life, it is.
"When you look at the whole picture, from pre-K and elementary and secondary schools through Virginia Western and the two private colleges and one of the finest research universities in the world, we are all part of a very attractive big picture."
"When you look at the whole picture, from pre-K and elementary and secondary schools through Virginia Western and the two private colleges and one of the finest research universities in the world, we are all part of a very attractive big picture."
by CNB