Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 14, 1995 TAG: 9507140077
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The CIT, which tries to pair research needs in industry with colleges and universities that can do that research, has moved from its mobile home on the New River Community College campus into office space at Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Center. The CIT had been housed at the Dublin site for eight years.
Most regional CIT offices in Virginia are still based at community colleges. But this move brought the office closer to the five technology development centers it has funded at Tech: Wireless Communications, Fiber Optics, Advanced Ceramic Materials, Power Electronics and Coal & Mineral Technologies.
"It's just a question of proximity," said Jim Stewart, who manages the office. He said the center still maintains a partnership with New River. "It continues to be a very good relationship," he said.
The move to Blacksburg also brings the CIT closer to the Business Technology Center, which it supports along with Tech, Blacksburg and Christiansburg. That center provides assistance to technology-based Southwest Virginia companies in their early stages.
"Logistically, it just made sense to be closer," Stewart said. He and Cindy Melfi, CIT client coordinator, are now located at 1900 Kraft Drive.
The CIT has been positioning itself, too, to better document its successes statewide.
The center has been criticized in recent years for not communicating its mission, its activities, or the results of those activities.
Created by the General Assembly in 1984 to enhance the transfer of technological developments from Virginia's universities to its businesses, the CIT survived an attempt during the administration of Gov. Douglas Wilder to reduce its funding to zero. It's also survived some misgivings by members of Gov. George Allen's Commission on Government Reform. The center's budget, which had been as high as $13 million in the 1990 fiscal year, is now down to $8.2 million. And its governing board, formerly dominated by educators, is now being filled out by Allen appointees from the business community. The board wants to be able to measure CIT accomplishments, as does Robert Templin who became CIT's new president last year. His predecessor, former Governor Linwood Holton, had already done that to some extent.
Holton told Virginia Business magazine how the CIT and Virginia Tech helped a Southwest Virginia company, Bristol Compressors Inc., improve its air-conditioning converter, which led to increased sales, a plant expansion and some 1,200 new jobs.
Other success stories range from a Fairfax company that makes satellites to a Tappahannock soybean producer.
The CIT arranged for Tech researchers to study the viability of satellites produced by Orbital Sciences Corp., which got its first mobile communications satellite up last year and grew from 25 employees to more than 400. Montague Farms got help from Tech and the CIT in genetically improving soybeans.
"The research and all that's still there, but it's not everything, anymore," Stewart said. "The emphasis is more to make an application of a lot of these developments with quantitatively measureable things."
Besides working more directly with businesses, CIT is emphasizing partnerships and collaborative efforts on a regional basis much like New Century Council, he said. "No one individually creates jobs. It's a cumulative effort."
by CNB