In the July 12, 2004 Issue:

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DOL Provides $17.2M for National Biotech Initiative
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) launched last month a $17.2 million national Biotechnology Worker Training Initiative in support of the President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative.

“This $17.2 million in training funds will recruit and train workers for jobs in the biotechnology field, which is expected to be one of the fastest growing sectors by 2012,” said Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

An initial award of $2.4 million was made to the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG), a public-private partnership dedicated to Western Pennsylvania's life sciences industry. Chao said the grant to PLSG would help increase awareness about promising biotech-related careers in the state, while addressing the need for skilled workers.

As part of the project, PLSG will try to match trained workers with local biotech companies by developing curriculum and training that aims to shape workers with a “hybrid” of desired capabilities. The project will integrate various industry skills sets and academic disciplines. Key partners include Renal Solutions Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pa., the Community College of Allegheny County, the Pittsburgh Technology Council, the Allegheny County Workforce Investment Board and the Allegheny County Job Link.

A subsequent award of $5 million was made to Forsyth Technical Community College (FTCC) in Winston-Salem, N.C., which is partnering with four other community colleges from around the country. The DOL grant is designed to enable each of the five colleges, considered biotechnology centers of excellence, to focus on a specific area of biotech training. Combined, the schools will make in-kind contributions totaling nearly $7.5 million.

While FTCC focuses on biotech research and development in the Southeast, New Hampshire Technical College will concentrate on biomanufacturing in the Northeast. Indian Hills Community College in Iowa will emphasize agriculture and food processing in the Midwest, Bellevue Community College in Washington State will provide training in bioinformatics in the Northwest, and Miracosta Community College in San Diego will highlight bioprocessing in the Southwest.

The DOL announcement involving the five colleges was preceded earlier last month by a $320,000 biomanufacturing training grant to FTCC and another community college, awarded by the Golden LEAF Foundation. Together, the five institutions will establish a National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce, Chao said. Their partnership is intended to serve as a national model for other schools throughout the country, she added.

The High Growth Job Training Initiative is a strategic effort to better prepare workers to take advantage of new job opportunities in high growth sectors of the U.S. economy. The initiative, in part, addresses workforce challenges facing the biotech industry. More information is available at: http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/JobTrainInitiative/

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Missouri Gov. Signs 'Jobs Now' Bill
New manufacturer training funds, enhanced enterprise zones, and new economic development infrastructure loans are among the incentives included in Missouri's Jobs Now legislation, signed into law by Gov. Bob Holden on July 8. Passage of key elements of the package was one of the governor's top priorities for the legislative session and was considered critical for securing the new 1,200-employee H&R Block headquarters in downtown Kansas City, according to local news reports.

During the signing ceremony, Gov. Holden noted the new economic incentives will benefit both community colleges and businesses. Jobs Now provides $15 million to help retrain existing workers to keep up with advanced technology upgrades. To be eligible for the retraining assistance, companies must have maintained at least 100 employees during the two years prior to being in the program. They also must make a capital investment of at least $1 million in long-term assets at the project location, such as buildings or equipment.

SB 1155 also calls for enhanced Enterprise Zones, areas marked by high unemployment and low personal income levels that can offer tax incentives to incoming or expanding businesses. In addition to local property tax abatement, businesses may be eligible for refundable state tax credits. Special eligibility considerations exist for counties with declining population or in areas affected by a natural disaster. The legislation also permits the creation of two more rural enterprise zones in the state.

Jobs Now also:

The full text of SB 1155 is available through the Missouri General Assembly at: http://www.house.state.mo.us/bills041/bills/sb1155.htm

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Kentucky Finds Teachers' S&T Knowledge Dated
The pace for new advances in science and technology has quickened significantly over the past 10 years -- so much so that companies are challenged to stay current with the latest innovations. Entire new fields such as nanotechnology are being created while products introduced this week may be obsolete before the year is out.

If tech firms and research labs are having trouble keeping up with science and technology, how do we expect our K-12 science teachers to do so when they are always in front of a classroom? Is it an issue for inspiring new students into these fields when they enter college?

In perhaps one of the first of its kind a new study testing Kentucky science teacher’s depth of knowledge and understanding of critical new technologies reveals the issue is quite real for the Commonwealth. The results most likely could be transferred to most school districts across the country, we suspect.

Sponsored by the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation, Kentucky Survey of Critical Technologies details a representative cross-section of middle- and high school teachers using an online method to measure awareness, familiarity and plans for curriculum integration of 25 scientific and technological concepts. Such concepts included biotech, natural products, proteomics, alternative fuels, nanotech, astrobiology, and quantum computing.

In summary, the findings consistently demonstrated a general awareness of a limited number of terms, but showed that far fewer teachers understood the concepts well enough to present them in the classroom. Only 7 percent of teachers indicated they were teaching nanotechnology, and more than two-thirds of the concepts were only taught by less than 10 percent of the teachers surveyed.

According to the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC), "the survey demonstrated an alarming disconnect between technologies with significant economic and social impacts that are emerging from scientists, engineers and successful entrepreneurial companies worldwide...and their infusion into today's P-12 classrooms. This finding represents a major contributing factor in Kentucky's lack of an adequately prepared talent pool and entrepreneurial class to create and grow the innovation-driven companies that are essential to the state's future."

Dr. Mahendra Jain, executive director of the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation, said the study has national implications and believes the results would be consistent across the nation. In response to the disappointing findings, Secretary Fox said Gov. Ernie Fletcher has asked KSTC along with the Council on Postsecondary Education, innovation-driven Kentucky companies and others, to help develop a strategic response to the survey results.

The state-funded Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation is an initiative of KSTC under the Council on Postsecondary Education. More information is available at http://www.kstc.com/.

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New York CATs to Keep State Competitive after Decennial Re-compete
One of the recurring issues in many states for financing centers as part of their tech-based economic development portfolio is whether or not the organizations resulting from the multi-year, multimillion grants should become financially self sufficient at the end of the grant term. New York's approach of redesignating its Centers for Advanced Technology (CATs) provides a model similar to efforts employed in some states, but with broader applicability across many public-private initiatives to ensure long term, recurring public investments are yielding significant economic results.

Mandatory re-competitions through sunset clauses or grant terms force all of the partners in a particular tech-based economic development initiative to re-evaluate the program's continued value and effectiveness.

Administered through the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Advanced Research (NYSTAR), the CAT program supports university-industry collaborative research and technology transfer in commercially relevant technologies. The program was created 21 years ago in 1983 to facility the transfer of technology from New York’s top research universities into commercially viable products produced in the private sector. The CAT Development Program was created in 1999 to provide more resources to successful centers to expand their work with New York business.

Currently, 15 CATs are in operation in New York, each connected to a particular public or private university and focused in one or more specific technology areas. Over the past five years, a state impact assessment of the program revealed the CATs have helped create or retain more than 5,300 jobs and generated more than $1.7 billion in private sector revenues, cost savings and capital expenditures.

With the CAT designation, the state commits to funding the center for up to 10 years, provided the legislature appropriates funding for the program and the center meets its milestones. Historically, public funding has averaged $1 million per year for each center.

Ten of the CATS were up for re-designation this year, allowing NYSTAR the opportunity to assess whether or not the financial relationship should continue with each center. As part of the selection process, proposals were judged on the basis of the center management team’s experience, the applicant’s track record in assisting industry with applied research and commercialization, the institution’s breadth of research resources, and the degree to which New York’s investment will enable the applicant’s ability to create economic impact in New York State.

As a result of the re-compete, one new Center for Advanced Technology emerged. The new CAT in energy systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will focus on energy conservation, smart lighting, fuel cells and renewable energy sources. The other nine institutions receiving CAT designation include Binghamton University, City University of New York-City College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Polytechnic University, Stony Brook University, Syracuse University, the University at Albany and the University of Rochester.

More information on the CAT program and the centers receiving designation is available at: http://www.nystar.state.ny.us/cats.htm

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Investment in Education Wise for Economy, Report Shows
As state and local governments make tough funding choices with tight budgets, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report shows adequate and effective funding of education is the best way to achieve faster growth, more jobs, greater productivity, and more widely shared prosperity.

Smart Money: Education and Economic Development draws on research to show how increased investment in preschool, primary and secondary education, and colleges provides concrete returns to economic development through increases in productivity, learned skills, technology and workers' average earnings.

At a time when the knowledge-based economy demands increasingly higher skills to stay competitive, support for well resourced schooling and training is key, the report states. This strategy also is an important tool for advancing economic equality, it adds.

Smart Money notes that many state and local governments have, for example, cut education and other services while investing in programs such as tax incentives to lure companies like Wal-Mart with expectations of an economic boom. The problem is that local resources are often shortchanged and some of the companies attracted by these programs provide mostly low-income jobs that ultimately do not improve the local job market or worker livelihood.

"If our goal is an economic climate that provides good jobs, decent living standards, entrepreneurial workers and a competitive edge over other countries, then investing in education is the single most important thing we can do," says author William Schweke, research director for the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). "Education should be thought of in terms of productivity, innovation, and the growing of wealth."

Smart Money examines nearly 180 studies that show the relationship between education investment and quality and economic development, emphasizing, for example, how schools provide not just greater knowledge but also an improvement of the lives of current and future workers. Some of the report's findings include:

Among its recommendations to invest wisely in education, Smart Money suggests: reforming state tax codes and business tax incentive programs so that corporations provide a fair share of revenue for education and other local services; investing more state and local money in community and technical colleges, which can provide training and skills to students and older workers who must keep up with new technologies and requirements in the job market; and investing more in early childhood education.

Smart Money is available for purchase from EPI, a nonprofit think tank, at http://www.epinet.org/.

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Input Sought for 'Next Generation' Manufacturing Programs
The U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recently released reports making recommendations to address the challenges faced by the manufacturing industry. One of the recommendations in the NAPA report suggests creating a strategic plan that articulates the "next generation" of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). To gather public comment on the strategic plan and respond to both reports' recommendations, MEP will hold a series of regional roundtables and webcasts this summer:

All of the above events run from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to register, visit http://www.mep.nist.gov/competition/intro.htm. The Commerce and NAPA reports, respectively, are available at: http://www.manufacturing.gov and http://www.napawash.org/Pubs/NIST6-2-04.pdf

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Southern Growth Investigating Drivers for Industrial R&D
Wanted: all managers in private-sector research and development (R&D) facilities. The Southern Growth Policies Board is conducting a nationwide survey to gain insight into drivers and policies of industrial R&D. The survey attempts to illuminate university-company relationships. If you are a manager and can spare 10 minutes of your time for the online survey, visit the survey at http://www.southern.org/survey.shtml. Questions may be directed to Scott Doron, director of the Southern Technology Council, at sdoron@southern.org.

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People

Connecticut Lt. Gov. M. Jodi Rell was sworn in as the state’s 87th governor on July 1, taking over from former Gov. John Rowland, who resigned amid a federal corruption investigation and a threatened impeachment for allegedly accepting gifts from employees and state contractors. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin Sullivan was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor. Rell is a Republican, while Sullivan is a Democrat.

Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan has named David Dorff as the state's first director for the new Office of Small Business Advocacy.

Angie Dvorak, vice president of research and economic development for the University of Southern Mississippi, is becoming president of the university's research foundation.

Frank Horrigan is leaving Innovation Works in Pittsburgh to become director of the Governors Action Team SW Regional Office.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has appointed Michael Olivier to serve as Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development. Olivier was president and CEO of the Harrison County Development Commission in Gulfport, Miss., for 17 years.

Jim Petell is the first director of technology transfer and commercialization for the University of North Dakota.

The Fayetteville Economic Development Council named Steven Rust as its new executive director, beginning Aug. 15.

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