SSTI Digest

The University of Vermont announced that Janice St. Onge has joined the Vermont Business Center as the director of business education.

Kay Wade is the new president of the Oklahoma Professional Economic Development Council. Ms. Wade retains her position as director of the Center for Business Development at the Meridian Technology Center.

The Wright Center for Innovation for Advanced Data Management and Analysis named Charles Walsh as its first president.

The lack of encouraging news in the culminating report from the National Science Board’s (NSB) three-year study of America’s science and engineering (S&E) workforce is offset only by the urgent call to recognize and counter increased global competition and disturbing demographic trends and projections.

The Science and Engineering Workforce: Realizing America’s Potential concludes:

A $100 million initiative announced last week by the Lilly Endowment Inc. will help Indiana's colleges and universities attract and retain more faculty and students. The Lilly Endowment, a private philanthropic foundation based in Indianapolis, supports community, educational and religious causes.

A total of 37 institutions among Indiana's two- and four-year public and private schools will be encouraged to submit proposals for funding under the initiative. Purdue University and Ivy Tech State College are eligible for a combined $30 million of the $100 million pot. Another $26 million is allocated for Indiana University. Other schools such as Ball State University, Indiana Wesleyan University and the University of Notre Dame are eligible for $5 million or less.

Addressing a joint session of Rhode Island's General Assembly, Gov. Don Carcieri unveiled last week a fiscal year 2005 budget that includes funding for several technology-based economic development (TBED) initiatives.

Gov. Carcieri's budget attempts to navigate around a projected $240 million budget gap for FY 2004 and FY 2005. Despite proposing $92 million in spending reductions, the governor would direct $50 million toward a new Center for Biotechnology to be built at the University of Rhode Island. The center would serve as both a world-class research facility for students and a stimulus for the state's growing biotech economy.

Other highlights of the governor's budget include:

Preliminary findings from an annual survey conducted by the National League of Cities (NLC) reveal economic and fiscal conditions are worsening in many of America's cities and towns. A large segment of those surveyed by NLC also reported improvements in areas such as the vitality of their downtowns, increased efficiency in service delivery, and preparedness for emergencies and homeland security. The 345 respondents in the survey, State of America's Cities, reflect a nationally representative sample.

The need for tax cuts, reduced and simplified regulations, a well-trained workforce, lower employee health care costs, and a state-sponsored industry advocate are among the top concerns shared by a core group of Minnesota manufacturers.

Those concerns and others are summarized in Positively Minnesota Manufacturing: Making It Great, a report released earlier this year by the state's Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). The report is a synopsis of feedback obtained during a series of roundtable meetings convened by Gov. Tim Pawlenty in October 2003. To help manufacturers, DEED identified several key areas that could warrant further consideration:

When this year's high school freshmen receive their diplomas in four years, it will mark the largest and most competitive graduating class ever, according to a new study. Released by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), ACT Inc. and the College Board, the study projects the number of high school graduates will peak in 2008-09 at 3.2 million. A slow but steady decline in the number of enrollments and graduates is expected to occur in most parts of the U.S., following the peak year.

Arizona taxpayers paid at least $100 million for the TGen Institute. The east coast version of Scripps cost Florida a cool $500-plus million. How much should Kansas City expect to pay the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to double the size of its 600,000 sq. ft. research facility instead of locating a second campus elsewhere?

Not a dime.

At least not directly. In making the announcement, founders Jim and Virginia Stowers acknowledged the efforts of city, state and academic leaders to strengthen life sciences research at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the University of Kansas.

California's Treasurer Phil Angelides called earlier this month for the nation's largest and third largest pension funds to invest at least $1.5 billion into environmental technologies and environmentally responsible companies. The goal of Angelides' initiative is to improve long-term financial returns for pensioners and taxpayers through investments in the burgeoning environmental technology sector, while also reducing the risks to the pension funds posed by corporate environmental liabilities.

The treasurer’s Green Wave initiative calls on California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System to invest a combined $500 million in private equity investments, venture capital, and project financing to develop "clean" technologies that can provide the pension funds with positive, long-term returns. The two pension funds have a total of $250 billion in assets.

The Fund for Our Economic Future, a new collaboration of Northeast Ohio private, community and corporate foundations to support regional economic development, has secured more than $22 million in commitments and is expected to grow to $30 million. Launched last week, the fund is believed to be the largest and most comprehensive philanthropic collaboration of its kind in the U.S.

Numerous participants are collectively providing the fund's initial $22 million. A select number of Northeast Ohio nonprofit organizations capable of strengthening the regional economy figure to benefit from the fund. By concentrating its resources on a small number of programs and pursuing them as part of an overall plan, the fund is expected to impact Northeast Ohio's economic revitalization more significantly than any other organized philanthropic grantmaking initiative to date.