SSTI Digest

During its annual meeting in December, members of the National League of Cities have elected Charlie Lyons, a selectman for Arlington, MA, to serve a one-year term as president.

The Acting Director for the Idaho Department of Commerce is Roger Madsen. Madsen also is serving as director of the state Department of Labor.

Joe May, president of Colorado's community college system, announced his retirement, effective in February.

The Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance has appointed Tony Moon as its new president.

Robert Olsen, the director of the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority, will become the head of the Economic Development Administration's regional office in Denver.

Robert Pozen, secretary of economic development for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, announced his resignation, effective at the end of 2003.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has named Sandy Ring to the new position of vice president for economic development policy.

Kelvin Simmons is the new director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, replacing Joe Driskell who held the position for 10 years. Simmons had been serving as chairman of the state's Public Service Commission.

Leroy Williams has been named as the new technology secretary for the state of Colorado. Williams, previously the state's chief information officer, will manage the Governor's Office of Innovation and Technology.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation awarded on Monday $25 million in grants to eight U.S. universities that pledged to make entrepreneurship education available across campus. The selected universities, shown with their award amounts, are: Florida International University, $3 million; Howard University, $3.1 million; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, $4.5 million; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, $3.5 million; University of Rochester, $3.5 million; University of Texas-El Paso, $2 million; Wake Forest University, $2.16 million; and, Washington University in St. Louis, $3 million. Because schools must match the grants at least two-to-one, the Kauffman Campuses initiative ultimately directs a minimum of $75 million for the creation of new interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education programs in American higher education. The initiative is believed to be the first such program of its kind. While entrepreneurship programs traditionally have been the domain of the business school, the eight Kauffman Campuses schools propose to…

A collaborative agreement formed Tuesday between AT&T and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is expected to speed the creation of regional and national grid services. SURA, a nonprofit organization, is comprised of more than 60 leading research institutions in the southern U.S. and the District of Columbia. Under the partnership, researchers and academia will have access to Grid networking — AT&T's newest national network infrastructure for experimental work on new networking technology and applications. The telecommunications company will make available, at no cost to SURA, 8,000 miles of dark fiber network and a substantial inventory of optical networking equipment. These assets will be used to develop experimental network services to support advanced research that would not be possible otherwise. AT&T also will lease to SURA and its partners additional network facilities and capacity as needed. The company will make its network assets available through USAWaves, a research and education (R&E) networking initiative created by SURA. Grid…

New grants totaling more than $28.5 million will help foster the development of new products and markets for agriculturally based products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week. In all, 184 value-added agricultural product market development grants were distributed across 40 states. Twenty-nine of the selected applications – a total of $4.3 million in grants – will focus on biomass and renewable energy. For example, Central Illinois Energy Cooperative will utilize $250,000 to assist with the construction of a 30-million-gallon-per-year ethanol processing and co-generation facility. Authorized as part of the 2002 Farm Bill, the Value-Added Agricultural Product Market Development Grants program provides an opportunity to refine agricultural commodities and products to increase their value in the marketplace. Applications selected for funding range from Arkansas-based Planters Cotton Oil Mill, Inc., which will develop a feasibility analysis and business plan for marketing and manufacturing of an oilseed processing product, to Massachusetts Woodlands Cooperative, LLC to…