SSTI Digest

Margie Emmermann has been named Director of the Arizona Department of Commerce. For the past seven years, Ms. Emmermann has been the state's policy adviser to Mexico and liaison to the Hispanic Community.&nbsp

The National Science Foundation has named Judith A. Ramaley as the Foundation's new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR). A biologist, Dr. Ramaley served most recently as president of the University of Vermont. 

New Technology Week reports William Schneider, president of International Planning Services, has been picked to chair the Defense Science Board.&nbsp

Dennis J. Sysko is serving as interim president of the Anne Arundel County High Technology Council, following the resignation of president John G. Rice. Mr. Sysko, who is currently serving as the group's treasurer, will perform both roles until a replacement president is elected in January.

The Office of Technology Transfer in the National Institutes of Health has published abstracts of eight government-owned patents that are available for licensing. To help bring these commercialization opportunities to the attention of a wider audience, SSTI has reprinted the abstracts on the following webpage: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/072001t2.htm

At the end of June, Governor Bob Holden signed an executive order committing $21.5 million of the state’s tobacco settlement funds for biotech research during fiscal year 2002. Governor Holden made his announcement prior to signing Senate Bill 500, which expands the state’s job training program to prepare Missouri’s work force for new careers in life sciences. Although the General Assembly this year appropriated $21.5 million in tobacco settlement funds for life sciences research and development, no legislation was enacted to govern the expenditure of the money.



The executive order will direct the State Office of Administration to administer the funds through the Life Sciences Research Committee, composed of the commissioner of administration, and seven other members appointed by the governor. The committee will solicit and review biotechnology research proposals, and funds will be disbursed through research contracts for proposals that have the potential to provide the greatest health and economic benefits to Missourians.



Funds earmarked for the life sciences can support development and clinical research including aging, endocrine, cardiovascular and neurological work, nerve regeneration, pulmonary, diagnostic disease and infectious disease, and nutrition and food safety.



For more information, see the Governor’s press release http://www.gov.state.mo.us/press062001b.htm

While cities such as Boston and San Francisco, not surprisingly, are home to many high-growth companies, a recent report from the National Commission on Entrepreneurship (NCOE) reveals large concentrations of high-growth companies in less familiar areas such as Elkhart, IN, and Provo, UT.



High Growth Companies: Mapping America’s Entrepreneurial Landscape provides a detailed picture of the regions where businesses have shown rapid growth. The report was released July 11 as a starting point for understanding the economic development in the nation’s 394 Labor Market Areas (LMAs), as designated by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Agriculture.



The key findings of the report include:

The William and Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation was founded last month at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The center is the product of a $10 million gift from William L. Mack, the president and senior managing partner of the Mack Organization — a national owner, investor and developer of warehouse facilities.



The center serves to house all of Wharton's technology management initiatives, including Wharton faculty members' research and publishing activities, an endowed professorship and a student-run conference. The Mack Professorship honors a senior faculty member whose primary commitment is to teaching and research in technological innovation management.



The center also includes the Mack Program in Technological Innovation, which encompasses the Wharton Emerging Technologies Management Research Program, a corporate learning network for senior executives and academic researchers guided by senior Wharton faculty members and staff. Senior executives from numerous industry partners are helping to schedule activities for the program, which also provides the MBA major in Technological Innovation.



The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has approximately 4,600 undergraduate, MBA and doctoral students and more than 75,000 alumni. It was founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school in the nation. For more information on the center, visit http://emertech.wharton.upenn.edu/emertech/index.html

Aggregated venture capital investments are commonly used by state and local policymakers to assess the “health” of their tech-based economies. As a result, some of the most accessed pages of the SSTI Weekly Digest web archives have been the state-by-state tables SSTI generates with the release of each quarter’s Moneytree™ venture capital survey results.



The merger of the PricewaterhouseCoopers and Venture One surveys late last year into a single Moneytree™ survey, however, made long-term analysis inaccurate, if not impossible, for practitioners and researchers alike.



Fortunately, the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds sought a solution to the problem from PricewaterhouseCoopers/Venture One. The results, two charts presenting annual seed and first round venture capital investments by state for 1995-2000, are posted in the NASVF NetNews web library. The first article <http://www.nasvf.org/web/allpress.nsf/pages/2833> provides six-year aggregate data and each state’s share of the total number of deals and funding. The second article <http://www.nasvf.org/web/allpress.nsf/pages/2841> presents annual results by state.



More detailed Moneytree™ results for the first quarter of 2001 are available at: http://204.198.129.80/

Math and science students exposed to high expectations, challenging curriculum and sound instructional methods may hold an advantage over their peers, suggests a report funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).



Academic Excellence for All Urban Students presents data from a study of 22 urban school districts comprising the NSF's Urban Systemic Initiatives (USI), showing great gains in student achievement by school districts that participated in the USI program for the longest period of time. The report is the result of eight years of research under the USI program, which began in 1993. It also is part of a larger ongoing study by Systemic Research, Inc., How Reform Works: An Evaluative Study of National Science Foundation's Urban Systemic Initiatives.



Among the report's findings, students in grades K-12 in major urban school districts demonstrated significant improvement in mathematics and science and higher-level course achievement in the following: Algebra I or above in eighth grade and Algebra II, Geometry, Calculus, Integrated Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Integrated Sciences in grades 9-12.



Since the school year (SY) 1993-94, enrollment in these courses and completion rates also steadily increased. In one cohort, the number of grade 9-12 students enrolled in the above mathematics and science courses increased by 53 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Enrollment gains were even greater among underrepresented minority students. Between SYs 93-94 and 98-99, in a cohort including Cleveland, Columbus, Fresno, Los Angeles, Memphis and Philadelphia, the enrollment of 8th grade black students in Algebra I or above increased by 82 percent. In another cohort, the enrollment of black students increased by 58 percent and Hispanic students, 59 percent.



According to NSF's annual data collection system, nearly 87 percent of USI schools in SY 98-99 reached the mathematics and science goals set forth by the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). The USI program, following GPRA, ensured that a standards-based curriculum was implemented by 80 percent of the schools for at least three years.



An interesting side benefit surfaced in the study: Sites that received USI funding — intended for mathematics and science education reform — leveraged an average of $11 million in in-kind contributions during fiscal year 1999. Twenty of the sites reported leveraging a total of $547 million in additional funding. The largest share of total funds went toward professional development activities, which averaged 49 percent among all sites.



Research has indicated that students who enroll in and complete higher-level mathematics and science courses are more likely to pursue higher-level courses and post-secondary education. To view Academic Excellence for All Urban Students, visit: http://www.systemic.com/usi/booklet.htm

Public and private efforts to attract more women into high-tech fields of information technology have a significant hurdle to overcome: 60 percent of women already in IT jobs wouldn’t choose the same career path if starting over, according to Women In Technology, a recent survey by DeLoitte & Touche. Many of the reasons women cited for the dissatisfaction – pay equity, glass ceiling for promotions, and few role models – are already long-standing and too-common issues for women in more traditional industries. Findings include:



Is there a glass ceiling in the high tech industry?

Nearly two-thirds of women surveyed believe a glass ceiling is a reality for women in the high technology industry (62 percent), whereas 62 percent of men felt that this barrier is a non-issue for women in the high tech industry. High tech is defined as computer hardware or software, telecommunications, dot-coms, or e-commerce departments.



What perceived barriers to advancement exist for women and why?

Those who perceive a glass ceiling exists cited the following reasons: women are perceived as less knowledgeable and/or qualified than their male counterparts, gender bias, sex discrimination, stereotypes, and a lack of women technology leaders (84 percent of women and 57 percent of men said there were too few women high tech leaders).



What does it take to succeed in the high tech arena?

Women are more likely to link female success to skill, accessibility to female mentors, and education, while men are more likely to attribute women's success to the prosperous economy of the past 10 years. Perceptions could be half of the battle: half of the women surveyed agreed “that once they put their minds to it, women have an equal chance of advancing to leadership positions.”



Progress toward leadership positions for women has been made, though, since a majority of survey respondents perceived women holding many or “a fair amount” of the management or supervisory positions at their place of employment. Nevertheless, only one out of ten high-tech respondents stated that a female was the owner or CEO of their company.



Seven out of ten of all respondents believed there are not enough female leaders in the IT industry. These respondents cited these future challenges, some of which can be addressed by state and local tech-based economic development practitioners:

Camden, Arkansas

The June 19, 2001 issue of The Bond Buyer reported that Camden, with a population just over 13,000, approved a one-cent sales tax to raise $6 million over four years to support downtown business revitalization efforts. Plans include construction of a business incubator and development of a 500-acre business park.



Missouri

The 2002 budget passed by the state’s General Assembly includes $1 million to support the creation of a research park in Fort Leonard Wood. The Missouri Technology Investment Fund, which supports the Electronic Materials Applied Research Center, Missouri Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), Innovation Centers, and Centers for Advanced Technology received an appropriation of $5,114,652. Of the total, Governor Holden vetoed a $549,000 appropriation for the SBDCs and $200,000 for a fruit and vegetable experiment station at Southwest Missouri State University. For the full economic development appropriation bill see: http://www.house.state.mo.us/bills01/bills01/HB7.htm