Centers of Excellence

When Gov. John Hoeven announced the Centers of Excellence concept in 2002, an express component of the project's mission was to be the creation of well-paying jobs and business opportunities in North Dakota.

Fair enough. How many?

There have been three rounds of grant awarding done, and the projects for a fourth round have been selected. The grants awarded to the first 11 centers of excellence amounted to $20 million in state funds. That doesn't count the millions from private sector grants. Bismarck State College got one of the first grant awards, $3 million for its National Energy Center of Excellence.

With a couple of years of existence, it's time for those who are funding the grants - North Dakota taxpayers - to start to see some hard numbers of jobs actually created.

The governor's office referred an inquiry to the North Dakota Department of Commerce. Justin Dever, manager of the Office of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives, speaks about "projected" numbers and writes about the "potential for over 4,000 jobs to be created by the 11 centers that were approved in the first three rounds." Dever said that there isn't really a single state Web site that presents job numbers, that a new Department of Commerce Web site is under construction.

But how many of the projected jobs are people filling now?

Search engine browsing takes an inquirer to the governor's site and to that of the North Dakota University System. The governor's presentation of the program is glowing. The university system's site is filled with description, with grant applications and grant commission meeting minutes.

It's all really interesting. It's encouraging to be told that the newest round recommends six projects with a "proposed job creation" of well over 900 positions.

But of the established ones, how many positions are up and running now?

People can understand and accept that it's early in the timeline, even for centers approved in the 2005 round, to live up to their full potential for job creation. It's pointed out that some of the projects are still in the research stage. OK, how many now are working in the research?

People should not be up in arms if we're told that of the 4,000 projected jobs, say only 200 now are employing real live people - with projected people to be hired in the future. We can handle the facts. However modest the total, actual numbers are needed.

The University of North Dakota, in its description of the envisioned center for Biomedical Device Research, Development and Commercialization went at the numbers game in the right way. The center, with its proposed $2.5 million state grant (and up to $6.63 million from the private sector), projects "six jobs immediately, (good for a start) ramping up to 100 in two years and 500+ in five years."

It's better to be told that than, as in a previous project, "potential to create 2,472 direct and indirect jobs ..."

Great. Has the hiring started? Please, inform us.

Excellence

job figures

necessary