What might Tech powerhouse do with full funding?

BYLINE: Staff

EDITORIAL

Along with the opening of Louisiana Tech's new biomedical engineering building earlier this month in Ruston, there have been a number of other bellwether successes that are making this year one of Tech's best ever. These all add up to good news for north Louisiana.

Local and area citizens can take pride in a whole laundry list of accomplishments, even as university supporters are battling in Baton Rouge for support of the funding formula that always deemed to be appropriate but almost never fully funded.

One accomplishment is the completion of the $12 million building, two years in the making, which is connected to the Institute for Micromanufacturing on the south side of the campus. Inside its wall, professors from several academic disciplines will teach, invent, research, mentor and collaborate on projects that will initially serve students but also ripple out to benefit businesses and the economy as well.

Along with the building's opening came the announcement of the Herman Anson Rhodes Eminent Scholars Chair in Engineering. As Tech's first "Super Chair," funded with a $2 million endowment, its synergy will allow the attraction of even more top scholars, researchers, teachers and resources to the campus.

Just this month, Tech graduated the world's first nanosystems engineering degree holder, who co-invented and is close to patenting a nanocatalyst that is reportedly superior to those currently used in producing biofuels from biomass waste.

As a further draw to researchers, Tech also has just connected its "Bluedawg" supercomputer to the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a statewide fiber-optic grid that connects to a high-speed national network, greatly speeding up the flow of data throughout the academic world.

Louisiana Tech President Dan Reneau is justifiably proud of the products of professor-student research during the past year: 31 National Science Foundation grants, the highest ever and second in the state only to Louisiana State University; 30 licensing agreements in multiple technologies; an average of 32 inventions a year; and the filing of 17 patents in fiscal year 2006, to name a few.

There's also movement toward the development a $20 million-$25 million research park on some 50 acres near the campus for the benefit of the state's Interstate 20 corridor. The idea is to attract high-growth, high-wage jobs to the region and ultimately to allow it to be competitive in the area, state and nation.

It's all about generating jobs, one of the more important public service aspects of any university. It's no surprise Tech has been in the loop on talks about attracting a larger "cyber warfare" mission to Barksdale Air Force Base.

Additionally, graduation and retention rates have increased, leading to the university's elevation on an important listing by the Southern Regional Education Board. Larger numbers of doctoral degrees earned during the past three year added to Tech's move up the ladder to a "four-year 2" institution. That means a bump of about $6 million new dollars in the state funding formula. As Reneau noted, it's a major achievement for Tech's image, for grant awards and plain old new money in the budget.

Now the key is to continue the momentum "" with full funding of the higher education formula and full recognition of the college investment that brings returns to Louisiana like none other.