@work on the economy:

 

 

 

NC State’s HiTEC Concentration Yields Real Solutions for North Carolina

 

With UNC system faculty filing hundreds of patents a year – some with the potential to address some of North Carolina’s most pressing problems – how do you determine which ones can make a real, immediate difference? One strategy is to turn smart students loose on them. NC State’s Poole College of Management has created a three course MBA concentration in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (HiTEC for short) where students are encouraged to turn ideas from the lab into companies and products that fill critical needs in communities across our state.

 

And it’s just the kind of idea envisioned in the UNC System’s new strategic plan recommendations (see pp. 66, 67) aimed at converting more discovery into more innovation more quickly. Which of the 342 patents filed in the last reporting year could be turned into products or companies? Students may be able to help find out.

 

How does HiTEC work? The latest example of HiTEC student’s work is Tethis Water Treatment Systems, a startup led by an interdisciplinary team of graduate management and engineering students who completed the HiTEC concentration. The company, led by CEO Scott Bolin, has begun to commercialize a technology developed in NCSU’s College of Natural Resources to be used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves pumping water, sand, and chemicals deep underground in order to extract natural gas.

 

Tethis’ filtration process will allow “dirty” water from the fracking process to be cleaned on site where the gas wells are drilled. Traditionally, truck drivers with hazmat licenses are paid to bring the dirty water to treatment facilities off-site – a slow and expensive process. “Not only is our onsite service cheaper, but it allows reuse of all of this waste water for future wells, reduces the water treatment costs by about half and the overall cost per well by 20 percent,” said Bolin.

 

Tethis’ efforts have recently turned heads in the local venture capital community, where Tethis raised $800,000 from Cherokee Investments, Acorn Investments and angel investors. “Our most important goal for 2013 is to move the technology from the lab to commercial scale,” Bolin says.

 

Although successes like Tethis make the commercialization process look easy, Ted Baker, executive director of the Technology Entrepreneurship Collaborative (where HiTEC is housed) will be the first to tell you that it is anything but. According to Baker, it can take between 2,000 and 4,000 hours to assess whether a piece of university intellectual property (IP) would be commercially viable. Though universities often bring in outside consultants to assess the most promising inventions, scaling these programs to look at all the promising university IP would be cost prohibitive. “Great university IP-based startups are not just not sitting there, waiting to be plucked; they are created through the work that our students do,” Baker says.

 

In addition to helping students and the university, the HiTEC program also has big benefits for the state. “Throughout the course, students talk to literally hundreds of people in the community to get as much feedback as they can on the technology and the market that they are interested in. That network, mentorship and expertise they get through the university helps us keep a lot of these companies in North Carolina, where the technology was discovered.”

 

Since its inception in 1994, the HiTEC program has trained more than 450 students, whose work has helped raise more than $200 million dollars for new ventures created in the classroom—creating 250 jobs in the Research Triangle alone.

 

The HiTEC program will be a model the UNC system will build on as it looks to build out the recommendations of the new strategic plan on development and commercialization of university technology and ideas. A key component of this effort will be the creation of innovation discovery teams will help all UNC schools assess, protect, develop and commercialize promising intellectual property across of its campuses, helping to ensure that our universities—through the application and development of their research—can help lead North Carolina’s economy into the future.

 

 

 

 

@work in the community:

 

 

 

NCCU, Three Other UNC Schools Make the "A” Honor Roll for Community Service

 

NC Central University, NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Greensboro have all earned recognition this year as “members of distinction” on the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the highest recognition available for work in the community.

 

What does it take to be a “member of distinction”? In the case of NCCU, it has taken a commitment by faculty, staff and students to respond to the school’s motto: "Truth and Service.”

 

“We take our motto very seriously,” says Deborah Bailey, Director of the Academic Community Service Learning Program at NCCU. In addition to an academic transcript, every NCCU student has a “service” transcript which shows the number of service hours that students have completed and the organizations they worked with. “In order to graduate, every NCCU student must complete 120 hours of community service, but we get a lot of students who go above and beyond that—we have one student right now who is about to graduate with 1000 hours of service,” notes Bailey.

 

This focus on service has helped NCCU sustain a number of long-standing programs in the Durham community. “Part of what sets us apart is how consistent we are—we want the community to feel like they can depend on us,” Bailey says. “One place you can really see that is The NCCU Eagle Pride Blood Drive, operated by our School of Public Health Education that has been going since the 50’s and is currently the largest blood drive in the Durham area.” Last year the blood drive collected nearly 1,500 units of blood—enough to save more than 4,000 lives. Other programs include the “Our America Reads Project,” which has provided NCCU student-led academic support to six elementary schools and one Head Start program in Durham for the past fifteen years, providing more than 70 tutors in the 2010-2011 school year alone.

 

For the students at NCCU, the commitment to service has also paid dividends in other ways. “Last year we gave exit surveys for our seniors and asked them what they really thought of the community service requirement; the response was overwhelmingly positive. Students were glad to have the experience because in addition to feeling good about what they had done in the community, they saw that it gave them a leg up in the job market.” Bailey observes, adding “The feedback we get from employers bears this out—they want students who are bright but who also have character and have experience working with people outside of the classroom.”

 

Besides NCCU, NCSU, UNC-Chapel Hill and UNCG’s recognition with distinction, another six UNC schools received the next highest recognition for community service.  East Carolina, Elizabeth City State, UNC Charlotte, UNC Pembroke, UNC Wilmington and Western Carolina were recognized for their efforts as well.  

 

These campuses’ recognition for their efforts in promoting experiential education through community engagement aligns with the UNC System’s recent strategic plan, which puts renewed emphasis on measuring and growing UNC’s community outreach efforts and preparing job-ready students with experiential education in businesses and communities across North Carolina, and calls for an annual report analyzing UNC campus community engagement efforts.

 

 

@work in the world:

 

 

Employers Value Study Abroad Experience

 

What’s the point of studying abroad? Well, for one thing, it appears to help students get jobs.

 

That’s the implication of two recent studies that asked employers what they thought of students who had studied abroad.

 

A recent study of 119 employers conducted by the Career Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found 59% of respondents said that Study Abroad or other international experience would be valuable to an individual's career prospects with their organization. A national study  published in Frontiers surveyed 352 firms, organizations and agencies from a wide range of industries across the US and found a similar preference for candidates with study abroad experience—ranking study abroad in a non-English speaking country among the top three characteristics they deemed important in college graduates behind having a major relevant to the firm’s work and having a minor in a foreign language.

 

But the percentage of students studying abroad in any given year varies widely, from more than 5% at UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Wilmington and Appalachian State to less than 1% at Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, NC A&T State, NC Central and Winston-Salem State.

 

The low study abroad rates are something ECSU would like to change. Makitta Whitehurst-McLean, Director of Career Services and Study Abroad at Elizabeth City State University, has the opportunity to serve both students and employers and has been an integral part of this effort: “We really try to encourage students to study abroad because a lot of the companies we deal with are not just working North Carolina—or North America; they are working internationally and need people who can well with people from different cultures and backgrounds.”

 

Beyond cultural fluency, study abroad also helps students hone their skills in other areas. “Employers want people who aren’t afraid to go out of their comfort zone—to take smart risks. Study abroad is a good way for our students to gain those skills” said Whitehurst-McLean.

 

Improving job prospects, of course, isn’t the only reason to study abroad. Study abroad also deepens our student’s awareness of other perspectives and cultures—helping educate them on the litany of challenges facing the world, and in many cases, students return to their universities bringing that perspective and new motivation to the classroom. UNC’s recent strategic plan takes steps toward greater participation in international opportunities, calling for financial support from the General Assembly to promote stronger linkages between UNC’s researchers, faculty and students and countries like India, China and Brazil, Mexico and Africa that are critical to the state’s economic and strategic future. Through promoting joint research, sending our students abroad and bringing in top talent from these countries, UNC hopes to forge connections with the people and places necessary for our state to continue to produce the globally competitive graduates and research critical to our state’s future.

 

 

Fact of the Month

 

In 2012, industries invested $72,231,703 on UNC campuses on research projects.  

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