Two colleges hook up to energize region

By Chuck Soder - Crains Cleveland Business

March 26, 2007 - Two Northeast Ohio colleges think they've found an innovative way to promote innovation

The University of Akron and Lorain County Community College plan to share resources and ideas to promote economic development through a new partnership called the Innovation Alliance.

The school's aim to encourage job growth and workforce development along with what they are describing as "the Innovation Corridor" between the schools.

The alliance, announced today at a press conference at RPM International Inc.'s plant in Medina, includes initiatives to offer new degrees for adults in high-growth industries; a partnership among groups that promote entrepreneurship at each institution; strategies to promote science and math among elementary and high school students; and an effort to cut costs by combining administrative resources.

The school's plan to offer four to six baccalaureate degrees meant to make it 40% cheaper and 25% faster for adults in the work force to further their education in the fields of advanced manufacturing, healthcare and entrepreneurship.

LCCC president, Roy Church said the degrees would be quicker and less expensive to attain because they would be designed so that students would take only the most essential courses.

The alliance also would create a partnership between LCCC’s Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE) and the University of Akron’s Office of Technology Transfer. The organizations are confident University of Akron’s tech transfer office more easily can connect entrepreneurs with researchers, while GLIDE focuses more on the application of business technology, Dr. Church said.

B-W may join alliance

To cut costs, the schools are studying the possibility of using the same software system at both institutions, which University of Akron president Luis Proenza said could save the institutions “millions of dollars.” The community college has about 14,000 students, and the university has about 24,000.

LCCC also has created a pre-seed capital fund called the Innovation Fund that will give new companies grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Both schools will provide student interns to work with entrepreneurs who receive the grants.

Baldwin-Wallace College is considering joining the Innovation Alliance, which would be open to other schools, Dr. Proenza said.

State officials that included Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, new Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut and U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, a Democrat who represents Ohio’s 13th District, championed the Innovation Alliance at the press conference and said it could inspire other institutions to create similar partnerships.

“This really does epitomize for us what we are trying to accomplish,” Mr. Fingerhut said.