URC COLLABORATING AND REACHING OUT LIKE NEVER BEFORE

By Joe Serwach
News Service

LANSING — With state support declining or flat while global competition intensifies, Michigan’s University Research Corridor presidents say they are cooperating, collaborating and reaching out like never before.

U-M President Mary Sue Coleman told the state House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education that she was proud to recently get a letter from a CEO telling her U-M has gone from being difficult to reach to being “the best” at working with business and communities.

Meanwhile, U-M’s URC partner, Michigan State University, is using its extension offices in all 83 counties as “a new front door,” according to MSU President Lou Ann Simon, adding that “we need to think of ways we can be helpful,” she said. “We are aligning our assets on behalf of the entire state.”

Wayne State University President Irvin Reid added, “Working individually was not enough. That was the genesis of the URC. State support has been declining or, at best, stagnant. Cooperation is the only reasonable option.”

The three URC presidents, testifying as a team, called the current proposed 3 percent increases in support for higher education a good step, but reminded lawmakers that Michigan is “dead last” nationally with regard to increases in higher education spending over the last five years.

“You are on the hot seat with us,” Reid told lawmakers. “Our research universities are economic engines for our state’s economy but you built these engines and you control the fuel.”

They pointed to the example of North Carolina, which showed how a state with declining industries could transform itself by consistently investing in building education, most notably the Research Triangle, over a 50-year period.

“North Carolina was in dire, dire straits when they began the Research Triangle and today when you say ‘Research Triangle,’ you think ‘North Carolina,’ because the Triangle is now a way people brand an entire state,” Coleman said. “I want people to say, ‘University Research Corridor’ and think ‘Michigan.’”

Simon pointed out that URC’s first report found that the URC, begun in November 2006, was already doing better than the Research Triangle by many measures “but no one knew it... We could sit here and list of our accomplishments but we want to give some benchmarks about your return on investment.”

Rep. David Agema, R-Grandville, praised Simon for MSU’s major investment in Grand Rapids, breaking ground on the new Secchia Center that will serve as the west Michigan home of MSU’s College of Human Medicine.

Rep. Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing, told the presidents, “I am just so pleased with what you’ve done.”

Rep. Marsha Cheeks, D-Detroit, called on the presidents to push lawmakers for greater support of the many business incubators they are establishing with economic development partners like Ann Arbor SPARK.

“I wanted to applaud all of you,” Cheeks said. “We are not competing with each other. We are really one family, with each of our 15 universities having its own unique strengths. We’re competing globally, not locally.”

Rep. Lee Gonzalez, D-Flint Township, added, “I share your excitement about this alliance. The point you need to remember is we are pioneers in a new economy. The 2007 New Economy Index found Michigan ranked 34th in 1999 but wes’d risen to 19th by last year. Because of your efforts we should rise by the time the next rankings come out.”