Colleges cater to business, too

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 2004 by Brush, Cassandra Hemenway

Todd Pinkham and Andrew Meyer sell soy. That is, they will sell soy, once they've developed products made from Vermont grown beans that can withstand shelf life while providing a high quality fresh tasting product. The partners have temporarily shut down their company, Vermont Soy, in order to focus on finding a processing facility - and, more importantly do some basic research and development. That's where Dr Mingruo Guo comes in.

Dr Guo, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Vermont, has been helping Meyer and Pinkham develop their product. In return, Meyer procured a federal grant for UVM totaling $200,000. The money funds soy food development.

"Vermont Soy benefits by observing and participating in those studies," said Meyer, a Washington, DC, consultant and a farmer in Hardwick. "It's helping Vermont Soy so we can learn about products that can be developed for the marketplace."

This symbiotic relationship exemplifies a growing trend among Vermont's colleges and universities: research finds application in the real world, businesses get a chance to thrive and theoretically hire more and more employees, and the institutions lending a hand get grant money, not to mention the chance to offer useful experience to their students.

This kind of relationship between colleges and business may be what Vermont Technical College had in mind when it developed the VTC Agricultural Institute, a project so new VTC won't be formally announcing it until next month, according to VTC spokesperson Lisa Helm. Funded by private donors, Helm said the Agricultural Institute will provide training and resources to farmers, "bringing them together in the industry."

Matching business needs with professorial research is all Paul Hale does at UVM. Hale, UVM's Associate Vice President for Research and Development, comes from an industry that pioneered the academic/private sector partnership. As Lab Director at BioTek Instruments in Winooski, Hale collaborated with UVM, especially it's chemistry department. Founded in 1977 by Professor and Chairman of Physiology at the College of Medicine, Bio-Tek continues to conduct research through UVM. It currently employs 150 high tech workers in Chittenden County.

Seeing how successful the match between research and entrepreneurship can be, Hale now solicits the needs of private businesses and tries to match them with faculty research. Typically such projects get federal funding, he said.

UVM takes it even further than employing Hale, by participating in the newly formed Vermont Center for Emerging Technology - a venture a long time in the making. Funded by both UVM and federal grants, VCET acts as both a business incubator - offering rental space, office equipment and administrative work and business education - and as a link between client companies and specialty laboratories and equipment, technology licensing, private investment capital resources and a network of faculty, staff, student interns and alumni.

"The University of Vermont and other academic institutions will benefit by identifying and transferring technologies, providing real world experience to students and faculty, increasing royalties and licensing fees, and serving as a catalyst for statewide economic development," said Tom Rainey, Director of VCET.

"Research is for the public good," said Frances Carr, Vice President of Research and the Dean of the Graduate College, in an interview for the UVM publication The View.

"It's public money that funded the research, therefore, there's an obligation to ensure that the- results of the research are applied. It is part of the role of public research institutions - the mission of the land grant for sure to ensure that we are able to improve the fives in the' community in which we five."

Indeed, UVM has seen its research dollars rise dramatically from just over $60 million in 1998 to nearly $120 million in 2003. According to a UVM press release, the state of Vermont has already appropriated $500,000 to support business incubator activities, and Governor Douglas is requesting another $125,000 in the FY05 budget specifically for VCET.

In the land-grant spirit, UVM provides a slew of other services to small businesses, including the newly launched Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese, which puts faculty expertise to use in the industry, while training students, and of course, spurring on private enterprise.

Meyer and Pinkham of Vermont Soy have used the services of the Northeast

Center for Food Entrepreneurship, as well as working closely with Dr. Guo. UVM and Cornell professors got the grant, said Cathy Donnelly, UVM Professor of Nutrition and Food Science and the NCFE's Associate Director. NCFE does for the food industry what VCET does for technology.

"Part of our job is to field inquiries from people who need assistance and refer them to the appropriate expertise," Donnelly said. NCFE provided product development, food safety evaluation, and marketing assistance she said. It also helps farmers in a floundering dairy market find new crops needed for food industry markets. Vermont Soy, for example, will be seeking organic Soy bean producers - a crop not commonly associated with Vermont.