| Technology Oasis in Tucson, Arizona |
| The University of Arizona
has built strong relationships with the public and private sectors of Tucson,
working together to create a high-tech center in the Sonoran Desert. |
By Eric J. Adams
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Article Summary:
In addition to its primary function
as an educational institution, the University of Arizona (UA) works with
local government and businesses to attract technology companies to the greater
Tucson area, create more prosperous neighborhoods, and deliver medical care
and education to remote areas of the state. It works to find creative ways
of using the Internet and related technologies to promote the economic community
of Tucson and southern Arizona.
The university utilizes the expertise of its faculty and staff to assist
local governments and businesses in building networks and delivering services
via the Internet and private telecommunication networks.
The university has helped the local community by providing benefits for the
economy, education system, and even medical care. The companies operating
out of UA’s Science and Technology Park alone generate more than $2
billion for the local economy annually. Additional economic benefits come
from many of the 1,200 high-tech companies now located in the greater Tucson
area.
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In the middle of 2001, a delegation of public and private officials from
the city of Tucson, Arizona met with senior executives of a major semiconductor
maker in Richardson, Texas. Their goal: to promote expansion of one of the
company’s subsidiaries in the Tucson area. This kind of economic-development
mission occurs every day in the United States and abroad. But this delegation
was unique in that one of its members was the president of the University of Arizona, Dr. Peter
Likins.
"At first thought, a university president is an unlikely partner
in such an endeavor, but really he’s not," says Duff Hearon, chairman
of the Greater
Tucson Economic Council (GTEC). "The University of Arizona is at the
center of Tucson’s economic revitalization and is one of the region’s
greatest draws for high-tech companies. When you have people from the public
sector, business sector, and education sector in the same room, it makes
for a very powerful presentation."
Indeed, in the past decade, this
city of 900,000, located just 60 miles from the Mexican border in the Sonoran
Desert, has emerged as an important technology center. It rivals New York
City’s Silicon Alley, Austin, and Boston’s Route 128. A 2001 study
by Forbes
magazine and the Milken Institute ranked Tucson 23rd out of 200 U.S.
metro areas for its high-tech climate, based on jobs, earnings growth, and
technology growth and output.
As a land-grant university, we were
given the specific charge from our inception to serve the larger community,"
says Likins. "In the past, we focused on agriculture and mechanics, but now
we are living in a knowledge-based global economy, and our mission reflects
that change." Many people in the Tucson area attribute a good measure of
the city’s transformation to the University of Arizona (UA) and the
role it plays as a partner to the city, state, and private sector in economic
and community-development projects.
Likins is no stranger to technology;
he studied at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and received his Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford
University before becoming an educator and administrator. Likins also
spent time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and currently sits on several
corporate boards.
The university’s expanding role cuts across
boundaries to touch on the improvement of health care, education in rural
communities, and continuing education. But one common thread runs through
its strategy: technology, and specifically the Internet, are being used to
assist local governments and businesses, providing benefits for the economy,
education systems, and health care in the state.
The university’s
projects include an ambitious 1,345-acre Science and Technology Park, a business
complex that contributes around $2 billion annually to the greater Tucson
economy; a world-class telemedicine program that brings health care to the
far reaches of rural Arizona via a high-speed telecommunications network;
and involvement with the City of Tucson in a number of community-renewal
initiatives that use the Internet to deliver city services and education
to the city’s low-income neighborhoods.
Economic
Development
"Fifteen years ago, the University of Arizona was
one of the first universities to open an economic-development office to find
commercial outlets for the university’s many research initiatives. Since
then, we’ve consciously targeted specific industries by looking at the
strengths of the university and attempting to economically develop around
them," says Bruce A. Wright, UA’s associate vice president for economic
development and chief operating officer of the UA Science and Technology
Park.
Today in Tucson, 1,200 technology companies within six targeted
industry clusters—advanced materials, aerospace, biotechnology, environmental
technology, information technology, and optics—employ more than 50,000
high-wage workers.
"Take a look at these clusters and you’ll
find they all have one thing in common: a very close relationship with the
university," says Kathleen Perkins, CEO and publisher of OpticsReport, a newsletter for
venture capitalists.
The nascent optics industry, in particular,
is a bright star in Tucson. The area hosts 185 optics-related companies,
including Raytheon,
a major developer of optics-based guidance systems.
"When you come
in from the airport, a billboard on the outskirts of town welcomes you to
‘Optics Valley,’" says Perkins. "It’s no hype. That’s
what has been created here—a global center for optics research and development."
Many of the CEOs and researchers of Tucson-based optics companies graduated
from UA’s Optical Sciences Center. The center is one of only three in
the United States that offers a Ph.D. program in optical science, and it
graduates the most optical-science students in the country. It offers study
concentrations in optical physics, design, materials, and applications.
"Gone
is the old monastic format of a university," says Steve Weathers, president
and CEO of GTEC. "Universities of the future will be built around partnerships,
not only for funding, but for utilizing the ideas generated, the income those
ideas generate, and the future research it promises."
The school has
several two-way financial, research, and technology transfer agreements with
many of the top firms in the valley. Wright cites a start-up company called
NP
Photonics, Inc., as a prime example of this dynamic relationship. Three
professors from UA’s Optical Sciences Center founded the company, which
develops low-cost optoelectronic and waveguide devices. At its inception,
the company entered into a $1 million licensing agreement with UA for technology
patented by the university. The company leases space from UA and benefits
from low-cost use of the university’s micro-fabrication facility.
NP
Photonics recently raised more than $32 million through a wide variety of
government and venture-capital sources and now provides jobs for 80 skilled
employees.
"That’s economic development," says Wright.
Low Income High Speed
The university’s
and the city’s economic-development program isn’t limited to the
glass buildings and broad drives of the technology business parks. It also
extends to the dusty roads of the city’s low-income areas, such as the
Santa Rosa neighborhood near downtown Tucson. The median annual household
income in the neighborhood is less than $9,000, and more than one-fourth
of residents aged 16 to 19 drop out of school. "There was real concern inside
and out of the neighborhood that communities like Santa Rosa were being bypassed
by economic development," says Todd Sander, chief information officer for
the City of Tucson. "The residents weren’t getting information on city
policies and programs. And access to transportation, education, and business
opportunities was poor at best."
In collaboration with the university,
Pima
Community College, Tucson Unified School District, and CoxCommunications, the City
of Tucson has worked to build a fiber-optic network and a neighborhood learning
center as an extension of the city and county library system. Cox Communications
wired public housing for cable and high-speed Internet access, which is paid
for by the city while people are in those homes.
The city is providing
many services and connecting the neighborhood center to its I-NET fiber-optic
network. This 125-mile high-speed infrastructure promises to be the foundation
for a wide variety of education and community-building applications.
When
the network and its related facilities are completed, the learning center
will serve more than 1,000 families in Santa Rosa and neighboring communities.
Residents will receive individual e-mail accounts and unlimited Internet
service, and post-secondary educators can use the network to advise and counsel
students. The learning center’s goal is to help residents understand
how integrating technology into their lives is important and beneficial,
not just interesting to do. "The network has been designed to scale so that
as residents come on board, we can add additional ports, desktops, and laptops
in the learning center to meet their needs," says Carl Drescher, IT administrator
for the City of Tucson.
The hope is that by bringing new technologies
into the community setting, residents will be more likely to use city services,
and the number of people who receive job training, education, and access
to business assistance will also increase. The University of Arizona has
partnered with the city to help extend the reach of I-NET into the community
and help schools and community groups realize the benefits they can gain
from it. The university is also helping with the technical aspects of connecting
and networking the center, leveraging its expertise in network architecture,
infrastructure build-out, and online services, according to Fred Neasham,
IT project manager at UA.
"We have to help people cross that digital
divide and give them the means of advancement necessary to create a permanent
difference in their lives," says Likins.
Health-Care Initiatives
Health and economic
advancement are closely linked, and the university has been instrumental
in developing and running an innovative telemedicine program that has received
a number of national awards for its research and innovations.
Telemedicine
is the use of telecommunications technology to provide, enhance, or expedite
health-care services to patients who are geographically separated from health-care
providers. The technology includes linking clinics with hospitals and transmitting
patient information or diagnostic images to another site.
Headquartered
on the UA campus, the Arizona Telemedicine Program operates as a "virtual
corporation," providing telemedicine services and distance learning to 34
rural communities, correctional facilities, and Native American reservations
in Arizona. The program delivers health care in a wide variety of forms,
including 15 pediatric specialties, a telepsychiatry program that reachesremote
high schools, and a multidisciplinary pain clinic made up of university-based
clinical psychologists, pharmacologists, anesthesiologists, and other specialists.
"The program was initially conceived as a test bed for telemedicine
based on the university’s long tradition of pioneering medical digital-imaging
development," says Dr. Ronald S. Weinstein, M.D., director of the telemedicine
program and head of the Department of Pathology at UA’s College of Medicine.
"But we quickly discovered that our initial challenge was the unanticipated
lack of a telecommunications infrastructure throughout the state. This is
the sixth-largest state in the union in terms of area and one of the most
rural."
University IT professionals designed a high-speed telecommunications
network that traverses the state’s 150,000 square miles. "It’s
a unique infrastructure in that it is fast enough to handle both medical-health
imaging and educational needs," says Weinstein.
In addition, the telemedicine
program recently instituted innovative services for home health care for
patients with artificial hearts awaiting transplants, patients requiring
home-nursing services, and children needing occupational and physical therapy.
"At
the university, we have the largest physician group practicing in the state,
so we have a large pool of subspecialists available for consultation," says
Weinstein. He predicts the program will complete 20,000 telemedicine consultations
this year on a budget of about $3 million.
The program has also been
successful partnering with a wide variety of not-for-profit and profit-based
health-care organizations and creating new interagency relationships, says
Weinstein. An example, Project Nightingale, is a broadband
telecommunications consortium that operates much like an electronic marketplace.
"It’s designed to streamline such things as the application
process for funds and acts as a purchasing consortium, which helps us cut
costs and standardize equipment for total interoperability among telemedicine
sites," says Weinstein.
The telemedicine program is also home to e-Healthcare Arizona, a statewide education program
managed in conjunction with Arizona state agencies. The program has delivered
more than 500 interactive health-education telecasts statewide.
"This
is really a tremendous innovation. You have just as much opportunity to get
a good continuing education on the Navajo reservation as in any hospital
in Phoenix," says Weinstein.
e-Healthcare Arizona is also becoming
a collaboration vehicle for various state programs in disease prevention,
children’s health care, and home-health nursing.
"I think the
program’s greatest accomplishment has been creating strong ties among
the University of Arizona College of Medicine, various health-care providers,
and the state legislature to achieve the state’s health-care goals,"
says Likins.
Research Jewel
Scores of top firms are benefiting from close
university ties. Many of these companies are located in an area that has
emerged as Tucson’s crown jewel of economic development—UA’s
Science and Technology Park, a networked, 2-million-square foot technology
campus located just southeast of the city. In its eight years, the park has
grown to become the sixth-largest university-related research park in the
United States, and today it is nearly 100% occupied.
"University
research faculty provide much of expertise for park companies, and more than
half of the park’s high-technology companies are involved in research
partnerships with UA faculty," says Wright. Nearly 90 percent of the park’s
technology companies employ UA graduates, and more than half provide student
internships. Many companies even tap promising high-school students for internships
and entry-level jobs, according to Wright.
In 1999, the university
opened its Optical Material and Technology Laboratory at the park, rather
than the school campus, further strengthening the bond with the optics industry.
The 9,000-square-foot facility is an integrated environment for the design,
synthesis, characterization, and application of molecular and polymeric optical
materials and is part of a larger 30,000-square-foot research center currently
under construction.
Despite its success, the university encountered
some initial resistance when it spent $685,000—in closing costs and a
bit of creative self-financing—to purchase a near-empty facility from
IBM
to build the technology park in 1994.
"People felt the university
shouldn’t be in the business of operating a high-tech research park,
but today, I believe, the vast majority of residents understand the broad
economic benefits the park provides," says Likins. Moreover, the purchase
served as the foundation for a significant and continuing technology relationship
with IBM, which bases its successful and growing storage research and development
division at the park.
"The plan was to build self-sufficiency in five
years. We did it in three-and-a-half years," says Wright.
The university
is using funds generated by the park to pursue plans to develop an additional
4 million square feet of research space while promoting trade in Latin America
and Mexico. Tucson is a perfect gateway to Mexico, given the convergence
of several transportation systems, years of experience doing business in
Mexico, and the cooperation with numerous contacts in public and private
sectors in Mexico. In addition to managing the park, UA provides high-speed
Internet access to all of the park’s tenants and maintains and operates
the facility, which includes 12 primary campus buildings connected by 15,000
miles of cabling.
"These companies want high-speed access, redundant
storage systems, videoconferencing, and access to the Internet2," says Wright.
"They wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t provide it."
The technology
park is also home to the Tucson Technology Incubator, a place where selected
start-ups receive office space and consulting from more than 200 professionals
in topic areas ranging from accounting to developing venture capital.
"With
so many [UA] ties, people say the park feels like an extension of campus,
and in many ways it is," says Wright.
Into the Future
Even though the university quickly developed
its economic development plan, it still faces many challenges.
"For one,
this university has been rather slow to invest in technology transfer," says
Likins. "Only recently have we become more focused on its financial benefit."
The
Science and Technology Park has reached its space limits. "We had two companies
leave already because they didn’t have room to grow," says Wright.
The
university is also hoping to build on its experience with the telemedicine
program to extend other specialized telecommunications and distance-learning
programs to industries beyond health care. The university has already ventured
aggressively into distance education, offering an M.B.A. program in San Jose,
a distance-optics master’s degree, and a tri-university master’s
degree in engineering.
"We are now creating a network to share courses
among all three Arizona universities and will soon share community colleges,
too," says Likins. "For us, telecommunications is the technological platform
that links us to so many communities."
Hundreds of southern Arizona communities
have yet to see a high-tech dividend.
"We can’t lose sight of
the fact that our future as a university is inextricably intertwined with
the future of Tucson and southern Arizona and vice versa," says Likins.
May/June 2002
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About the Author
Penngrove, California-based writer
and consultant Eric J. Adams covers business trends and solutions. |
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 From Cisco
Serving Students
Next Steps
From Cisco
In
addition to the networking hardware and telecommunications expertise that
Cisco Systems provides the University of Arizona (UA), the company also has
a presence on campus with its Cisco Networking Academy Program.
Cisco
Networking Academy is a not-for-profit alliance between Cisco, education,
business, government, and community organizations around the world. The program
provides certificate programs in basic and advanced networking skills for
high-school and college students. Those who successfully complete the advanced
portions of the program are eligible to test for a CCNA® networking
certification, which helps employers recognize their skill sets.
The
CCNA program, launched in 1997, now spans the entire United States, operates
in 133 countries, and has instructed more than 232,000 students.
Cisco
selected UA as a regional academy host, which means the school focuses on
training high-school teachers who then take the knowledge they have gained
back to their students.
"The recognized crisis here is in getting
students, especially from the low-income areas of Tucson, on the path to
high-paying technology careers," says Fred Neasham, a UA IT project manager
and a Cisco Networking Academy instructor. "We’re helping to develop
job skills so young people in the community can stay in the community, enter
the IT workforce, and move up the ladder."
Since UA’s regional
academy opened its doors in June 2001, it has instructed 78 teachers, who
are now tutoring 214 high-school students in 12 area high schools. Neasham
expects to enroll more teachers from metro-area high schools and others in
southern Arizona as the program expands.
Academy graduates are likely
to be offered jobs in Tucson-based technology firms. "Cisco told me about
one student who didn’t have any computer skills before getting his CCNA
certificate," says Neasham. "As soon as he was graduated, he received four
job offers."—Eric Adams
Serving Students
Last year, the
University of Arizona inaugurated a $20 million campus facility designed
primarily to curb the high dropout rate for first-year students, a problem
many large universities face.
"When we started to address the problem,
we had a 37 percent dropout rate. That’s not OK," says Lynne M. Tronsdal,
UA’s associate dean of University College. "Our university was like
a large city of 35,000; we had to figure out how to make it a university
of small neighborhoods."
The school’s newest neighborhood is
the Integrated Learning Center (ILC), a 120,000-square-foot structure built
beneath the grassy commons located in the center of campus.
"If you
want freshmen engaged, you can’t put them on the edge of the university,
so we decided to build the ILC underground in the heart of the campus instead,"
says Trondsal.
The ILC symbolizes a fundamentally different way of
thinking about learning methods and environments.
"When we looked at those
first-year students who dropped out and those who stayed, we found it was
not an academic distinction, but a distinction between those who find a connection
on campus and those who don’t," says Dr. Peter Likins, president of
UA. "The idea behind the ILC was to use technology to create an outstanding
first year-experience for freshmen so they can make that connection."
The
ILC serves as a freshman headquarters by providing students with a technology
and resource-rich learning environment designed to promote faculty-student
interactions, group study, and peer tutoring. Most of the required first-year
general education courses are now taught at the ILC, and a freshman learning
center brings counseling and other student services directly to students.
A 350-seat open-access computer lab is connected to the library and promotes
collaborative study. A digital media center is slated to include around $3
million worth of equipment dedicated to the capture, storage, and delivery
of digital images. For example, a student will be able to sit with a tutor,
search the video database by text or by images for a part of the lecture
he or she wants to review, and walk through the video lecture with the tutor’s
direct guidance.
An instructional-support area serves as a center
for faculty to learn how to create state-of-the-art instructional resources
and class presentations.
All 14 ILC classrooms are networked with both
fiber-optic and copper wire for high-speed video and data transfer. Many
of the classrooms are, or will be, equipped with multiple high-quality video
projection units, electronic whiteboards that display hand-written material
on large screens, document cameras for displaying 3-D and printed objects
on large screens, surround-sound room audio, and speech reinforcement and
wireless audience-response systems.
"With all this technology, we’ll
be able to do many things," says Tronsdal. "For example, we can capture video
not only of classroom lectures, but of questions from the students, slide
presentations, and live streaming video brought into the classroom. Then
we’ll send the video capture to the digital media center, where staffers
will digitize and post it on the Web for students to review later or view
for the first time if they were not able to make it to class that day."
Additionally,
a few of the center’s classrooms will be outfitted with audience-response
keypads at every student desk.
"Freshmen take a lot of general education
courses, and these classes tend to be big and impersonal," says Tronsdal.
"With these keypads, faculty members can poll the students immediately to
find out what they’ve learned and to prompt discussion. A faculty member
might say, ‘Thirty-two percent of you selected Choice A. Who wants to
stand up and defend the selection?’"
Since the ILC is in its first
year of operation, it’s too soon to measure its success in lowering
freshman dropout rates, but Tronsdal reports that first-year students are
flocking to the facility.
"Already, we see that the commons area
is too small," says Tronsdal. "But the center seems to be working as planned."—Eric
J. Adams
NEXT STEPS
University of Arizonainformation and highlights for further
reading.
Please visit theArizona Telemedicine Program for
more information.
Please visit City of Tucson’s economic development
plans for more information on Tucson development. |
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