I think Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland best summed up UT’s continuing efforts to transform the region into a high-tech alternative energy industry hub with these words taken from the Blade’s story:
The governor said he had been touring the state, viewing high-tech facilities, and talking about renewable energy, “and no part of Ohio is more exciting to visit” than UT.
UT’s incubator facilities are working with local companies that collectively span the spectrum of the solar power industry. Some, like Xunlight, create the panels and do the research to discover how to most efficiently capture the suns rays. Other companies focus on installation, others on logistics.
One company UT is working with is developing a layer to help use the power of sunlight to scatter dust particles and keep the panels clean without needing to wash them (which comes in handy in places like the desert, where we put many, many solar panels).
UT is hiring a new dean to lead the newly created School of Solar and Advanced Renewable Energy which will help further focus all of the alternative energy research and efforts coming out of a number of different UT colleges.
All these companies we’re working with, combined with the researchers investigating solar and wind and bio-fuels, will have the opportunity to test and display their advances at the new Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation.
And the result of all this learning will be companies putting it into practice, creating jobs in a high-growth, high-tech industry. Also interesting from the Blade – 60 percent of solar cell production in the United States is within 60 miles of Toledo, Ohio.
The critical mass has been forming for some time as Toledo works toward becoming the solar-power version of a Silicon Valley in California or a Research Triangle in North Carolina.
A new scholarship program announced last Thursday provides students from school districts that sign up with UT the chance to arrive at UT their freshman year with $10,000 already in the bank.
The new Scholarly Savings Account, outlined in the Blade here, gives schools the ability to partner with UT to set academic, behavioral and other metrics students must meet in order to have $2,000 set aside each year to go toward attending UT.
This program adds another opportunity for students following the success of the UT Guarantee, which brought hundreds of well-prepared students to UT from the largest urban school districts in the state. Both programs mandate that students and their families start thinking about, and preparing for, college earlier.
In fact, the boards of UT, Owens Community College and Toledo Public Schools have held several joint meetings in the past year focusing on the need to start preparing students for college at a younger age. (I.e. let’s buy a 6th grade science textbook that sets the foundations for students’ 10th grade chemistry classes that in turn prepares them for Chemistry 1230 freshman year at UT – a shout out to Dr. Jorgensen who still knew my name 5 years after I took his chemistry class in 2000.)
If parents and students know in 8th grade that if they work hard money will no longer be a barrier to attending college, it changes everyone’s mindset early on. Whereas if you suddenly realize senior year that you want (need) to go to college, you may not have been taking the classes needed to be ready to step into first-year science, math or English college courses.
Scholarship money is good. Higher education is too expensive – a point frequently made by UT President Lloyd Jacobs and the reason he pushed so hard for the tuition freeze in 2007. But as important as the money is the mindset and work ethic needed to achieve success. Preparing for that success earlier in life makes it available to a much broader population of students, and UT’s scholarship programs are helping push students to prepare.
There was a great story in Monday’s Blade about all the research grants The University of Toledo has received, many from the National Institutes of Health. (UT has had 24 grants funded, 17 from the College of Medicine.) Most prominently featured was Dr. Akira Takashima, chair of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Medicine.
Now whether your personal politics cause you to love February’s federal stimulus package or hate it, the $9.1 million in stimulus projects that have come to UT so far this year are primary examples of what will ultimately lift this regional economy – high-tech industry.
For instance, $1 million (of the $2.4 million Takashima was awarded) will go to developing a way to test the effects of chemical compounds on skin. Traditionally, these tests have been done on animals, however Takashima explained that the European Union several years back made testing on animals illegal. Lots of companies still want to sell to Europe, so new options were needed.
You don’t need to have your heart flutter when a kitten yawns to appreciate the value of this. Think of all of the lotions, soaps, make-up, clothes, cleaning products, etc. that do or can touch your skin. Companies need to know the effect of their products on skin. And frankly, even companies indifferent to puppies cuddling would probably love to jettison the billions spent world-wide each year to feed, care for and breed laboratory animals.
By using different types of cells to essentially create a 3-D model of skin in a test-tube, Takashima will be able to develop a process that can test thousands of chemical compounds’ toxicity in a short period of time. This process will employ highly educated lab technicians and researchers and build on ever-growing bio-science expertise in the region.
And the same pattern holds true for most all of the $70 million in research UT conducted last fiscal year and the stimulus money coming in today. If businesses in the future can develop new, safe chemicals to improve products without the financial and humanitarian (animalitarian?) cost of testing on animals, surely that is worth a $1 million investment today.
It says a great deal about the people at UT that increasingly, the government, state agencies and private organizations are looking to make those investments with UT researchers.
Also worth noting: UT Law associate professor Geoffrey C. Rapp continues his national prominence commenting on sports law issues with a quote in the Washington Times about a college football playoff.
Also, UT’s Department of Physics and Astronomy gets some national attention from an AP story circulating about doctoral student Lesley Simanton and UT professor Rupali Chandar studying the sky at reknown observatories in Chile. The story is in the Chicago Tribune here.
I’m a few months late on this, but I don’t think the message has diminished any.
The University’s Blue and Gold Scholarship Program has been getting a lot of attention for the opportunities it offers to select Pell Grant-eligible public school students with a 3.0 GPA, but a recent mention of the program in U.S. News and World Report helps exemplify one of the families impacted by the scholarship.
You can indeed, says Karisha Sutton, a B-plus high school senior from Columbus, Ohio, whose dad’s disability prevents him from working and whose mom works as a home health aide. Sutton was about to give up on going straight to college because her family couldn’t afford the few thousand dollars it would cost to send her to a nearby state university. But then she heard about the University of Toledo’s offer of free tuition to low-income students from several areas of Ohio, including Columbus. Newly hopeful, she filed several last-minute scholarship applications. A thick acceptance letter from Toledo and a few private scholarships have turned her into an excited student and aspiring doctor. Now, she tells her friends who are feeling discouraged: “Don’t just give up!”
While this student’s experience was shared broadly in the national media, the increases in UT scholarship monies in the last few years have helped make more common this very experience.
And for those who are having trouble making ends meet, be sure to contact Financial Aid to see what assistance might be available.
A busy week for experts at The University of Toledo:
Dr. Paulette Kilmer, professor of communication, organized (as she has for many years) a stirring reminder this year that freedoms not passionately defended have the habit of disappearing:
Dr. Terribeth Gordon-Moore, associate dean in the College of Business Administration pointed out that even in a tough economy, there are jobs for students -- but students need to start planning for success years before they walk the stage at graduation:
Also on the topic of jobs, Larry Burns, vice president for external affairs and interim vice president for diversity, spoke to Channel 24 about the recently created Minority Business Incubator. It was also highlighted in the Toledo Free Press.
And Celia Williamson, UT associate professor of social work, helped coordinate and lead the international 6th Annual Conference on Prostitution, Sex Work and Human Trafficking:
Jon Strunk is UT’s media relations manager, a graduate of UT’s College of Arts and Sciences, a student in its College of Business Administration and a man constantly wary of his cell phone ringing. With the media having only so much space and so much time to tell a story, Jon has reserved this space on the World Wide Web to highlight, analyze, complain, lobby, beg, apologize and comment on media coverage of UT, higher education and, from time to time, his half-hearted quest to replace his ’96 Mercury Sable.
Jon Strunk is UT’s media relations manager, a graduate of UT’s College of Arts and Sciences, a student in its College of Business Administration and a man constantly wary of his cell phone ringing. With the media having only so much space and so much time to tell a story, Jon has reserved this space on the World Wide Web to highlight, analyze, complain, lobby, beg, apologize and comment on media coverage of UT, higher education and, from time to time, his half-hearted quest to replace his ’96 Mercury Sable.