The numbers continue to show a positive progression for our Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. Nevada’s student-athletes posted an overall Graduation Success Rate of 73 percent, the highest mark in school history and up from its previous best mark of 70 percent in 2008. Nevada’s Graduation Success Rate has improved in each of the five years the NCAA has released the data from 63 percent in 2005, 65 percent in 2006, 67 percent in 2007, 70 percent in 2008 and now 73 percent in 2009. The national average for this year’s Graduation Success Rate was 79 percent.

The federal graduation rate for Nevada’s student-athletes, which doesn’t count transfer students, is 63 percent this year, which is also the highest that mark has ever been, and up from 54 percent in 2008.

Wolf Pack athletics continues to set the standard for members of the Western Athletic Conference as well. All 17 of Nevada’s teams turned in a multi-year Academic Progress Rate at or above the NCAA’s standard of 925 in 2008-09, and Nevada was again the only school in the Western Athletic Conference to have all of its programs above the 925 mark.

Drilling further into the data shows that almost every Wolf Pack athletics program ranks at or near the top of the WAC in Graduation Success Rate. For example, our men’s tennis program ranks first at 100 percent among the WAC’s other programs; baseball ranks in the top two programs; women’s softball, top two; women’s basketball, top three; women’s cross country and track, top three; men’s golf, top three; men’s basketball, top four; women’s soccer, top four.

In addition, Nevada saw 73 student-athletes earn their degrees in the 2008-09 academic year, while 98 Wolf Pack student-athletes were named to the 2008-09 WAC All-Academic teams and six were named to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District teams. Rifle team member Andrew Hickey also became Nevada’s first first-team Academic All-American in six years, while golfer Taylor Coffman earned All-America Scholar honors from the Golf Coaches Association of America.

Kudos to Nevada Director of Athletics Cary Groth and her hard-working academic staff, coaches and student-athletes for yet another point of pride for our University.

Nevada News story: http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5261&zoneid=15

Link to NCAA data: http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?key=/ncaa/ncaa/academics+and+athletes/education+and+research/academic+reform/gsr/2009/841gfw951_2009_d1_school_gsr_data.html

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/Kunr/news.newsmain/article/4208/0/1579495/A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt../Part.II.with.Beryl.Love

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/Kunr/news.newsmain/article/4208/0/1576873/A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt../A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt..11-11-09

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/Kunr/news.newsmain/article/4208/0/1574285/A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt../Solutions.to.Global.Warming

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/Kunr/news.newsmain/article/4208/0/1574284/A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt../New.Professor.of.Business.Journalism

We are also committed to improving education - all education, and not just higher education - in our state. One of the key points in Provost Johnson’s presentation on our strategic plan was “Prepare Nevada youth to participate in the world economy.” To that end, we feel that it is imperative that we prepare teachers who will serve as our educational partners in the elementary, middle and high schools of our state. This new wave of enterprising, innovative educators will not only help raise the achievement and help pave the road of success for their students; they will also help raise the aspirations of their schools and various school districts throughout our state.  It is vitally important that we dream big in this regard. Why? A recent New York Times column by the best-selling author, Thomas Friedman (”The World Is Flat”) tells us why.

Friedman argues that educational failure in our country has been the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American workers’ competitiveness, which has only helped to worsen an already ailing economy. To combat this competitive erosion, Friedman says the nation must focus on “the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work.” In essence, he says that it isn’t enough to simply show up to work each day. In challenging times, we must challenge ourselves to be exceptional, or in Friedman’s words, “untouchable.” He writes: “Those with imagination to make themselves untouchables - to invent smarter ways to do odd jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies - will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college - more education - but we need more of them with the right education.”  

For those of you who have heard me speak in the past, you know that I have a few lines that I use often. One is the idea that “Nevada needs more education, not less.” I would like to amend that statement slightly. Today, more than ever, Nevada not only needs more education, it needs the right education … and we at the university have it within our power to provide it.

To read Thomas Friedman’s column, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/Kunr/news.newsmain/article/4208/0/1568613/A.Few.Minutes.with.Milt../News.from.the.Washoe.County.Health.Department

This is an incredibly significant discovery for those with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and it has important implications for the world of science and medicine. Scientific breakthroughs are often iterative, and a finding of this magnitude can lead to additional discoveries and new research frontiers.

We believe in partnerships and are delighted to have the Whittemore Peterson Institute on our campus. This scientific breakthrough speaks to the level of research happening in Nevada, and this will only be magnified with the opening of the Center for Molecular Medicine which will be the future home of the Whittemore Peterson Institute. The Center for Molecular Medicine will open fall 2010. 

On behalf of the University of Nevada, Reno, I extend my congratulations to the researchers with the Whittemore Peterson Institute and their collaborators. Their work - which is inspired, shared and supported by Harvey and Annette Whittemore - will have a lasting impact on the diagnosis and treatment of this syndrome and potentially other neuro-immune diseases.

 Link to Nevada News story: http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5207&zoneid=8

“Quiet Crisis or Common Cause: The Role of Higher Education in Economic Development”

By Dr. Milton Glick

First, before we jump into my presentation, I’d like to take a moment to thank the organizers of the International Economic Development Council’s 2009 annual conference.  

Your gathering comes at a particularly important time for our world, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak today, be part of the dialog and test my ideas about economic development and higher education.

When it comes to the relationship between economic development and higher education, there are strong examples of regions that are ahead of the curve. The city of Pittsburgh was once known for its steel mills: symbols of an industry that could no longer sustain a regional economy.

Today, Pittsburgh — which recently hosted the G-20 meeting — is enjoying an economic resurgence that most credit to the partnership of business and industry with that city’s great research institutions, such as Carnegie Mellon and Pitt.

However, despite examples like Pittsburgh … despite the fact that a room like this is filled with people who clearly understand the many positives associated with a strong marriage between economic development and higher education … there is still much work left to be done.

We are in the midst of the best of times and the worst of times in higher education … we are simultaneously ahead of and behind the curve. This is a time where common cause and cooperation between higher education and the economic development community has never been better.

And yet, it is also an uncertain time.

Here in Nevada - as in many, many other states - the campuses of the Nevada System of Higher Education have experienced the “Quiet Crisis” of reduced state budgets.

The fact remains, however, that universities must always strive for more. We serve just as many students and Nevada needs more college graduates.

Without healthy, vibrant, forward-thinking universities - places where the possibility of tomorrow seizes the every waking moment of today - we suffer profoundly, whether it is in the economic vitality of our communities or in the way our world operates. Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, summed up the value of higher education in this way: “If you think higher education is expensive, then try ignorance.”

There are many examples - many Pittsburghs — from the past 20 years that clearly show that higher education represents a primary asset to a community, region or nation’s economic well-being.

Many of these successes have followed what Richard Lester of MIT called a “one-size fits all” approach to economic development. This formula meant exciting university research that led to patenting, licensing and the formation of new businesses.

The past year or so, with its wild economic fluctuations, however, has shown that more is needed. Since 2008, many universities have seen an influx of students who are looking to re-tool for a changing economy.  Recession, some have discovered, has become the mother of re-invention.

We’ve also seen a changing of the economic playing field in the past few years. The boundaries of the global economy are becoming more and more amorphous by the day. Anyone, from anywhere in the world, can innovate, produce and compete.

In response, we must look at re-tooling higher education’s mission, particularly as it relates to how we help stir the economic development pot in our communities.

Teaching, research and outreach is not enough anymore. We must engage our surrounding communities through discovery and learning and innovative ways of doing things. I often speak on my own campus of “blurring the lines” between our campus and our community; as our community grows and as our campus evolves, it should become increasingly more difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The best-selling author, futurist and university professor Richard Florida has written that universities still provide an uncommon competitive advantage to the communities and states they serve: “Spillovers in knowledge that result from talent-clustering are the main cause of economic growth. Well-educated professionals and creative workers who live together in dense ecosystems, interacting directly, generate ideas and turn them into products and services faster than talented people in other places can.”

Florida also tells us the transformation we are seeing, while somewhat subtle, is still historically quite significant. He compares it to the 19^th century, when individuals flowed from the farms and agrarian countryside into the cities and the promise of the industrialized society. Today, we are trading in the industrialized model for another that begins with the letter “i” - IDEAS. We are shifting to an economy driven by knowledge and creativity.

Says Florida, “The economy is shifting away from manufacturing toward idea-driven creative industries - and that, too, favors America’s talent-rich, fast-metabolizing places.” 

According to Florida, the regional centers of this new, knowledge-based economy are characterized by three criteria: Technology, talent and tolerance.

Regarding Technology: As we all know, technology is one of the most important engines of economic growth. Many of the more robust, rapidly-growing regions of the United States are centers of technology.

Talent: This is what universities produce with such great regularity. Our graduates become your “human capital.” The educated workforce has a vast array of knowledge and skills that can forever change a business or an industry.

Tolerance: Florida tells us that talented, technologically savvy people have an abiding need to express themselves freely. The members of our future workforce are not traditional thinkers, nor do they wish to adhere to traditional roles.

The classic example that Florida uses is that of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who with their shaggy hair, unkempt beards and sandals looked more like slackers than economic visionaries. Imagine in 1972 if they had lived in say, the button-down Midwest, rather than the more freewheeling Bay Area, when they had sought financing for this strange new invention of theirs, the personal computer. Tolerance, not to mention another underlying factor - proximity - made all of the difference to the ultimate transformative success of their business.

Proximity, in fact, can be seen in the development of many major modern industries: Silicon Valley for high tech; Hollywood and Las Vegas for entertainment; Milan for fashion; Indianapolis or Colorado Springs for Olympic-level athletic competitions and athlete development.

To summarize. Florida: creative class: VALUES: INDIVIDUALITY, MERITOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND OPENNESS.

Attracted to communities where they can work hard, play hard. Communities which have a strong technology base and strong educational systems. Communities which feature active, not passive lifestyles, 24-hour coffee houses, street level culture, small group entertainment entertainment rather than huge venues, university environments.

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to see first-hand how all of this can come together, in a way that can transform the economic development of an entire region.

About eight years ago, I was part of a fact-finding mission for my then current employer, Arizona State. Many of us in higher education had heard about the so-called “San Diego Miracle,” where San Diego had successfully broadened its economic model from its long reliance on the military to high-tech.

What was behind this new way of thinking and doing business?

Was the San Diego miracle real?

Was it a result of UCSD?

After meeting with the Governor of California’s staff, legislative staff, business and union leaders, and the leaders of the University of California System, it became apparent that much of the change had been facilitated by UC-San Diego and its outreach arm. The answer was yes and yes. But we were surprised that the university’s contribution was less driven by technology spinoff such as dean Irwin Jacobs’ founding of Qualcomm than by its other attributes. The magnetic attraction of a great faculty to talented creative people even though they may have only casual contact with the university and its faculty and the networking capability of such a university.

Much of this has been chronicled in Mary Lindenstein Walshok’s excellent book, “Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America’s Research Universities can do for the Economy, the Workplace and the Community.”

Walshok, the associate vice chancellor at UC-San Diego, has said that the successful marriage between a developing high-tech industry, specifically in the form of Qualcomm, first requires a re-thinking of her institution’s role in economic development.

She has said of the process and higher ed’s role: “We have outreach, but no in-reach. It should be a two-way street.”

You can hear echoes of Richard Florida in another statement Walshok has made: “Technology commercialization today requires not only a rich reservoir of basic research but a supportive regional culture of innovation and highly skilled network of business support. Universities help connect, or broker, scientists and engineers with business. We create the context in which deals can happen.”

In the case of the “San Diego Miracle,” I found that the University had indeed, as Walshok says, created an environment that a bright, talented workforce wanted to be a part of.

UC-San Diego’s program, UCSD CONNECT, provided a way for faculty to meet and develop relationships with venture capitalists, accountants, finance managers, lawyers, Angel investors, inventors, lawyers and other professionals.

The University played the role not only of partner, but of an honest broker. Higher education brought together all the various constituencies who would prove central to the re-thinking of the economic development of the local community.

Economic development, in my opinion, should never be thought of as a chance byproduct of our mission to provide teaching, research and outreach.

We must look at economic development as a much more holistic endeavor. We must look at ways that contribute tools and meaningful solutions to the economic challenges of the 21^st century.

From an economic development perspective, I believe that higher education is at its best when it touches on four distinct points.

First, higher education must help industries create their identity through a spirit of entrepreneurship and partnership. We see this everyday in the relationships that are established between academics, researchers and business leaders.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, we are proud to have more than 30 active business and industry partnerships.

Second, higher education must provide the knowledge and manpower development of an educated workforce. This is an integral building block as all nations continue on an inexorable march toward a knowledge-based economy.

Third, higher education must provide the bridge that connects two seemingly unrelated businesses or industries through innovation and research. We fill structural holes and deepen the social capital of our business communities when we open our campuses to forums, conferences and the sharing of new ideas.

As proud as we are of the specialized knowledge that we produce on our campus, often, our greatest asset is our ability to gather the vast array of businesses and industry in our communities and expose them to new ways of doing business, or innovative ways to deliver their businesses to their customers. In the age of the social network, college campuses provide face-to-face interaction that can prove invaluable for businesses.

Fourth, higher education must provide the problem solving and the global best practices perspective that can lead a mature industry toward finding a new and integral place in the marketplace.  This is central to the whole notion of re-conceptualizing and revitalizing already existing industries in any community.

Our critics might say: society has problems, universities have departments.  At Nevada, we have identified areas which are critical to the future of the state and are putting together virtual centers to address these needs: they include successful K-12, transformation of media, logistics, health and biomedicine, mining, gaming and computer games (described by John Seeley Brown as the future of learning), renewable energy, environment. Let em describe a few of these.  We have long had one of the leading mining engineering programs in the nation reflecting the concentration of gold and silver mining in the this state. It has served the mining industry well as has the excellence in geosciences at UNR and DRI. But mining has many needs beyond those areas.  Recently the Provost began a series of meetings with the mining industries.  With him he took the Deans of science, engineering, business and agriculture. (Due to the conservation responsibilities of the miners) and asked them to work together with the miners to develop one stop shopping for for the miners, not just in Nevada, but in the nation. 

He is also convening all of these deans to address the fact that training K-12 teachers is not a college of education responsibility but a university responsibility. We are working with the superintendent of schools and our local community colleges. We may even dare to ask how would we educate teachers if there were no college of education.

We have just announced we will be breaking ground on a new health science education facility.  Key to its success is that we will be training doctors and nurses together, as teams, in forgiving real life environments so that they will be prepared to work as teams in order to maximize effectiveness of health care delivery.

We have also announced a virtual renewable energy center which will reflect the robustness of renewable energy resources in Nevada. This center will have five pods, geothermal, biomass, solar, hydrogen and power grid, with faculty from accross the university, these faculty will work with our partners, DRI and UNLV, the community colleges, the power industries and EDAWN to identify how to maximize effective renewable energy resources. The noted corporate executive and author Max De Pree has said that, “The first job of a leader is to define reality.” Let me comment on reality from where I sit:

Our students are the workforce of the future.

The research being done by our professors supports technology development both internally through tech transfer and externally, through innovative partnerships with entrepreneurs and R&D companies.

Our outreach programs provide significant support through data analysis, research, workforce development and professional development.

It’s a simple fact: if we can increase the proportion of our population that are college graduates, we can raise the average productivity of our population, which will, in turn, increase the income of the people.

In August, the University of South Carolina released the most recent study done on the impact of higher education on business. Its findings further support this idea that a commitment to higher education can lead to a healthier and more diversified economy:

On average, over a lifetime, individuals with bachelor’s degrees earn $1.2 million more than individuals who completed high school but not a post-secondary degree;

On average, individuals earn in additional income 8.2 times what they invested in a four-year degree;

Region after region in the country experiences the positive effects and economic benefits of higher educational attainment among its residents.

At the University of Nevada, economists in our own Center for Economic Development project an economic impact nearly four times the amount of the initial investment in research. By their analysis, our 73 million dollars last year in research and grants alone meant a regional impact of nearly 300 million dollars for Nevada.

And as we continue to crawl out of these recessionary times, it is clear that higher education offers the pathway to a new kind of economy, one that is based on the vast potential of the partnership between economic development and higher education.

The special issue of the IEDC Journal that was developed for this conference gives you some local examples, illustrative of how work at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Desert Research Institute is directly connected to the regional economy.

At present, on our own campus we are working to create a single portal for businesses to the university.

Too many college campuses speak a campus-centric language that is easily understood only by the academic community. We need to speak in a more business-centric language that is more easily understood.

We’re confident that this new portal, supported by new media and social networking sites, will help us achieve a more seamless meeting of the minds.

We are especially excited to join with Desert Research Institute, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, and other partners to help drive the emerging renewable energy industry. Between our expertise in engineering, geology and earth resources - born through our century old collaboration with the mining industry - and Nevada’s abundant environmental resources, we believe we are uniquely poised for success.

In fact, as you meet here at the Silver Legacy, across town nearly 2,000 are gathered for the geothermal industry’s largest national conference. They do so here because northern Nevada is an international leader in geothermal resources and reserves.

Despite the virtues of higher education and our partnerships and collaborations, we can do more.

Once the model for the world, the United States now ranks 10^th among industrialized nations in the percentage of young adults - 25 to 34 years old - with college degrees. A recent study shows the leading countries boast young-adult populations in which more than half are degree holders; the United States checks in at under 30 percent.

This “Quiet Crisis” demands that we act, and that we act quickly to reverse these troubling numbers. It is imperative, not only for the well-being of the nation’s economy but for the health of the global economy, that the United States reach international degree attainment benchmarks.

This is one of the reasons why, as I mentioned earlier, the next great economic development success stories have become so portable. They are not being written so much in the Silicon Valley or in Redmond, Washington … as they are being written in Beijing … in Mumbai … in London … in Vancouver … in Sydney.

It is an exciting time right now and I remain an optimist. The world is educating more young people than ever before, at a pivotal time in our history where the world needs more education, not less. Our talent and technology have never been higher. I remain confident that the universities and colleges of America will soon equal the degree attainment levels of those throughout the industrialized world. There is a Quiet Crisis, no question, but our common cause has never been greater.

That’s the beauty of working together: economic development and education can foster tremendously imaginative and innovative economies.

When higher education and economic development partner together, everyone benefits.

The work of the universities becomes more economically relevant. Our cities, regions and states become revitalized and are more economically diverse. Our communities sparkle with the science and technology … arts and culture … finance, health care and education … all of the key elements that are so central to a flourishing society … a society that chooses to remain far ahead of the curve.

http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5206&zoneid=14