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By Barbara Hale
Public Information
When Pat Conway, president of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County (CBICC), talks about the new little companies in the CBICC's Business Incubator in Penn State's Research Park, he's so full of pride and enthusiasm that you almost expect him to start passing out cigars. Conway's new-dad-like demeanor even extends to pointing out that helping start up companies to grow -- like helping children to grow up -- requires lots of community support. It takes broad community effort, in Conway's view, to commercialize ideas and projects, create jobs and encourage economic growth by launching new businesses. That's why, he says, the chamber's "synergistic" relationship with Penn State is so important to the county's business incubator program.
On a formal basis, Penn State and the chamber share the condo that houses the incubator. The Technology Building in the Research Park is owned jointly by the University and the chamber and houses the incubator on the second floor. But more important than the condo, Penn State and the chamber share a vision and a win-win approach that results in reinforcement of each other's new company development efforts, according to Conway.
"For example, we start up companies in the incubator and then move them out as soon as possible to free up space for the next entrepreneur," Conway said. "The graduating companies can move to space in the University's Research Park or, if they aren't geared to high technology, they can go to our property, Penn Eagle Industrial Park, which is geared to manufacturing and assemblies.
"We also support one another in recruiting established companies for our respective industrial parks," Conway said. "Since our parks accommodate different types of customers, we don't compete. We provide a nice fit."
But Conway is quick to add that the chamber can't claim credit for planning out this mutually beneficial partnership in advance.
"After all, the chamber's industrial park was started more than 20 years ago," he said. "But dialog and communication has certainly helped as well as being co-located. Having President Spanier, Gary Schultz (University treasurer and senior vice president for finance/business) and Art Heim (Penn Stater Industrial Research Office director) on our board of directors also opens up communication and helps the chamber and the University coordinate planning for economic development in the county."
Heim said the University has a stake in the chamber . Likewise, the University is a valuable asset to the chamber's programs as well.
Alice Clark, CBICC vice president, concurs.
"The fact that Penn State's Ben Franklin Program, which provides funds for start-up companies, is right downstairs from the incubator in the Technology Building and that the Penn State patenting and licensing office is also there, plus Art Heim's industrial research office, is a big help to the companies," she said. "People are close by to provide or locate financial, technical and business support.
"We also bring in people from the colleges of Business Administration and Engineering who have knowledge and contacts that could be helpful to our incubator tenants. Students from The Smeal College of Business Administration on internships have helped to do marketing plans and business plans. It's good experience for the students and valuable advice for our incubator companies."
Heim noted that the University's research and technology transfer organizations in the Technology Center building often look for additional activities and support programs that can further reinforce the chamber's incubator program. For example, it was noticed that the region's Small Business Development Center was not able to handle very many cases in Centre County. Leadership there approached the chamber about a satellite office.
The small business folks agreed and a satellite office was created at Penn State on Oct. 30 with planning help from the chamber. Donna Holmes, who has more than 14 years experience in commercial banking, was recruited to staff the new program. The center will provide one-on-one business consultations and information to prospective, new and established small businesses in Centre and Mifflin counties.
The new satellite office's activities complement those offered by
PENNTAP, Penn State's statewide technical outreach network that provides
no cost assistance to smaller businesses that do not have the in-house expertise
or time to resolve specific technical questions or problems. It also will
complement another Penn State regional business incubator effort -- the
Transformation Regional Incubator Project -- as well as the chamber's incubator
program.
The Transformation Regional Incubator Project, directed by John Vidmar, tries to deliver services where the four regional incubators in Moshannon Valley, Lycoming Valley, State College and Altoona leave off. Each of those incubators supplies on-site office practice services. Vidmar offers financial management and marketing workshops, as well as other owner/entrepreneur services to complement them.
"We've only really started this regional incubator support effort within the last year," Vidmar said. "Even more recently, we've started to work with the chamber to look for new entrepreneurs. Traditionally, both the chamber and Penn State worked with companies after they were in the incubator. Now, we are working with the prospects before they need space."
Conway said the results of all of these efforts -- those on the part of the chamber and those by the University -- are a kind of positive energy, a momentum, that helps new companies grow. He wants more entrepreneurs to step up to the table and avail themselves of the smorgasbord of services both from the chamber and from the University.
"We're interested in anybody who wants to start a business," he said. "We're interested in economic growth."
Pat Conway is president of the Chamber of Business and Industry
of Centre County.
Photo: Greg Grieco
Pat Conway, president of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, wants to reach out to the University community and encourage faculty, staff and students who are thinking about becoming entrepreneurs to turn to the chamber for assistance.
"We've been focusing primarily on those who have high technology ideas but we're not limited to those areas," he said.
Conway said graduate and undergraduate students can become involved in the incubator through internships.
"Maybe some of them would like to become entrepreneurs and stay here in Centre County."
Business development services provided by the chamber include: access to financial institutions and state economic resources; a "foot soldier network" of 100 professional around the county committed to helping companies grow, including business executives, bankers, accountants and attorneys; an affiliate program for non-incubator tenants; "Business-in-a-Box," a set of written materials with information on taxes, wages, record keeping and public relations; and assistance finding the appropriate assistance -- in addition to the incubator program.
For more information, call the chamber at (814) 237-7644.
The National Science Foundation has awarded Penn State's WISE Institute (Women in the Sciences and Engineering) a grant of $234,160 over two years to train women and girls at five sites to diagnose, upgrade and repair computer hardware. The project, called "WISE-Cache or Changing Attitudes in a Computer Hardware Environment," is the creation of two Penn State faculty members from the Science, Technology and Society Program.
Judi Wakhungu , director of the WISE Institute, and Richard Devon, director of NASA's Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium at Penn State, devised the project to help stem serious declines in the number of women majoring in computer science and engineering -- which is estimated to have fallen from a high of 36 percent in 1984 to less than half that rate by 1996, according to Mary Jane Irwin, the project's adviser and professor of computer science and engineering.
WISE-Cache is expected to train 500 to 800 women and girls in a variety of settings from middle school to graduate school and K-12 classrooms over the two years. Men are also invited to take part in the training.
The project is an outgrowth of the Pennsylvania Space Grant's five-year-old student-run computer recycling program, SCROUNGE, which solicits donations of used computers from industry for placement in rural and inner-city schools or in non-profit agencies. To date, SCROUNGE has recycled about 1,000 computers free of charge. Both Temple University and the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium have spin-off SCROUNGE recycling programs.
"This computer repair course really came about when we found that women engineering majors participating in SCROUNGE were uneasy about opening computer CPU boxes to repair them," Devon said. "Although the women students were highly software literate, dealing with hardware wasn't part of their experience."
Testing confirmed that women's confidence levels about their competence to deal with hardware rated near zero, even among women whose confidence levels about their competence with software rated about seven on a 10-point scale. To remedy this confidence gap, Devon ran a pilot course last spring with 10 undergraduates, followed by three sell-out summer sessions for 36, K-12 teachers who were allowed to take the computers they had repaired back to their schools.
Susan Straley, an elementary school teacher from Bellefonte who took the 30-hour course, said she is now able to help other teachers solve computer problems because both her software and hardware skills and comfort level have increased as a result of the training.
Straley, who has been named the school's technology coordinator, said she is now able to talk to computer support people and get answers she understands. She also trains other teachers to correct computer problems they once brought to her to solve. Evaluations of undergraduates and teachers show that both software and hardware knowledge increase as a result of the training.
For more information about the project, contact Project WISE-Cache at the WISE Institute, 510 Thomas Building, University Park, Pa. 16802, or phone (814) 865-3342. E-mail can be sent to Katie Rung, administrative assistant, at cxg1@psu.edu.
By Nancy Crabb
Philadelphia Region
Each week, it seems, the headlines announce yet another food horror: tainted beef, salmonella-laced eggs, deadly bacteria growing in strawberries and cantaloupes. And with each new scare, new rules emerge: no more traditional Caesar salads, raw cookie dough or rare steaks; and everything -- hands, counters, knives, cantaloupes -- must be kept scrupulously clean.
In this new brave world of cooking and eating, it's little wonder that Philadelphia County would pass a law a few years ago requiring at least one employee from every county organization that serves food -- from restaurants to hospitals, cafeterias and even homeless shelters -- to complete a 16-hour food safety certification program.
The law made sense, and many Philadelphia organizations, including area colleges and universities, rushed to offer the training on a for-profit basis to a captive market of restaurants and hospitals. But for the hundreds of Philadelphia area non-profit organizations, the new law posed a potential financial hardship: with tight budgets and shrinking corporate donations, many simply could not afford the fees charged for training.
Enter Penn State's Philadelphia County Cooperative Extension. Teaming with the Philadelphia Food Bank, Philabundence and the Philadelphia Department of Health, cooperative extension officials tailored a National Restaurant Association food safety certification program to the needs of area non-profits, and began offering it at-cost.
The program, which started in early 1996, has been an overwhelming success. More than 200 employees of area non-profits have completed the training and are now certified for five years.
"Our participants have included the Salvation Army, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, soup kitchens, shelters -- any place that helps the needy and serves food to the needy," said John Byrnes, the Philadelphia County extension agent who manages the program. "We've had a real range of people, from executive directors of very small organizations to cooks in larger ones. And I've never worked with a more appreciative group."
The program meets once a week for four weeks, going over everything from food contamination issues to developing a food safety system, cleaning and sanitizing and purchasing and storing food safely. Byrnes, a registered dietitian who also holds a Ph.D. in health education, team teaches the classes with officials from Philabundence and the Philadelphia Food Bank.
"Prior to the legislation, there was a real void and a lot of inconsistency in the amount of training people received," said Byrnes. "Now, we know they are receiving the training they need to better ensure food safety."
