Chancellor reaches for the stars

Saturday, Nov. 19, 2005 | 7:27 a.m.

University system Chancellor Jim Rogers is pulling a page from the state of Georgia's playbook in proposing his Nevada Stars Program.

The program, which will rely on private donors and industry to help recruit world-class faculty to Nevada's research institutions, looks to copy what Georgia has done with the Georgia Research Alliance.

The Georgia nonprofit organization unites state lawmakers, businesses and private and public universities to invest money in attracting top scholars in science and technology to the state -- scholars who often bring with them their own research grants and federal dollars. The research is then applied to the commercial sector, helping to incubate new technology businesses and create new high-paying jobs.

A similar plan in Nevada could double the total research dollars coming into the state within the next five years, Rogers said in his State of the System speech Thursday night.

"If we were trying to build the best major league baseball team, we would recruit the best players," Rogers said. "To build research universities, we must recruit only the best minds and talent."

Since 1990, the Georgia Research Alliance has brought about 50 such scholars to six universities in the state, helping to create 4,000 new technology-related jobs and 100 new companies, as well as allowing existing companies to expand, said Michael Cassidy, the group's chief executive and president.

The alliance was Georgia's way of creating its own Silicon Valley, Cassidy said. The $400 million invested by the state and the $200 million to $300 million in private contributions in people, laboratories, equipment and technology has netted about $2 billion in federal and private money for the state.

Research dollars at the state universities also have more than doubled, from about $400 million in 1990 to $1.1 billion today.

Cassidy, who has been repeatedly invited to Nevada by local business leaders to speak about the Alliance, said many of the elements are in place for Nevada to be able to start its own program.

"It's just a matter of focusing resources," Cassidy said.

Rogers' plan will take a tremendous amount of money and cooperation among state lawmakers, businesses and the Nevada System of Higher Education leadership. But the proposal already has drawn praise from the Board of Regents, UNLV President Carol Harter, university professors and administrators.

Others in the business community already have pushed the initiative with lawmakers. They include Fred Gibson, the retired president and chief executive of American Pacific Corp. in Henderson, and Carole Vilardo, the Las Vegas-based president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association.

Gibson and Vilardo both supported a bill in the 2005 Legislature that would have diverted $4 million of unclaimed property revenue for research-related initiatives. The bill was not approved, however.

Vilardo praised Rogers for pushing the initiative, but stressed that the "devil is in the details."

Georgia was so successful with the Alliance because it was driven by the private sector, Vilardo said. Another key to the program's success, Vilardo added, was that the state focused on a few key areas in science and technology where universities were already involved and where there was commercial potential.

By using research at the universities to develop new businesses, Vilardo believes it will help entice more high school students into college to pursue those high-tech jobs, further diversifying Nevada's economy.

UNLV already is working toward that goal with the private Research Foundation and with its own efforts to raise money for endowed professorships, said Harter and Paul Ferguson, vice president for research and graduate studies.

A university system-driven initiative to create a $5 million matching-fund program to set up special, endowed professorships also got lost in the 2005 Legislative shuffle, Harter said, but the university is pursuing private money for that purpose.

Named or endowed professorships attract faculty to the university by offering higher salaries than the state can pay, as well as producing added graduate assistant help, improved laboratories and other resources, UNLV deans said. The estimated cost ranges from $1 million for a named professorship to $5 million for a position endowed in perpetuity.

Rogers' plan also would include money to help recruit graduate students, who, depending on the field, can receive a full scholarship and a modest stipend for their work in aiding faculty research. UNLV deans estimate that the $12,000 annual stipends they typically offer is $6,000 to $8,000 less than that given by other universities.

Better professors and better students improve the university as a whole, deans stress.

The Board of Regents also is slated to vote in December on whether to establish research as its own separate committee. If approved, the research committee would work on how to possibly implement the Georgia model in Nevada, said Board of Regents Vice Chairwoman Dorothy Gallagher.

Leveraging the federal dollars they receive now, the state's universities have been able to set up the laboratory infrastructure needed to promote future research growth, Ferguson said. That means that Rogers' promise to double the amount of research dollars coming into the state within five years is not as far-fetched as it perhaps sounds.

The state overall saw a 20.9 percent increase in research funding this past year, increasing from $145 million in fiscal 2004 to $175.4 million in fiscal 2005. UNLV drove that growth with a nearly 48 percent increase in research funding, from $47 million in 2004 to $69.4 million in 2005.

Christina Littlefield can be reached at 259-8813 or at clittle@lasvegassun.com.