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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Tom Arrison and Steve Olson, Rapporteurs

Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

PLANNING COMMITTEE FOR THE WORKSHOP ON

RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM: DEVELOPING
REGIONAL INNOVATION ENVIRONMENTS

Judith Kimble (Chair), Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Medical
Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief, Science and Professor Emeritus,
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California,
San Francisco
Ruth A. David, President and Chief Executive Officer, Analytical
Services, Inc.
C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr., Regents Professor and Glenn L. Martin Institute
Professor of Engineering, University of Maryland
William J. Spencer, Chairman Emeritus, SEMATECH

Principal Project Staff

Kevin Finneran, Director, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public
Policy
Tom Arrison, Rapporteur and Senior Staff Officer, Policy and Global
Affairs Division
Neeraj Gorkhaly, Research Associate, Committee on Science, Engineering,
and Public Policy
Steve Olson, Rapporteur and Consultant-Writer

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND PUBLIC POLICY

Richard N. Zare (Chair), Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural

Science, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University
Linda M. Abriola, Dean of the School of Engineering, Tufts University
Claude R. Canizares, Vice President for Research and Associate Provost
and Bruno Rossi Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Moses H.W. Chan, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics, Pennsylvania State
University
Ralph J. Cicerone (ex-officio), President, National Academy of Sciences
Paul Citron, Vice President (Retired), Technology Policy and Academic
Relations, Medtronic, Inc.
Ruth A. David, President and Chief Executive Officer, ANSER (Analytic
Services, Inc.)
Harvey V. Fineberg (ex-officio), President, Institute of Medicine
Judith Kimble, Investigator, HHMI; Professor of Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology and Medical Genetics, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr. (ex-officio), Regents Professor and Glenn L. Martin
Institute Professor of Engineering, University of Maryland
Percy A. Pierre, Vice President and Professor Emeritus, Michigan State
University
E. Albert Reece, Vice President for Medical Affairs, Bowers Distinguished
Professor, and Dean of the School of Medicine, University of
Maryland
Susan C. Scrimshaw, President, The Sage Colleges
William J. Spencer, Chairman Emeritus, SEMATECH
Michael S. Turner, Rauner Distinguished Service Professor, Kavli Institute
for Cosmological Physics, The University of Chicago
Charles M. Vest (ex-officio), President, National Academy of Engineering
Nancy S. Wexler, Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology, Columbia
University

Staff
Kevin Finneran, Director
Neeraj P. Gorkhaly, Research Associate
Marion Ramsey, Administrative Associate

vii

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Reviewer Acknowledgment

T
his report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for
their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with
procedures approved by the National Academies’ Report Review
Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid
and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published
report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional
standards for quality and objectivity. The review comments and draft
manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process.
We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this
report: Jeffrey Alexander, SRI International; David Attis, Education Advi-
sory Board; James Dahlberg, University of Wisconsin; Charles Hasemann,
Michigan State University; and Gail McClure, Arkansas Science & Technol-
ogy Authority.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive
comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the content of
the report, nor did they see the final draft before its release. Responsibility
for the final content of this report rests entirely with the rapporteurs and
the institution.

ix

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Contents

1 Overview 1

2 Revitalizing K-12 Science and Mathematics Education 7

3 Strengthening Undergraduate Education in Science and

Engineering 15

4 Building Effective Partnerships 23

5 Fostering Regional Technology Development and

Entrepreneurship 31

6 Final Observations 43

Appendixes

A Workshop Agenda 47

B Biographical Sketches of Agenda Speakers and Planning

Committee Members 51

C Workshop Participant Roster 57

xi

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Overview

I
n October 2005, the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy
of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine released a policy report that
served as a call to action. Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing
and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future observed that “the
scientific and technological building blocks critical to [the United States’]
economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are
gathering strength.” The report laid out 20 recommendations in four broad
areas—K-12 education, science and engineering research, higher educa-
tion, and economic and technology policy—and warned that a failure to
take action could have dire economic consequences. As the committee that
wrote the Gathering Storm report concluded, “we fear the abruptness with
which a lead in science and technology can be lost— and the difficulty of
recovering a lead once lost.”
Rising Above the Gathering Storm sparked intense discussions among
policy makers, industrial leaders, and the general public. (See Box 1-1, “The
Origins and Aftermath of Rising Above the Gathering Storm” at the end
of this chapter.) Five years after the release of the Gathering Storm report,
a second report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly
­Approaching Category 5, assessed changes in America’s competitive pos-
ture. That report concluded that “our nation’s outlook has not improved
but rather has worsened” since the Gathering Storm report was released.
The report noted examples of other nations that have upgraded their invest-
ments in education, technological infrastructure, and innovation systems to
a greater extent than has the United States. “In summary,” the follow-up
report concluded, “the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has
still further deteriorated over the past 5 years.”

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

2 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

FOCUSING ATTENTION ON STATES AND REGIONS

The federal government is not the only source of policy actions that
can enhance U.S. competitiveness. States and regions within the United
States can also contribute to building their capacity for innovation.1 Ar-
eas of intensive innovative activity are scattered throughout the United
States—often near major research universities—and all states are interested
in strengthening these capabilities.
The ability of the states to drive innovation was the impetus behind a
major workshop held in Madison, Wisconsin, on September 20-22, 2011.
Entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innova-
tion Environments,” the workshop brought together leaders in education,
government, economic development, and industrial innovation to discuss
state and regional initiatives to boost competitiveness through science,
technology, and innovation. The conference—which was sponsored by
the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Morgridge Institute for
Research, and the National Research Council—was organized around four
major themes:

• Revitalizing K-12 Science and Mathematics Education

• Strengthening Undergraduate Education in Science and Engineering
• Building Effective Partnerships Among Governments, Universities,
Companies, and Other Stakeholders
• Fostering Regional Technology Development and Entrepreneurship

The presentations given in each of these four areas are summarized in chap-
ters 2 through 5 of this report. Chapter 6 provides a list of observations
and recommendations made by individual participants in the conference’s
final open-ended discussion. The report has been prepared by the workshop
rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The
planning committee’s role was limited to planning and convening the work-
shop. The views contained in the report are those of individual workshop
participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all workshop
participants, the planning committee, or the National Research Council.

AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH
The conference was held at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery,
which Judith Kimble, Henry Vilas Professor and Howard Hughes Medical

1 There is an extensive literature on state and regional innovation. One recent collection
of insights and perspectives is Charles W. Wessner, Rapporteur; National Research Council.
Growing Innovation Clusters for American Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium, Washing-
ton, DC: National Academies Press, 2011.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

OVERVIEW 3

Institute investigator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described

in her opening remarks as the “physical embodiment of the principles of
Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” (See Box 1-2.) The Wisconsin Insti-
tutes for Discovery is a public-private partnership consisting of the private
not-for-profit Morgridge Institute for Research and the public Wisconsin
Institute for Discovery. Located in a new state-of-the-art facility, it brings
together scientists from a broad spectrum of disciplines to conduct research,
translate discoveries into applications, enhance cross-disciplinary educa-
tion, and reach out to the public. As Tashia Morgridge, founding trustee
of the Morgridge Institute for Research, said in her opening remarks, the
institute has, “as the kids would say, buzz.” John Morgridge, chairman
emeritus of the Board at Cisco Systems, borrowed a term from his grand-
daughters to describe the institute: “awesome.”

Judith Kimble: “This isn’t about making one region strong at the expense
of another. We want to make every region in the country strong.”

Carl Gulbrandsen, the managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Re-

search Foundation, said that the great strength of the Wisconsin Institutes
for Discovery is the ability “to leverage the human capital and the infra-
structure of a great public research university, and . . . leverage the nimble-
ness and the flexibility of a private research institute.” The institution does
not have departments, just research themes. The building includes teach-
ing laboratories on each floor, research space, and space for community
involvement. “We wanted young people to get excited about science and
want to be scientists,” said Gulbrandsen. “We wanted people to have fun.”
Another great strength of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, said
Kimble, is that it is engaged in a positive sum game. Research and education
undertaken at the institution make the region stronger while also benefit-
ing the broader society, as the results of research and people trained at the
institution move elsewhere. The same can be said of state and regional ap-
proaches to innovation in general. Kimble said, “This isn’t about making
one region strong at the expense of another. We want to make every region
in the country strong.”

C. D. Mote, Jr.: “The United States has taken actions, but they are too
little, they are without long-term commitment, they do not engage those
responsible, and they do not reflect an appreciation of the accelerating
advancement of other countries.”

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

4 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

BOX 1-1
The Origins and Aftermath of Rising Above the Gathering Storm

On May 11, 2005, Senator Lamar Alexander delivered a talk entitled “The
Next Big Surprise” at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS). He predicted that within one or two decades other countries would close
the economic gap between themselves and the United States. “We need to work
together to ensure that our current prosperity is passed on to the next genera-
tion,” he said.
This talk ignited a “congressional brushfire,” said C. D. Mote, Jr., Regents
Professor and former President of the University of Maryland, in his remarks at
the Madison workshop. On May 27, 2005, the NAS received a bipartisan letter
from the Senate requesting responses to specific questions on how to maintain
U.S. preeminence in science and technology in the 21st century. On June 30, the
NAS received a bipartisan letter containing similar questions from the House of
Representatives and requesting a response within 90 days.
Within a few weeks, the NAS, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute
of Medicine, through their Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy,
formed a 20-member committee that included Nobel laureates, the directors of
national laboratories, university presidents, corporate chief executives, and former
government officials. Chaired by Norman Augustine, former president and chief
executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the committee met in the sum-
mer of 2005 to decide on the top federal policy actions to ensure that the United
States would be able to compete, prosper, and be secure in the 21st century.
When the report was released in October of that year, it contained recom-
mendations in four broad areas. The report’s highest priority was K-12 science
and mathematics education, with a particular focus on the supply of high-quality
teachers. The report’s second broad recommendation was to support basic re-
search and transformational ideas in science and engineering. The report’s third

BOX 1-2
To Learn More

Additional information about the workshop is available at: http://sites.nation-

alacademies.org/PGA/COSEPUP/index.htm
Video of the workshop plenary sessions is available at: http://vimeo.com/
album/1748515

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

OVERVIEW 5

major recommendation was to attract the best and the brightest into science
and technology from both the United States and other countries. And the fourth
general recommendation was to create incentives for innovation that would make
the United States the premier place in the world to innovate, invest, and create
high-paying jobs.
Actions corresponding with many of the report’s 20 detailed recommenda-
tions were authorized in the America COMPETES Act of 2007. Funds for some
provisions of America COMPETES were appropriated in the 2008 supplemental
budget. Funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E),
which was recommended in the Gathering Storm report as a way of undertaking
high-risk and potentially high-payoff energy ventures, was appropriated in the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), passed in 2009. Some provi-
sions of America COMPETES have not been funded.
The America COMPETES Act was reauthorized in January 2011. But action
on many of the recommendations in the Gathering Storm report remains stalled
because of constrained resources and political differences in the federal govern-
ment. “The United States has taken actions,” said Mote in his workshop remarks,
“but they are too little, they are without long-term commitment, they do not engage
those responsible, and they do not reflect an appreciation of the accelerating ad-
vancement of other countries. It’s fair to conclude that a top priority commitment to
U.S. global competitiveness in science and technology is not U.S. policy.”
Mote noted that Rising Above the Gathering Storm focused on federal ac-
tions but that its recommendations extended well past the domain of the federal
government. States and localities play major roles in improving K-12 education,
accelerating regional economic development, fostering competitiveness within the
private sector, and many other issues. “That’s why this conference is so important,”
he said, “because regional and state actions have to be a part of [the solution] if
it’s going to work.”

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Revitalizing K-12 Science and

Mathematics Education

T
he highest priority actions recommended in Rising Above the Gath-
ering Storm were in the area of K-12 education, and three speakers
at the Wisconsin conference discussed initiatives in that area. Helen
R. Quinn, professor emeritus at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory,
described a framework for the development of standards in K-12 science
education that could greatly improve instruction in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Tom Luce, the founding CEO of
the National Math and Science Initiative, discussed two programs with
proven track records of success and the prospects for scaling up those and
similar programs on a national level. And Michael Lach, special assistant
for STEM Education at the U.S. Department of Education, presented some
of the initiatives being taken by the Obama administration and described
several further steps needed to make progress.

A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION STANDARDS

Based on the success of the common core standards in K-12 math and
language arts education, which already have been adopted by many states,
the development of standards for K-12 science education was under way at
the time of the conference. Helen Quinn described the work of a National
Research Council committee that she chaired to develop a framework for
those standards.
The goals of the framework were to make possible a coherent inves-
tigation of core ideas across multiple years of school and to provide for
a more seamless blending of science practices with those ideas and with

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

8 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

crosscutting concepts. The committee’s report, A Framework for K-12 Sci-

ence Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, which
was released in July 2011, laid out a vision for K-12 science education and a
way to realize the vision.1 The report specified eight “essential practices for
the K-12 science and engineering curriculum.” “If you want a definition of
21st-century learning, this is not a bad one,” said Quinn. The practices are:

1. Asking questions and defining problems

2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and information and computer technology
6. Developing explanations and designing solutions
7. Engaging in argument
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

“These practices are what scientists do,” said Quinn, “and we think
students have to do them in order to learn science.”
The committee also identified seven crosscutting concepts in science
and engineering that students should master:

1. Patterns
2. Cause and effect
3. Scale, proportion, and quantity
4. Systems and system models
5. Energy and matter
6. Structure and function
7. Stability and change

These concepts apply across all fields of science, whether earth systems,
biological systems, or physical or chemical systems, and are important in
engineering as well. They are the “connective tissue that helps students
understand how the pieces fit together,” said Quinn.
The document also spells out core ideas for the science disciplines
included in K-12 science. The following criteria were used to identify core
ideas:

• Have broad importance across multiple science or engineering

disciplines, or be a key organizing concept of a single discipline;

1  National Research Council. A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices,

Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012.
Available at: www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REVITALIZING K-12 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION 9

• Provide a key tool for understanding or investigating more complex

ideas and solving problems;
• Relate to the interests and life experiences of students or be con-
nected to societal or personal concerns that require scientific or
technical knowledge; and
• Be teachable and learnable over multiple grades at increasing levels
of depth and sophistication.2

Helen Quinn: “Understanding science and engineering is a tool we use

in our lives for making decisions. . . . All students need an understanding
of basic science as deeply and as critically as they need to be able to read
and do basic arithmetic.”

For the physical sciences, the core ideas were (1) matter and its interac-
tions; (2) motion and stability, forces and interactions; (3) energy; and (4)
waves and their applications in technologies for information transfer. For
the life sciences, they were (1) from molecules to organisms: structures and
processes; (2) ecosystems: interactions, energy, and dynamics; (3) heredity:
inheritance and variation of traits; and (4) biological evolution: unity and
diversity. And for the earth and space sciences, they were (1) Earth’s place
in the universe, (2) Earth’s systems, and (3) Earth and human activity. In
addition, the committee specified core ideas in engineering, technology,
and the applications of science: (1) engineering design, and (2) links among
engineering, technology, and science and society.
The intent is not that these ideas should be tested or taught separately,
said Quinn. Rather, curriculum should be designed to help students develop
and expand a coherent network of understanding science ideas across
multiple years of study. Students should explore a core idea by engaging in
scientific and engineering practices and by making connections to crosscut-
ting concepts.

Implementing the Standards

To implement the framework, key components of the K-12 education
system need to be aligned, including standards, curricula, instructional
materials, assessments, pre-service preparation of teachers, and professional
development for in-service teachers, said Quinn. In particular, “having the
teachers know where the learning sequence is going and what their job is
in the context of that sequence is as important as having the sequence laid
out in the curriculum that they are teaching.”

2 Ibid, p. 31.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

10 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

The framework is designed to produce standards for all students, Quinn

emphasized. Every student should have the opportunity to become knowl-
edgable about science and engineering, whether or not he or she decides
to pursue a career in science and engineering. “Understanding science and
engineering is a tool we use in our lives, both as individuals and as citizens,
for making decisions, . . . so all students need to have this basis.” The time
spent on science in elementary schools has generally decreased as the focus
on testing in math and language arts has sharpened, a trend that “is not
serving students well,” said Quinn. “All students need an understanding of
basic science as deeply and as critically as they need to be able to read and
do basic arithmetic.”
Finally, the standards developed from the framework need to be open
to revision. “No set of standards is going to be valid forever,” Quinn ob-
served. “We want to know what worked and what didn’t work in imple-
menting this vision of science education, so that next time around we’ll do
it even better.” Furthermore, schools and students will continue to change.
Education reform needs to be an ongoing and iterative process to adapt to
new circumstances and enduring needs.

INCREASING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

USING PROVEN METHODS
The United States often falls victim to what Tom Luce, founding CEO
of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) called pilot disease.
“We start a pilot in one school and then we start another pilot in another.
And we do pilots very well, but we don’t do scale very well.”
As a result, NMSI, which was launched in order to implement some
of the education recommendations of Rising Above the Gathering Storm,
uses proven methods to increase student achievement. In this way, it seeks
to help all 55 million children in the K-12 public education system, not just
1,000 students here and 1,000 students there.
One program it has promoted is called UTeach, which is training the
next generation of K-12 science and math teachers by enabling undergradu-
ates to study the natural sciences and mathematics and simultaneously earn
a teaching certificate in those subjects in four years rather than five years.
Pioneered at the University of Texas at Austin, UTeach has now been imple-
mented in 33 universities. This replication process is supported by four-year
competitive grants of $2.2 million per university awarded by NMSI, and by
resource and support materials provided by the UTeach Institute.3 “Pretty

3  Additional information about the UTeach program is available at the NMSI Web site

(www.nationalmathandscience.org/programs/uteach-program) and the UTeach Institute

website (uteach-institute.org/).

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REVITALIZING K-12 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION 11

soon we’ll be producing 10,000 new teachers a year who are trained in the
content,” said Luce.
The second program is the Advanced Placement Training and Incentive
Program (APTIP), which is designed to provide opportunities for students
across the country to take Advanced Placement (AP) math and science
courses in high school. When African American or Latino students com-
plete and score a passing grade on an AP course during high school, their
college graduation rates go from about 15 percent to more than 60 percent,
Luce observed. Furthermore, the AP program is uniform across the United
States, enabling high-level college preparation no matter where a student
lives.
Pioneered in 10 Dallas schools in 1996, the program has produced
“dramatic results,” according to Luce. A typical urban high school under-
taking the program has 95 percent free and reduced-price lunch enrollment.
Yet in the participating Dallas schools, AP passing scores in math, science,
and English have increased 11-fold over the past 15 years, and 33 times as
many African American and Hispanic students are passing AP tests in those
subjects. The program has now been extended to 350 high schools across
the country, and the existing teacher corps is being provided with profes-
sional development and incentives for completing that training.4

Tom Luce: “. . . we do pilots very well, but we don’t do scale very well.”

“Rising Above the Gathering Storm has produced concrete implemen-

tation of its recommendation across state lines, across school district lines,
across political jurisdictions,” said Luce. “I can take you to any state in the
union and show you a successful school with any kind of population.” The
challenge now, he said, is to standardize successful programs like UTeach
and APTIP and replicate them across the country. “We don’t need another
report. We need an implementation plan.”

EDUCATION INITIATIVES AT THE

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
K-12 education is “incredibly important” to President Obama and his
administration, said Michael Lach, special assistant for STEM Education at
the U.S. Department of Education. Lach stated that the Obama administra-
tion has allocated far more resources to STEM education at the Department

4  Additional
information about the APTIP program is available at the NMSI Web site (www.
nationalmathandscience.org/programs/ap-training-incentive-programs).

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

12 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

of Education than has any other administration.5 The President also has
expressed his support in less formal ways. He hosted the first astronomy
night at the White House and the first annual White House Science Fair.
He has invited the winners of math competitions and robotics tournaments
to come to the White House, just as standouts in sports and entertainment
receive such invitations.

Michael Lach: “We’ve really pushed to make sure that STEM education
is not a standalone piece but is embedded into all of our work.”

At the same time, improving STEM education is not just one person’s
job or the job of the federal government, said Lach. It is everyone’s job,
including state and local leaders, education administrators, teachers, the
business community, and scientists and engineers. “It’s going to take all
hands on deck working together to make this happen.”
Improving STEM education also requires attending to the entire educa-
tion system, said Lach. Many of the reforms of recent decades have tried
to treat science and math as each being in its own silo. But education is
too interconnected to treat science and math separately. “It has to be part
of how we deal with school funding. It has to be part of how we recruit,
hire, train, and contract with teachers. It has to be part of how community
groups, museums, and after-school providers all fit into the system. We’ve
really pushed to make sure that STEM education is not a standalone piece
but is embedded into all of our work.”
The best example of this integration, said Lach, has been the Race to
the Top competition. Launched in 2009 with American Recovery and Re-
investment Act (ARRA) funds, the competition has created incentives for
states to change the fundamental premises of their education systems.6 For
example, one priority in the competition was for comprehensive statewide
plans that focused on STEM. But states were not told to develop a new
STEM education system. Rather, the competition directed states to show
how and where math and science were embedded throughout their educa-
tion systems.

5 For an overview of Department of Education K-12 STEM spending, see Executive Office of

the President, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Prepare and Inspire:
K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s Future.
Washington, DC: September 2010, particularly pp. 24-28.
6  Through the end of 2011, Race to the Top had awarded over $4 billion in grants to 18

states and the District of Columbia. For additional information, see www2.ed.gov/programs/
racetothetop/index.html.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REVITALIZING K-12 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION 13

Fomenting Change
Science and math do have several unique aspects, Lach noted. First,
they are sequential, in that they require some concepts to be learned before
other concepts. This can be a problem where school districts and states have
high mobility rates. When students move from one region to another where
math and science education is not coordinated, they can waste time and
resources repeating material or trying to learn missed concepts.
Also, many parents are not comfortable with math and science. “It’s
still okay for someone to go to a cocktail party and make a joke that bal-
ancing a checkbook has too much arithmetic involved,” Lach said. Given
such attitudes, it will take extra effort to teach students the basic concepts
described in math and science education standards.
Finally, students, parents, and society in general need to be motivated
and inspired to learn math and science. Many students are proficient in
math and science but say that they are not interested in the subjects. Ac-
cording to Lach, “a lot of kids have the chops to do this work but, by
middle or high school, have been turned off and think it’s not for them. So
motivation is particularly important.”
Education remains fundamentally a state- and local-level activity in
the United States, Lach pointed out. The federal government provides just
4 to 5 percent of the total funding for K-12 education, which means that
coherent regional plans are incredibly important. Similarly, the help offered
K-12 schools from business, higher education, and philanthropy should
be coordinated, according to Lach. Colleges and universities also need to
focus on the most effective ways to get knowledge to the people who need
it, whether teachers, administrators, or parents. “And please, in the stan-
dard Calculus 101 class, where the professor gets up and says, ‘Look to
the left, look to the right—one of you is not going to be here at the end of
the semester,’ and they say that with all the pride in the world, as if that’s
a good thing, that kind of culture tells people that [math and science] are
only for some, not for all. . . . We have to work together to put that aside.”

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Strengthening Undergraduate
Education in Science and Engineering

T
he challenge of improving U.S. math and science education is not
limited to K-12, but instead extends to undergraduate and graduate
education. Many of the problems of K-12 education plague under-
graduate education as well, as three speakers at the conference explained.
Bruce Alberts, professor emeritus at the University of California, San Fran-
cisco, and editor-in-chief at Science magazine, discussed how to give all
students the knowledge and skills they need to be effective workers and
citizens in the 21st century. Robin Wright, associate dean in the Department
of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota,
provided a concrete example of the kinds of instruction Alberts described.
And Lorrie A. Shepard, dean of education at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, described some of the cognitive science that supports successful
reforms in STEM education.

Bruce Alberts: “If you watch American television today, or listen to our
political debates, you have to worry about what’s happening to our sci-
entific temper.”

THE ROLE OF UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION IN

TRANSFORMING MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION
Scientists need to achieve a much higher degree of influence through-
out their own nations and the world, Bruce Alberts said. The first Prime
Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, called for a “scientific temper” that

15

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

16 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

incorporates the creativity, rationality, openness, and tolerance inherent in

science. The mathematician, biologist, and author Jacob Bronowski spoke
to the same idea in his 1956 book Science and Human Values:
The society of scientists is simple because it has a directing purpose: to
explore the truth. Nevertheless, it has to solve the problem of every society,
which is to find a compromise between . . . (the individual and the group).
It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of
scientists to be tolerant. From these basic conditions, which form the prime
values, there follows step by step a . . . (range) of values: dissent, freedom
of thought and speech, justice, honor, human dignity, and self-respect.1

Bronowski also wrote of the way in which science has humanized val-
ues. As the scientific spirit spread, it generated calls for freedom, justice,
and respect. But “if you watch American television today, or listen to our
political debates, you have to worry about what’s happening to our scien-
tific temper,” Alberts said.

Giving Students 21st-Century Skills

The vision of science education laid out in reports like Rising Above the
Gathering Storm and A Framework for K-12 Science Education would pre-
pare children to be problem solvers in the workplace, said Alberts, with the
abilities and can-do attitude that are needed to be competitive in the global
economy. This vision for science education also precisely fits the needs for
workforce skills widely expressed by U.S. businesses. As Ray Marshall and
Marc Tucker pointed out in their 1993 book Thinking for a Living, the
workplace skills needed for success in the modern world economy include:

• A high capacity for abstract, conceptual thinking;

• The ability to apply that capacity for abstract thought to complex
real-world problems—including problems that involve the use of
scientific and technical knowledge—that are nonstandard, full of
ambiguities, and have more than one right answer; and
• The capacity to function effectively in an environment in which
communication skills are vital and in groups.2

As president of the National Academy of Sciences, Alberts took on the

challenge of education reform that would produce these kinds of skills.

1 Bronowski, Jacob. 1956, Science and Human Values. New York: Harper and Brothers.
pp. 87-88.
2 Marshall, Ray, and Marc Turner. 1993. Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth

of Nations. New York: Basic Books, p. 80.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

STRENGTHENING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION 17

“When you look at how the system works, it’s the faculties of arts and sci-
ences that define what science education is. They teach the future teachers
[and] the parents. What you do in Biology 101 at the University of Wis-
consin will define science for those adults for whom that’s the last science
course they ever have.”
However, most science teaching at the undergraduate level does not
lead people to understand what science is, Alberts stated. Undergraduates
are not allowed to generate and evaluate scientific evidence. They do not
learn about the development of scientific knowledge and the difference
between scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge. They do not
participate productively in scientific practices and discourse to gain the
skills laid out in the framework for K-12 science education.
A major barrier to progress is an overreliance on lecturing, said Alberts.
Talking to 500 students in a large lecture hall may be an inexpensive way to
teach, but it does not give students the knowledge or skills they need. Many
better approaches have been developed that do not entail a great increase
in cost, but few faculty members know about them, much less use them.
Alberts’ “current obsession” at Science is to use the magazine to create
more coherence in education. For example, the magazine has named 24
monthly winners of a contest for the best free science education websites.3
In 2011, it announced a contest for the best inquiry laboratory modules for
introductory college science. Modules require between 8 and 50 hours of
student work and are readily transferrable so that others can use the same
module in their institution.
At the time of the conference, Alberts was working on an editorial
about the need for a specially trained scientist in each major school district
to connect that district’s schools to the wealth of available resources. These
specially trained individuals could be connectors or adaptors between the
school system and the scientific community. “I have concluded that school
districts badly need such an inside person with science in his or her soul
who really cares deeply about science and is a scientist.” For example, these
individuals could coordinate inputs from the local scientific and engineering
communities. “I know from my time at UCSF that there are many talented
science graduate students and postdocs who would be interested in such
a career if a productive new pathway for entry could be developed and
promoted.”
Efforts to improve science education are going on around the world,
Alberts concluded. As noted by the Gathering Storm report, the United
States needs to take bold steps to meet the competition.

3  Information on the winners is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/spore.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

18 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

TEACHING MORE BY TALKING LESS

Students do not need more information, said Robin Wright, associate
dean, Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development at the Univer-
sity of Minnesota. They have a device at their fingertips that provides them
with access to all of the knowledge of humankind. What college students
need is the ability to do something with that information, to be skeptical,
to become sophisticated consumers of information, to create—“the hard
part,” Wright said.

Robin Wright: “My job now is not the source of all knowledge. It’s the
coach. I look at my students as collaborators, as emerging colleagues. And
they haven’t disappointed me once. It’s remarkable.”

Wright has asked her undergraduates what they should be able to do

after four years of college. Among their answers are the following:

• Be ready for more school.

• Apply knowledge, not just have it.
• Think critically and analyze different situations.
• Get a job.
• Develop leadership skills.
• Understand other cultures.
• Manage time well.
• Be able to write well.
• Have experience with research and a laboratory setting.
• Understand scientific writing.

As for what students want from their college instructors, Wright pro-
vided the following list:

• Engage us.
• Challenge us.
• Help us develop critical thinking, analytical, and communication
skills.
• Make your learning goals transparent to us.
• Provide opportunities for research.
• Use analogies, not jargon.
• Make learning relevant.
• Give us ownership of our learning.
• Infect us with your enthusiasm about the natural world.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

STRENGTHENING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION 19

Teaching Students to Be Biologists

Wright described an introductory biology course she has helped to
develop that encapsulates many of these principles. In the course, students
are expected to have read from the textbook and from other resources, and
they have a quiz at the beginning of the week that covers that content. Their
job in the class is to apply their knowledge, learn how to analyze informa-
tion, look at data, create new things, and evaluate possible solutions.
Students do not sit in rows. They are in teams at round tables equipped
with computers and Internet access. They have to be responsible to and
teach each other. By standing in the middle of the room and looking
around, the instructor can see how students are doing. “My job now is
not the source of all knowledge. It’s the coach. I look at my students as
collaborators, as emerging colleagues. And they haven’t disappointed me
once. It’s remarkable.”
Students take tests first by themselves. They then retake the test in
their teams for additional credit. The class average on the test might be 70
percent, said Wright, but it is 95 percent when they take the test as a team.
“It’s more effective for them to discuss the answers than for us to explain
it, in most cases.”
During class, students work together on specific problems, such as in-
vestigating the structure and function of a molecule. For a take-home exam
or paper, they might recommend a strategy to develop a new antibiotic for
extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, or identify a problem of social value
and solve that problem using genes. “We are helping them figure out what
it’s like to think like a biologist,” said Wright. “What are the problems
biologists wrestle with? What are the resources? What are the limitations?”
Undergraduates have tremendous abilities, said Wright. “They will go
to places that are remarkable. If you ever get depressed about all the work
ahead of us, all you have to do is think about your students. I’m optimistic
about the future.”

THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE BASE

Cognitive science research helps to explain why the classes described
by Wright work so well, said Lorrie A. Shepard, dean of education at the
University of Colorado at Boulder. Active learning does more than keep
students awake. Deeper cognitive processes are in play.
A 2002 NRC report contained a list of factors associated with learning:

• Learning with understanding is facilitated when new and existing

knowledge is structured around major concepts and principles of
the discipline.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

20 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

• Learners use what they already know to construct new understandings.

• Metacognitive strategies and self-regulatory abilities facilitate
learning.
• Learners’ motivation to learn and sense of self affect what is learned.
• Participation in social practice is a fundamental form of learning.4

Lorrie Shepard: “By engaging students in explaining their reasoning and

solving problems collectively, they come away with much higher levels
of learning.”

Shepard particularly emphasized the last item on this list. People learn
language, gestures, interpersonal behaviors, manners, and tastes through
interactions with adults and peers. But educators traditionally have had a
behavioristic idea of how learning occurs. They advocated memorization
first followed by figuring out how to apply that knowledge. Assessments
therefore focused on memorization.
Shepard asserted that a fundamental change is needed in how people
think about learning. Knowledge makes sense when it is learned in con-
text. Then learners can absorb that knowledge, remember it, and connect
it to something they already know. From this perspective, learners need
opportunities to interact, explain their reasoning, and use evidence as part
of that process.
The National Science Education Standards, which were released in
1996, made this point. But engagement has not been practiced in enough
classrooms on a regular basis to become normative, Shepard said. “Scaling
up or making these things understood to be common practice is the most
difficult task.”
Changes in assessments are one of the most effective ways to change
teaching, she said. In its 1993 report Measuring Up: Prototypes for Math-
ematics Assessment, the Mathematical Sciences Education Board of the
National Research Council listed some of the qualities of mathematical
tasks that should be embedded in assessments:

• Promote higher order thinking.

• Draw connections within math, to other subjects, and to life out-
side of school.
• Emphasize the importance of communicating results.
• Allow for multiple solution strategies.

4 National
Research Council. 2002. Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study
of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

STRENGTHENING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION 21

The success of the mathematics community in improving both instruc-

tion and assessments may be a significant reason behind the gradually
improving scores of U.S. students on mathematics tests in recent decades,
Shepard observed.

The Colorado Learning Assistant Model

Shepard described the Colorado Learning Assistant Model, which em-
bodies the principles she discussed.5 In this model, outstanding undergradu-
ate students are hired as learning assistants and are given an education
course on learning research. The professor lectures twice per week and
meets with graduate students and the learning assistants once a week.
Instead of “recitations” with graduate students working problems, the
learning assistants and graduate students lead “learning teams.” Through
this process, students are engaged in talking through their reasoning about
how to solve problems.
This arrangement creates the kind of interactive environment that is
conducive to learning, said Shepard. “By engaging students in explaining
their reasoning and solving problems collectively, they come away with
much higher levels of learning.” Tests of content knowledge show sub-
stantial gains in learning after the learning assistant model was instituted.
Furthermore, the learning assistants show even greater gains in their mas-
tery of the content—“far above what has been achieved in other contexts.”
Finally, the learning assistant model also has contributed to a significant
increase in the number of undergraduates who are interested in becoming
STEM teachers, said Shepard.
The University of Colorado, with support from the American Physical
Society, is running workshops across the United States for people who are
interested in implementing the learning assistant model. Faculty members
need to get over an initial hurdle in learning to use this model. But the suc-
cess and enthusiasm of the students who benefit from it provide a compel-
ling argument for change.

5 Additional information is available at laprogram.colorado.edu/.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Building Effective Partnerships

R
ebuilding America’s competitiveness is too big a job for any one sec-
tor, whether academia, business, or government. The third session
of the workshop discussed how partnerships among sectors might
also address the challenge.
In this session, three speakers examined the prerequisites for success-
ful partnerships. The director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-
Energy (ARPA-E), Arun Majumdar, reviewed ARPA-E’s work and cited the
need for alignment of innovation agendas among government, industry,
and academia. C. D. Mote, Jr., Regents Professor and former president
of the University of Maryland, described the central role of universities
in the transition from a national innovation paradigm to a global innova-
tion paradigm. And Mary Good, the Donaghey University Professor at the
University of Arkansas, noted the relative lack of a national strategy in the
United States compared with other countries and emphasized the potential
of universities to step into the breach and support innovation within states
and regions.

THE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY-ENERGY

A prominent recommendation of the original 2005 Rising Above the
Gathering Storm report was for the creation of an agency to foster “out-of-
the-box” energy research that industry cannot support due to its high risk.
Success in these high risk research areas could produce dramatic benefits
for the nation. Arun Majumdar provided a two-year report on the agency

23

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

24 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

and summarized its work as a catalyst of government-university-industry-

national lab partnerships.
Majumdar stated that ”the mission of ARPA-E is to fund projects that
will develop transformational technologies that reduce America’s depen-
dence on foreign energy imports, reduce U.S. energy-related emissions,
improve energy efficiency across all sectors of the U.S. economy, and ensure
that the United States maintains its leadership in developing and deploy-
ing advanced energy technologies.”1 The agency’s mission is patterned on
that of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created
during the Cold War to foster radical innovation in defense-related tech-
nologies. However, there is a fundamental difference between DARPA and
ARPA-E, Majumdar observed. The defense sector is an essentially closed
sector of the economy in that it has an eventual customer (the Department
of Defense). The energy sector is almost completely open in the sense that
the eventual customer could be businesses, consumers, or government.
ARPA-E therefore needs to support projects that ultimately will succeed in
the marketplace and enable businesses. “It’s a different ball game than the
DARPA model,” he said. ARPA-E looks to create technologies that will
induce the private sector to scale up those technologies, “because scaling is
what industry does really well.”

Examples of Success
Majumdar cited two examples of the approach ARPA-E has taken. The
first is the Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation (BEEST)
program. Instead of incrementally improving the lithium ion battery, the
program sought a battery that would give electric cars a longer range and
cheaper operating costs than gasoline-based cars. Such a battery needs
double the energy density of today’s lithium-ion battery at one-third the
cost. “This is a really hard problem,” said Majumdar.
The program has been supporting several promising approaches. One
is an “all-electron battery” being developed at Stanford University that
moves electrons rather than ions in the battery. Another is a lithium air
battery that provides extremely high energy densities. “People thought this
was impossible. Now they’re making modules of these, and of course they
want to get into manufacturing.”
Majumdar also cited a biofuel example. Photosynthesis is an inefficient
process for converting sunlight into energy, so ARPA-E is supporting com-
parable processes with much higher efficiencies. One such process, called
Electrofuels, uses microorganisms to harness electrochemical energy from
wind, solar, nuclear, or other energy sources to convert carbon dioxide

1 See http://arpa-e.energy.gov/About/Mission.aspx.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

BUILDING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS 25

into liquid fuels without using petroleum or biomass. Already, teams at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts
Amherst, OPX Biotechnologies, and North Carolina State University have
been using such a process to make vials and bottles of oil. “It’s not a big
plant making millions of gallons, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and
it’s a completely new way of making oil.”

Arun Majumdar: “Scaling is what industry does really well, and the
government does not do well.”

Creating New Opportunities to Learn

Rather than following existing learning curves, ARPA-E seeks to cre-
ate new and much shorter learning curves, said Majumdar. Some of the
approaches it is taking will fail. But “we call them not failures, but oppor-
tunities to learn, and we go back and try again.”
Similarly, rather than relying on a traditional pipeline from research to
development to commercialization, ARPA-E tries to compress the process
by putting scientists, engineers, technologists and entrepreneurs together.
The idea is to blur boundaries so that “scientists educate engineers about
what science could do to change the system, and engineers look at systems
and educate the scientist about what science is required to change the ball
game.”
Speed is of the essence, said Majumdar. ARPA-E is asking the techni-
cal community to work quickly, and the agency is itself setting records
in reviewing proposals and getting funds to investigators. “In the federal
government, this is a big deal. Contracting time is now down to two to
three months. We’re trying to push the system as hard as we can and really
engage the stakeholders in this.”
Success in the energy field will not occur immediately. It will take at
least 15 to 20 years to change energy technologies in the United States or
globally in a major way. In the short term, ARPA-E is measuring success
in terms of how many good people and projects it is supporting, whether
small businesses have been created from universities, how much intellectual
property has been created, and the amount of money the private sector is
investing in the technologies that are emerging from the agency’s efforts.
ARPA-E also measures its success in terms of the partnerships created
among government, industry, and academia. The need is for “alignment of
innovations,” said Majumdar, “not just in science and technology but in
finance and markets, policy, education, and society.”

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

26 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

GLOBAL INNOVATION PARTNERSHIPS

A transition has taken place where the world has moved from a national
innovation paradigm to a global innovation paradigm, said C. D. Mote, Jr.,
Regents Professor and former president of the University of Maryland. In
the past, the federal and state governments were connected to universities
and to industry in a national innovation platform. Each sector had its own
responsibilities for funding, innovation, education, and commercialization.
This partnership contributed substantially to the growth of innovation in
the United States and shaped important aspects of that platform.
“This national innovation platform died, basically, around 1990,”
said Mote, for several reasons. The Cold War ended, which had the effect
of adding more than 2 billion people to the knowledge economy. “They
wanted to share in the market economy and benefit from it.” Also, the
Internet was commercialized in 1993 and became the preferred way to
communicate globally, with search engines designed specifically to make
all information available. High-speed communications spread all over the
world, making everyone the neighbor of everyone else. Globalization ac-
celerated through the 1990s.
The Cold War paradigm of “controlling information and innovation”
for commercial and security advantages has been replaced by a paradigm
of global innovation because information cannot be controlled. Mote cited
a sports analogy by describing the Cold War innovation strategy as a de-
fensive strategy. “You don’t score as many points as you might, but you
keep your opponents from scoring more points than you do, so you win
the game. However, if you can’t stop your opponents from scoring points,
then the only way you’re going to win the game is to score more points
than they do. That calls for an offensive strategy, and that’s the one we’re
in.” Score points fast and often.
The global innovation paradigm is based on partnerships to create
information and accelerate innovation. It places an emphasis on talent,
employment, markets, manufacturing, research, and investment. It short-
ens product life cycles, accelerates change, grows consumer markets, and
creates a high demand for “front edge” (advanced) employee skills and
capabilities. “That’s one reason why we have high unemployment and high
job opportunities all at the same time,” said Mote, because “employers are
looking for front-edge skills.”
In this new paradigm, partnerships among governments, universities,
and industries occur globally on all scales. Governments encompass na-
tional, state/provincial, regional, and city governments. Industries are multi­
national, national, and local. Colleges and universities oversee consortia,
campuses, departments, faculty members, and students. “All combinations
[occur] on a global platform instead of on a national platform.”

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

BUILDING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS 27

C. D. Mote, Jr.: “Universities are ideally positioned to provide innovation

services for the global platform enterprise.”

Embracing the New Paradigm

“Innovation” has become the answer to almost every “How will
we . . . ?” question, said Mote. How will we improve the quality of life
for all citizens? How will we stop pandemics? How will we solve climate
change? The answer is always “through innovation.” One issue is how
inno­vation scales on a global platform. Organizations and individuals tend
to scale from the bottom up, while national governments tend to scale from
the top down. Regions, communities, and states scale through a hybrid
model that combines bottom-up and top-down innovation elements.
Mote emphasized the special role that universities play in this new
global innovation paradigm. Universities have almost all of the assets
needed for local, regional, national, and global innovation. They can serve
as technology incubators, consultants for industry, venture accelerators,
conveners of investor networks, and sources of education and training.
“Universities are ideally positioned to provide innovation services for the
global platform enterprise,” said Mote, and “many universities in the
United States are working in this direction.” One example that he discussed
is the University of Maryland-China Research Park.2
Because of their unique and irreplaceable assets, universities need to be
central players in the global innovation system, Mote said. “In fact, they’re
the only organizations in our society that can do it.”

THINKING GLOBALLY TO ACT LOCALLY

Mary Good, Donaghey University Professor at the University of
­ rkansas, began by briefly reviewing the work of the Board on Science,
A
Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) at the National Research Council
on international innovation programs. For several years, a STEP committee
that she chairs has been comparing innovation systems around the world,
including those of China, India, Germany, and smaller countries like Fin-
land. Many governments, she said, have innovation as a national strategic
objective. China, for example, has a research park in Shanghai that is led
by a woman in San Francisco who recruits companies and people from all
over the world to move to the research park to work. Cities like Bangalore

2  More information on this initiative is available at www.umcrp.umd.edu/overview.html.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

28 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

in India have become fully international, with major companies based in

other countries playing prominent roles.

Mary Good: The United States “does not have the focus on strategic de-
velopment that you see around the rest of the world.”

The STEP committee has been particularly interested in manufactur-

ing in Germany, because it combines a large manufacturing base with high
wages and social benefits that exceed those of the United States. A particu-
lar asset in Germany is the system of Fraunhofer institutes, which are the
product of government-university-industry partnerships focused on areas
of applied research. These institutes run apprenticeship programs, Good
noted, that could be a model for retraining programs in the United States.
“We should look at the way those are organized to see if it would not make
sense for the United States.”
The United States, in contrast to other countries, does not have a
national innovation strategy, with just a few exceptions. One exception
is the ARPA-E program described by Majumdar, which has the potential
to create world-changing industries. Another is the federal Small Business
Innovation Research program, though that program “is on life support at
the moment,” Good noted. Overall, the United States “does not have the
focus on strategic development that you see around the rest of the world.”

Implications for the States

In contrast, STEP has found several instances of state-level initiatives,
often driven by governors, that center on cooperation between government,
industry, and universities. State initiatives tend to be different from each
other because what works in one state will not necessarily work in another.
But those differences are also advantages, because they allow states to take
advantage of their unique assets.
New organizations could reignite partnerships similar to those that
have worked well in the past. For example, as noted by Mote, some uni-
versities are in a position to pull together partnerships, especially with state
aid (though states’ support for universities has declined markedly, Good
observed). State innovation programs also could focus on the medium-size,
small, and start-up companies in particular regions, “because in my opin-
ion, that’s where most of the jobs in the United States are very likely to get
created over the next 15 or 20 years,” said Good. These companies are lo-
cally situated and can be stable contributors to local partnerships. “People
should think about not just partnerships with IBM and General Electric but

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

BUILDING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS 29

also with the small [company] across the river that runs a reasonably-sized
manufacturing facility and does it well.”
Partnerships with universities and governments also can greatly benefit
medium-sized and small businesses. Many do not have the resources to
secure the modern equipment and analytical technologies needed to remain
competitive. Universities, possibly with state support, could be a central
laboratory for these kinds of businesses. State manufacturing extension
programs also could provide a foundation to build central laboratories.
Finally, Good advocated putting more effort into research parks that
involve university-industry-government coalitions and into university incu-
bators. The incubators at the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere could
act as models for other universities, “because, frankly, many of us don’t
run those very well.”
The United States needs to figure out how to do things differently than
it has in the past, Good concluded. “If we’re going to keep our small busi-
nesses afloat, we’re going to have to figure out how to make these kinds of
joint arrangements work.”

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

30 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

BOX 4-1
State and Regional Reactions to
Rising Above the Gathering Storm

Although the original Gathering Storm report focused on recommendations

for federal policy, the report’s message about the importance of education and
research to building a strong 21st-century economy resonated with state and re-
gional leaders. Examples of activities focused on state and regional responses
to the report include:

• T he National Academies organized the Convocation on “Rising Above the

Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing Regions, States, and Cities
for a Brighter Economic Future,” which was held on September 28, 2006,
in Washington, DC. The convocation featured participants from all fifty
states.
• At the request of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Coun-
cil on Science and Technology prepared the report Shaping the Future:
California’s Response to “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which
contained recommendations to the governor and was released in January
2007 (report available at ccst.us/publications/2006/2006gatheringstorm.
php).
• The Arkansas Science and Technology Authority and the Arkansas STEM
Coalition co-sponsored the Conference on Rising Above the Gathering
Storm: Energizing and Employing Arkansans for a Brighter Economic
Future, held September 5, 2007, in Little Rock.
• The Role of Engaged Universities in Economic Transformation: A Re-
gional Conference inspired by the National Academies Study, “Rising
Above the Gathering Storm” was held October 15-16, 2007, in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Fostering Regional Technology

Development and Entrepreneurship

M
ary Good commented during a discussion period at the confer-
ence: “I don’t believe that you’re going to get very much help
out of the federal government for a while. It’s going to be an era
where the states and regions are going to lead the federal government, not
the other way around.” Five speakers provided concrete examples of how
the states and regions are doing this. Keynote speaker Duane J. Roth, CEO
and member of the board of CONNECT, described how a quarter-century
partnership of businesses, universities, and governments transformed the
environment for business formation and job creation in San Diego. Sangtae
Kim, executive director of the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madi-
son, Wisconsin, explained the rationale behind the institute’s creation and
pointed toward its immense promise. G. Steven Burrill, CEO of the venture
capital firm Burrill & Company, discussed the role of venture capitalists in a
radically new entrepreneurial world. Frank Samuel, Jr., President of Geauga
Growth Partnership, Inc., provided a specific example of how venture
capital has been attracted to the Great Lakes region. And keynote speaker
Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin and secretary of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, gave his perspectives on policy
making at the state and national levels.

CREATING REGIONAL INNOVATION ENVIRONMENTS

San Diego offers a superb example of what regions can do when they
pull together the right ingredients, said Duane Roth, in his keynote ad-
dress at the conference. CONNECT was founded in 1985 by government,

31

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

32 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

research institutions, and the private sector to aid in the commercialization

of research discoveries in and around San Diego. At the time, the region was
reeling from economic problems. The imminent end of the Cold War with
the Soviet Union was decimating defense contractors, which were major
employers in the region. And the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s hit
major banks in the region hard.
CONNECT was based on the premise that not nearly enough was be-
ing done in the San Diego region to commercialize the excellent research
being conducted there. “Nobody in San Diego understood entrepreneur-
ship, venture capital, risk, tech transfer—all the things that have to be done.
Until that happens and you educate the community, you’re just going to
keep publishing papers,” said Roth.

Duane Roth: “If you give things, you get more back in return. The col-
laboration culture is what San Diego became known for.”

Spearheaded by leaders at the companies Qualcomm and Hybritech,

the University of California, San Diego, and the San Diego Regional Eco-
nomic Development Corporation, CONNECT has had incredible success
over the past quarter century, according to Roth. It has helped start 2,000
companies, has generated about $10 billion in follow-on funding, and has
played a role in creating about 150,000 jobs in the region. It now has a staff
of 20, membership support of about $3.5 million per year, holds about 350
events annually, and coordinates 2,000 volunteers. Currently, an average
of one new company is formed daily in San Diego based on a wide array
of enabling technologies.

Formula for Success

CONNECT is based on the formula BC/VC/ED/RC/DC/CC, said Roth,
for business creation, venture capital, education, recognition and competi-
tions, Washington, DC, policy, and convergence clusters.
The organization’s most important mission is business creation. It does
not just arrange for meetings with mentors. Rather, it assigns people and
companies an entrepreneur in residence — “a former CEO who is tired of
lying on the beach reading a paper and wants to give back.” Approximately
300 entrepreneurs in residence currently are helping companies commer-
cialize their ideas.
CONNECT also connects business creators with venture capitalists
and trains them in business practices. Minicourses known as frameworks
provide a basic background in accounting, finance, intellectual property,
and other subjects that entrepreneurs need to know. “These are the kinds

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 33

of things that we can teach at a very high level, and with this framework
scientists and engineers can figure out how those pieces go together.”
The organization accords recognition and holds competitions to pro-
mote new businesses. It also has an office in Washington, DC, to promote
policies that foster rather than discourage business formation. Business
leaders come from San Diego to Washington to meet with policy makers
and explain their needs. “In Washington, we don’t need more voices. We
need different voices,” said Roth.
Finally, convergence clusters are the means by which many technologies
become products. The idea is to encourage companies that are doing similar
things to talk with each other. Many companies tend to resist, thinking that
they need to keep their ideas private. But in San Diego, companies have
learned that “if you give things, you get more back in return,” Roth said.
“The collaboration culture is what San Diego became known for. It crosses
all boundaries.”
The idea of collaboration puts the region above individual companies.
Companies do not just create jobs and help the economy; they help other
companies. Today the San Diego region has more than 250 defense and
security companies; more than 3,000 information technology, wireless, and
software companies; more than 600 life sciences and biomedical companies;
more than 700 energy and environmental companies; and more than 600
sport innovator companies.1 Together, technology companies employ more
than 140,000 people in San Diego, with average tech salaries well above
the overall average for the region. Furthermore, new industries such as
“information dominance” (defense applications of information technol-
ogy), wireless sensors in health care, renewable forms of energy, and energy
storage have immense promise for the future.

Remaining Challenges
However, said Roth, it is important to recognize that models that have
been successful in the past are no longer working today.
First, a new financing model is needed. Fully integrated models in
which single companies made discoveries, developed products from those
discoveries, and marketed those products are obsolete. As such companies
began to focus on production, marketing, and short-term gains, research
and innovation often suffered. “Guys like me, product managers, suddenly
got into that research room, and we got to talk about the budget. We didn’t
want anything brand new. We just wanted to make our numbers.” Compet-
ing divisions within companies tended to undermine support for research

1  See CONNECT’s 2011 Annual Report at www.connect.org/about/AR2012.pdf.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

34 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

and development. And most CEOs were no longer scientists or engineers.

As a result, many companies lost their innovation ability.
In addition, passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 made it possible
to transfer publicly funded research into commercial products. This led
to many start-up companies that were supported by venture capital and
equity sales. But relatively few of these companies succeeded over the long
term, and it has been difficult for venture capitalists and the public to pick
the successful ones. Instead, large companies have tended to buy promising
start-ups for their ideas while slashing jobs, according to Roth.
An alternate approach is to distribute the innovation process, said Roth.
Because the outcomes of basic research cannot be predicted in advance, it
needs to be funded by the federal government. This process may be inef-
ficient, but “we have to continue to fund [research], because that’s where
the ideas come from.” Product definition companies then could define the
product from the discovery to proof of concept. “That’s the hole that we
have in our system today.” By funding midstream development, venture
capitalists could fund product development in a portfolio of investments.
Furthermore, this work could be very profitable, according to Roth, even
if only some of the products being defined end up being commercialized.
In addition, much product definition and development could be “near
sourced” by drawing on resources in “the cloud.” Building extensive physi-
cal infrastructure in startup companies is “terribly inefficient,” said Roth.
By using resources in the cloud, companies could tap expertise in exactly
the areas they need to obtain the data or prototypes to advance their idea.
Also, the provision of these cloud resources will be a major new source
of employment. This is the approach wireless companies have taken, and
they have been extremely successful with it. For example, instead of build-
ing their own factories to manufacture phones, they went to factories that
already had so much experience and expertise that the wireless companies
could not hope to catch up independently. That leaves the companies free
to develop the innovations on which future prosperity will be built.

Discussion
In response to a question about manufacturing during the discussion
period, Roth described the advantages of manufacturing products in the
United States rather than in another country. Modern manufacturing jobs
are good jobs that pay well. “We can’t let any jobs drift out of this country
anymore,” he said. Also, manufacturing workers contribute to innovation
in many ways by making products better, which is a lesson many other
countries have applied in developing their high-technology manufacturing
centers.
He also elaborated on the advantages of having the head of the com-

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 35

pany act as the product manager—someone who understands the science

and technology behind products. “Quality gets better, because that CEO
who’s making the products gets up every day and thinks about quality,
lower costs, and not having a product defect or recall.”

BRIDGING THE VALLEY OF DEATH

Sangtae Kim: The Morgridge Institute produces a “synergy between open

research for the public good and the increased value of companies that
live in the ecosystem.”

The creation of the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University

of Wisconsin-Madison, where the conference was held, was a response to
the long and risky pathway from university discoveries to commercial proj-
ects. According to Executive Director Sangtae Kim, the Morgridge Institute
was designed specifically to bridge the gap between innovation and impact.
The institute focuses on translational research in collaboration with
others who have similar interests. It has adopted an approach used by the
National Science Foundation in establishing the NSF Engineering Research
Centers, which involves three layers of knowledge. The foundation layer
consists of the scientific discoveries emerging from university research. The
integrative layer relies on a human, technological, and physical infrastruc-
ture to produce an innovation environment. And the summit layer involves
the delivery of solutions to overarching problems.
Kim said that he also draws on his experience at the Parke-Davis
Research Center in the 1990s. Though the budget of the center was small
compared with other pharmaceutical R&D centers, it created some of the
most successful pharmaceuticals of the time, including Lipitor. The success
of the center, said Kim, hinged on the role of project managers. Led by
CEO Ronald Cresswell, the center made project managers into drug de-
velopment vice presidents with rank, budget authority, and power equal to
that of vice presidents in functional areas of the company, such as toxicol-
ogy or chemistry. As a product like Lipitor moved from discovery biology
through optimization, toxicology, clinical studies, and eventually to sales
and marketing, the drug development vice president followed that product
through the functional departments of the company. “Very powerful project
management teams were superimposed on top of strong functional areas
and capabilities,” said Kim.
In universities, individual professors are analogous to the vice presi-
dents of functional areas. They are rewarded for continued excellence in
their area of expertise. When they publish a paper, they typically do not
tend to pursue the idea into domains where they lack expertise. Their

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

36 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

instinct is to return to their areas of expertise and try to replicate their

success. Meanwhile, the project managers in a university setting are typi-
cally associated with the technology transfer office and have to scramble
to link discovery with the delivery of innovations. “It’s not surprising that
innovation from university campuses to product is a haphazard situation,”
said Kim.
The Morgridge Institute seeks to achieve a balance between discov-
ery and delivery, said Kim. This process is complicated by the fact that
initial ideas for innovation often do not work out. As a result, investors
often lose patience before an idea makes it across the “valley of death” to
commercialization.
The Morgridge Institute helps ideas through the valley of death in part
by working with local consortia that together represent a critical mass of
capabilities in the region. The institute can support research on alternative
pathways and better ways of achieving an end while companies focus on the
development of products and avoid diverting their capital to precompetitive
research. The result is a “synergy between open research for the public good
and the increased value of companies that live in the ecosystem.”
Kim cited an example called the Accelerators in Medicine consor-
tium, which is focused on the use of particle accelerators in medicine. No
one company has the resources to build instruments that can be used for
such purposes as proton therapy for tumors, miniaturized mass spectrom-
eters, and solid state CT scanners. Instead, a half dozen companies, the
Morgridge Institute, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have pooled
their resources in an R&D consortium. The consortium reduces the techni-
cal risk and makes it easier for the companies to attract investment capital.
One medical isotope company, for instance, was able to raise $20 million
and significantly ramp up its scale of operation after working with the
consortium for 18 months. Furthermore, said Kim, the value of the royalty
streams to the Morgridge Institute from the sale of the medical isotope, if
the project works, would be in the many hundreds of millions of dollars.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A CHANGING WORLD

Steve Burrill: “Whether we like to admit it or not, the United States is in

the process of moving into a second tier. . . . We’re moving to where we
are no longer the dominant economic engine of the world.”

The world is a very different place today than it has been for the past
several decades, said G. Steven Burrill, CEO of the venture capital firm
Burrill & Company. Burrill has played a key role in the growth of the U.S.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 37

biotechnology industry over the past several decades, first with Ernst &
Young, and more recently as a venture capitalist.
First, the marketplace has become flat, interconnected, and borderless.
Ten years ago, pharmaceutical sales were predominantly in the United
States, Europe, and Japan. By 2020, emerging markets are predicted to
account for over half the growth in global sales.2 “If you think about the
dominant players in the world today, they are not well-empowered in the
markets that are truly important,” Burrill said.
Second, a powerful and growing middle class has emerged in countries
that used to be largely poor. “The first thing that happens when people
come out of a lower class poverty-driven society is they want health care.
And they think health care is a right, not a privilege, so the demands on the
health care system are enormous.”
Third, new countries are coming to the fore, including the BRIC coun-
tries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China, to which Burrill added South Africa)
and the CIVET countries (Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, and Tur-
key). “Whether we like to admit it or not, the United States is in the process
of moving into a second tier,” Burrill added. “It’s like Britain, a country
with a proud past but kind of a lousy economic future. . . . We’re moving
to where we are no longer the dominant economic engine of the world.”
Finally, every country is trying to build its economy around technology,
and particularly biotechnology. “We need to be aware of that in the context
of our competitive state today. We’re no longer alone in what we’re trying
to do. Everybody’s trying to do it around us.”

Global Problems
The five biggest problems facing the world today, according to Burrill,
are:

• Global climate change and the sustainability of the planet

• Clean water
• Energy security and self-sufficiency
• Food security and production
• Health care and health care reform

In Burrill’s view, the life sciences can contribute to solving all of these
problems. He used health care as an example of the changes going on today.
The world is growing older. For example, China has more than 110 million

2  Forecast by IMS Health, as reported in Reuters, Emerging market drug sales seen

$400 bln by 2020, February 8, 2008, available at uk.reuters.com/article/2008/02/27/

uk-pharmaceuticals-emerging-idUKL2777827620080227.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

38 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

people over the age of 65.3 This aging of the world population is creating
tremendous demands on the health care system.
In addition, Burrill sees the focus of health care today moving toward
chronic care as increasing progress is made against the diseases requiring
acute care. As a result, the health care system needs to reorient care from
hospital-based care toward wellness care where people will be sustained
over long periods of time. In the future, people will be treated personally,
predictably, and preemptively, which will dramatically change the oppor-
tunities for entrepreneurs. Health care will move from a cost-based system
to a value-based system in which it looks for opportunities to add quality
and value to life.
The integration of software and systems will drive wellness care. Rather
than going to a hospital to receive care, people will wear a “smart t-shirt”
with embedded sensors that will do all the monitoring that can be done
in an intensive-care unit. Patients will feed the results of biological sample
analyses into their cell phones before consulting with health care providers.
Such a world will give rise to an entirely new ecosystem of entrepreneurs
focused on the needs of the future, said Burrill.

Implications for Venture Capitalists

Despite the existence of technology clusters, new technologies can come
from anywhere, said Burrill. Madison, Wisconsin, for example, is a center
of biotechnology research and could become of a hotbed of commercial
applications of biotechnology.
Furthermore, capital to develop new technologies is available every-
where, not just in the established centers of technology development. Even
if venture capital is less available in the Midwest than elsewhere, the region
has strong angel investor networks, Burrill observed. He also emphasized
that venture capitalists may look at 100 to 200 deals a month and decide
to support only one. “Most entrepreneurs talk to three VCs and say, ‘Well,
the VCs aren’t interested.’ Maybe you have to talk to 100 of these guys to
find one. The tenacity necessary to ultimately find someone who’s going to
finance your company and build it is very important.”
Entrepreneurs need to be willing to fail. “In Silicon Valley, we expect
everybody to fail at least one or two times before they build a successful
company.”
Innovation has created extraordinary value, Burrill concluded. When
Genentech, which Burrill helped develop, was sold to Roche, it was valued
at $100 billion, which was more at the time than Pfizer, the biggest drug

3 Central Intelligence Agency, The World Fact Book 2011, see www.cia.gov/library/
publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 39

company in the world. “We created more value in 25 years than did some of
the biggest companies in the world.” This innovation can occur anywhere
in the world, so long as those regions are connected to the outside resources
that make innovation possible. But people and companies need to allocate
time to innovation. “You can’t just hope it happens in your spare time. You
have to make it a focus.”

ATTRACTING REGIONAL INVESTMENTS

The Ohio Third Frontier Program, which was created in 2002, “sup-
ports applied research and commercialization, entrepreneurial assistance,
early-stage capital formation, and expansion of a skilled talent pool that
can support technology-based economic growth.” It has been funded from
a variety of sources, including the state budget, tobacco settlement money,
and bonds approved by the voters. In May 2010, despite the recession,
Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a $700 million extension of the
program.4
Frank Samuel, Jr., President of Geauga Growth Partnership, Inc., an
economic development organization just outside Cleveland, pointed to
several lessons that can be drawn from the program’s success. First, biparti-
sanship has been essential for the program to be continued over time. Ohio
governors and legislators from both parties have supported the program,
partly because from the beginning it has been described and has operated
in a bipartisan fashion.

Frank Samuel, Jr.: “If you can get financial returns, you will get jobs and
economic growth and all the social benefits that come with it.”

The second important lesson concerns the importance of having pro-

posals for the program independently evaluated. The process has been
intensely competitive, but potential grantees have known that grants were
not being made on the basis of geographic fairness or political equity.
The third lesson is the importance of persistence. “Persistence without
bipartisanship or independent evaluation would have been probably use-
less, but in our case it proved exceptionally valuable.”

4  Additional information on the Ohio Third Frontier Program is available at www.

thirdfrontier.com/ThirdFrontierCalendar/Default.aspx.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

40 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

The Great Lakes Economic Initiative

Samuel also described his involvement in the Great Lakes Economic
Initiative, which was designed to establish a sustainable venture capital
strategy for the Great Lakes region. Before the initiative, deals were too
expensive in the region, said Samuel. As a result, companies based on dis-
coveries made in the area took shape elsewhere.
Based on interviews with people in the region conducted under the
auspices of the Brookings Institution, Samuel concluded that a $1 billion
to $2 billion family of funds could achieve several needed ends. It could
invest in the existing infrastructure of early stage venture funds. It would
also co-invest in the most successful companies in the portfolios of those
funds. And it could co-invest with a major fund from outside the region to
create a significant presence in the region.
This approach would strengthen the availability of venture funds in
every state in this region, said Samuel. It also would attract the kind of
management needed to make ideas work. The approach is premised on
financial returns, not on job creation or economic development. But job
creation and economic development would be the result. “If you can get
financial returns, you will get jobs and economic growth and all the social
benefits that come with it.”
An essential complement to the family of funds in the region is a sup-
port network of universities, technology transfer offices, research institutes,
philanthropies, state and local programs, and other entities that can support
economic growth and entrepreneurship. “They add value,” Samuel said.
“They are sufficiently searching in their criteria that the only projects that
get across their thresholds are really good and merit investment by people
who are making financial investments.”
The financial community is not constrained by geography. If the finan-
cial community believes that there is money to be made in the Midwest, it
will invest there. The challenge, said Samuel, is to figure out how to posi-
tion the Midwest as a single community, because then it will be “extremely
attractive to financial investors.”

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE STATEHOUSE

Tommy Thompson, former governor of the State of Wisconsin and
secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, delivered a
keynote speech at the workshop. He drew on his policy-making experience
to make several observations about the goals of the workshop, particularly
in the areas of education and economic development.
Thompson reviewed the recommendations of the original Gathering
Storm report, and observed that the troubling fiscal condition of the fed-

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 41

eral government in coming years will make it difficult to increase spending

on the K-12 education and research priorities the report identified. He
provided perspectives on the challenges the United States faces in reign-
ing in spending, on health care and the Medicare program in particular.
The difficulty of addressing these challenges is compounded by increased
polarization and gridlock in Congress. In Thompson’s view, the increased
ability of political parties to create legislative districts during redistricting
that reliably vote for one or the other party is contributing to this polariza-
tion and gridlock.
In the education area, Thompson touched on the contribution that
immigrant scientists and engineers make to U.S. innovation, an issue that
was emphasized in the original Gathering Storm report. He pointed to the
potential value of new approaches to immigration policy and education that
would allow and encourage talented foreign-born scientists and engineers
to stay in the United States after graduation and contribute to technology-
based innovation and the broader economy.
He observed that during his time as governor of Wisconsin, state
government was able to work with higher education, industry, and philan-
thropy to launch new university-based research programs that benefited the
state and local economies. Although such collaboration is more difficult in
the current environment, the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery itself, built
through the contributions of the state of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation, and John and Tashia Morgridge, stands as an encour-
aging example of what collaboration can accomplish.
Despite the serious challenges faced by the United States and by indi-
vidual states and regions in sustaining an innovative 21st-century economy,
Thompson expressed optimism that Americans will be able to come to-
gether and do what is necessary. He encouraged workshop participants to
continue to their efforts to advance the Gathering Storm goals of strength-
ening research, education and innovation.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Final Observations

D
uring the final session of the workshop, the participants engaged
in a free-wheeling discussion of the important points they heard
during the previous two days and steps to be taken next. Their
individual observations and suggestions, which have been organized ac-
cording to the four major sessions of the workshop, should not be taken
as a consensus of the workshop participants as a whole or of the planning
committee.

REVITALIZING K-12 SCIENCE AND MATH EDUCATION

• A coherent vision of the knowledge and skills that education should
provide to students can drive improvement.
• Future generations will learn in different ways than have people
in the past, which will require new and innovative approaches to
education.
• Metrics for educational achievement among students and teachers
can guide educational improvement.
• The informal STEM learning that occurs in such places as museums
can have a powerful effect on both knowledge and attitudes.
• An emphasis on results rather than just funding can increase the
interest of industry in contributing to K-12 education.
• Teachers need to be more adequately represented in discussions
of education, perhaps through electronic connections from the
schools where they are working.

43

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

44 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM

• Giving teachers continuing education credits for learning how to

apply for and manage grants could enable them to foster partner-
ships with the private sector.
• Teachers also need to spend time to learn through collaborative
lesson planning and professional development.
• The valley of death plagues education as well, because few organi-
zations exist that can develop promising innovations to the point
that they can make a sustainable difference in the classroom.

STRENGTHENING UNDERGRADUATE SCIENCE

AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION
• Revisions of undergraduate curricula across departments could
produce a better alignment of undergraduate STEM education and
workforce needs.
• Different states and regions have different needs that could be re-
flected in undergraduate STEM education.
• Two-year colleges are a critically important component of the
higher education system in the United States.
• Recognition and support of students who are skilled at bringing
others together and fostering achievement could produce major
educational dividends.
• If more people could experience science as a means of exploring
the unknown, they would better understand the process of bringing
discoveries to the market to create jobs and wealth.

BUILDING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS

• Precompetitive cooperation in building production capacity can
prepare the infrastructure needed for future production.
• Representatives from industry, K-12 education, and higher educa-
tion rarely meet together, yet, as demonstrated by the conference,
such meetings can be highly productive.
• Cooperation among academia, governments, and industry must
be based on trust and on an appreciation of the value that each
partner brings to the table.
• Partnerships succeed when all members of the partnership believe
it to be to their advantage to make the collaboration work.
• Sharing information can build the trust necessary for collabora-
tions to succeed.
• The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(EPSCoR), an initiative by the National Science Foundation and
other federal agencies to help build the research bases of jurisdic-

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

FINAL OBSERVATIONS 45

tions that have historically received relatively low levels of federal

research funding, provides a valuable model of collaboration to
achieve shared goals.
• Many barriers prevent faculty members from moving between
academia and the private sector, despite the importance of such
exchanges.
• Cooperation among a group of states that share common interests
can yield better outcomes than competition.

FOSTERING REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY

DEVELOPMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
• Innovation applies not just to products but to new approaches to
technology development and entrepreneurship, such as new financ-
ing models.
• Financing for early-stage prototypes can demonstrate the fea-
sibility of a product so that private industry will invest in its
commercialization.
• A simple message is needed to convey the importance of science,
innovation, and entrepreneurship to regional economies.
• Legislators tend to respond more positively to suggested solutions
to problems than they do to requests for funding.
• Fellowship programs for scientists within state and local govern-
ments can create a connection between science and policy that is
often missing.

Finally, Julie Underwood, the dean of the School of Education at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison, observed that the conversation begun at
the conference needs to be continuous, not a one-time event. “This conver-
sation needs to go on and on.”

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Appendix A

Workshop Agenda
Rising Above the Gathering Storm
Developing Regional Innovation Environments

Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

Madison, Wisconsin
September 20-22, 2011

Tuesday, September 20
Arrival and Opening Session

Noon Registration opens

1:00 pm Tours of Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (on the hour)
5:30 Reception
6:30 Dinner
6:50 Welcome from Workshop Chair / Judith Kimble, Henry
Vilas Professor and HHMI Investigator, University of
Wisconsin
6:55 Welcome to the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery / Carl
Gulbrandsen, Managing Director, Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation
7:00 Welcoming Remarks / John P. Morgridge and Tashia F.
Morgridge, Founding Trustees, Morgridge Institute for
Research
7:10 Evening keynote: Creating a Regional Innovation
Environment / Duane J. Roth, CEO, CONNECT
7:45 Discussion
8:30 Adjourn

47

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

48 APPENDIX A

Wednesday, September 21
Regional Innovation Environments: Key Elements and Examples

8:30 am Welcome/Introduction: Workshop Challenges and Goals /

Judith Kimble
8:35 Setting the Stage: Five Years of Rising Above the
Gathering Storm / C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr., Regents
Professor and former President, University of Maryland
8:45 Plenary Session One: Revitalizing K-12 Science and
Mathematics Education. Session chair, Tom Luce
8:45 The Foundation of Innovation: K-12 STEM Education /
Tom Luce, CEO, National Math and Science Initiative
9:00 Ensuring Quality: A New Framework for Science
Education Standards / Helen R. Quinn, Professor
Emerita, SLAC
9:15 Delivering Value: Why K-12 STEM Education Matters in
the Current Economy / Michael Lach, Special Assistant
for STEM Education, U.S. Department of Education
9:30 Discussion on Revitalizing K-12 STEM Education
10:00 BREAK
10:30 Plenary Session Two: Strengthening Undergraduate
Education in Science and Engineering. Session chair,
Lorrie A. Shepard, Distinguished Dean of Education
10:30 Why Changing How We Teach Introductory
Undergraduate Science Courses Is Critical for Our
Nation’s Future / Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief, Science,
and Professor Emeritus, Department of Biochemistry and
Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco
10:45 Innovation in Teaching Undergraduate Biology / Robin
Wright, Associate Dean, Department of Genetics, Cell
Biology and Development, University of Minnesota
11:00 Improving Undergraduate Science and Engineering
Education / Lorrie A. Shepard, Professor and
Distinguished Dean of Education, University of
Colorado, Boulder

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

APPENDIX A 49

11:15 Discussion on Strengthening Undergraduate STEM

Education
11:45 BREAK
Noon Working lunch: How can education help regional
innovation environments thrive?
What are the key strategies for implementation?

1:30 pm Plenary Session Three: Building Effective Partnerships

among Governments, Universities, Companies, and
Other Stakeholders for Innovation Environments. Session
chair, Arun Majumdar
1:30 The ARPA-E Model and the Innovation Ecosystem /
Arun Majumdar, Director, ARPA-E
1:45 Government-University-Industry Partnerships: Global
Innovation / C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr., Regents Professor
and Former President, University of Maryland
2:00 New Alliances among Government, Industry and
Universities / Mary Good, Donaghey University
Professor, University of Arkansas
2:15 Discussion on Building Effective Partnerships
2:45 BREAK
3:15 Plenary Session Four: Fostering Regional Technology
Development and Entrepreneurship. Session chair,
William J. Spencer, Chairman Emeritus, SEMATECH
3:15 Innovative Research Environments for Regional
Development / Sangtae Kim, Executive Director,
Morgridge Institute for Research
3:30 Fostering Entrepreneurship and Venture Investment in
Regions / Frank Samuel, Jr., President, Geauga Growth
Partnership, Inc
3:45 Venture Investment and Regional Development in the
Life Sciences Sector / G. Steven Burrill, CEO, Burrill &
Company
4:00 Discussion on Fostering Regional Technology and
Entrepreneurship
4:30 BREAK

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

50 APPENDIX A

5:30 Reception
6:00 Keynote speaker: Honorable Tommy Thompson,
Former Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services
6:45 pm Discussion
7:00 Working dinner: How can partnerships and
entrepreneurship help regional innovation environments
thrive? What are the key strategies for implementation?

Thursday, September 22
Summing Up and Next Steps

8:00 am Breakfast: (Panelists and table leaders to be organized

privately)
9:00 Panel discussion: Mary Good, Duane Roth, Helen Quinn
Discussion of Key Themes and Strategies for
Implementation
11:00 Adjourn

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of
Agenda Speakers and Planning
Committee Members

Bruce Alberts (Plenary Session Two Speaker, Planning Committee Member)

is a prominent biochemist with a strong commitment to the improvement
of science and mathematics education. He is editor-in-chief of Science and
professor emeritus of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of
California, San Francisco, to which he returned after serving two six-year
terms as the president of the National Academy of Sciences. He also serves
as one of President Obama’s first science envoys. He received his A.B. and
Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

G. Steven Burrill (Plenary Session Four Speaker) is chief executive officer

of Burrill & Company. He has been involved in the growth and prosperity
of the biotechnology industry for over 40 years. Prior to founding Burrill
& Company in 1994, he spent 28 years with Ernst & Young, directing and
coordinating the firm’s services to clients in the biotechnology/life sciences/
high technology/manufacturing industries worldwide. Mr. Burrill holds a
B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin.

Ruth A. David (Planning Committee Member) is president and CEO of

ANSER (Analytic Services Inc.), a not-for-profit corporation that provides
research and analytic support on national and transnational issues. She
was previously deputy director for Science and Technology at the Central
Intelligence Agency. A member of the National Academy of Engineering,
Dr. David received a B.S. from Wichita State University, and M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

51

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

52 APPENDIX B

Mary Good (Plenary Session Three Speaker, Final Panel) is the Donaghey
University Professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and serves
as the managing member for Venture Capital Investors, LLC. Dr. Good was
previously U.S. under secretary of Commerce for Technology and senior
vice-president of technology at Allied Signal, Inc. A member of the National
Academy of Engineering, she received a B.S. from the University of Central
Arkansas and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arkansas.

Carl E. Gulbrandsen (Welcome) is the managing director of Wisconsin

Alumni Research Foundation, the patent management organization for the
University of Wisconsin Madison. He joined WARF in 1997, after practic-
ing intellectual property law in private practice and with several high tech-
nology companies. He received his B.A. degree from St. Olaf College, and
his Ph.D. in physiology and J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sangtae Kim (Plenary Session Four Speaker) is executive director of the

Morgridge Institute for Research. Located on the University of Wisconsin-
Madison campus, the institute is intended to become the Midwest’s pre-
mier, private medical research institute. Prior to his appointment at the
Morgridge Institute, Dr. Kim served on the faculties at Purdue University
and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and also held positions in gov-
ernment and industry. A member of the National Academy of Engineer-
ing, Dr. Kim earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the California Institute
of Technology, and a Ph.D. in chemical and biological engineering from
Princeton University.

Judith Kimble (Workshop and Planning Committee Chair) is Henry Vilas

Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Departments of
Biochemistry and Medical Genetics and an investigator with the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Her research focuses on the molecular
regulation of animal development. Over the course of her career, she has
made seminal contributions in the area of how stem cells are regulated to
self-renew or differentiate. A member of the National Academy of Sciences,
Dr. Kimble earned her B.A. at the University of California-Berkeley and her
Ph.D. at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Michael Lach (Plenary Session One Speaker) is special assistant for STEM
Education, U.S. Department of Education. Previously, he was officer of
teaching and learning for Chicago Public Schools. Mr. Lach began his pro-
fessional career teaching high school biology and general science in New
Orleans in 1990 as a charter member of Teach for America. He earned a
bachelor’s degree in physics from Carleton College, and master’s degrees
from Columbia University and Northeastern Illinois University.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

APPENDIX B 53

Tom Luce (Plenary Session One Chair and Speaker) recently stepped down
as chief executive officer of the National Math and Science Initiative, which
was created in 2007 to implement the recommendations of Rising Above
the Gathering Storm by dramatically improving U.S. K-12 math and science
education. He previously served as U.S. assistant secretary of Education
for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. An attorney, Mr. Luce
received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Southern Methodist
University.

Arun Majumdar (Plenary Session Three Chair and Speaker) became the
first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
in October 2009. Dr. Majumdar was previously associate laboratory direc-
tor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and on the faculty of the
University of California, Berkeley. A member of the National Academy
of Engineering, he received his B.S. at the Indian Institute of Technology,
Bombay and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

John P. Morgridge (Welcome) is a founding trustee of the Morgridge Insti-

tute for Research, a trustee of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation,
and chairman emeritus of Cisco Systems. He was president/CEO of Cisco
from 1988 to 1995, growing the company from $5 million to over $1 bil-
lion in sales. He previously held top management positions at several other
information technology companies, and served in the U.S. Air Force. He
received a BBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.B.A.
from Stanford University.

Tashia F. Morgridge (Welcome) is a founding trustee of the Morgridge In-

stitute for Research and a member of the University of Wisconsin, School of
Education Board of Visitors. She and her husband John actively support a
range of education, conservation, and human services initiatives, including
generous support for the Morgridge Institute for Research and numerous
other initiatives at the University of Wisconsin. Mrs. Morgridge was previ-
ously a special education teacher. She received a B.S.E. from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. from Lesley College.

C.D. (Dan) Mote, Jr. (Setting the Stage, Plenary Session Three Speaker,
Planning Committee Member) is Regents professor and Glenn L. Martin
Institute Professor of Engineering at the University of Maryland. He served
as president of the University of Maryland from September 1998 to August
2010, spurring the university to lead the state in the development of its high
technology economy. A member of the National Academy of Engineering,
Dr. Mote received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in engineering, mechanics
from the University of California at Berkeley.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

54 APPENDIX B

Paul S. Peercy (Discussion Leader) is dean of the College of Engineering

at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was previously president of
SEMI/SEMATECH, a non-profit technical R&D consortium of U.S.-owned
and operated companies that comprise the equipment and supplier infra-
structure for the semiconductor industry. A member of the National Acad-
emy of Engineering, Dr. Peercy earned a B.S. from Berea College, and M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Wisconsin.

Helen R. Quinn (Plenary Session One Speaker, Final Panel) is a professor of

physics emerita at Stanford University where she also served as Education
and public outreach manager at the SLAC National Accelerator Labora-
tory. She chairs the National Research Council’s Board on Science Educa-
tion, and chaired the 2011 study A Framework for K-12 Science Education:
Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. A theoretical physicist
and National Academy of Sciences member, Dr. Quinn received her B.S.,
M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Stanford University.

Duane J. Roth (First Evening Keynote, Final Panel) is chief executive of-
ficer and member of the board of CONNECT, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to creating and sustaining the growth of innovative technology
and life science businesses in San Diego. Prior to joining CONNECT, he
founded Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., where he serves as chairman of
the board, and held senior management positions at Johnson & Johnson
and American Home Products (now Pfizer) operating companies. Mr. Roth
earned a B.S. from Iowa Wesleyan College.

Frank Samuel, Jr. (Plenary Session Four Speaker) is president of the Geauga
Growth Partnership, Inc., a business-led economic development organiza-
tion in Geauga County (northeastern Ohio). He was science and technology
advisor to the governor of Ohio from 2000–2007, where he was a princi-
pal architect of Ohio’s Third Frontier Project. Mr. Samuel is a graduate of
­Hiram College and Harvard Law School.

Lorrie A. Shepard (Plenary Session Two Chair and Speaker) is University

Distinguished Professor and dean of the School of Education at the Uni-
versity of Colorado at Boulder. Her research focuses on psychometrics and
the use and misuse of tests in educational settings. She was elected to the
National Academy of Education in 1992 and served as its president from
2005 to 2009. She earned her B.A. from Pomona College, and her M.A.
and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

William J. Spencer (Plenary Session Four Chair, Planning Committee Mem-

ber) is chairman emeritus of International SEMATECH, having served as

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

APPENDIX B 55

chairman of the SEMATECH and International SEMATECH boards, and

previously as SEMATECH’s president and chief executive officer. He also
held key research and management positions at Xerox Corporation, Bell
Laboratories, and Sandia National Laboratories. A member of the National
Academy of Engineering, Dr. Spencer received an A.B. degree from William
Jewell College an M.S. degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in physics from
Kansas State University.

The Honorable Tommy G. Thompson (Keynote Speaker) is currently a

partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Before entering the
private sector in 2005, Secretary Thompson enjoyed a long and distin-
guished career in public service, including service as U.S. secretary of
Health and Human Services and 14 years as governor of Wisconsin. Sec-
retary Thompson received both his B.S. and J. D. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.

Julie Underwood (Final Panel) is dean of the School of Education at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was previously dean of Miami Uni-
versity’s School of Education and Allied Professions. Dr. Underwood has
a bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology from DePauw Uni-
versity, a law degree from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in educational
leadership from the University of Florida.

Robin Wright (Plenary Session Two Speaker) is associate dean for Faculty
and Academic Affairs in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) and
professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of
Minnesota. Her major goal as associate dean is to catalyze the development
of the nation’s best biology curriculum. Her research focuses on the genet-
ics and physiology of cold adaptation in yeast. Dr. Wright earned a B.S.
degree from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon
University.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

Appendix C

Workshop Participant Roster

Paul Ahlquist Jane Belmore

Morgridge Institute for Research/ Edgewood College
HHMI
Ellen Bergfeld
Bruce Alberts American Society of Agronomy
Science Magazine
Anthony Boccanfuso
Kristine Andrews University-Industry Demonstration
UW System Administration Partnership

Tony Armstrong Eric Brunsell

Indiana University University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

Tom Arrison G. Steven Burrill

The National Academies Burrill & Company

Lauren Baker John Burris

Milwaukee Public Schools Morgridge Institute for Research

Linda Bartlett Edward Clarke

New Era Madison Area Technical College

Jay Bayne Harvey Cohen

Milwaukee Institute Morgridge Institute for Research

57

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

58 APPENDIX C

Marta Collier Paul Fowler

Arkansas Science & Technology Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable
Authority Technology

Kevin Conroy Adam Gamoran

Exact Sciences Corporation University of Wisconsin

Kathe Crowley Conn Richard George

Aldo Leopold Nature Center Great Lakes Higher Education
Corp.
Maria Dahlberg
Pennsylvania State University Mary Good
University of Arkansas-Little Rock
James Dahlberg
Morgridge Institute for Research Peter Goodwin
University of Idaho
Mary Darrow
Iowa State University J. Ian Gray
Michigan State University
Troy Dassler
Wisconsin Alumni Research Carl Gulbrandsen
Foundation Morgridge Institute for Research

Lorelei Davis Mary Gulbrandsen

Michigan State University Fund for Wisconsin Scholars

Ian Davison Jennifer Harper-Taylor

Central Michigan University Siemens Foundation

Paul DeLuca, Jr. Charles Hasemann

University of Wisconsin Michigan State University

Tim Donohue Laura Heisler

University of Wisconsin Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation
Michael Ferris
University of Wisconsin Katy Heyning
School of Education
Kevin Finneran University of
The National Academies Wisconsin-Whitewater

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

APPENDIX C 59

Richard Hichwa Pat Lipton

University of Iowa Morgridge Institute for Research

Robert Hoar Miron Livny

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Morgridge Institute for Research

Theodore Imes Tom Luce

Northrop Grumman Electronic National Math & Science Initiative
Systems
Arun Majumdar
Jorge Jose ARPA-E
Indiana University
Ernie Micek
Michael Kaspar Morgridge Institute for Research
National Education Association
Susan Millar
Terry Kelly Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
Aldo Leopold Nature Center
Gary Mirka
Aaron Kershner Iowa State University
University of Wisconsin
John Morgridge
Ryan Kershner Morgridge Institute for Research
Thermo Fisher
Tashia Morgridge
Kurt Kiefer Morgridge Institute for Research
Wisconsin Department of Public
Instruction C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr.
University of Maryland
Sangtae Kim
Morgridge Institute for Research Daniel Nerad
Madison Metropolitan School
Judith Kimble District
University of Wisconsin
Peter Nordgren
Betsy Kippers University of Wisconsin-Superior
Wisconsin Education Association
Council Rhonda Norsetter
Chancellor’s Office
Michael Lach University of Wisconsin
U.S. Department of Education

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Developing Regional Innovation Environments: A Workshop Summary

60 APPENDIX C

Paul Peercy Rupa Shevde

University of Wisconsin Morgridge Institute for Research

Terry Potter Tatsuya Shinkawa

Morgridge Institute for Research NEDO

Helen Quinn William J. Spencer

Board on Science Education SEMATECH
National Research Council
Tom Spitz
Fred Robertson Settlers Bank
Morgridge Institute for Research
Becky Splitt
Roy Romer Study Blue Inc.
The College Board
Tommy G. Thompson
Duane Roth Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
CONNECT LLP

Bob Rothschild Lorin Toepper

Morgridge Institute for Research Madison Area Technical College

Sara Rothschild Julie Underwood

Morgridge Institute for Research School of Education
University of Wisconsin
Carmel Ruffolo
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee William Vajda
University of Wisconsin-Parkside City of Marquette, Michigan

Steven Salter David Ward

Project Lead the Way-Wisconsin University of Wisconsin

Frank Samuel, Jr. Robin Wright

Geauga Growth Partnership University of Minnesota

Gary Sandefur Tom Zinnen

University of Wisconsin-Madison University of Wisconsin-Madison
Extension
Lorrie Shepard
University of Colorado at Boulder

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.