Big Ten means a chance to grow

Here come the innovators, the creative thinkers and the job-creators of the Information Age.

At least the potential exists for Nebraska to attract and keep more such people now that it belongs to the Big Ten Conference. The state could score on the factory floor and in the office cubicle as well as on the field of athletic competition.

Conference membership could mean more research dollars for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and more gifted students and faculty members. That, in turn, could translate into graduates who start businesses and into research with commercial applications, creating jobs, generating tax money and generally lifting the region's economy.

Certainly, joining the Big Ten is an opportunity, not a guarantee. But conference enthusiasts and those less enamored agree that it can be an important piece of the economic puzzle.

Prem Paul, vice chancellor for research at UNL, said that in 20 or 30 years Nebraskans will look back at 2010 as a significant year in the state's economic development.

“I think this is really a golden time in the history of Nebraska,” he said.

Barry Kennedy, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said businesspeople already are talking about the possibilities of closer connections with companies in Big Ten states.

“People say they'd like to come here, and they've heard a lot about the game-day experience at Nebraska. If we can get them here, then we have a chance to talk to them about other things as well,” Kennedy said.

The enhanced status of belonging to the Big Ten is hard to document, but it's real, he said, although the economic benefit will take time to develop.

“If you're willing to look at a 20-year cycle, I think it could be significant. It's putting Nebraska into a new arena, a new wealth of partners, that if we do our part and we work at it, we should be able to benefit.”

But it doesn't insulate a state from larger economic forces. Michigan and Ohio, for example, are in the midst of deep and long-term decline.

And Nebraska still faces many “musts” to reach a golden future.

It must attract top-notch professors and convince more students to see Nebraska as a career launching pad. Professors must make discoveries and attract financial support from government and the private sector.

Bruce Johnson, a UNL economist whose Ph.D. is from the Big Ten's Michigan State, called joining the conference a “wedge that gives you a little bit of an uptick from the plane you might be on.”

Johnson said the degree he earned in 1975 “was a huge plus. It opened up doors that led me to being here, no doubt about it.”

But UNL had better have the substance and relevance in its academic programs, he warned, and it better have the placement opportunities for graduates that are comparable to other universities.

“We're looking at a lot of pieces to assemble a puzzle that will get us toward a solid future,” he said.

Jo Potuto, a UNL law professor and faculty representative to the Big 12, said a big economic impact is possible but not certain. “Everything is so fresh and new, it's hard to say.”

Although the Big Ten is unique in its role of encouraging faculty collaboration among campuses, it will take time for UNL to benefit.

The university must first join the Big Ten's academic consortium, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Then there's the lengthy process of finding research ideas, of collaboration, writing proposals for highly competitive grants, carrying out research and, if possible, turning discoveries into businesses.

That said, joining the consortium will be “a major advantage to the faculty and researchers,” including those in fields where university discoveries have commercial potential, Potuto said.

UNL's nonprofit business development affiliate, NUtech Ventures, already has tapped Big Ten connections in its quest to turn research discoveries into businesses, including its 85-year-old counterpart at the University of Wisconsin.

“We've used a lot of the Big Ten schools as an aspiration group of where we'd like to be and get this program up to that level,” said Marc LeBaron, chairman and CEO of Lincoln Industries and a board member of NUtech. “I think it's going to make the program stronger, just because of more interaction with universities that have top research programs. You're within the same conference, with better access.”

The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha also anticipates closer relationships with Big Ten medical schools, all “research powerhouses,” said Tom Rosenquist, vice chancellor for research at UNMC.

“Part of the secret of getting federal funding is to have large-scale projects that incorporate experts from a variety of sources,” Rosenquist said. “Getting into a group like that in a formal way will facilitate all kinds of interactions.

“There are probably things going on at any of those medical centers that we just haven't even thought about, that we don't even know about, because we don't have that kind of formal exchange of information and ideas on a regular basis.”

The exchange of benefits with Big Ten medical centers will be two-way, Rosenquist said. Nebraska's highly ranked disciplines include cancer research and treatment, transplant programs and infectious-disease research.

Rosenquist, whose job includes recruiting faculty members, said joining the Big Ten is “another high card in the deck that helps us.”

It also could mean a “quantum leap” in research grants, which in turn can result in jobs, he said.

Some studies estimate that every $1 million in university grants generates 25 or 30 jobs in the community.

Since 1999, UNMC has more than tripled its grant funds, to $114 million. If UNL reaches that milestone in the coming decade, the formula would yield more than 4,000 jobs in Lincoln, plus others at the Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha.

The Big Ten affiliation also might attract businesses with no direct university connections, said Graham Mitenko, an associate professor of finance at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

He earned his MBA at Minnesota State University, not a Big Ten school but in a Big Ten state.

“I think there's huge upside potential,” he said. “All of a sudden you're part of the club. People say, ‘We can put a branch plant in Nebraska, we can expand that way.' We're not looked on as an outpost anymore.”

The “Big Ten mystique” extends even beyond U.S. borders, Mitenko said.

“It's a big move forward for the university. Now the state has to capitalize on this. The university can't do it all on its own,” he said.

Rutgers University Professor Frank Popper became notorious in Nebraska when, in the 1980s, he predicted that vast stretches of the Great Plains would revert to a “buffalo commons” as small towns withered because of weak economies.

Popper now says that joining the Big Ten could strengthen UNL, and strong universities have become “the new factories, the new source of economic development.”

With a Big Ten university, Nebraska should be able to attract a large number of people in the “creative class,” he said. Those are the thinkers and doers whose ideas align with the growing Information Age and who will shape the future.

Seattle, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Austin, Texas, are among cities that have grown as a result of attracting such people, he said.

To create lots of jobs, though, UNL must excel in high-dollar academic fields such as science, engineering, computers, medicine and applied fields of study such as urban planning, marketing and public health, he said.

“You want the person,” Popper said, “who's not looking to go to Yale but wants to find a place where they can do what they want and make a zillion dollars, or at least change the world.”

Contact the writer: 444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com

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