“Am I allowed here?” asked former UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student, Mark Weinberg, during the reception at the end of the first day of the Summer Meeting of the Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Economic Prosperity in Hunt Library on Monday.
Weinberg, now Dean of the School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University, was one of many representatives from public universities across the country who convened to discuss effective practices in advancing the role of university in technology-based economic development.
Several features of Hunt Library were showcased to the attendees. Weinberg found the graphics lab to be the most interesting part of the tour. The presenter for this section of the tour, Michael Young, discussed a game being researched at NC State that records and tracks intricate aspects of player behavior in order to discover trends.
“I was interested in the extent to which you could model company startup behavior, it would be interesting to use [the game’s model] to model public sector strategy around a startup company,” Weinberg said.
The tour highlighted focused on three areas, technology-based innovation, industry research partnerships and community-based economic development.
This was the first year that CICEP was hosted by a university and it gave NC State the opportunity to highlight certain aspects of the Centennial Campus.
“This is just great meeting where we can bring people together where they can see what we’re doing here and we can learn from each other about what each of us brings to the table,” said Woodson.
Woodson said the unique feature of Hunt Library is its focus on engagement. Woodson is at the end of his two-year term as chair of CICEP.
Thomas White, Director of the Economic Development Partnership at NC State, said the main thing that NC State hoped to demonstrate was how partnership-oriented it is.
“I think they see that’s a reality, a lot of times you express that desire but we actually do it — ‘think and do’ — we live the motto from the chancellor on down, he embeds that value in what we do whether it’s industrial extension,” White said.
White said that even though Centennial Campus is a great resource, the people to make the difference.
“Even with that physical plant you still have to have people to interact, you have to be welcoming and then the other part is that you have to be comfortable going off campus too; we have to be sure we can go to downtown Raleigh or rural areas,” White said.
