Sandy Baruah, the U.S. Commerce Department’s assistant secretary for economic development and a University alumnus, was at ease as he joked with the top brass of the local business and University research community during a visit Wednesday.
“I really applaud what you are all doing,” he said during a luncheon at the RiverFront Research Park. “I’m proud to be a Duck – especially because we’re 4-0 and we’ll be
5-0 soon.”
Briefly addressing the assembled panel and leaders, Baruah, who told the group he has been a Republican since his college days, painted a rosy picture of the current U.S. economic status and expounded the realities of the 21st century’s global economy.
“We as a nation have taken some pretty significant hits,” he said, listing off a series of economic derailments that included terror attacks, natural disasters and market crises. “Despite all of that, our economy is surprisingly strong.”
Baruah credited President Bush’s tax cuts and policies with increasing collected tax
revenue and keeping the economy on-track.
“We are living in a global economy. Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, is right: The world is flat,” he said. “Our
competition comes from anyone in the world with a good education, a good idea and an Internet connection.”
He credited the state with working hard to be internationally competitive and innovative.
Also during Baruah’s impromptu half-day visit he met with University President Dave Frohnmayer, toured the University’s research park and met with local businesses hatched through partnerships between private businesses and academic research – a model he praised repeatedly.
“Individual components of competition can no longer exist independently. It’s no longer a recipe for success,” he said. “Those institutions that don’t change are really at risk.”
Local city officials and University representatives had worked hard to present a cutting edge impression of the region’s business climate.
Rich Linton, University vice president for Research and Graduate Studies, praised the fact that the roundtable discussion had nearly equal attendance by members of the University, private business and governmental organizers.
“I think that says a lot about our community’s integration,” he said.
A panel of RiverFront Research Park tenants spotlighted such cooperation by featuring speakers from a biofuel production and distribution start-up, a neuroimaging equipment manufacturer, a next-generation educational testing developer and a nanotechnology research firm. All had used or were using the University’s research park facilities to get off the ground.
SeQuential Biofuels CFO Doug Campoli, described how a business that had started with the company’s co-founder nearly blowing himself to pieces while attempting to make biofuel in his garage had grown into the state’s largest biofuel distribution company.
“There was no market, no place to manufacture and no place to distribute to,” he said, describing the conditions the company faced in 2002 when it first moved into the park’s Innovation Center.
Today the company runs the state’s first exclusive biofuel retail station, a showcase for sustainable technologies, and produces nearly one million barrels per year.
The Economic Development Administration, for which Baruah works,
distributes federal funding to universities to create similar research parks in conjunction with national laboratories.
The University, which owns the park outright, is planning to move ahead with the addition of a new 60,000 square foot building, said RiverFront Research Park
Director Diane Wiley.
“One quarter of that facility will be dedicated to technological innovation,”
Wiley said.
Baruah, who grew up in Salem, received a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Political Science from the University in 1986 and later earned a Masters of Business Administration from Willamette University. He joined the Bush administration in 2001 and was confirmed by Congress for his current position in December 2005.
“It’s good to come home to my alma mater and to see the potential being realized,” he said.
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