Clemson University President Jim Barker often doodles when he thinks, to give ideas and concepts concrete shape and substance. What emerged from one of those recent brainstorming sessions was a map of South Carolina highlighting Clemson's widening statewide presence and its growing role in economic development. The hand-drawn sketch featured a series of purple squares designating locations of traditional agriculture-oriented Research and Education Centers (RECs), orange dots showing relatively new economic development initiatives, and a Tillman Hall icon to indicate the main campus.

The idea behind the doodle was this: Clemson is re-inventing—in fact, improving—the century-old, land-grant model of economic development.

"I started with the existing RECs because one point we need to remember is this: There is nothing new about Clemson University's involvement in the economic development of South Carolina. It is the reason we exist as an institution," he said. "When Thomas Green Clemson talked about his vision of a college to teach scientific agriculture, he was making plans for the economic development of the state.

"Throughout our history we have supplied the educated manpower that helped our economic base expand from growing and weaving cotton, to manufacturing films and fibers, to assembling automobiles," Barker said. "And we have helped South Carolina grow and progress by directly advising agri-business and industry on best practices for everything from seed selection to energy conservation to tourism planning and management."

Today, South Carolina faces a different kind of challenge caused by the twin pressures of rapid technological change and globalization. A broad coalition of business and political leaders is again dedicated to the task of bringing more and better-paying jobs to South Carolina. The Palmetto Institute has set a goal of increasing the personal wealth of every citizen of the state. Currently, South Carolinians earn only 82 cents for every dollar earned by the average American Ü and the gap is widening.

In the second quarter of 2005, South Carolina ranked 50th in the nation in job growth and had America's 6th highest unemployment rate. Neighboring North Carolina Ü despite losing more textile jobs over the last five years—had healthier job growth and lower unemployment.

The reason? North Carolina's focus on quality higher education. As Microsoft Founder Bill Gates said, "There is an almost perfect correlation between the number of good jobs in a region and the strength of its universities." North Carolina prepared for the day when textile jobs would leave the region, just as they had left New England to head decades earlier. The state leveraged its research universities to build a high-technology, knowledge-based economy.

It is a well-proven method. According to the Milken Institute, the healthiest state economies have been—and will continue to be—those where business has spun off from and clustered around excellent research universities to create concentrated, self-sustaining economic activity in a specific sector.

"The key word is 'create,'" Barker says. "There's a subtle but very important difference between technology development and technology creation. One has to do with applying technology to problems identified by existing industries or the federal government or other partners. We're experts at that. We have over 100 years of experience at that.

"The other involves creating new products and technologies through innovation, then commercializing them and bringing them to market. And while we've been successful in that role in some areas of agriculture—developing new types of plants and production or harvesting technologies, in many ways Clemson is fairly new to this arena."

This is why the path Clemson is now on is, in one sense, an extension of the traditional mission while also being a very different animal altogether. In one, the university is an important part of the process. In the other, the university is the heart of the process.

In one, the important economic assets are tangible. Land. Water. Power. Oil and minerals. Crops—trees, food and fiber. In the other, other important assets are the intangibles. Ideas. Creativity. Patents. Copyrights and intellectual property.

In its white paper on the State Technology and Science Index, the Milken Institute said "Human capital is the most important intangible asset of a regional or state economy."

By that, they meant brainpower:

• a well-trained workforce
• a cadre of well-educated professionals
• top-flight scientists and researchers, and the innovations they generate

And that brings us back to the new map of South Carolina—a map showing how Clemson is leading a new era in economic development—a map that starts not at CU-ICAR or at a REC but at Tillman Hall.

"The most important contribution we make to the economy of South Carolina is a Clemson graduate," Barker says. "The most important thing we can do for the South Carolina economy is to prevent the "best and brightest" from leaving our state to study, settle, work, build businesses and pay taxes elsewhere. We also need to attract the best students from other states to come here for the same reasons."

With one of the nation's most generous scholarship programs and a top-35 academic ranking, Clemson is attracting more than its fair share of the "best and brightest." In competition with every other institution in South Carolina—public and private—Clemson this fall enrolled 35 percent of all the Palmetto Fellows. If we look only at those students who enrolled in public colleges and universities, 44 percent chose Clemson—a 24 percent increase over just last year."

That's why Clemson's economic develop strategy doesn't begin with research and graduate education but with improvements in the undergraduate curriculum, with

• a new core curriculum that focuses on competencies (such as communications skills, critical thinking and ethical judgment) rather than a list of courses,
• enhanced support systems such as the Academic Success Center, classroom technology, and living-learning communities, and
• value-added enrichment opportunities including study-abroad, service learning, and undergraduate research.

The second major part of the strategy was the designation of eight emphasis areas, including many that align directly with South Carolina's leading industrial sectors, such as automotive and transportation technology, advanced materials, and biotechnology and biomedical sciences.

"Research-oriented emphasis areas were chosen because they met three criteria: existing faculty strength, alignment with state needs, and opportunities for significant external funding," says Chris Przirembel, vice president for research and economic development. "Each represents an area where we believe we can build internationally competitive programs."

After strengthening the undergraduate base and selecting a few areas of focus, Clemson's economic development strategy needed just one more ingredient: funding. South Carolina's General Assembly stepped up and, in just three years, enacted four major legislative initiatives that support research focused on economic development:

• Research Centers for Economic Excellence Act (2002)
• Economic Development Bond Act (2002)
• Research University Infrastructure Bond Act (2004)
• Innovation Centers Act (2005)

These legislative initiatives have provided funding for faculty endowed chairs that will help Clemson (and other research universities) recruit senior talent, and has helped build research infrastructure, such as buildings and equipment. These initiatives have helped expand the footprint of Clemson into a new map inspired by Jim Barker's doodle Ü one that shows traditional RECs and an equal number of initiatives that have emerged or grown with the help of new state funding, including:

• the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research;
• the Advanced Materials research cluster at the Clemson Research Park in Anderson County;
• the Clemson Greenville Hospital System alliance in bioengineering and biomedical science;
• the Clemson/Greenwood Genetic Center alliance in biotechnology;
• the Clemson University Restoration Institute in North Charleston, and the Clemson Architecture Center, and Clemson/MUSC Alliance in bioengineering, in Charleston.

"This is the new footprint of Clemson University in South Carolina—reaching from the mountains to the sea, and following a well-known path of going where the industries are," Barker said. "We learned through our land-grant model that we can't sit up here in Pickens County and address the issues facing industries and communities on the other side of the state. We have to go where they live, because that's where there is potential for development of a strong economic cluster. It is not the easiest route, but it is the most effective."

But Clemson has improved the model, and in many ways, the new initiatives are case studies that will shape the continuing evolution of traditional REC's—retrofitting the 19th century land-grant model to serve the needs of a 21st century knowledge-based economy.

In these case studies, the components of success are:

• alignment with established research programs and faculty strength
• targeted graduate degree programs
• a strong focus on collaboration
• the availability of land to accommodate spin-off companies and attract new industries that want to be in close proximity to faculty and graduate students
• and finally—the endowed chairs program, which helps attract senior, highly credentialed faculty who can quickly establish a core group of colleagues and graduate students.

But because this new model begins with a foundation of strong undergraduate programs and engages existing RECs, it can be undermined by continued cuts to core teaching and outreach budgets. While state funding for research related to economic development soared, Clemson lost a fourth of its academic and public service state funding to budget cuts. Significant tuition hikes helped stabilize the academic budget, while massive retirement incentives and restructuring saved public service activities, However, neither continued double-digit fee hikes nor program cuts is considered a viable long-term strategy.

"Increased base funding for academics and outreach, coupled with the state's proven commitment to scholarships and research incentives, will secure the kind of future we want for South Carolina—with more, better-paying jobs, an outstanding quality of life, and affordable and accessible educational opportunities," Barker said.

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