Agri News (6/30/04)
By Janet Kubat Willette
WINONA, Minn. -- The University of Minnesota is a leader in organic research, but has room to improve.
That's among the findings Jim Riddle discovered in a survey he conducted while serving as a University of Minnesota endowed chair in agricultural systems from May 2003 to June 2004.
The U of M has the nation's largest and oldest organic research project in Elwell Agroecology Farm at South West Research and Outreach Center near Lamberton. There, 120 acres are certified organic. This year, the U of M expanded its organic research to 13 acres of flax at Southern Research and Outreach Center in Waseca, and is seeking money to convert half of the dairy herd at West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris to organic production.
The U of M is also considering other organic research projects, including poultry, seed crop breeding and horticulture, Riddle said.
The more than 200 people who spent about 30 minutes apiece completing the extensive online survey said they need more systems research from the U of M. Respondents want whole farm research, he said, not just research evaluating one type of parasite, for example. That makes research more challenging, but also more relevant.
Another issue that was raised repeatedly was the lack of infrastructure for an organic farming industry, Riddle said. Organic farmers lack certified organic feed mills, veterinarians with an understanding of organic treatment techniques, and certified organic livestock processing plants.
The U of M has taken time to listen to organic farmers and learn about their needs, Riddle said. The U of M has partnered with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture Utilization Research Institute to provide an information exchange program for organic producers, the Minnesota Organic Farmers' Information Exchange.
Riddle spoke at the Land Stewardship Project's southeast annual meeting Saturday. About a hundred people attended the event that included a tour of Hidden Stream Farm near Elgin, a hog roast and presentations on sustainable farming.
On the Web:
Minnesota Organic Farmers' Information Exchange, http://mofie.coafes.umn.edu/
Star Tribune (6/14/04)
By Frank Cerra
Imagine a future in which health care is truly about health rather than illness. Imagine a health care team in which nurses, physicians, pharmacists and even dentists work together on your behalf to improve the health of you and your family. And now, imagine that in the future, the overall costs of this health care are lower than current systems of delivering care.
That is the future we imagine and are working to develop at the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center, home to the Medical School, Colleges of Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine and Schools of Dentistry, Nursing and Public Health. As one of the nation's most comprehensive Academic Health Centers, we are well-positioned to prepare the next generation of health professionals who understand and value not only their own education but also that of the other health disciplines they will rely on in practice.
But our ability to continue delivering on that future of great potential took a direct hit this year when our public partners in the Legislature failed to pass a bonding bill. Our work takes place in an environment that benefits from rich support from the community and commitment from the faculty. Yet the campus' physical environment needs upkeep and renovation. We cannot educate tomorrow's physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians and public health professionals in yesterday's classrooms.
As head of the Academic Health Center, I've been challenged by my colleagues in the private sector to think and act more like a business person. After all, this is a $650 million enterprise with many of the same business issues found in the private sector. We have human resources issues, including a salary freeze that will be lifted only at the end of this fiscal year and that makes it difficult to retain valuable faculty. We have customers to serve, including the clinics and hospitals who hire our graduates; the people of Minnesota, who expect well-prepared health professionals; and our students, who expect a top-flight education that will prepare them for practice. And we have facilities to manage, maintain and improve.
This year, a smart businessperson would take a look at our fraying facilities that desperately need maintenance and make the capital investments needed to meet the expectations of those customers. Interest rates are at historic lows, and now is the time to invest in capital assets. But we can't take that action alone. Despite having considerable accountability for the outcomes of this enterprise, neither I nor any other leader at this university has the ability to raise the capital needed to invest in core maintenance without the action of our historic partners -- the state Legislature.
There is a cost to this delay -- and we have a recent example to illustrate this fact. The Translational Research Facility taking shape on campus was delayed a year when the previous governor vetoed our bonding authority. That one-year delay added $1 million to the overall cost of the project -- money that wasn't provided when the bonding was finally approved. To cover the costs of the building, we cut funding from other important areas. For a relatively modest investment of $18 million, the health sciences educational facilities on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses would gain major improvements.
The current delay in bonding could increase the cost of rehabbing classrooms by 20 percent. Those expenses either will be added to the bonding request we make of our state partners or will be absorbed by our strapped academic programs.
These are not decisions a businessperson is forced to make.
The enterprise we run is designed to position and prepare Minnesota for the future. That's what this strong public research university accomplishes on behalf of this state. Unlike a business, however, our public status requires us to partner with elected leaders to accomplish many of our goals.
This year, we managed our portion of the partnership by graduating nearly 750 new doctors, pharmacists, veterinarians, nurses, dentists and public health professionals. Our faculty competed successfully for $260 million in research funding that benefits Minnesota and its economy. And our clinics cared for about 638,000 patients, including nearly 44,000 that were cared for at our Veterinary Medical Center.
Our elected partners in the Legislature, however, didn't manage their portion of the work portfolio. The failure to act on needed capital investments would, in the private sector, lead to a dissolution of the partnership. For us, that's not an option we can or would pursue.
What this institution needs to meet the hopes of the future is elected leaders who are truly interested in a viable partnership with us. The health care sector and the future health of this state are too important for any other alternative.
Frank Cerra is senior vice president for health sciences at the Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota.
Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
June 12, 2004
University of Minnesota officials reluctantly passed a 2004-05 budget filled with tuition increases and cuts Friday, and then defiantly signaled that they are ready for a very public fight over further cuts in state funding.
The $2.6-billion budget includes tuition and fee increases for undergraduates that range from 12 to 14 percent as well as staff cuts. While most of the cuts are largely invisible to the public -- a secretary here, a professor there, 60 cows sold from an agriculture program -- officials said that if state funding is cut again, the kind of budget slashing that hit the University of Minnesota Extension Service last year and that raised hackles all over the state is just the beginning.
"The people of this state don't understand [that] we are approaching an emergency," said Regent Frank Berman. "The university is being placed in jeopardy, real jeopardy, for the lack of support we're getting from the state. We are going to start losing programs that the state needs and wants."
"...We can't keep having budgets with salary freezes, we can't keep [raising tuition 14 percent] and hope our students have access. ... The time has come to recognize that this institution and what it stands for is being placed in jeopardy."
President Robert Bruininks said Minnesota's health care system would be "third world" without the physicians, dentists, veterinarians and pharmacists produced by the university. A plan to produce more pharmacists on the Duluth campus has been held back because money to add facilities were in this year's bonding bill, which never passed the Legislature. And Bruininks bristled at what he called misconceptions that the university did not suffer much when the state cut base funding to the school by $185 million for the 2003-05 biennium.
Bruininks said that unlike some state workers, who got experience-based raises during the first year of the biennium, university employees took a true pay freeze and paid higher health insurance premiums as well. Unlike the state, he said, which pushed costs into the future to deal with its deficit, the school took the pain now.
"What we did not do was rely on reserves to balance this budget. I promised you last spring . . . that we would not use the easy way out," he said.
Tuition pressure
Two-thirds of the coming tuition increase is due to the state budget reduction "and nothing else," Bruininks said.
"We face very serious problems," he said. "I don't think we should be off the hook; we still will be setting priorities and making choices." He said the school needs to work out a "renewed partnership with the state of Minnesota, a partnership that recognizes that the university is absolutely critical to the state's future."
The state's general fund appropriation of $550 million in the new budget bumps state support to the university back near 1998 levels. Tuition, on the other hand, is at an all-time high. While half of Big Ten universities have not set tuition and fees for next fall, on the Twin Cities campus those costs for resident students likely will remain third among public schools on the list, behind only Penn State and Michigan. The school has begun a campaign to raise money for endowed merit scholarships that would increase the number of students receiving privately funded scholarships from 4,500 to more than 6,700.
What happens to tuition in the future depends on funding, Bruininks said. "There may be no way to shield students from large tuition increases," he said. But university Chief Financial Officer Richard Pfutzenreuter said the school is running out of less drastic options.
"We had a hard freeze on salaries, and we can't do that again," he said. "We pushed health care costs down to employees, and we can't do that again. Then we're back to high tuition increases, and we can't keep doing that. So what are our tools for next year?"
Officials worry that if salaries are frozen again, faculty members will begin to leave. About 550 jobs at the university were eliminated during this biennium, through layoffs and not filling vacancies. About 200 of those positions were cut from University Services, where janitors are cleaning more buildings, jobs have been consolidated and technology is doing some work that people once did. The four-campus university system has almost 19,000 employees.
Bruininks said that if funding forces more cuts, the school might have to begin "planned abandonment" of some university units.
The board also passed a dramatically reduced capital budget for 2004-05. Hopes for almost $188 million in renovation and health and safety improvements to university buildings were lost when legislators didn't pass a bonding bill. The $44.2 million budget includes some classroom and lab renovations, window replacements, air conditioning improvements and the like. The board resolution includes a clause allowing other items to be added if a legislative special session yields a bonding bill.
A job review
In his second annual job review, regents praised Bruininks for his handling of the school's budget difficulties and said he has made the school better despite those problems. They said they want him to develop "a new funding model" for the school and to make a renewed effort to convey the university's importance to Minnesotans. Bruininks got high marks for building strong and trusting relationships both inside and outside the university, for focusing on the school's academic strengths and building programs in cutting-edge areas, and for managing controversies such as the student riots and the issue of guns on campus.
The board also appointed neuroscience, neurology and psychiatry Prof. Apostolos Georgopoulos to a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair, a high honor for faculty members. The McKnight chairs give recipients about $50,000 in new research support each year.
Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
June 12, 2004
The University of Minnesota is saving roughly $16 million a year by going to self-insurance rather than staying with the state's health insurance program, a Board of Regents committee was told Thursday.
Last year, the university dropped out of the state plan after 34 years of participation because school officials thought they could save money and offer more health plan choices to employees through a self-designed plan. Annual out-of-pocket costs for employees went up. But the average employee contribution of 20 percent of the cost of their health care premium is less than the 25 percent that the average Minnesotan pays, officials said.
"I would say the program is stable and reaching its goals," said Frank Cerra, the university's senior vice president for health sciences.
To save on drug costs, the school is exploring the possibility of starting its own pharmacy on the Twin Cities campus to serve employees, which Cerra said could yield significant savings.
This year, the cost of self-insurance is projected at almost $124 million, with employees paying about $23 million of that amount in premiums. The total does not include co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses for employees.
As a group, university employees are healthier than the general insured population but have a higher rate of certain ailments because they tend to be older, Cerra said.
The university started offering flu immunizations in the fall, has a campus walking program, and is exploring other ways to emphasize prevention, screening and education, and to reward employees for losing weight, eating well and generally watching their health.
Below is a great article that talks about how research at the University is moving into the marketplace.
St. Paul Pioneer Press 6/9/04
Getting U ideas to marketplace
DAVE BEAL
The University of Minnesota's romance with the state's entrepreneurial community, a relationship marked by countless twists and turns over the years, appears to be entering a stage of more-intense commitment.
A few measures of progress:
• The Carlson School of Management's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has embarked on a summer-long study that could lead the university to strengthen its commitment to business development.
• David Hamilton, the U's top research administrator, has emerged as a key supporter of the center and other efforts to commercialize university technology.
• The Minnesota Business Partnership just added U President Robert Bruininks to its ranks. That's a first for the business group, which has never had a member from a public institution. The desire of both the partnership and the university for closer ties dictated that move.
• The university's Office of Business Development will move this fall from the U's East Bank Campus to the school's new technology incubator at St. Paul's Westgate office complex.
The development office helps university-related startups get off the ground. At the incubator, it will be closer than ever to the state's entrepreneurs, startup funders and top researchers.
Hamilton hails the late Tony Potami, who turned the university's interest in commercializing its technologies into a formal program in the 1980s. Potami, who was 61, died last Thursday after a battle with cancer.
"He was a far-seeing individual who helped the institution immensely," Hamilton says.
The university, he says, must find ways to get more of its considerable research into the marketplace. "This is all about making sure we capitalize on our intellectual property" to benefit the state, the university and investors, he says.
Some institutions — notably the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University — have long been leaders in encouraging faculty members and researchers to take their discoveries to the marketplace. Two principal ways exist to do this: by licensing technology to businesses and then benefiting from the royalties it produces, or through startups that create jobs and wealth.
However, as Hamilton and Carlson center official Doug Johnson note, the U was long a laggard in this area. Little of the wealth generated by some of the U researchers' most popular inventions — the Gopher Internet browsing system, the process for making taconite, the black box that records data in airline crashes, seat belts — found its way back to the university or the state.
Simply put, the U's recent experiences in commercializing its research fall into three areas:
• The "early Potami" years — when the school built up its Office of Research and Technology. This period grew out of the federal Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which cleared the way for universities and their researchers to own and license to businesses the technologies they invented. In the biotech field alone, that act led faculty members across the country help start more than 500 companies.
• The "chilling effect" of the 1990s. Disputes arising out of the sale of ALG, a transplant drug developed at the school, led many faculty members and researchers at the U to shun any involvement with for-profit ventures for fear of being tainted with controversy.
Dr. John Najarian, chairman of the university's surgery department, was acquitted of charges arising from the sale of ALG, but also was forced to resign. The National Institutes of Health, the source of gushers of grant money to researchers at the university, put the U on probation.
• The Yudof-Maziar era. In the late 1990s, U president Mark Yudof and his top research staffer, Christine Maziar, worked to make the culture at the U more hospitable to tech transfer.
Hamilton led the university off probation, a stressful six-year process that lasted until 2001 and spurred the U to create an elaborate system to tighten oversight of its research.
Now he has high hopes that the entrepreneur center's study, to be done by four interns, will lead to more progress. They will write a plan to nurture U-affiliated startups, offer more help to U employees who want to commercialize research, provide outsiders with a single point of entry to the U and look into prospects of offering "gap financing" for promising ideas and companies.
Doing more to commercialize the university's research is a two-step-forward, one-step-back journey because the process and the university itself are complicated.
The increasing budget stress that the U and federal research budgets are coming under doesn't make it any easier. Nor does the fact that many corporate research budgets face rising pressure from Wall Street.
Yudof is gone, and Maziar just announced plans to take a top post at the University of Notre Dame.
Yet the U's new administration, led by Bruininks and interim research chief Hamilton, clearly has taken up the cause.
That's good news for Minnesota, and a fitting memorial to the work of Tony Potami.
Dave Beal can be reached at dbeal@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5429.