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Courtesy Lakehead University
Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, had an economic impact of $326.5 million during the 2011-12 school year. In all, the impact of Big Lake schools tops $1 billion.
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David Kenyon / Michigan DNR
Lake Superior State University’s Aquatic Research Lab partners with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources to provide salmon for the St. Marys River and to create learning opportunities for students like Addie Dutton.
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Lakehead University
Lakehead University was one of three schools that helped develop the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute, where students and faculty collaborate with healthcare industry partners.
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Lakehead University
Schools work with local employers to offer students internships and help them find jobs.
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Whitley Mike
At the College of St. Scholastica’s “No Jobs for Slobs” Business Etiquette Dinner in November 2012, student Amanda Abrahamson, on the left, meets Angie Hanson of Wells Fargo in Duluth. The idea of such events is to build networks for students and employers. “It’s so great for students to see that employers are here,” says Carrie Taylor Kemp, an employer relations associate at St. Scholastica.
In the human ecosystem by the Big Lake, communities and higher-education institutions live symbiotically, each growing in step with the other, according to Lakehead University’s Dr. Rui Wang.
“Two is better than one,” he says.
Cities and towns offer amenities and services – like access to shopping, recreation, entertainment and employers – while universities and colleges prime local economies with hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of students annually.
Rui joined the Thunder Bay-based university as its vice president of research, economic development and innovation in 2004. He works with the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute and facilitates a partnership that connects students, the city and employers. “The Lakehead University medical school and the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre came together to try to create an innovative way to promote health research in the Thunder Bay region,” says Rui.
The result, launched in 2007, was the Regional Research Institute. There, world-class health researchers work with industry partners and with graduate and undergraduate students from Lakehead and from Confederation College.
“The impact, you can feel,” Rui says.
“The partnership impacted job creation, economic development. This really has become a model of how different organizations can come together … to create something we could not achieve separately.”
Together, the economic impact of colleges and universities around the Lake totals more than a billion dollars – the sum of school expenditures, construction work, student and faculty spending, and the complex web of trickle-down effects that follow.
Strong research universities, like Lakehead, the University of Minnesota Duluth, Lake Superior State University and the Keweenaw’s Michigan Tech, also bring extra money into communities via outside grants, technology licensing fees and local start-up companies spun out of university research.
According to its latest “Report to the Community,” Lakehead’s impact on Thunder Bay totaled $326.5 million in 2011-12. Enrollment topped 8,000, and those students – more than half of whom come to the city from outside northwestern Ontario – inject upwards of $80 million into the Thunder Bay economy annually.
Those Lakehead dollars “helped the city and region move through some extremely difficult economic times,” reports Blair Smith, office manager of BDO Canada.
Confederation College, also a Research Institute partner, boasts a total economic impact of $560 million between its Thunder Bay campus and eight regional branches throughout northwestern Ontario.
The numbers and the stories add up all around the Big Lake with institutions large and small.
- In Ashland, Wisconsin, Northland College employs more than 150 people in service of its 600 students. Officials estimate the school’s 2012 regional economic impact at more than $22.5 million.
- In Marquette, Northern Michigan University, a 9,400-student institution, reports its impact on the Upper Peninsula as $311 million in a 2012 study.
- Lake Superior State University, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, spends roughly $47 million annually in support of its 2,500 students.
- Michigan Tech has budgeted $256.5 million for fiscal year 2013.
In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, partnerships between towns, businesses and universities have been particularly fruitful thanks to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation that in 2000 chartered a SmartZone network of technology incubators in certain college towns around the state. The goal was to link universities, students and business leaders to launch start-up companies that could prove a boon to cities reshaping their economic identities. LSSU is a partner in the Sault Ste. Marie SmartZone; Michigan Tech anchors the Keweenaw zone. Eight incubated companies have graduated from the program so far.
LSSU also collaborates with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to rear Atlantic salmon for sport fishing in the St. Marys River. LSSU’s Aquatic Research Laboratory stocks 25,000 yearlings each year and employs about a dozen students. The St. Marys fishery generated $7 million in spending in 2006, according to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, and the DNR plans to expand the flourishing program to Lake Huron.
In the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior, education is a major economic driver in the region.
The University of Minnesota Duluth’s impact measures $345.9 million, according to a 2011 study, and $1 of every $35 in the Arrowhead regional economy is supported by the University of Minnesota, according to the report.
The University of Wisconsin-Superior added $41.2 million to the local economy in 2006-07, according to its most recent impact report.
The area’s sizable healthcare industry, which employs 1 of every 7 Duluth residents, has fostered strong connections with local schools and their medical programs.
Lake Superior College, which accounts for $28 million annually in the local economy, offers many healthcare programs, including nursing, dental hygiene and physical therapy, and training specific to healthcare administrative jobs.
The College of St. Scholastica, whose operating budget totals roughly $70 million annually, partners with major Twin Ports hospitals for programs in physical and occupational therapy and health and information management.
“A lot of our students have internships at local hospitals,” says Carrie Taylor Kemp, an employer relations associate at Scholastica. Hands-on experience is a required part for many areas of study, she says, not just health care.
Scholastica also holds a joint job fair, Head of the Lakes, with UMD and UWS twice a year, further cementing relationships with local businesses. “We want students to know that they don’t have to go very far, that jobs are right here in the community,” Carrie says.
“It’s a two-way street,” agrees Charlie Glazman, associate dean of continuing education at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College. WITC has four campuses and three additional centers in the region.
“I’m charged with trying to work with local businesses to see what their needs are,” he says. “Do they come to us? Yes, sometimes. Other times it’s a part of this conversation about workforce development and the needs of the community. That’s our mission.”
When Superior manufacturers Genesis Attachments and Exodus Machines wanted to increase their workforces but couldn’t find enough welders, WITC developed training programs “to help people get hired at these companies,” Charlie says.
In January 2012, Kestrel Aircraft announced plans for a manufacturing plant in Superior. By July, WITC had received a $600,000 workforce partnership grant from the Wisconsin Covenant Foundation to develop, with Kestrel’s input, an associate degree program in composite technology. The company also has committed to internships for WITC students. After it launches in the fall, the technology program should create a pool of highly skilled – and local – aircraft workers for Kestrel, which plans eventually to hire 600 people to operate the plant.
“We’re helping students connect the dots between what they’re learning in high school and what’s needed in the workforce,” Charlie says.
For all the partners involved, tighter integration between higher education and their communities’ needs, says Lakehead’s Dr. Wang, is “a win-win situation.”