Maria Pidgeon, director in the Office of Economic Development at the University at Albany, reflects on the university’s experience being designated an Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University by the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities (APLU).
UAlbany Office of Community & Economic Development
National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps)
New York Business Plan Competition
Blackstone LaunchPad at UAlbany
APLU Commission on Economic & Community Engagement
APLU IEP -- Innovation and Prosperity Universities
The Engagement Ring, Episode 12: A Real Power Couple – Economic Development and Community Engagement
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from Maria Pidgeon's interview.)
MARY HUNT: Welcome to the Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
MARIA PIDGEON: It was a long process. It was three years, so it was a big commitment that we made and were happy to do, and also we found it as an opportunity to really do a self-study on where we are and what we're doing and where we can grow.
MARY HUNT: Maria Pidgeon, interim director of the Office of Economic Development at the University at Albany, reflects on UAlbany's path to being named an innovation and economic prosperity university. APLU’s IEP program helps institutions better understand, measure, convey and enhance their economic and community development impact, while acknowledging universities and colleges that have demonstrated a substantive, sustainable and institution-wide commitment to and strategy for regional economic engagement, growth and economic opportunity.
MARIA PIDGEON: Being part of a community of other universities that have the designation and the resources that APLU can offer in connections, in programming and networking opportunities, I think will be one of the bigger advantages, for sure.
MARY HUNT: Here's my conversation with Maria Pigeon…
[Program introduction ends and interview begins]
MARY HUNT: Thanks for joining me, Maria.
MARIA PIDGEON: Thanks for having me, Mary. I’m looking forward to the discussion.
MARY HUNT: So am I, Maria. Tell us a little bit about your role as the interim director. What kind of activities are you involved in? What is your charge as the interim director?
[Music fades out]
MARIA PIDGEON: My main focus is on innovation and entrepreneurship efforts at the university. When I started here seven years ago, the resources and innovation on entrepreneurship were kind of all over the place and they were segmented, and so one of the biggest roles played was to kind of connect those resources and see how we can fill the gaps and make those resources better and really to drive innovation and economic development at the university. So my main focuses are the programming, the economic development programs that we run here at the university, START-UP New York, the innovation hotspot, which is innovation five one eight in the Capital Region, the New York State Business Plan Competition, the NSF I-Corps program and then on the side, just some APLU and industry partner stuff. So that's really my main focus here at the university.
MARY HUNT: I want to ask you a little bit about your involvement with APLU and the IEP designation. But when you talk about innovation and entrepreneurship at Albany, are you talking about on the part of students or the part of faculty or community partners who come to the university looking to partner? Who falls under that umbrella of innovators and entrepreneurs?
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, so we coordinate and kind of pull together all of the different organizations and departments across the university. So ,on a monthly basis I'll meet with the Small Business Development Center, Blackstone LaunchPad, which is the Student Entrepreneurship part of the university and, you know, working with Tech Transfer as well, which is on the faculty side of any innovation, development and commercialization. So it's really all of us kind of working together to be able to help students, faculty and anyone in the community that needs help with their innovation or product or service.
MARY HUNT: When people think of universities and colleges, I think they think all your primary mission is to educate students and prepare them for careers. So how is managing the operation that you do of innovation and underpins supporting that mission of public education and what is its role to community or public engagement? Isn't our primary purpose to be teaching students and preparing them for career.
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, and indentureship can be a huge benefit for students across all disciplines. You know, if we have a student in engineering who has a type of innovation or invention that they're putting together to solve a problem and help the community and help people in the world, we can really help him or her actually bring that to the marketplace and actually have people benefit from it. So students too in general have now more of an entrepreneurial mindset and they really enjoy coming up with ideas, whether they're technology-based or restaurants or whatever it is that they think of, they really like to. They really like the idea of being their own boss first of all and the idea of making a lot of money. But I think if a university or college or academic institution has that offering, has that support to students, it's attractive to them and it really makes a student kind of more well-rounded. In entrepreneurship, you have to, you know, have the responsibility of the marketing, the financing, the managing the business, the making the partnerships, the connections, the networking. They take on the role of everything. So it really makes a student you know more well-rounded in everything that they could possibly do, whether it is, you know, creating an idea or service or going in working for somebody else.
MARY HUNT: Are there particular industries, disciplines where most of the innovation, entrepreneurship that your programs are addressing or fostering are coming from, or is it across the disciplines?
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, so SBDC handles more of the main street types of businesses.
MARY HUNT: And that's the Small Business Development Center.
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, yeah, and so they deal more with kind of those main street mom-and-pop shops. They really have that service to help, either, you know, get loans or grants or write a business plan. At the university, the incubator program, which is the UAlbany Innovation Center, and the funding that we got from NYSTAR, which is the technology innovation agency out of Empire State Development. It's really a tech focus. So here at the university we have our major research thrusts and those are the types of companies we prefer and start-ups and ideas we prefer to take on outside of the university. So we can, you know, help them find a connection here at the university with faculty and the research that we're doing. You know not just in ETEC, across the university, but you know some of our major research thrusts are obviously housed here at ETEC.
MARY HUNT: And ETEC is a new facility the university opened about a year ago, which houses our College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, and right now many of the folks from our College of Engineering and Applied Science, not to mention those in our Atmospheric Sciences as well. So it's really a hub or center for a lot of research and entrepreneurship and collaboration among students, faculty, staff and community partners in business.
MARIA PIDGEON: Yes, exactly.
MARY HUNT: How is economic development and the work that you do connected to public engagement? What is the benefit to the public of the development… cultivation that you're doing here in your center.
MARIA PIDGEON: So, community was part of our division or department. So before just being economic development, it was community and economic development. A lot of the programs that we run, especially the five one eight, and NSF-I corps, those programs try to reach populations that aren't able to gain access to resources. So, in that capacity you know the program is there and available and free of charge for those populations. On the other hand, too any companies that are created and are successful feed the communities and we're able to hire from communities and help put them in jobs and get resources and funding they may not necessarily have access to. So that's a big portion of our community and just the impacts that some of these technologies and innovations have on the world and on the communities at large is just very impactful or can be impactful.
MARY HUNT: And UAlbany is located in the capital city of New York State. Does being in the capital, close to government agencies, and all the nonprofits that are often associated with capital cities, does that bring any benefits to your work or does that offer any opportunities for economic development collaborations with the university?
MARIA PIDGEON: You know it does benefit us in that we're in their backyard. You know we're not too far from the capitol and we have good, good relationships with a lot of the economic development folks in government. You know sometimes I feel like we may be overlooked and that that meaning the Capital Region as a whole. You know you see a lot of news about Buffalo and Central New York and downstate, but because we're so focused on government here, I think that we have a lot of work to do to kind of catch-up to the other regions and I think in order for that to happen and for us to be successful, I think we need to work very closely with government here in the Capital Region to kind of communicate some of our successes and really voice some of our needs.
MARY HUNT: So maybe it's more of promotional challenge as opposed to not having the goods right here in the Capital Region. We have a wealth of scientists who work together at the RNA Institute, and a lot of the major hospitals in the area, engineering companies, I mean so there's a lot of potential business partners and current business partners, but maybe we're not so great about getting the word out about it.
MARIA PIDGEON: Absolutely, and we actually identified that in our APLU process… some of the things that in our growth and improvement plan. We identified UAlbany as that, that's one of the biggest things that we need to focus on, but I think the region as a whole needs to focus on as well. So, yeah.
MARY HUNT: That brings me to the question: why did you want to pursue innovation and economic prosperity designation? What was the impetus for that?
MARIA PIDGEON: It was a long process. It was three years, so it was some, you know, some big commitment that we made and were happy to do, and also, we found it as an opportunity to really do a self-study on where we are and what we're doing and where we can grow. So I think you know my office saw it as an opportunity to really shine the light on where we can really grow and make an impact.
MARY HUNT: What did you learn about the institution from the self-assessment process that’s part of the application?
MARIA PIDGEON: So I was actually tasked not too long ago, probably about a year ago, to actually do the growth and improvement plan and to talk about some of our accomplishments. And you know, I think we have a lot of strong areas. Some of the things we're doing in community engagement and in educating students and experiential learning opportunities. We're doing a lot of things that are really strong, but we also have some gaps that we can fill-in those areas like talent, especially in innovation, and then place. We're doing a lot of right things. But you know, telling our story was really the biggest thing on getting some of these great things out there and telling the community what we're doing, and you know, nationally, not just regionally but nationally.
MARY HUNT: Have you strategized about how to do that better and have you put any plans in place, or is that still work in progress? Just curious where that's led you to, how it's led you to change any actions or strategies that you are taking.
MARIA PIDGEON: We put together a growth and improvement plan and the first area of focus was commercialization of research. So that's really the innovation aspect, and with that of course we said we would like to hire more, get more programming, get more funding for students and faculty to really focus on commercializing their research and making that more of a priority in our department. So we are are working on that. I've made recommendations to Kesh, our VPR, or so we are working on a number of those metrics, and timelines that we've set forth. We've already kind of put some of that stuff into place around experiential learning and then telling our story. I think some of the things that we said, you know we identified as weaknesses. I think some of those things are being done and were planned on being done… one of the things offering micro credentials, or increased promotion of the existing resources we have a more coordinated effort across campus on those opportunities. I think you know some of that is taking place and then around telling our story, working more closely with communications and marketing, but we have outlined some specific ideas. We have not yet set forth a specific plan and timeline, which is definitely one of the things that I've been tasked to do on kind of what's next.
MARY HUNT: Telling your story… telling your story to whom?
MARIA PIDGEON: Telling our story internally, telling our story externally. I think a lot of folks internally are not familiar with our processes, our resources, what's available for faculty, staff, students, you know, and a place for those things to be heard as well, and really internally telling… you know what is the best way to be able to communicate that? Is it through newsletters, is it through public forums? Is it you know through workshops and events? So that's one thing, and then the other one is showcasing externally the excellence of our students or faculty… what they're doing in their research or their programming or in their focus of study. So those are the types of things we really want to do. We've done faculty innovation awards just recently, so really just showcasing and highlighting some of the great things that we do here is another way that we're hoping to do that.
MARY HUNT: And hopefully, draw students, prospective students, draw community partners, support for projects.
MARIA PIDGEON: We’re an R one research institution. We have such great faculty and research coming out of our labs and our institution and you know there's so much good and public benefit and you know, good that can happen. We really need to foster that and work together to make that happen. It'll only benefit everyone: the students, the faculty, the staff and the public in general. We, I think, just all need to work together to keep driving that and I think we're moving in the right direction. So…
MARY HUNT: One of the benefits of going through this process, obviously, is the self-assessment identifying your weaknesses and your strengths and coming up with a plan for getting stronger and getting better at what you do and addressing those things maybe you're not so great at, but what are the other benefits of earning the designation as UAlbany has done? Do you expect to reap any other tangible benefits from having this under your belt?
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, I think being part of a community of other universities that have the designation and the resources that APLU can offer in connections and programming and networking opportunities, I think, will be one of the bigger advantages, for sure.
MARY HUNT: Where to now? Where to next? Is it about putting together the improvement plan, or what other things might be on your to-list?
MARIA PIDGEON: Well, so we have the growth and improvement plan, so it's really taking a look and setting out, you know, a presentation, I think, to the Executive Council on kind of what's next. So we got the designation and everybody went to the annual event and received the plaque, and you know it's great to be able to say that we have that. But let's put some of these suggested improvement plans into place. So it's kind of putting together a strategic outlook of what we've suggested and what's attainable and in what time, I think, because we will have to report back on that.
MARY HUNT: Do you have any advice for other institutions that might be entertaining the idea of going through this process or who are in the middle of this process? Any thoughts, reflections, advice for them?
MARIA PIDGEON: Yeah, I think while you're in it and you're doing all the stakeholder meetings and getting all the input from, you know, internally, through surveys and externally, you know, to industry partners, and kind of getting… going to all the meetings and getting all the information out can be a little tedious and we had to do it during COVID as well. So it was hard process and lengthy process. It took us a little longer than we would have liked, but I think the most I got out of it was at the end, when I actually was writing, you know, a summary of our accomplishments at the university and putting together the growth and improvement plan. That's where I found our benefit to see kind of, you know, really say, wow, we have all these programs and initiatives and all these great successes…
(Theme music begins to play under the interview)
MARIA PIDGEON: You know it was really a learning process for me, so stick through it and it is totally worth it at the end just to even get a good outlook of what your university has. It just brings everybody together to be able to identify and work towards a successful outlook for the organization.
MARY HUNT: Maria, thanks for being my guest today. Congratulations on earning the IEP designation. Hard work, but hopefully it will pay off and sit back and pat yourself on the back before you go on to the next phase of trying to implement it… to the next phase of hard work.
MARIA PIDGEON: Hard work is coming, yes. Thank you so much for having me, Mary.
MARY HUNT: Oh, you're most welcome. Best of luck!
MARIA PIDGEON: Okay, thanks!
MARY HUNT: Maria Pigeon is the interim director of the Office of Economic Development at the University at Albany. She tweets at Maria Pidgeon 12. The engagement ring is produced by the University at Albany's office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at Albany O P E at Albany dot E D U.