The Indiana University Council for Regional Engagement and Economic Development, or CREED, hosted its second quarterly meeting of 2018 on June 20 on the IUPUI campus.

David Gard, assistant vice president for economic engagement, shared new developments at the university: Bill Stephan, vice president for engagement, will also assume the duties of the vice president for government relations; Brad Wheeler, CIO and vice president for information technology, will also assume the position of vice president for communications and marketing; IU Research and Technology Corp. was named Tech Transfer Unit of the Year by Global University Venturing; and IU has signed an agreement with the Indiana Innovation Institute, NSWC Crane and Purdue to develop trusted microelectronics.

Joe Carley, director for economic development, recapped the fourth annual Education-to-Employment Convergence.

“This year was the perfect breakdown in attendees: 40 percent from industry, 40 percent from education, 10 percent from nonprofits and the remainder from government entities. We also saw an increase in the overall number of attendees,” he said. “There also were wonderful panelists this year: Bridget Boyle, Danette Gerald Howard, Blair Milo, Jay Roberts, Ryan Twiss and Chancellor Ray Wallace of IU Southeast.”

Gard announced the creation of the Sustaining Talent, Engaging Partners (STEP) grant.

“The grants enable IU regional campuses to develop related initiatives addressing the specific needs of the community they serve,” he said. “Each regional campus may apply for one STEP grant of $10,000, which may include multiple events, programs or other initiatives.”

Jason Whitney, manager of strategic partnerships at IU Research and Technology Corp., spoke about the organization’s newly aligned focus to encourage entrepreneurship and startup growth throughout all campuses.

“When IURTC assessed the entrepreneurial ecosystem at the university, we found several challenges. These included finding C-suite talent, commercialization partners, funding, education and mentors. There also is a lack of awareness of what the entrepreneurial process is,” he said. “But there are tremendous opportunities, including strengthening relationships with regional campuses, the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and corporate partners.”

Lou Lenzi, professor of practice at the IUPUI School of Informatics and Computing, spoke about the university’s presence at the Indiana IoT Lab in Fishers.

“I teach a class that focuses on creating business models based around the Internet of Things. The course touches on industry-sponsored projects, each five weeks long,” he said. “But it isn’t just inside a classroom where we think about IoT. We wonder about translating these concepts, which is where the Indiana IoT Lab comes into play. It’s an environment for IU to be involved to make things and also to learn. Being at the lab is a great bi-directional learning opportunity for IU students as well as the tenant companies.”

Jennifer Boehm and Kristin Norris of the IUPUI Office of Community Engagement spoke about Collaboratory, a web-based platform that tracks and monitors partnerships, activities and collaborations among universities and their communities.

“All IRB protocols for the university ask if you’re using a community-engaged approach. We’ve got about 200 activities in Collaboratory since we started using the program. It tracks both the geographic location of where the project takes place as well as the geographic locations of the partners,” Norris said. “The university purchased a systemwide license for Collaboratory, so each campus has its own portal that can be accessed through One.iu.edu.”

Gard showed the newly launched statewide impact website, which was created in collaboration between Innovate Indiana, Government Relations, the Alumni Association and the IU Foundation.

“The opening page shows five key metrics: total purchases from the past fiscal year, taxable county wages, total enrollment of Indiana residents in the last academic year, total degrees completed by Indiana residents in the last academic year and living alumni,” he said. “The site also allows visitors to break down those five metrics by county and region.”

Sean Ryan of IU Fort Wayne summarized the Northeast Indiana Technology Commercialization Forum, which took place June 4 in Fort Wayne.

“The event provided a way to bring together a large group and hold a compelling discussion about intellectual property portfolios from Crane, Purdue, Notre Dame and IU,” he said. “Now we are looking at holding small, semiannual luncheon events for people interested in commercializing this IP in order to help them take the next steps.”

CREED approved a $2,500 Regional Economic Development, or RED, Fund grant to IU Northwest. The School of Business and Economics will develop an index to capture the business confidence in the Northwest Indiana region including Lake, Porter and Laporte counties. The index will be assessed annually and will complement the existing Northwest Indiana Coincident Economic Index.

The next CREED meeting will be Oct. 3.