[Peace-discuss] Robert Jones presents a plan to transform the entire universe

[David Green]

CHANCELLOR’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Group proposes strategies for growth in C-U

By JULIE WURTH

jwurth at news-gazette.com

CHAMPAIGN— A community that keeps startup companies in town, boasts
national expertise in agricultural technology and “med tech,” and offers
living costs and amenities to attract suburban Chicago retirees to
 Champaign-Urbana.

Those are some of the strategies envisioned by an economic development
group advising Chancellor Robert Jones on how to promote development in one
of the state’s fastest-growing communities.

“We’re all in this together. We need to be very thoughtful about how that
growth takes place,” Jones told a campus Academic Senate group Monday.

Jones convened the Chancellor’s Economic Development Council in spring 2018
and said it meets regularly, most recently last week. It’s led by Susan
Martinis, vice chancellor for

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research, who oversees the UI Research Park, along with park Director Laura
Frerichs and Pradeep Khanna, associate vice chancellor for corporate
relations and economic development.

Community regulars include executives from both Carle Health System and OSF
Health Care, Parkland College, local economic development agencies, and
representatives from the business and minority communities, he said. They
in turn have created subcommittees to work with broader groups on specific
issues.

Jones said the council will continue working through this academic year but
is already developing plans to make Champaign- Urbana “the epicenter of ag
tech.”

That effort will focus on leveraging the assets of the UI Research Park,
with tenants such as San Francisco-based Granular, an agricultural software
firm, and Cargill, which opened an innovation lab there last week to move
digital ideas to “test mode.” Jones, a crop scientist in his earlier life,
personally visited Cargill to help seal that deal.

The Chancellor’s Economic Development Council is also looking at how to
support new startups so they stay in the community; develop a
“transformative” medical technology sector, building on the new UI medical
school and cancer center; and leverage the UI’s data analytics expertise,
he said.

It will also involve “thinking about what is the built environment that
we’d need to support all of that big-idea growth,” he said, from housing to
school systems.

The C-U pitch

Jones said the council will be coming out with a “pretty aggressive plan
that addresses everything from working with community development agencies,
working on issues of K-12 education, and trying to create more
opportunities to get our young people interested in STEM careers, and ways
to really talk about and brand this community in a different way.”

It’s working with the UI’s new chief marketing officer, Eric Minor, about
how to make Champaign- Urbana attractive not only to students but also
retirees, and overcome outdated notions that “there’s nothing to do here.”

“How do we turn that around to talk about the positives, in terms of a safe
place to raise a family, you can get anywhere within 15 minutes, the assets
of the university providing seamless

entertainment, and engagement opportunities with the university,” Jones
said.

“People that may be tired of the traffic in one of the outlying suburbs of
Chicago can come here and have a quality of life that they haven’t even
imagined,” he said.

Jones sees the effort as part of the UI’s land-grant mission, which also
extends to Chicago and statewide, especially in “this urban age,” he said.
He cited the campus’ role in the new Discovery Partners Institute in
Chicago and a strategic plan to revamp UI Extension.

He told members of the Senate Executive Committee they will be hearing more
this year about how the campus can be more visible in Chicago and how
Extension can be used “to think differently about how to deliver health
care,” though he offered no details.

Chicago hope

The largest concentration of Illinois alumni — more than 200,000 strong —
is in the Chicago area, he said. And the campus has always had a presence
there, led mostly by individual faculty members or colleges. But Jones said
he’d like to coordinate existing connections through the College of Law,
School of Social Work, College of Education and others and strengthen
partnerships with “key leaders” in the city.

The campus already partners with the University of Chicago on several
research efforts, “everything from quantum to community,” Jones said, and
they will be working together to address issues identified by residents of
Chicago’s south side.

The UI also rolled out a new event this year to boost its presence in the
Windy City — the firstever “Illini Fest” on July 18. The outdoor festival
at Millennium Park, featuring representatives from 40 academic units as
well as top UI athletes and head coaches, drew at least 5,000 people on a
stormy Chicago day, he said.

“We saw a different type of alum showing up at this event that doesn’t show
up at some of our other long-standing alumni events,” Jones said, adding
that it likely will become an annual event.

Despite the interest in Chicago, he told the senate group, “I don’t want
you to think for one moment that we have forgotten about our long-standing
and core commitment to serve every part of this state. We’re a land-grant
university. That’s our mission. We’re not giving that up to anybody else.

“I can assure you that this institution is anchored here in this great
community,” he said.
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