Q. How do you react when people say Detroit is failing? What is your personal assessment of Detroit and its future?

A. Detroit has terrific assets … a talented, diverse workforce, committed companies and a strong cultural center. As the economy turns around there will be more investment in the city of Detroit and the Detroit region.

Detroit has been adapting to an economic downturn for the last decade, while other parts of the United States are just beginning to learn to cope with this new economic crisis we’re facing. Because of that I believe Detroit will be able to move ahead faster than many other cities. Over the next 10 years you will see a different Detroit. Brown space and empty buildings will be converted into green space. There will be more high-tech industries specializing in fields such as biomedicine, wind energy and cellulosic fuel.

When Detroit and Michigan return to economic health, it will be because we act now to build, nurture and attract knowledge-based economic ventures. At Wayne State we’re doing so both through our research enterprise and through TechTown, our business incubator and research park, which hosts 70 start-up companies and is planning for 300. TechTown also will soon be home to research and development in the biomedical sciences through Michigan’s first stem cell commercialization lab, which is a collaboration with our University Research Corridor partners, U of M and MSU.

Q. What is the University Research Corridor?

A. Two years ago, Wayne State, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan formed a partnership in research and development we call the “University Research Corridor” (URC for short)—an alliance for invention, innovation and technology transfer aimed at regional economic development. Together, our three institutions bring in more than $1.3 billion in research funding every year, 95 percent of all academic research and development grants at work in Michigan.

We are the youngest of only seven such university “clusters of innovation” in the country. The others include universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, University of California-Berkley and others. Yet we already are ahead of three or four of the other six on major R&D benchmarks.

Q. There are many negative stories out there about the Detroit Public Schools system. What is Wayne State doing to help improve that system?

A. First let me emphasize that there are many excellent programs in the Detroit Public School system, but they are overshadowed by the major challenges that Detroit, like many of America’s great cities, faces in K-12 education. Detroit has an overall high school graduation rate below 45 percent ... and among African American males the graduation rate is the lowest in the nation at 20 percent. At Wayne State we are acutely aware of the challenge, and we have more than 100 programs targeted for the success of K-12 students in the Detroit Public Schools.

Around the world many countries are closer to the top in K-12 education than the U.S.; we need to hurry up. Revitalizing America’s K-12 system is a very steep mountain to climb. But it’s essential to America’s future that we climb it … and that we do so very fast.

Q. What is Wayne State doing to help improve K-12 education in Detroit?

A. We are exploring collaborations with Detroit Public Schools for alternative approaches to urban K-12 education. We have explored ideas with the State of Michigan Superintendent of Education, the University of Chicago Institute for Urban Education and the Clinton Global Initiative-Universities. We have a task force addressing this plan with representatives from eight disciplines throughout the university.

Q. What can be done to improve the effectiveness of urban universities?

A. I believe the creation of “urban land grant universities,” built on the 19th century model of agricultural land grant universities, would go a long way to move urban universities and the cities in which they are located to the next level. Land-grant universities were created by the Morrill Act in 1862 and funded by granting federal lands to the states. A logical parallel is dramatically illustrated in Detroit. America’s urban areas all face issues of neighborhood blight—land, housing stock and business buildings in deteriorated condition. This land, like the federal lands in 1862, has much potential value, but not unless it is revitalized. So that land and those buildings could be provided to urban universities, with the expectation that the universities will develop them with the aid of philanthropic foundations as well as local, state, and federal government.

Q. What else can the federal government do to help urban universities?

A. It can do two other things. First, create a National Trust Fund for Higher Education. In our current system funding for higher education tracks the national economy in exactly the wrong direction. In cycles of economic downturn like the recession we now face, when recovery depends upon education and innovation, we consistently and recurrently decrease higher education funding when just the opposite is demanded. A national higher education trust fund would address this serious conflict between need and resources and more effectively shorten and reverse periods of economic downturn that are best treated by assuring continued production of skilled human capital.

 Second, we need a cabinet-level federal Department of Urban Affairs with funding to address the many challenges of America’s Great Cities.

Jay Noren was sworn in as 10th president of Wayne State University in August 2008. Wayne State is Michigan’s only urban, public research university. Its student body is among the most diverse in America, with African-American, Middle Eastern, Mexican American and Asian students making up almost 50 percent of its enrollment.

Wayne State is ranked by the National Science Foundation among the nation’s top 50 public universities in research expenditures – at nearly $253 million per year.That puts the school in the highest research category among American universities, a distinction held by only 3.6 percent of U.S. institutions of higher education. In Michigan only Wayne State, the University of Michigan and Michigan State qualify for this classification.

Noreen also serves on the Detroit team for “CEOs for Cities.” This is a national organization of leaders from major US cities who meet regularly to share ideas addressing major urban challenges. The following is taken from an interview with President Noren regarding ways in which Wayne is addressing some of those challenges.
 

This past Sunday the BBC website described Detroit as “Car Crash City” and ran a story headlining  "Motor City in Mourning for GM." On one level the story is accurate. he reporter describes looking out of his hotel room on the 45th floor of the Renaissance Center, the headquarters of GM. He is as confused as anyone has the right to be that Canada is to the south, and even more bewildered by the poor design of the lower business floors of the building. The reporter, Greg Wood, chronicles the urban decay, the deserted office blocks, a closed church, the odd car and the lack of pedestrians. All true. What he may have missed is the spirit of Detroit.

I would like to invite the BBC’s Greg Wood to come back to Detroit on June 24th when we are kicking off a historic new effort to create 400 – yes 400 – new companies in the next three years. That means helping to give birth to about one new company every two to three days. The multi-million dollar effort is backed by the New Economy Initiative and is supported by the Kauffman Foundation, who are the world’s experts on entrepreneurship. Car Crash City could set an example to America.

In past economic downturns, recovery has been led by new entrepreneurs taking their future into their own hands and starting new businesses. There are plenty of examples of companies started in tough times and some go on to be pretty big, including Microsoft.

I can understand why Greg Wood and others might find it difficult to believe that the spirit of Detroit is an unlikely savior of the world economy but consider this. A few years ago General Motors donated one of their abandoned buildings to Wayne State University.

The first tenant, Asterand, moved in here 2004. There are now 90 tenants and a waiting list for space. Asterand is now a public company. Other companies are developing new businesses based on new technology. In short the spirit of innovation is alive and well in Detroit.

Maybe you are part of that spirit. If you have an idea for a new business sign up for www.techtownwsu.org ">TechTown's June 24th day-long event which kicks off FastTrac to the Future. It is free. All you have to bring is your ideas and your spirit. Greg Wood of the British Broadcasting Corporation is welcome to return to witness that Detroit and its people are not done yet. We are about to become the focus of a great national experiment and if we win the Stanley Cup we might even give Greg a Red Wings t-shirt so that he can get into the sporting as well as the business spirit of Car Crash City.

Randal Charlton is Executive Director of TechTown, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Special Assistant to the President for Economic Development at Wayne State University.