Tech Training Center Might Provide Key Boost

In time-honored tradition, major league pitchers and catchers report for spring training this week.

But it’s a pitch of a different sort that intrigues our area. The topic is not baseball, but technology training.

Developer John Stone was on the mound, or at least at the podium, Tuesday at Gonzaga University to open the fourth program in the Symposium series on the Spokane-area economy.

As reported elsewhere on this page, last year’s local economy offered little to brag about. And just flipping the calendar to a new century doesn’t change anything. It will take an array of economic development efforts to make a difference.

Stone’s vision and Symposium program Tuesday offered an interesting idea.

The keynote speaker was Microsoft alum Neil Evans, executive director of the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies. The center has gained international acclaim for its information technology (IT) training standard programs.

The intriguing aspect here is that the center is not located at a high-profile institution like the University of Washington, but at Bellevue Community College, in the heart of the Puget Sound’s “silicon forest.” The center trains students for high-tech careers and faculty to train still more IT-certified students.

Stone’s vision is to develop work force-ready students in a Spokane Center for Emerging Technology, spearheaded by the Community Colleges of Spokane.

CCS Chancellor and CEO Charles Taylor, a Symposium panel member, asked the attendees who nearly filled GU’s Jepson Center Auditorium whether Spokane could support such a center. With a little prompting, the response from the crowd was a loud “yes.”

Taylor told the gathering, “I’ve been in Illinois and Michigan and Texas and Baltimore, and some cities would literally die to have the resources we have here.”

He added, “I’m the new guy, so I have no allegiances to anyone. It’s time to stop shooting yourself in the foot and take the revolver and shoot it in the air to celebrate some of the things you have here.”

In an interview after the session, Stone said he envisions an academic center near a new high-tech business park at Mirabeau Point in the Spokane Valley. “Having close proximity between the training and the high-tech firms really makes sense,” he said.

The large community development under way at Mirabeau includes plans for a possible community college branch, an idea now before the state Legislature. And county zoning changes were approved last summer to accommodate campus-like business parks at Mirabeau. Last fall Stone floated the idea of an 83-acre technology and business park there, partnering with high-tech entrepreneur Bernard Daines and others, but those plans are on hold.

Others have proposed technology parks on sites everywhere from the West Plains to Liberty Lake, so a next logical step may be to try to consolidate efforts at one location, if possible, to avoid fragmentation.

Stone would like a fast track for developing an academic center.

“If we got everyone behind it who needs to be involved, we could break ground a year from now,” he said.

It would take about $5 million in commitments and various funding sources to start an academic center, said Patrick F. Valentine, who as executive director of the Symposium series is the only paid staff member so far. He smoothly moderated the session last week.

Valentine noted that the Bellevue Community College center was funded largely by National Science Foundation grants and since has become nearly self-supporting.

“The dynamic is different here than in Bellevue. The Community Colleges of Spokane serve many rural areas (in six counties), and there is a pool of money for rural needs,” Valentine said. “It’s a different kind of digital divide,” he said.

Valentine, who turns 40 in March, said he will begin work here full time in May after attending to details in Washington, D.C., where he is executive director of the Professional Development Institute and teaches business management at Southeastern University. He and wife Teresa, an attorney, had their second child two months ago.

A Spokane native, Valentine grew up in the Garland neighborhood. He attended St. Francis of Assisi, Gonzaga Prep, GU and Eastern Washington University and has a doctorate from George Mason University.

In town last summer for a family reunion, a friend mentioned the Symposium sessions. Valentine attended the third meeting in the series and met Stone. After some golf and more discussion, Valentine decided on the career change.

His book, scheduled to be published next year, is titled, appropriately, “The University’s Role in Technology Workforce Development.”

Coordinating the efforts of the community colleges and the area’s colleges and universities will be crucial to the success of any center for new technology.

Stone said he has met with academic leaders at GU, EWU and WSU and thinks it’s advantageous that Whitworth President Bill Robinson will chair the Spokane Chamber of Commerce next year.

Areawide collaboration also is important, and the Symposium panel included Doug McQueen, director of the University of Idaho Research Park in Post Falls, and Robert Ketchum, the assistant vice president for instruction who directs a work force training program at North Idaho College. Stone at one time taught computer classes at NIC and at Spokane Community College.

Asked whether the Spokane area needs to recruit a sizable plant from a major technology company to make a real impact in the industry - an economic development “home run,” Valentine said no.

The major challenge, he said, “will be to find technology entrepreneurs and executives and get them to come here.”

He cited Blackboard Inc., the online teaching tool company started three years ago by two MBAs from Georgetown, which now employs 250.

“I think the home run here can be a successful start-up company” that can grow as much as 500 jobs a year, Valentine said.

“If you’re 24 and talented (in technology), where do you want to be? We need to give people a reason to choose Spokane.”

Whether the optimism of spring training can be converted into success is uncertain. But at least there is some optimism, some energy and some ideas worth considering.