Early
Extension Agent Mae Click, in the dark dress, demonstrates canning techniques.
Photo courtesy of Texas Cooperative Extension.
From the start, part of our land-grant mission has been to take scholarly innovation directly to the people who could most benefit.
What is meant by innovation depends on the times, of course. One woman who works in the System Offices told of her grandmother, a county home demonstration agent in the early 1920s for what is now Texas Cooperative Extension.
Her grandmother, a new college graduate barely out of her teens, drove a black Model T Ford across South Texas—whether it had an official A&M seal decal on the doors, I couldn’t say—telling housewives about the latest research that could ease their considerable burdens.
Her most popular lesson? How to kill and dress a chicken in less than 30 minutes. At that rate, a person could wring the necks of a considerable number of chickens in a 40-hour work week. I expect she found other things to eat back in her own kitchen.
Even before the advent of the automobile or modern highways, extension staff criss-crossed Texas, helping farmers develop better sorghum grain varieties, control root rot in cotton and combat diseases affecting livestock. It was hot, dirty work, but it had to be done. It still does.
As Bob Gates says in the sidebar, “It’s tough to be a land-grant university and live in an ivory tower.” To that I would add, “Thank goodness.”
In thinking about how much has changed in just a few decades, I’m reminded of a cartoon that was in The New Yorker several years ago. It shows someone impatiently drumming his fingers on the top of a microwave. “Come on,” the caption reads, “I haven’t got all minute.” It stuck with me because it says so much about innovation and our ever-rising expectations.
In last year’s best-selling The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, columnist Thomas L. Friedman freshens the argument that a strong technology base is crucial to a nation’s economic performance. Our high standard of living is a direct result of the technological advances that took us from raising chickens in our own backyards to being unwilling to wait a few seconds for our coffee to heat up in the microwave.
This is even more true given today’s global economy and the free enterprise system in which the United States functions. The nations that will prosper in the 21st century are those that will be able to expand their knowledge base through scientific and other discoveries, then transform this knowledge into new technology, and disseminate it broadly.
If the United States is to stay at the forefront in this regard, we must invest now in research and technology transfer to increase the amount of knowledge generated. This is where our research universities come into play, and where we can help fulfill our land-grant mission during the computer age.
This is a trend across higher education. The Association of University Technology Managers’ website states that before 1980, fewer than 250 patents were issued to U.S. universities each year and discoveries were seldom commercialized for the public's benefit. In contrast, in FY 2002, AUTM members reported that 4,673 new license agreements were signed. Between FY 1991 and FY 2002, annual invention disclosures increased nearly 250 percent (to 15,573), new patents filed increased more than 310 percent (to 7,741) and new licenses and options executed increased more than 365 percent (to 4,673).
What does this mean for the A&M System? Most of you are aware that we have added a new Office of Technology Commercialization to the A&M System, with Guy Diedrich as the new vice chancellor. This move is part of my effort to respond more effectively and efficiently as opportunities for commercialization arise.
Arthur
Sands (left), president and chief executive officer of Lexicon
Genetics, and I signed an agreement to establish TIGM last July.
In recent years our research efforts have become increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative. For example, the Texas Institute of Genomic Medicine was founded last July by the System—the health science center’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology in Houston and Texas A&M in College Station—with Lexicon Genetics in The Woodlands as our industry partner.
In addition, the A&M System hosts the Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization, the only statewide center created to administer investments made by Gov. Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund in new biotechnology companies.
One of Texas A&M’s newest spin-out companies just won the Big XII New Venture Competition as the best new company formed among the Big XII Conference universities. The judges were renowned venture capitalists and industry leaders, and the recognition anticipates A&M’s place at the forefront of technology commercialization.
I expect that these kinds of opportunities will be more common in the future. As a result, I have proposed a new policy on patenting and commercialization to encourage the transfer of technology from the lab to the marketplace for the benefit of researchers, System members and the public we serve.
Related to this, I will soon be asking for a modernization of our rule that patents, copyrights, and commercialization are recognized as evidence of scholarly activity in the new information economy.
The A&M System has always been about improving the lives of Texans through teaching, research and outreach. Technology transfer and commercialization will help us strengthen this legacy through the 21st century.
