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Doing Business In Connecticut 2015

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2015 | Doing Business in Connecticut 29 By Theresa Sullivan Barger S outhern Connecticut State University President Mary Papazian, Ph.D. has spent much of her career working at public institutions that provide an educational bridge to students outside the world of elite colleges and universities. In the three-and-a-half years of leading the university, the former English professor, provost and dean has worked to make earning a degree more attain- able, especially for the 50 percent of SCSU students who are the first in their families to attend college. "It's in all of our interests to ensure that those pathways to opportunity remain open and affordable," she said. "Education is not simply a benefit for the individual student who will now have the tools and the ability to go out and get a well-paying job and become an active member of the community. It's also a benefit to our broader community, to our public good. We can't have a healthy democracy without an educated population." Providing an affordable public education is becoming harder because the state is cutting funding. "We're a state university, but only 35 percent of our income comes from the state. Sixty-five percent comes from tuition and fees. It's very dif- ficult to put more of the burden on our students," she said, because "that starts to threaten our mission of accessibility and opportunity." e rising cost of higher education prevents some students from being able to complete their degree. Students who work full time and attend school part time oen end up with massive college loan debt, without earning a degree. When Papa- zian arrived at SCSU, only 35 percent of students earned a degree within six years. By working to help students complete remedial courses through less costly commu- nity colleges, the six-year graduation rate has increased to 52 percent. Still, only 26 percent of students graduate in four years. Papazian, who earned her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, is passionate about the importance of a liberal arts education because the world changes so rapidly. e national push toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, she said, does not exclude the importance of the applied skills honed in a liberal arts education, espe- cially critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, teamwork and communication. "If you're trained for one job, that's all you know. If you have the experience of a liberal arts education behind you, you can grow and develop as the economy around you changes," she said. "e jobs of today aren't the jobs of tomorrow." Today's employers want someone who has the ability to analyze information, understand an audience and use data, she said. "ey say they can teach the busi- ness but they can't teach thinking." Students who can blend a liberal arts foundation with skills across disciplines are the most sought aer, she said. "If you're an English major and you've done some work in business or health care, you're going to have a leg up." ❑ Mary Papazian, Southern Connecticut State University President on a prototype and getting funding, and the CBIT is helping connect them with mentors. "Working with the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, we have well over 100 business mentors who have committed to help us think through challenges and solutions as well as provide connections," Loose said. Teams of students create biomedical inter- ventions and compete; up to four winners will each receive $50,000 in seed funding that helps bring their company to the stage where they can seek private funding. Another course, called "Creating Health Care Ventures," is designed to be taught to a mix of students from the schools of medi- cine, management, and the graduate school of arts and sciences. Yale is also taking a novel approach to connecting industry with medicine, partner- ing with local medical device companies to bring their staff into the clinical setting where they can observe surgeries and procedures; it's hoped that direct observation will spark concepts for invention and improvement. Professors First While some professors get so involved in their start-up companies that they don't make tenure, at Yale, the education part of the equation comes first. Professors are en- couraged to apply their expertise to the real world as part of an essential mission for the university, said Laura Niklason, M.D., Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology and of biomedi- cal engineering. But they are "still held to exactly the same standards for tenure and promotion as everyone else." at doesn't mean there isn't room for commercial success. In 2005, while con- tinuing her teaching and research duties, Niklason — together with doctors Shannon Dahl and Juliana Blum — founded Huma- cyte. e company raised more than $2.4 million in grants and more than $19 million in investments. Humacyte is in the process of develop- ing "novel, human tissue-based investiga- tional products" that may one day be used to provide off-the-shelf tissue replacements — tubes for use in vascular surgery and sheets for patching damaged organs and tissues. Niklason said the creation of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, and the focus on innovation by Yale President Peter Salovey, "have provided material but also 'spiritual' support to aspiring entrepreneurs, giving them the extra impetus to go ahead and cre- ate their own ventures." ❑ Bridging the Gap SCSU president focuses on accessibility PHOTO/SCSU PROFILE

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