UCCS chief asks area to invest in campus

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak issued a call to action Tuesday to local business and civic leaders to help her raise about $10 million to attract research faculty that will fuel growth of the campus and local economy.

The fund would target faculty members who would bring research projects with them to UCCS and boost the amount of research funding at the campus from $10 million now to $50 million, increasing the economic impact of the school from $250 million to $750 million, Shockley-Zalabak said during a speech to about 250 business and community leaders hosted by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort.

"We are not able to hire research faculty that are the cornerstone of a successful technology transfer program," Shockley-Zalabak said. She is proposing creating a special fund "to bring faculty with their research to the university. This will not use state resources."

She pointed to a much larger effort to attract 100 research faculty members to the University of California at San Diego that has produced a $600 million annual research budget for that campus.

She wants to build UCCS from 8,000 students to between 10,000 and 12,000 in the short-term and eventually to 35,000 on a campus that has developed just 15 percent of its 530 acres. Shockley-Zalabak didn't set a timetable for reaching those targets, but she said she will launch a planning process in the first quarter of next year with community and business leaders to produce plans by the fall and to get programs under way by fall 2010.

A centerpiece of Shockley-Zalabak's plan is to boost technology transfer efforts.

Technology transfer is the process of moving faculty research to businesses where it can be turned into marketable products and services. She wants to create at least two new companies annually based on technology resulting from university research, a goal UCCS reached this year but can't sustain because it doesn't have enough research projects under way.

Shockley-Zalabak called her plan an innovation strategy for the campus that she said would create an "innovation zone" around UCCS where companies developing technology from university research would move.

That zone would be part of what she is now calling the "University District," which includes a nearby shopping center built as part of a major urban redevelopment project now under construction just east of the UCCS campus.

Mike Kazmierski, president of the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corp., praised Shockley-Zalabak's plan. "We're fortunate to have such a dynamic and committed leader at the university leading the charge to grow UCCS to be an even greater engine of economic activity," he said.