LEADERSHIP
14
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thought process: We’re going to go blue
sky. How do we do this to ensure that this
college 25 years from now is stronger and
better than it is today? And to know that
we’ve helped more people and we’ve had
an economic impact beyond just payroll
washing through the community.
Q: Won’t some businesses fear that
the college is competing against them?
A: No, and it’s a great question, but I disagree
with the premise. I’ll tell you why. At
the end of the day, we have a mission and
our mission is not to sit there and be in
competition with them. When we did the
vaccine project at Auburn, we were sole
source to the United States. We were the
only ones doing it. So there really wasn’t
anybody in competition with. So there are
discreet areas where we can complement
and we’re not going to be in competition.
For a startup business, if a technology is
developed here and intellectual property
is developed here, IRSC will license it to
protect them and will help give them get
that top cover for their intellectual property.
So they can go off and do their thing.
And all we’re going to ask for in return
is that if they go out of business, we can
draw back the intellectual property. And
we may have an equity stake, a minority
stake in the company, so that if they get
sold or bought or acquired, or whatever,
the college and the State of Florida benefits
from what’s happened here, as long
as it’s totally legal and permissible. I’m a
business guy. I’ve been in all these areas.
I’ve seen how it’s going right. I’ve seen
how it’s going wrong, I see how deals get
messed up. I see how companies lose.
Q: So you would actually see the college
being a minority owner in some
businesses?
A: I’ve not gone through all the legal
parameters, but at Auburn University
we spawned out several companies, we
licensed several product lines and technologies.
Q: Because of the Treasure Coast’s agricultural
history and your association
with agricultural research, do you see
opportunities for IRSC in this field? Are
there opportunities to partner with the
University of Florida Institute of Food
and Agricultural Sciences, for example?
A: The answer to your question is yes.
Agriculture is a much more high-tech business,
from the ability to do their financing,
their employment, their payroll, their
questions of how they improve yields,
improve their water quality, or control
their rental. There’s lots of areas where we
can help them. Absolutely.
Q: One of your goals is to expand
health-care education. How do you
do that?
A: One is, to the extent we possibly
do it right now with the constraints of
financing, expanding our nursing program.
Twenty percent of the U.S. GDP is
health care. And so we need to be playing
a strong role in that area because our
graduates are going to be reflective of
the demands of our economy. Florida is
a wonderful state — we rank third in the
nation in terms of population size and
right now we are first in the nation in
terms of population 65 and over. And we
have a large growing minority population
coming along here. What most people
don’t realize is we ranked 43rd in terms of
our per capita doctors to citizens, and our
nursing care is also skewed. We’ve got to
do more. And it’s not just us, it’s everybody
in the educational environments
… we’ve got to do more because the
demand is only getting bigger. v
Timothy Moore addresses students in the health science department at Indian River State College.
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