After a string of good news, South Charleston faced some bad news this week: More layoffs from Dow Chemical within their long-suffering research center in the Kanawha Valley. Up to 150 scientists – highly paid Ph.D.’s with salaries north of $100K – will be either relocated or let go in the coming year. Once a proud employer of over 3,800 in the Valley and source of over 30,000 patents, the vaunted Dow research center barely has the lights on anymore, shifting the focus of their research to new international markets.

The economic anxiety this sort of announcement causes is justified. Each high-paying job lost ripples through the rest of the economy. It’s been documented by various sources that a given manufacturing job generates four additional jobs (mostly in the service industries, but also other sectors); imagine the loss of 150 $100K+ jobs and the impact of losing $15 million in salaries?

This announcement points to three critical truths that West Virginia leaders and citizens must embrace:

• High-paying R&D-oriented jobs are critical to the economy. They cannot be replaced by service industry jobs in retail, hospitality or tourism which have an average salary of around $22,000. These Dow research scientists were “creative class” before creative class was cool to discuss, but their loss over the years has drained the Kanawha Valley of economic vitality, which has lead to severe population loss.
• Research, by definition, must be cutting-edge. This means our state must stay on the competitive forefront in research sectors vital to growth in the New Economy as well as traditional energy and chemical industries. This requires a talented pool of young people coming out of our high schools and colleges with strong “STEM” skills (science, technology, engineering, math) and attract world-class researchers to our universities. This requires commitment, risk-taking and investment. By all accounts, West Virginia is not being nearly as aggressive in either area as we need to be. Reach WV EPSCOR’s Vision 2015 strategic plan for tangible ideas on how to improve this situation.
• Research + entrepreneurship = growth. It’s not enough to have a few large universities or corporate neighbors investing in research. We also must develop the entrepreneurial mindset to spin-off new companies based on the research breakthroughs. It’s beginning to happen at Marshall and WVU, but we need to turn on the after-burners and build the support systems required to spin off companies at a more rapid pace.

Luckily for South Charleston, two entities are stepping in to create new research centers of excellence. Dow’s Union Carbide subsidiary recently donated 58 acres of their former research facility in South Charleston to WVU. WVU will turn the facility into a WVU Charleston Research Campus. The WVU Charleston Research Campus (WVUCRC), as it will be known, will serve as a center of research and economic development focusing on energy and chemical technology.

MATRIC, a very entrepreneurial non-profit led by state native Keith Pauley, has been growing by leaps and bounds by leveraging the expertise of former laid-off Ph.D.’s to attract Federal research grants. MATRIC has also had success in spinning off new private companies from their research efforts. Small, nimble, entrepreneurial entities such as MATRIC may be the more effective way to speed up research-driven growth in our Internet-speed world.

West Virginia must embrace an innovative mindset so that new research-driven entities can spring up to balance the impact of older corporations who no longer can sustain the presence of their heyday. What is your community doing to embrace research and the talented scientists, engineers and technical thought leaders who make it possible?