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Aug. 4, 2006
By Chad Binette
A U.S. Department of Labor assistant secretary toured the nationally
recognized UCF Technology Incubator on Friday afternoon and
met with the leaders of several emerging businesses that have
flourished at the incubator.
Veronica “Ronnye” Vargas Stidvent, the assistant secretary
for policy, stressed the importance of education for developing
a well-trained work force. She noted that because the nation’s
and state’s unemployment rates remain low, the main problem
now isn’t the lack of jobs.
“The challenge that we’re all having to deal with is
the skills gap,” she said. “We need to make sure that
workers have the education and training for the jobs that have
been created.”
Stidvent visited UCF with U.S. Rep. Ric Keller, R-Orlando, and
Linda South, director of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation,
to hold a roundtable discussion with UCF representatives and
chief executive officers of incubator companies. Stidvent and
South also toured three of the incubator’s most successful
firms.
The incubator, which opened in 1999, has served more than 80 emerging
companies that have generated nearly 700 jobs with an average
salary of $60,000 and more than $100 million in revenues. Such
success in starting and growing high-tech companies earned the
incubator the industry’s highest honor in 2004, when it
was named the Technology Incubator of the Year by the National
Business Incubation Association.
Several of the incubator companies have ties to UCF. Some are
led by alumni who have graduated with degrees in fields such
as optics and photonics, engineering and modeling and simulation.
Others work with university faculty and students on research
that helps them to launch new technologies on the market.
In addition to the CEOs, participants in the roundtable discussion
included M.J. Soileau, vice president for research at UCF; Cameron
Ford, an associate professor of management and the founding
director of the university’s Technological Entrepreneurship
Center; and John Lewis, economic development administrator for
Orange County.
Lewis described the county’s many economic development partnerships
with UCF. Those partnerships include the incubator, the Thomas
D. Garofalo Institute for Economic Competitiveness and the Venture
Lab, which strives to help people turn ideas for new products
into start-up companies.
During their tour of the incubator, Stidvent and South visited
AVT Simulation, a company with about 30 employees that has developed
simulations of Apache helicopter cockpits in which pilots work
together in training scenarios. They also toured Cognoscenti
Health Institute, a clinical laboratory that handles samples
for 1,000 patients a day, and Mydea Technologies Corp., which
uses computer-aided designs and direct digital manufacturing
with plastic, metal and other materials.
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