Earlier this week, the Delaware Innovation Valley Network (DVIN) announced its first innovation grant award: The Wistar Institute will receive $89,000 to support the Wistar Biomedical Technician Training (BTT) Program, a two-year workforce development program in the biosciences. Wistar is partnering with the Community College of Philadelphia.

Here's a description of the course:

Biomedical Technician Training

BTT 101
Biomedical Technician Training Practicum
0-0-35-3
Hands-on experience with data record keeping, laboratory tasks and routines, and the use and maintenance of lab equipment and reagents. Includes 345 hours of in-depth skills training in various resource laboratories at The Wistar Institute or a comparable research laboratory. Prerequisite: Permission of the Biomedical Training Academic Coordinator and completion of the Orientation to Biomedical Technology.

You can read more from a press release here.

On July 1, DVIN completed the second round for proposals for the Innovation Investment Fund, which will provide more than $2.4 million in funds over the next three years to support training and capacity building programs in the life sciences workforce in the Delaware Valley, a 14 county region.

You can find a copy of the DVIN Investment Guidelines as an attachment to this post.

Here's a news release from The Valley Innovation Alliance in northern Alabama and southern Tennessee:

NEWS  RELEASE

June 23, 2008

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:  Janet Kincherlow-Martin

  Director of Public Relations

  (256) 306-2561

  jkm@calhoun.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

VIA/WIRED Awards over $1.2 M in grants to regional workforce and economic development projects

 

Howell Lee, president of Valley Innovation Alliance (VIA), today announced that over $1.2 million in grants have been awarded to 16 different projects as part of the U.S. Department of Labor's Workforce Innovation for Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative. VIA is the local region created through WIRED, for which Calhoun Community is the local fiscal agency.

According to Lee, the funded projects will in some way impact all 23 counties which comprise the VIA region.  The region is made up of 14 north Alabama counties (Blount, Colbert, Cullman, Dekalb, Franklin, Jackson, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Morgan and Winston) and 9 counties in southern middle Tennessee (Giles, Franklin, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Marion, Marshall, Maury and Wayne).

"I commend the selection committee on their work in selecting the projects we funded for this cycle," said Lee.  "We received 35 applications for some excellent projects and were able to fund 16 of these programs.  The committee had the difficult job of determining which proposals best met the established funding criteria while also considering which would have the most significant impact on our region, and they did an outstanding job in their deliberations and final decisions," he added.

Grant awards for this cycle ranged from $21,150 - $158,862. Awards over

$100,000 went to projects that were regional in scope and serve at least a 3-county area.

Grant proposals were evaluated on several criteria, which included the following: 

Sustainable:  Preference was given to activities that showed potential for sustainability beyond the one-year period of performance and the three-year period of the VIA grant.

Industry-driven:  Projects funded under the Initiative must meet needs of industry.  In the case of programs at the high school or community college levels, projects should also provide STEM skills that will allow students to move into careers in the selected industry clusters.

Replicable:  Successful projects should be replicable to other parts of the region and/or country.

Quantifiable Project Outcomes:  Applicants must demonstrate a results-oriented approach by describing the proposed outcome measures relevant to measuring success and the long-term impact of the project.  Grant awardees will be required to submit quarterly progress reports to the VIA Office based on these performance measures in compliance with US Department of Labor guidelines

Each criterion was valued at 25 points for a total of 100 possible points with five additional points possible for demonstrating active partnerships.(Funded projects are detailed below)

In addition to the 16 recent grant awards,  20  projects listed in the original grant proposal were approved by the U.S. Department of Labor as Jump Start projects funded through the VIA Initiative.   These included awards to Calhoun Community College, the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, the Partnership for Biotechnology Research, the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, AZ Technology, Biztech, Columbia State Community College, Motlow State Community College, Vanderbilt University and South Central Tennessee Workforce Alliance.

The Valley Innovation Alliance (VIA) is a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization covering a 23-county region in northern Alabama and southern Tennessee and is dedicated to maximizing and connecting workforce and economic development  and innovation across the region.

The Workforce Innovation for Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative was created last year through a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor with the ultimate goal of expanding employment and advancement opportunities for American workers and catalyzing the creation of high-skilled and high-wage opportunities.

There was a nice article in this week's New Mexico Business Journal about one component of the WIRED Initiative in that region.

A new initiative aims to address the looming work force shortage by helping connect New Mexico students and graduates who have left the state with job opportunities here.

The initiative is obtaining funding from a $50,000 seed grant from the French Family of Cos. and $400,000 that is part of a larger $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The program was initiated with a decision by French to donate $100,000 to the community in honor of its 100th anniversary, Swan said. The idea was to improve what he calls the "AIR quality" in Albuquerque -- shorthand for access, innovation and relationships.

The full article can be found here .