Universities Are Key To $1 Billion In Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grants

President Biden announced the 21 winners of the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge on Friday, September 2. The Challenge is a national competition funded by the American Rescue Plan and administered by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA).

Each of the 21 grants provides between $25 to $65 million for regions to rebuild their economies, revitalize local industries, create new technologies and create thousands of jobs in business sectors of the future such as clean energy, next-generation manufacturing, and biotechnology.

The awards, spanning 24 states, were chosen from a group of 60 finalists that had each received a $500,000 seed grant to develop their full proposals after being selected from 529 initial applicants.

The 21 winning coalitions focus on the following six areas:

• biotechnology and health clusters (5)
• advanced mobility hubs, from autonomous and electric vehicles to advanced aerospace manufacturing (4)
• clusters reinventing their natural resource and agricultural industries (4)
• communities developing next-generation manufacturing clusters (4)
• coalitions focusing on segments of the clean energy economy (3)
• a multi-state Tribal coalition growing an Indigenous finance industry

“As we invest and grow critical industries in the U.S., we want to create industry hubs in diverse communities across the country, said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “These grants will provide critical and historic funding directly to community coalitions to invest in new infrastructure, research and development, and workforce development programs while creating good-paying jobs, supporting workers, and prioritizing equity.”

Each of the winning coalitions assembled large teams of employers, labor unions, worker organizations, state and local governments, and economic development organizations to develop and ultimately implement their projects.

But a central element in almost every winning proposal is the prominent contribution of the region’s higher eduction institutions, particularly in areas of research and development, commercialization of intellectual properties and worker training.

As examples:

The State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton will lead a coalition that will receive $63.7 million to accelerate innovation in battery technology and transform a southern region of New York into a global hub of energy storage manufacturing.

The University of Texas at El Paso will lead the West Texas Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing coalition, which will receive approximately $40 million to strengthen aerospace and defense manufacturing capabilities by integrating legacy manufacturers in West Texas into the aerospace and defense supply chain.

Wichita State University is leading the South Kansas Coalition, which is in line to receive $51.4 million to boost aerospace production for the Wichita region. The funding will support buildout of a workforce training facility and a complementary Smart Manufacturing Adoption Program.

Carnegie Mellon University is bringing its expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation research to help shape the Southwestern Pennsylvania New Economy Collaborative, a coalition that will receive $62.7 million to develop robotics and autonomous technologies.

The two winning proposals in Oklahoma – one in the Tulsa region focusing on advanced mobility technologies and one serving the Oklahoma City area’s development of biotechnologies – both rely heavily on the expertise of the state’s two research institutions – the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University.

Community and technical colleges, Louisiana State University, the University of New Orleans, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities like Dillard University, Southern University, and Xavier University of Louisiana are all central to the $50 million award to the New Orleans area to develop renewable energy sources in that region.

Two of Nebraska’s community colleges and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have lead roles in the Heartland Robotics Cluster, whose aim is “to make Nebraska a leader in robotic technologies and advanced manufacturing automation targeting the agricultural industry.”

And at Manchester, New Hampshire’s $44 million BioFabrication Center Cluster, which focuses on the production and distribution of regenerative tissues and organs, the University of New Hampshire and Southern New Hampshire University figure prominently in the project’s design and implementation.

A close look at other proposals from nearly every one of the winning coalitions reveals the central role of a research university, a regional institution or a community college to the economic development plan. That should come as no surprise. Economic revitalization, particularly in regions that have suffered declines in their legacy industries and disinvestments in their local economies will largely depend on the commercialization of new discoveries and the preparation of a skilled workforce to work with those technologies. That’s what American universities and colleges are supposed to do.