Newswise — Traditional science and business are coming together in a way that Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education student Beth Papanek believes will help graduates advance their careers.
“The Bredesen Center is the beginning of a new way of doing graduate education,” said Papanek, a third-year student doing dissertation research in the BioEnergy Science Center at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “As the world becomes more interconnected, it is becoming increasingly necessary to have a broad set of skills. Having an isolated degree in a traditional science is less and less relevant.”
In August, the center, a joint venture of the University of Tennessee and ORNL, admitted 28 new graduate students, bringing the total to 104 doctoral candidates. The program, which began in August 2011, already has three graduates with doctorates in Energy Science and Engineering.
This semester, 22 students are enrolled in a new course focused on entrepreneurship. The class, Energy Science and Engineering Commercialization Support Teams, is led by Tom Rogers of ORNL. Like Papanek, Rogers sees Bredesen Center graduates having an extraordinary opportunity.
“From my perspective, one of the promising trends at the Bredesen Center is the increasing interest in entrepreneurship,” Rogers said. “About 20 percent of the center’s students are engaged in these entrepreneurial courses being taught by ORNL staff with the support of Tech 2020.”
Tech 2020 is a not-for-profit, public-private partnership governed by a volunteer board of directors. These directors share a common interest: utilizing the unique technology capabilities of East Tennessee to create new businesses, new jobs, and setting the stage for future economic growth.
In the spring semester, nine students took a course in which they built a business model around a specific UT or ORNL technology. Several students participated in ORNL’s Next Big Idea competition, and one student, Andrew Lepore, received one of three $50,000 awards. The money is to be used to kick-start the technology. The goal of the competition was to discover talent and untapped transformational ideas and expose them to investors, industry experts and entrepreneurs who can help get them to the marketplace.
Students in the new support team entrepreneurial class will explore how to assess the commercial potential of an idea or technology. They will work with scientists and entrepreneurs to identify potential markets and meet with potential customers.
“With this approach, we are given the opportunity to pursue science at the depth that we’re interested in by still doing PhD-level research, but we’re also asked to explore courses in entrepreneurship or policy,” Papanek said. “For students who do not want a career at the laboratory bench, this provides real experience for other career tracks, and even for the students likely to stay in the academic setting, it helps students understand the larger impact of science research.”
On a broader scale, ORNL continues to reach out to other leading universities to attract top-caliber graduate students. The goal is to develop a vibrant graduate student community at ORNL and provide a strategic workforce development that is key to ORNL’s future.
For students, ORNL and UT, the Bredesen Center is turning out to be exactly what its creators envisioned, said Mike Simpson, assistant director of the Bredesen Center and an ORNL corporate fellow.
“UT wanted a bigger graduate program to reach its goal of being a Top 25 university, and ORNL wanted the energy and vitality of having a lot of young researchers,” Simpson said, adding that the goal is to have 400 graduate students at the lab. “Not all of those would be from the Bredesen Center as some would come from core universities, but the center is having a huge impact.”
Lee Riedinger, a physics professor and director of the Bredesen Center, also sees the relationship flourishing.
“I have seen and even been part of so many advances in the UT-ORNL partnership over the last 40 years,” Riedinger said. “Moving this partnership to this joint- PhD phase is the culmination of all that has come before in leveraging the assets of two large institutions.
“There are 104 excellent graduate students who were attracted here by a unique doctoral program and a unique partnership.”
From Papanek’s perspective, the Bredesen Center provides an ideal path forward.
“One of the reasons I went for an interdisciplinary degree is to be outside of a traditional track,” Papanek said. “So many traditional programs have requirements that are unrelated to your career goals.
“In the Bredesen Center, I can focus on what will actually help me advance my career. This includes course requirements, adding additional courses to fill gaps, pursuing job shadowing and/or internships while in the program. I am receiving more career-specific training for what I want for my future than I would anywhere else.”
“In addition to all of these amazing opportunities, I get to do my science research at one of the most respected scientific laboratories in the country.”
The Bredesen Center is named in honor of former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who served Tennessee from 2003 to 2011, in recognition of his leadership in education and economic development for the state. More information about the Bredesen Center is available at http://bredesencenter.utk.edu/index.php.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://www.ornl.gov) is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system. The laboratory, managed since April 2000 by a partnership of the University of Tennessee and Battelle, has a staff of more than 4,400 focused on solving grand challenges in materials, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology and national security. – Ron Walli, Sept. 12, 2014
Cutline: Illinois native Beth Papanek, a third-year student at the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, works in the BioEnergy Sciences Center to explore more efficient ways to convert cellulosic plant material into biofuels. Image credit: Jason Richards/ORNL
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