“World-class” ISU faculty can make an impact on Iowa through their research, said President Gregory Geoffroy.

Geoffroy met with the Education Appropriations Subcommittee on Thursday and spoke about the importance of research programs and Iowa State’s accomplishments based on those programs.

Along with Geoffroy, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa presidents all addressed the subcommittee at the State Capitol. Representatives from the Board of Regents were also present at the meeting.

“At each university we strive to maintain a select number of research programs that are truly among the best in the world,” Geoffroy said. “These world-class research programs help strengthen Iowa’s economy in three principle ways.”

Geoffroy said the first way the research programs help Iowa’s economy grow is developing new patent and intellectual property.

“In universities without a medical school, Iowa State ranks first in licenses and options executed, fourth in patents awarded, fifth in patent applications and sixth in the number of start-up companies,” he said.

All these strengths combined help Iowa grow and create jobs, Geoffroy said.

Another way the research programs benefit Iowa’s economy is the ability to attract other companies to Iowa, he said.

“World-class research centers attract other companies,” Geoffroy said. “[These companies] want to locate in the states which have the universities where the experts are located.”

The third way the research programs help Iowa’s economy is “the knowledge that is accumulated and advanced in these world-class programs promotes economic development statewide by being shared broadly across the state where needed,” Geoffroy said.

Geoffroy illustrated the last reason with an example of how Herman Quirmbach, associate professor of economics, and Dan Otto, professor of economics, saved an Iowa company.

In 1994 Alpo pet foods was purchased by Nestle. Alpo owned the Friskies plant in Fort Dodge, which employed about 150 workers, Geoffroy said.

Otto and Quirmbach were able to help save those 150 jobs from being lost by creating an economic impact analysis.

Otto was called in after members of the community petitioned to the Federal Trade Commission to disallow the merger. The FTC is part of the U.S. Department of Justice and looks at unfair competition in markets and the concern that too many mergers reduce competition, Otto said.

“It was a combined departmental effort,” he said.

Otto said he and his team studied an input-output model for the region and looked at primary and secondary economic impacts to the community. Primary impacts include loss of payroll jobs, and secondary impacts include a loss of money to local businesses, he said.

“These were decent paying jobs for the region, [and we] linked them to sizable economic impact if [the plant was] closed,” Otto said. “This information made a difference to the FTC, so they changed decision on the merger.”

The plant would not have been saved if Iowa State did not have “the world-class faculty that brought credibility to the research,” Geoffroy said.

He said he wants Iowa State to repeat the Friskies success story.

“Our goal is to do more of these kinds of things, aimed at strengthening Iowa’s economy,” Geoffroy said. “The core of this effort is our support from the tax payers of Iowa, and we appreciate that.”