Copyright Austin Daily Herald
On Wednesday, members of the Minnesota House Capital Investment Committee made a swing through the Austin area, which included a stop at The Hormel Institute. The tour visits entities, who are asking for state funds for a variety of projects and on Wednesday the committee made stops at both the Institute and Riverland Community College. The Institute is asking for $5 million in bonding dollars for Phase 2 of its Minnesota Bioimaging Center (MiBC) project, which is already underway. Specifically, Phase 2 is focused on renovation of a 2,000 square foot locker room space and the launch of its STEM Learning Lab, which would expand collaboration opportunities as well as boosting educational and industry partnerships. The umbrella goal is to create an educational and training space that is central to the state of Minnesota. “You can see that we’ve already invested significantly in people and machines and we’ve already begun to build the base of a series of educational programs, which are really first class,” said Institute Executive Director Dr. Robert Clarke. “Now we’re ready to go statewide.” During the visit, Institute administration and local leaders broke down the scope of the three-phase project and impressed upon the House members what they are hoping to accomplish, particularly in regard to the educational component. “Ain’t nobody else doing that in this country,” Clarke told them during an introductory presentation before a tour took them to the renovation space. A central theme of this middle phase component is the promise these steps can have on strengthening the world of science in coming years. How big the promise gets, however, is down to available resources the Institute can pull on. Aside from the $5 million bonding fund request, the Institute has already received $1.5 million in Congressional funding it’s already applied to the project during the first phase, which included investment in the state-of-the-art bioimaging technology in the form of the Arctis cryoFIB microscope. According to Gail Dennison, The Hormel Institute's Development and External Relations Director, construction has already started on parts of the project, which not only will focus on education, but on workforce development as it seeks to train more people in the use of the institute’s microscope. “This is a slice of MiBC related to education and this component of workforce development,” Dennisen said. “Training in need of a workforce of training people to work on the cryoEM. Another aspect is bringing more people into the field, with the intention of spreading the STEM component across K-12, college, post-baccalaureate and teacher education.” Clarke said this is a chance to create opportunity. “For the younger kids it’s aspirational. It’s giving them the ability to imagine themselves in a career in science if that’s what really excites them,” Clarke said. “It can’t excite you if you don’t have the chance to experience it.” LIkewise, it’s expected that the STEM education will expand what educators will be able to bring to their classrooms by broadening what they can do. “That allows us to get the teachers and kids and ultimately of course the families engaged in what we do,” Clarke said. “Understand what we do and benefit from what we do in the sense of allowing the kids and their families to achieve things they might not have otherwise been able to do.” Despite all of this promise on the horizon, including an economical component that estimates a positive impact of $29 million on the community from employment, those at the Institute are realistic as to the challenge aspect of what they are asking, and that’s realizing how many requests are out there asking for money. One way or another we will do this,” Clarke said. “The time frame and the scale is dependent on the resources we have access to. The priorities of the committee and of the state and the government are theirs. If we are fortunate enough to rise to where we meet their priorities, we all win.”
