Gov. Jan Brewer visited NAU on Oct. 15 to announce the 2-year-old partnership between the university and the Northern Arizona Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NACET) would be getting a major financial boost, $1 million, drawn from Arizona’s share of the 2009 federal Recovery and Re-investment Act, more commonly known as the “stimulus package.”

Russ Yelton, president of NACET, said his organization helps small businesses survive their first few months so they can become profitable and create local jobs.

“We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and we are a business incubation program, and we essentially assist companies in commercializing technologies both domestically and internationally,” Yelton said.

Yelton said NACET and NAU have worked together for two years to develop technologies that can be used for high-tech small business start-ups.

“NACET currently functions as the tech transfer office for NAU,” Yelton said. “We assist them with identifying technologies that are being worked on in the labs that have commercial relevance. In the last two years and working with NAU through our partnership, we have gone through 29 invention disclosures and filed 23 patents. We do workshops with the professors, talking about patent entrepreneurship and what that may be.”

Laura Huenneke, vice president of research at NAU, said the institution and the organization have a very symbiotic relationship; the university has a wealth of creativity for new ideas, and NACET has the knowledge of how to turn those ideas into business plans.

“Why is it important that the university is partnered with our local incubator?” Huenneke asked. “The university is the source of some of the good ideas that might form the basis for a business. On the other hand, universities and university faculty and students, in general, don’t necessarily have a clue about how to start a business or how to raise money for it. So the incubator is especially important to university-generated business ideas.”

Marc Chopin, dean of the W.A. Franke College of Business and the chairman of the NACET Board, said the incubator’s new lab will allow local businesses to use technical equipment they would not otherwise have access to.

“We’re expecting to put in a lab that will include some high-powered microscopes and some other equipment that many of our companies have need of,” Chopin said. “We will be able to provide access to those, for both the companies in the incubator and potentially some researchers at NAU.”

Huenneke said the portion of the funds allotted to NAU would not only be going toward educating students about what is needed to start a small business, but also allowing students to create their own legitimate businesses.

“Another portion of those dollars we are going to put into student teams and really challenge them to participate in either the very early stages — how you generate good ideas or build prototypes — or in the later stages, where you take this and generate a business plan,” Huenneke said. “These student business teams will receive the same kinds of professional support and mentoring from NACET that they give to their other ‘real’ client companies. They will be real potential companies, but planned and run by NAU students. And that’s what we’re hoping to do with our portion of the dollars.”

The benefits of the grant are not just limited to student entrepreneurs, Huenneke said, but they extend to the general university population in the increase in jobs and internships within city limits.

“I think there are lots of opportunities for NAU students with the businesses that are up at NACET,” Huenneke said. “Many of them are hiring or at least using interns. Frequently, with an internship, a student can get credit for it.”

Yelton said Flagstaff is an economically sound place to start a business because of the demographics of the property owners and the workforce.

“Flagstaff actually has a lot of unique opportunities,” Yelton said. “With 25 percent of the homes being second homes, a large portion of individuals have a disposable income and are accredited investors — they can invest in companies. But they also bring a unique talent mix to Flagstaff. Last July, we had nine companies in our program. Currently, we are at 26 and our building is over 90 percent occupied, with 10 companies on a waiting list.”

Arizona needs job creation to begin at a local level, Yelton said, and grants such as the one given to NACET and NAU help to achieve that goal.

“It’s nice to see the governor’s office recognize these public-private partnerships and the importance of them in creating jobs in our local community,” Yelton said.