Young touts U.'s assets — in Provo

PROVO — The Provo-grown president of the University of Utah returned home Friday to ask businessmen and businesswomen in Brigham Young University territory to alter the way they look at the U.

President Michael Young wasn't recruiting BYU fans to change colors to red, although he wore a dark blue tie to speak at the Provo/Orem Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Forum luncheon. Instead, he attempted to convince the business community to view the U. as an engine for economic growth throughout the state.

Utah's colleges and universities, he said, should be considered places that can generate more and higher-paying jobs for Utahns.

"I want you to shift your perception of what you think about when you think about a university, and particularly the University of Utah," he said.

Young believes the world is on the cusp of an important cultural shift to an economy based increasingly on genetics, bioengineering and medicine. Utah, he said, is poised to be at the epicenter of this change because of its unique resources, including its people, the LDS Church's genealogical databases and, in many ways, the U., a research institution that gets $300 million a year in federal grants.

"This gives us the capacity to be at the forefront of what is almost certain to be the next great economic revolution," Young said.

Statistics suggest, however, the state is not taking full advantage of its resources. For one, in the early 1980s, salaries in Utah were at 95 percent of the national average. Last year, the average salary of a Utahn was about 83 percent of the national average.

Young said Utah needs to attract and generate higher-paying jobs to provide additional income-tax revenue for state programs to boost further economic growth and maintain Utah's standard of living.

A group of business leaders approached Young shortly after he became the U.'s 14th president in 2004 to express concerns about the salary figure and the falling number of technology jobs in the state. Young agreed to make the U. part of the Utah Science, Technology and Research project, or USTAR.

The state Legislature provided $10 million last year to help the U. and Utah State University to begin hiring researchers around Utah's technological strengths and needs. The idea is to enhance what Young called "translational research," or research that can quickly be turned around and marketed.