Page 74 - Innovation Delaware 2018

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STAR
Campus
STILL GOING STRONG
In looking for comparisons to the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus, KATHLEEN MATT, dean of the university’s College of Health Sciences, says they’re hard to find.
With its blend of academics and research, the presence
of public and private entities, health clinics open to area residents and, in the future, a relocated Newark train station and perhaps even a hotel, UD’s Science, Technology & Advanced Research Campus has few peers.
“There’s definitely nothing else like this on the East Coast,” says John Horne, president of Independence Prosthetics- Orthotics Inc., a tenant on the campus for two years. “Research, education, innovation — it’s an extremely unique opportunity,” he says.
And the opportunities will keep on multiplying because, as Matt says, “we’re not all the way to where we’re going.”
People have a tendency, Matt says, “to think of health care innovation being done in a silo.” But that’s not the case on the STAR Campus, built on the site of the former Chrysler assembly plant across South College Avenue from the UD athletic complex. “Here we’ve set it on the base of the entire university, and all the businesses are working together.”
Independence, which has operations at four other locations between Philadelphia and Dover, offers a prime example of the synergies available on the campus. Amputees come to Independence to be fitted for prosthetics, UD students work there as interns, and Independence collaborates with both
the clinical research team in the university’s physical therapy department and with the BADER Consortium. BADER, also based on the STAR campus, helps injured military personnel and civilians with limb loss and limb difference benefit from research advances so they can return to their previously active lifestyles.
The labs and clinics on the STAR Campus provide practicum, research and internship experiences for students in all six departments of the College of Health Sciences: nursing,
KATHLEEN MATT
DENNIS ASSANIS
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physical therapy, medical laboratory sciences, behavioral health and nutrition, kinesiology and applied physiology, and communication sciences and disorders. “They get their academics elsewhere on campus,” Matt says, “and they put it into practice here.”
The university-run health facilities, most notably the Nurse Managed Primary Care Center and the Physical Therapy Clinic, serve the general public, and those visits build awareness of the university’s programs and its community service.
Christiana Care operates a Care Now urgent care center on the campus, which Matt says serves as a complement to the Nurse Managed Primary Care Center.
Some of the enterprises located on the STAR Campus
are not directly related to health sciences. Rather, they are innovative technology businesses like Bloom Energy, which manufactures fuel cells, and SevOne, which develops and maintains corporate technology infrastructure. The university- affiliated Delaware Technology Park also has a business incubator on site.
Even more is on the way, mostly as a continuation of a public-private partnership in which the university owns the land and Delle Donne & Associates constructs and owns most of the buildings.
A 10-story tower is scheduled for completion in August. It will feature a large auditorium and atrium on the main level,
STAR CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE