Innovation + Job News

By Sharon Hanks

Request Foods' growing appetite for new business means new construction that will likely result in the hiring of 125 new workers next year.

The Holland Township company that prepares frozen entrees, side dishes and specialty items hopes to break ground this summer on a 200,000-square-foot addition north of its existing plant on John F. Donnelly Drive and a new wastewater pre-treatment facility. The development will help accommodate its growth that has heated up from annual sales of $180,000 million in fiscal 2009 to estimated annual revenues of $240,000 million in fiscal 2010.

"We have to expand our facilities," says Mark Zinc, Request Foods manager of people services.

With the recession, Zinc says families that once dined out are now cutting their food budgets by turning to more affordable home cooked meals and convenient frozen heat-and-serve food items. "We're definitely gearing up for a new adventure," he says.

Request Foods is seeking approvals from several state agencies for a 12-year tax abatement that's already been given the go-ahead by the Holland Township Board.

Zinc says that once construction is complete next spring, the frozen food manufacturer will initially hire 100 to 125 workers, with expectations of bringing on board at least another 125 by 2016.

Since last July, Request Foods has hired more than 140 fulltime employees, most in production, to mostly accommodate the demand of a customer contract awarded to them in October 2008, Zinc says.

The private company now employees 540 fulltime workers and makes nearly 800 different custom frozen entrees, side dishes, appetizers, sauces, desserts and soups.

Sources: Mark Zinc, Request Foods' manager of people services, Holland Township

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

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By Sharon Hanks

Lambert, Edwards & Associates, a Grand Rapids public and investor relations firm, has been named Small PR Agency of the Year by PRWeek at an awards ceremony in New York City.

PRWeek, the leading trade journal for public relations and corporate communications professionals, selected the 12-year-old firm from hundreds of applicants representing agencies with annual revenues of $5 million to $10 million.

"We're absolutely thrilled with this recognition by our peers in the industry," says Tara Powers, partner and managing director at the firm. "It's a testament to the work of our team on behalf of our clients."

Jeff Lambert is the president and managing partner of the company headquartered at 171 Monroe Ave. NW.

While a number of agencies struggled last year due the poor economy, LE & A reported a 6 percent growth in organic revenue and a 5 percent increase in net profit. It also recorded annual adjusted operating profit of more than 30% for the past five years. Besides financial growth, the award also recognized client roster growth, client and employee retention, client satisfaction, innovation, creativity and good human resources practices, such as fully paid employee health care, wellness reimbursement program and on-going training.

Part of that growth can be attributed to LE & A's acquisition last year of John Bailey & Associates, a Troy-based agency that brought with it a staff of 15 and about 25 new clients, Powers says. The acquisition expanded the agency's workforce to 37 employees, including 24 in Grand Rapids, making it West Michigan's largest public relations firm.

Spartan Motors, Georgia-Pacific, Zondervan, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Hangar42 Studios, and Salvation Army Kroc Center are among its 100-plus clients in 20 states.

Source: Tara Powers, Lambert, Edwards & Associates partner and managing director, Grand Rapids; PR Week website.


Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

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By Sharon Hanks

Known for its peaceful, wooded parks and meandering trails, Ottawa County will at last have an official center to present educational activities and exhibits showcasing the natural and cultural aspects of its entire 5,500-acre park system.

The new $1.8 million Nature Education Center will officially open April 24 at the popular Hemlock Crossing Park along the scenic Pigeon River. The much-anticipated opening of the 8,000-square-foot center will feature eight exhibits that interpret the natural history of the Pigeon River ecosystem and prepare visitors for their outdoor experience.

"There's a lot of excitement about it," says Parks Director John Scholtz, adding the fieldstone and wood timbers building is "beautiful" and the center is very accessible off US-31.  As one of the fastest growing counties in the state, the center is aimed at addressing a concern that consistently came up with survey results, showing residents were interested in recreational and educational facilities and services.

In addition to exhibits, the center includes a 1,600-square-foot multipurpose room that features a wood fireplace and a large bank of windows overlooking the forest, plus a 900- square-foot classroom for a variety of educational programs, activities and events.

An observation area for close-up views to outdoor birds and mammals has already been dubbed "The Wildlife Den," and the area housing real insects, reptiles, amphibians, and  native fish in an aquarium has been nicknamed "The Critter Hotel," he says. Year-round youth programs are planned so that children can reconnect with the natural world.

The 239 acres for Hemlock Crossing were purchased from eight different private land owners using parks millage funds and Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grants at a total cost of $1,885,000. The park itself opened in 2003.

Sources:  John Scholtz, Ottawa County Parks Director, West Olive; Ottawa County Parks website

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

 

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By Sharon Hanks

Grand Rapids' Spectrum Health is one of four pilot sites nationwide selected to participate in a new payment model for health care that may transform the way providers are reimbursed for care while offering greater efficiency and reduced healthcare costs.

Hospital officials say the model focuses on transitioning from the present a la carte system, in which providers are paid for each encounter of care, to a single all-inclusive payment structure that provides reimbursement for an entire episode of care.

"We are very pleased to be invited to be part of this," says Paula MacKenzie, Spectrum Health spokeswoman. "It's a very innovative approach and we are constantly looking for ways of coordinating care more efficiently. This is one way of doing this."

The model, often referred to as a bundled payment or the PROMETHEUS payment model, is based on delivery value-driven care with strong financial incentives to improve efficiency and encourage clinical collaborations. The goal is to streamline the payment system with a design that's more cost effective, efficient and successful.

Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the three-year project includes the coordination of services in each of Spectrum's business units: its hospital, medical group and health insurance plan.

"This pilot project is an opportunity to examine a payment reform approach that will benefit patients and anyone who pays for health care services," says Richard C. Breon, president and CEO, Spectrum Health in a press release. "Ultimately it means delivering the right care at the right time and in the right place for the best possible outcomes."

As part of the experiment, Spectrum Health will begin applying the piloted payment methodology in the last year of testing to patients receiving care for congestive heart failure, diabetes, colon surgery, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The other sites are in Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Sources: Paula MacKenzie, Spectrum Health Hospital spokeswoman; Spectrum Health website.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

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By Sharon Hanks

A system that turns wasted heat into usable, emission-free electricity will be sold to Midwest businesses through a new joint venture announced this week between a Grand Rapids investment firm owned by Dick and Betsy DeVos and a Portage company.

The patented Green Machine invented and manufactured by ElectraTherm Inc. in Reno, Nev. has been installed in six locations worldwide and has earned awards from such respected publications as The Wall Street Journal and Popular Science magazine.

One of the newest of the six Green Machine installations is in the Michigan Technical Education Center at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Kalamazoo, where a demonstration and announcement about the new venture was held Wednesday morning.

"We are pleased to announce this new venture bringing the Green Machine to the Midwest," says Dick DeVos, president of The Windquest Group.

The venture, called ProRenewables, LLC, represents a partnership between The Windquest Group, DeVos' investment management firm in Grand Rapids, and Pro Services, a specialized trades contractor in Portage.

The Green Machine uses heat and pressure recovery technologies to capture heat lost from virtually any geothermal or industrial operation and turn it into fuel-free, emission-free usable electricity. The escaping heat is a byproduct readily available from industrial sources, among them inefficient machines and manufacturing processes, and is abundantly available in the Midwest where there's a broad base of energy intensive industrial activity. Company officials estimate that more than two-thirds of the energy in fuel used to generate power in America is lost as heat.

The modular and mobile system captures heat by boiling fluids in a closed-loop system to create pressured gas that then turns a patented screw turbine, driving a generator to make electricity. To learn more about how the Green Machine works, click here.

Cost of the Green Machine ranges from $150,000 to $200,000, with a payback period expected in two to five years, company officials say. The unit, which won the 2009 Wall Street Technology Innovations Award and the 2008 Popular Science Magazine "Best of What's New" Award, Green Tech, has been installed for various applications, including boilers, stationary engines, and biomass, geothermal and solar thermal systems.

ProRenewables is authorized to sell, install and maintain the Green Machine in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. It was unclear how many jobs the new venture will immediately create.

Source: Pro Renewables LLC of Kalamazoo; ElectraTherm website; Andy Guy of Wondergem Consulting, Inc. of Grand Rapids.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

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By Sharon Hanks

Do you think about starting your own business in West Michigan and not sure where to turn?

Join us for our second Rapid Growth Series event Tuesday night when four entrepreneurs share their stories on how the reach of their small businesses has grown globally. Find out why they chose to locate their business here, and what challenges and opportunities they see that lie ahead.

Diana Sieger, president of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, will moderate the following panelists:

• Dottie Rhodes, principal of Plenty Creative, a downtown design studio
• Bing Goei, chief executive officer of Eastern Floral and founder of the Goei Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence
• Marcel Thibert of tronixr.us, an online electronics retailer
• Carl Erickson of Atomic Object, a developer of custom software solutions.

The event will be held from 5:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 16 at the Wealthy Theatre, 1130 Wealthy St. SE. Admission, food and beverages are free.

The event is sponsored by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.

Please RSVP for the event using the form below



Source: Jeff Hill, publisher, Rapid Growth Media, Grand Rapids

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.read on…

By Sharon Hanks

Community efforts are furiously speeding ahead to convince high-tech giant Google Inc. to pick Grand Rapids as one of its test sites for an ultra-high-speed Internet experiment called Google Fiber for Communities.

The Facebook site Google Fiber to Grand Rapids leads the nation with more than 22,000 fans since it was launched Feb. 10 by Mindscape at Hanon-McKendry. Mayor George Heartwell is one of the most recent fans to join. He even posted a pitch on YouTube.

Nominatations due March 26
But backers of the campaign believe Grand Rapids will have to shift into high-gear to succeed in convincing the innovative company that the River City is among its best choices for the fiber optic network. It's become a race against time. To participate in Google's "Request for Information," nominations from communities nationwide are due March 26.

"I think the activity in Grand Rapids is going very well," says Doug Lang, founder of the Grand Rapids Technology Partnership, an organization devoted to developing the city into a technological hub. "The social media push (here) is huge and that's a component of this," noting that the Facebook fans club created for Topeka, Kansas trails in second place with 14,000 Facebook fan members.

"I think what needs to be stepped up is community involvement beyond the keyboard (such as websites, twitters and blogs)," Lang says, adding that efforts at City Hall are well under way to complete the application earmarked for municipalities. "Google is a diverse company; their corporate culture is alternative to the status-quo business culture. They want to see the community truly involved."

Great opportunities with new video and photo contest
The new video and photo contest called "Bring Google Fiber to Grand Rapids" is a good example where the community has a great opportunity to be really innovative with a sales pitch to the Silicon Valley-based giant, Lang says. The community group behind the inthe616.com website along with four local restaurants are sponsoring the contest that's open from now until March 24. 

"They (contests) will be the engine that will drive creativity," he says. Two winners will be selected from both the photo submissions and the video submissions, with each winnter receiving a $100 gift certificate to one of the following sponsors: Brick Road Pizza, The Gilmore Collection, San Chez, or The Winchester. Contest rules are available at: www.inthe616.com/the-buzzzzz

Another activity that could create some buzz is to use Google products, he says. "There's Google.docs, Picasa (Google's version of flickr's image and video gallery), Google Chrome which is its web browser, and certainly, YouTube."

In the next two weeks, expect to see and hear more about the effort, Lang says. There are several different camps busy with plans. Last night some organizers met San Chez Café in Grand Rapids to explain what the Google Fiber Network would mean to the community. Another event is planned for downtown on Friday, March 19 by GRNow.com.

Google wants to roll out demonstration networks that move roughly 1,000 megabits per second, serving 50,000 to 500,000 people. A typical home broadband connection, in comparison, crawls at 1.5 to 6 megabits per second.

Sources: Doug Lang, founder of Grand Rapids Technology Partnership; several websites including Google and Facebook

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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By Sharon Hanks

Public schools across Michigan have been struggling for years with cutbacks in state funding and dropping enrollment, while costs for employee health care continued to soar.

Now 10 Kent County school boards have agreed to a solution -- at least for one year -- that cuts through the contentious issue, confirmed Ron Koehler, assistant superintendent of the Kent Intermediate School District.

The school boards adopted a labor template that requires each bargaining employee in their district to pay $65 per month toward the cost of their health care insurance for the 2010-2011 school year, Koehler says. In addition, they agreed to an increase in co-pays for doctor visits and a freeze on base salaries. The agreement will save the districts millions of dollars, dozens of jobs and long hours at the bargaining table.

The unusual agreement was proposed following negotiations by the Kent County Education Association and the Kent Intermediate Superintendents Association. During the past several years, many non-union support staff and administrators in these districts have been paying a portion of their health care insurance.

"We're just pleased that the Kent County Education Association recognized the severity of the financial situation our districts were facing and joined in on an effort to put kids first," says Koehler. "It sends a message to Lansing that we can work together and put our house in order. . . . it was the right thing to do and we're going to do it."

The districts include Godfrey Lee, Rockford, Lowell, Kenowa Hills, Kent ISD, Byron Center, Comstock Park, Northview, Godwin Heights and Grandville. In the past, teachers in the Grand Rapids Public Schools district were the only ones in the county that paid a portion of their health insurance premiums.

Source: Ron Koehler, assistant superintendent at Kent Intermediate School District.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.



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By Sharon Hanks

After collecting objects of local and "inter-galactic" significance for 155 years, the Grand Rapids Public Museum has arranged for 160,000 of them to be released to the public in one visit: an online collections catalog here.

This catalog allows the public to review the complete scope of the depth and variety of the collections, including those items not on display. The dynamic collection spans dozens of categories from automobiles to dolls to furniture to hats.

Only 10 percent of the museum's vast collection of 245,000 artifacts and specimens are exhibited in the museum at one time, according to Jen Huizinga, the museum's public relations and marketing coordinator. This is due to space demands, the desire to keep exhibits fresh for the public with new materials, and to protect the fragile items from exposure to light and other environmental threats.

"This (project) has been going on for over a year," says Huizinga. "A lot of larger museums have their collections on line so we're finally joining the ranks." Officials hope to have the majority of the remaining items online soon.

To access the collections catalog, visit here and click on the "collections catalog" icon. Once there you can search for artifacts by a category, such as keyword or artisan.

In addition to this new database, site visitors can also find information on featured objects, photo galleries, archival collections, stories, and more.

Because these collections can each contain thousands of documents, there is no way to list everything online. However, if viewers would like to conduct their own research, contact Alex Forist, the Collections Curator at aforist@grmuseum.org to set up an appointment.

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Sources: Grand Rapids Public Museum's website; Jen Huizinga, Grand Rapids Public Museum's public relations and marketing coordinator.


Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.

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By Sharon Hanks 

Holland-based Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co. has invested more than $1 million to install a huge rooftop solar energy system at its recycling facility in Wyoming, one of the largest such systems in the state. 

Consumers Energy officials say that when Padnos commissioned Grand Rapids-based Cascade Renewable Energy, a division of Cascade Engineering Inc., to set up the system last year, it was the largest of its kind in Michigan.

The solar system covers a 15,000-square-foot area, nearly 15 percent of the huge roof covering the sprawling plant at 500 44th St. SW. The system generates electricity using 636 3-by-5 foot photovoltaic panels. When sun hits the panels, they directly convert the light into a useable form of electricity, according to Mike Ford, business manager for Cascade Renewable Energy.

Underneath it is a 30,000-square-foot white rubber membrane to allow for better heat reflection. The installation became operational Jan. 4 and will be formally dedicated Monday, March 15.

The solar project taps into a program launched by Consumer's Energy last year called Experimental Advanced Renewable Program. Under the program, Consumer's Energy agrees to purchase the energy produced by the system at a predetermined rate for 12 years. After that time, the power is connected directly to the building's electric meter, allowing Padnos to enjoy significant cost savings and greater energy self-sufficiency.

The unit is expected to last 25 years with a payback of five to seven years, depending on lighting conditions.

"We really see this as a tipping point," Ford says, in advancing Cascade's leadership role in the renewable energy industry. "We have other projects (in negotiations), but the first projects are the toughest."

Last year, the company tackled its first residential solar energy projects with an installation at the Alto home of Fred Keller, Cascade chairman and CEO, and at the Ada home of Ford.

Consumer's Energy just gave the go-ahead for Cascade Engineering's facility in Grand Rapids to undergo its own solar make-over, Ford says.

In a press release, Keller hails the companies' collaboration on the project they began discussing in June, saying it represents "the kind of innovation that can take place between two companies that share a long history of trust. Our partnership goes back to the business Jeff (Padnos)'s father conducted by my father more than 60 years ago."

Jeff Padnos, president of Padnos Iron & Metal, called the project "an exciting expansion of our expertise and environmental commitment, and a path we hope many other businesses will emulate."

The coordination with Consumer's Energy is part of a larger strategy to meet Michigan's recently passed law that requires utilities to generate 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2015. When the law was passed, the utility was getting about 4 percent of its power from renewable sources.

Sources: Mike Ford, business manager for Cascade Renewable Energy, Grand Rapids; Amanda Passage of Lambert, Edwards & Associates, Grand Rapids.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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By Sharon Hanks

A stroll down Hope College's campus near Holland seems like a picturesque dream scene from another era, with its stately historic buildings and old whispering pines.

But the private college widely known for its high academic standards and deep roots to Christianity is not about to take for granted the safety of its 3,200 students, faculty and staff have enjoyed for generations.

The college is testing for the first time the benefit of surveillance cameras, a common safety device used for several years by a number of campuses nationwide, including Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Central Michigan, Michigan Tech, Western Michigan, Harvard, and Brown.

Since mid-January, the college has been taping the campus goings-on with five new surveillance cameras. Four cameras are situated inside the Martha Miller Center which houses expensive radio, television and computer equipment. A fifth monitors parking lot activities outside nearby Kollen Hall.

"We're not sure it's going to be a benefit," says Greg Maybury, Hope College's director of operations, adding that the college already maintains a "safe community" for its students compared to other campuses.

But the administration wants a 30- to 90-day test period to make an educated decision on the installation, he adds. "A place like Calvin has more than 140 of them (cameras)."

Results so far? Well, no one is monitoring the cameras, adds Maybury, saying "that would be expensive." No suspicious behavior has been reported that requires the need to download and replay the tapes for review, Maybury says. After the footage is kept for 48 hours, officials rewrite over it and tape new activities, he adds.

Once the semester ends in early May, Maybury says a final evaluation will take place to determine whether the benefits are worth the expense. It cost more than $5,000 to install the equipment and software, he says, adding the surveillance "can get expensive."

Sources: Greg Maybury, Hope College's director of operations; websites of these colleges: Harvard, Brown, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Michigan Tech and Marygrove.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.read on…

By Sharon Hanks

Grand Valley State University has tapped Linda Chamberlain, a director of a Grand Rapids technology incubator, to be the leader of its newly created Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.

Chamberlain, the executive director of the West Michigan Science & Technology Initiative for the past three years, began March 1 on focusing her energies on supporting the region's high-growth entrepreneurs.

"I'm very excited," Chamberlain says, adding that she welcomes "any sort of conversation" with the community regarding ideas to encourage new business and innovation in the region. "I think this is a wonderful opportunity for the community, Grand Valley, students, entrepreneurs and investors to continue our march for entrepreneurship."

In addition to work at WMSTI, for the past eight years Chamberlain has had her own consulting business, Inno Valuation, where she focuses on creating and validating business opportunities. Her career also includes leadership roles in research and product development at both blue-chip and start-up companies, including Shell Chemical in Texas, Allied Signal in New Jersey and Johnson Controls in Holland.

The new director grew up in Grand Rapids, graduated from the city's Creston High School and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue University. She completed her post-doctorate work at the University of California-Irvine.

Among her first goals are to help with the selection of an advisory board, introduce new programs focused on synchronizing resources, and complete a plan aimed at identifying new sources of capital. She will also work with the university's faculty and staff to develop additional academic programming for student entrepreneurs-in-training.

In the announcement released this week, GVSU President Thomas J. Haas says the Center will be "part think tank and part resource clearinghouse," with a goal of boosting entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Center will operate within GVSU's Seidman College of Business on the Pew Campus in downtown Grand Rapids.

Rick Cook, director of WMSTI's Venture Center, has been named interim executive director for WMSTI, an initiative located in GVSU's Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences along Medical Mile in Grand Rapids.

Sources: Linda Chamberlain, executive director of GVSU's Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Grand Rapids; Brian J. Bowe, GVSU's News & Information Services

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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By Sharon Hanks

A Hope College professor is being lauded by two national organizations for his "ground-breaking work" in the promotion of hearing loops, a technology that allows users who visit buildings installed with a loop system to turn their hearing aids into mini-loudspeakers customized for their own hearing needs.

David Myers has worked since 2002 to expand the use of telecoils in hearing aids in places such as churches, theaters, schools and other public meeting sites after he discovered first-hand how the wireless system enhanced his own hearing.

A telecoil that's installed in more than two-thirds of all hearing aids functions as an antenna, relaying sounds directly into the ear without background noise, much like Wi-Fi connects people to the web.

Myers says he and his wife first learned about telecoil-assisted hearing when they were visiting an abbey in Scotland and noticed a hearing assisted sign. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Myers says when he turned on the telecoil in his hearing aid that day. "What I was hearing was a crystal clear voice speaking at the center of my head."

The Hearing Loss Association of America and the American Academy of Audiology both have commended Myers for his crucial role in getting both organizations to endorse a public education campaign called the "Get in the Hearing Loop."

Pat Cricks, president-elect of the Academy, is quoted in a news release as saying "there have been steady increases in accessibility for individuals with hearing loss" due to Myers efforts.

"This is very gratifying," Myers says about national spotlight. "I don't want to take too much credit, but I guess the press release speaks for itself. It was sort of my fantasy that West Michigan could be a model for the nation and I think it is. It's really exciting!"

When Myers first learned about telecoils in Scotland, there was virtually no places in America that had installed the technology. Working with local corporations, Myers obtained grant money and support to help install the loop system in public venues. Today, there are 300 public places in West Michigan that are equipped with a loop, with each site costing from $2,000 to $10,000, Myers says.

In addition to this, Myers has helped spread the magic of the loop through a series of his own personal writings, including a memoir of his own hearing loss. He also established an informational website called www.HearingLoop.org that contains helpful facts for the hard of hearing.

Sources: David Myers, Hope College psychology professor in Holland; HearingLoop.org website; joint press release issued by HLAA and AAA

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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By Sharon Hanks

In keeping with its commitment to using cutting edge technology, Grand Rapids Community College announced last week the release of a free iPhone app called GRCC Mobile so that students can more easily tap into the latest college information.

Anyone with an iPhone can access up-to-the-minute updates on such things as classroom information posted on Blackboard websites, faculty absences, maps and directions to entranceways of more than a dozen college facilities, and, in the near future, the availability of parking spaces at the college's downtown area's five parking areas, says Derek DeVries, GRCC Communications Technology Manager. In addition, users can access the college's popular YouTube channel, course catalog and phone listings, he says.

"I've been chompin' at the bit to announce this," DeVries says. "I've worked here for eight years and I'm amazed at the stuff we have going on."

In the past, information posted at GRCC Mobile has been available to almost anyone using a laptop computer. Among the most popular was the college's YouTube channel where students, faculty and alumni could view video clips of select college sporting events, employee training sessions, and lectures by guest speakers. But the iPhone is preferred by a growing number of students because it's smaller, lighter and easier to carry than a laptop.

"I think right now we're the only higher education institution that has an app in West Michigan, but I know of other universities in the country that have an app," DeVries says. Among them are Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, he says.

In the future, DeVries says the college will be sharing the GRCC Mobile platform with other higher education institutions, such as Grand Valley State University, so they can develop their own apps.

He credits Szymon Machajewski, the college's senior Blackboard solutions engineer, for developing the program. Got suggestions for the app? Users are encouraged to e-mail Machajewski at smachaje@grcc.edu.

Sources: Derek DeVries, communications technology manager at Grand Rapids Community College

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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By Sharon Hanks

Parents worrying about the safety of their teenagers behind the wheel now have a new training tool that will monitor driving behavior on the road in real-time.

Holland's wireless startup Crayon Interface introduced Copilot this month, an innovative wireless device that plugs into a standard port found on all vehicles built after 1995. It tracks in real time the driver's performance on everything from the speed of driver to the location through the use of personal computers, software and mobile applications, according to Kevin Virta, Crayon Interface's vice president of business development.

Virta says the goal is to give parents a method of observing and teaching their teenager safer driving habits without always being in the passenger seat. With 12.5 million teen drivers on the road nationwide, Virta says the company hopes to reduce the number of traffic accidents which are the leading cause of teen deaths.

With Copilot, parents can instantly locate their teen drivers using an interactive map, receive alerts when they are rapidly accelerating or decelerating, set geographic boundaries, and keep track of their time behind the wheel for verification of supervised driving time required by most Graduated Drivers License (GDL) programs, including those in Michigan.

As a parent of a teenager, Virta is fully aware of the anxiety parents experience when their son or daughter hits the road as a novice driver.

"I think there are a lot of parents who go through this," he says.

Virta says there are other applications available to monitor the behavior of drivers, but they are designed for tracking drivers of large fleet trucks, he says, and not customized for novice drivers.

The Copilot device is about half the size of a deck of cards and plugs into the vehicle's computer diagnostic port. This is the same port a technician uses to diagnose a problem with the vehicle. It is normally located under the dashboard, usually near the steering column. It takes about five minutes to install.

Available only online, the unit costs $299, with a renewal annual service fee of $99 after one year. There is a 30-day risk-free trial program available.

"We're now looking for other (distribution) channels and retail opportunities for it," Virta says.


Sources: Kevin Virta, Crayon Interface's vice president of business development; Crayon Interface's website.

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.
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