Match point at UW business center

It's a perfect match. Struggling but promising businesses are matched with imaginative and promising young business minds.

The students get to apply their book learning to the real world, and the business owners in economically distressed communities get the benefit of first-rate market research and advice. For 10 years, the Business and Economic Development Center in the University of Washington Business School has been providing this hybrid learning lab/consulting service/management training to students, businesses and nonprofit agencies. Among the clients that have benefited are Wan Hua Foods, Ezell's Famous Chicken and the Colville Indian Reservation.

In the center's 2006 annual report, Director Michael Verchot traces 500 new jobs and $20 million in new revenues for business owners in economically distressed communities.

The program also has provided scholarships to 30 underrepresented minority students and executive education scholarships to 17 minority business owners; mentored 100 high-school students of color; and improved the management skills of 50 small-business owners in the Yakima Valley and on the Yakama Nation Reservation with classes offered in English and Spanish. The list goes on.

The center is among many University of Washington programs that help to make our region, and the people in it, more successful. But the university needs help to ensure that the quality of its many programs continues and improves.

The UW Foundation is attempting to raise $2 billion through its Creating Futures fundraising campaign to shore up the university across its many colleges, departments, research programs and instructional missions.

The UW is an excellent investment. For information about the UW and the campaign, go to www.uwfoundation.org