Daily Business Report-Dec. 4, 2019
For every dollar students spend on their education at the SDCCD they see a return of $4.10 in higher future earnings, according to the report. (Photo courtesy of SDCCD)
The Emsi Report:
San Diego Community College District
contributes $4.3 billion to regional economy
The San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) and its current and former students were responsible for generating $4.3 billion to the local economy in the 2018-19 fiscal year, or approximately 1.8 percent of the county’s gross regional product, according to a new study from an Idaho-based labor market analytics firm.
The $4.3 billion in added income was enough to support 44,988 jobs. That means the SDCCD and its students sustain one out of every 48 jobs in the region, which is more than the entire Research and Development in Biotechnology industry in the county, the Emsi report found. The district includes City, Mesa and Miramar colleges and San Diego Continuing Education.
Among the report’s highlights:
- For every dollar students spend on their education at the SDCCD they see a return of $4.10 in higher future earnings.
- The net impact of SDCCD’s former students who are now employed in the county’s workforce amounted to $3.8 billion in added income.
- For every dollar invested last year in the SDCCD, people in California will receive $11.20 in return for as long as the students who were enrolled during the 2018-19 academic year remain active in the state workforce
- The SDCCD employed 5,964 full- and part-time faculty, staff, and administrators last year, with payroll amounting to $315.6 million. The district spent an additional $142.9 million on day-to-day expenses related to facilities, supplies, and professional services.
A student with an associate degree from City, Mesa, or Miramar colleges will see an increase in earnings of $10,000 each year compared to a person with just a high school diploma or equivalent in California, the report said.
Mesa College alumnus Alex Szeto is among the tens of thousands of former students who embody the SDCCD’s impact. A refugee from Vietnam with a ninth-grade education when he moved to San Diego, Szeto enrolled at Mesa College in 1980 and earned an associate degree in mathematics two years later. Today, he is a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman.
“When you’re 18 years old with no high school diploma and no money, it’s not easy,” said Szeto, who was named Mesa College’s 2017 Distinguished Alumnus. “Mesa College provided me with an educational opportunity that allowed me to transfer to Cal Poly Pomona for a bachelor’s degree and to San Diego State University for a master’s degree and then a career in aerospace engineering. Mesa College was a springboard.”
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Illumina, ArcherDX expand
partnership on NGS IVD tests
genomeweb
ArcherDx announced a non-exclusive partnership with Illumina to develop next-generation sequencing-based in vitro diagnostic tests.
Under the terms of the agreement, ArcherDx will develop IVD test kits to run on Illumina’s NextSeq 550Dx clinical sequencing system, including ArcherDx’s future portfolio of IVD companion diagnostic tests used to facilitate targeted therapy selection and tests for monitoring minimal residual disease of patients with solid and blood tumors. ArcherDx will be responsible for obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals for each test kit and for commercializing them.
Financial and other details of the agreement were not disclosed.
ArcherDx CEO and Cofounder Jason Myers said in a statement that Illumina’s large installed base and highly accurate sequencing systems “will accelerate our efforts to democratize access to high-quality genomic testing by developing distributable diagnostic assays that can be used to identify targeted therapy options, as well as monitor for the recurrence of disease across a wide variety of cancers.”
Based in Boulder, Colorado, ArcherDx markets NGS-based assays for oncology developed with its proprietary anchored multiplex PCR technology for target enrichment.
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SDSU ranks top 5 in U.S.
for students studying abroad
By Aaron Burgin | SDSU NewsCenter
More than 3,000 San Diego State University students studied abroad during the 2017-18 academic year, placing the university in the top five in the nation for the number of students studying abroad and helping to develop global citizens who will work across borders to find solutions to social and scientific challenges.
Released this week, the Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education shows SDSU at No. 5 nationally for a second straight year. With 3,076 students studying abroad, SDSU also maintained its No. 1 ranking among California universities.
SDSU’s location on the U.S.-Mexico border and its recognized status as an international gateway are advantages in promoting study abroad and other global education and research.
The Open Doors report’s release coincides with the beginning of International Education Week, a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to publicize programs that prepare Americans for a global environment. SDSU hosts a series of related events this week, including the 63rd annual International Peace Village.
The number of U.S. students studying abroad has increased steadily for the past decade and rose 2.71 percent in 2017-18, with 341,751 students reporting participation.
SDSU’s study-abroad cohort rose from 3,039 to 3,076 between the 2016-17 and the 2017-18 school years. The number of students studying abroad each year equals about 10 percent of SDSU’s undergraduate population.
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Upcoming Major Events
at the San Diego Convention Center
Baseball Winter Meetings
Dec. 8-12 | 4,000 attendees
***
Fetch dvm360 Conference
Dec. 13-16 | 5,000 attendees
***
San Diego International Auto Show
Jan. 1-5, 2020
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Accel Robotics raises $30 million in
Series A funding led by SoftBank Group
Accel Robotics, a San Diego-based startup focused on AI and computer vision for checkout-free stores, announced a $30 million Series A funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp.
Accel Robotics enables grab-and-go, checkout-free shopping experiences across existing and emerging store formats. The company’s camera-based AI and computer vision system allows any shopper to enter a store, grab the items they want, walk out, and receive a receipt via text message or app notification.
Accel Robotics delivers its frictionless commerce platform to retailers and brands so they can run stores more efficiently with increased throughput. Accel Robotics increases shopper satisfaction by eliminating checkout lines while offering key data streams, such as live inventory and shopper analytics, to retailers to improve the in-store experience.
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Navy selects Fairbanks Morse engines to
power 7th Expeditionary Sea Base ship
Fairbanks Morse, an EnPro Industries company, has been awarded a contract for four main propulsion diesel enginesfor the U.S. Navy’s Expeditionary Sea Base. This is the seventh ship in the Navy’s Expeditionary Transfer Dock/Expeditionary Sea Base program. The engines will be built by Fairbanks Morse at its Beloit, Wisc., manufacturing facility and the ESB 7 ship will be constructed by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego.
ESB ships are designed to be a semi-submersible, flexible, modular platform providing the US Navy with the capability to perform large-scale logistics movements such as the transfer of vehicles and equipment from sea to shore. These ships significantly reduce the dependency on foreign ports and provide support in the absence of port availability.
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Dr. Seuss Enterprises partners with Sugar Creative
to develop educational augmented reality apps
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, a leading children’s entertainment company, announced it has commissioned renowned creative innovation studio Sugar Creative to produce a series of augmented reality (AR) apps set to enhance the way children learn to read. The first app in the series, based on the bestselling Dr. Seuss’s “ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book!,” will allow children to learn their ABCs in a fun, engaging, and unexpected way, and is set to launch in spring 2020 on both phones and tablets.
“We’re thrilled to enter the AR space with such an interactive, enjoyable product that truly enhances how children learn,” said Susan Brandt, president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. “This year, we’re embracing emerging technologies to shape how children, parents, and educators explore the world of Dr. Seuss in never-before-seen ways, and we’re excited to continue this momentum in 2020 with Sugar Creative!”
With more titles being explored for AR capability, this immersive platform will bring Dr. Seuss’s books to life like never before while also creating a fresh method for teaching and storytelling to children. Dr. Seuss’s “ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book!” will be the first in a series of apps Sugar Creative will develop in the coming years.
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Cal State San Marcos among national
leaders in social mobility
Cal State San Marcos stands among the national leaders in the social mobility of its graduates, according to new rankings by the online publication CollegeNET.
CSUSM ranks 36th nationally out of almost 1,500 schools measured in the sixth annual Social Mobility Index (SMI) by CollegeNET. The SMI measures the extent to which a college or university educates more economically disadvantaged students (with family incomes below the national median) at lower tuition and graduates them into good-paying jobs.
CSUSM improved its ranking in the SMI for the fourth consecutive year. The university ranked 74th in 2015, 62nd in 2016, 54th in 2017 and 52nd last year.
The SMI differs from most other rankings of colleges and universities in that it focuses directly on the factors that enable economic mobility. The index is computed from five variables: published tuition, percentage of students whose families have incomes below $48,000 (slightly below the U.S. median), graduation rate, median salary approximately five years after graduation, and endowment size.
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Jewish Family Service tapped to provide
immigration legal services for local colleges
Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) will provide free immigration-related legal support for students, faculty and staff at eight community colleges in the San Diego region. The services will be provided through a statewide pilot program involving the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the Foundation for California Community Colleges and the California Department of Social Services.
Known as “Higher Education Legal Services,” the program will support San Diego and Imperial County community colleges, including Cuyamaca College, Grossmont College, Imperial Valley College, MiraCosta College, Palomar College, San Diego City College, San Diego Mesa College and Southwestern College. Additional campuses in JFS’s Higher Education Legal Services program include San Diego State University and CSU San Marcos.
The program, which is being rolled out in 2020, will include confidential consultations, help applying for various benefits, and workshops and outreach events covering immigration-related topics. The initiative is aimed at addressing a critical need identified through a recent California Community Colleges Dreamers Project Report that found one of the top three pressing concerns for undocumented students was the need for free or low-cost legal services.
