SAVING LIVES. Enhancing public safety. Increasing the quality of life. Creating high-paying jobs. Any institution would be proud to have contributed to such efforts. Indeed, there's a Jesuit university that played a role in developing some important technological products that had these effects, including:

• a hand-held cutter used by rescue workers at the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995;
• a device that offers police a safer way of halting high-speed chases;
• a software program that gives educators insights into how severely disabled children react to stimuli.

Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W. Va., had a hand in all of these when it became partners with NASA to form a high-tech facility on its campus: the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC).

Since 1990, NTTC has been helping businesses in the United States gain access to research conducted at hundreds of federally funded facilities. The result is that technological innovations come off the "laboratory" shelf and into the hands of companies that put them to work.

Consider Lifeshears, a hand-held cutter that uses the same power source that separates solid rocket boosters from space shuttles to cut through car door posts, roofs, or steering wheels, for instance, to free victims from auto wrecks. In the hands of rescue workers searching for survivors at the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, this tool made quick work of cutting through rebar embedded in concrete exposed by the blast.

Lifeshears (in hand on left) helped rescue workers reach victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Wheeling Jesuit University played an important role in the tool's development.

NTTC helped make Lifeshears a reality by referring Hi-Shear Technology Corporation of Torrance, Calif., to NASA for the appropriate technology; NASA and Hi-Shear combined brainpower and dollars to develop this low-cost tool that is lighter and easier to use than the "Jaws of Life," traditional "wreck" equipment that relies on hydraulic power.

Another product NTTC helped create gives law enforcement personnel a new way to halt high-speed chases. RoadSpike, a device that hit the market this year, went from idea to product thanks to efforts of a branch of NTTC that works with the Justice Department to find new technologies police can use in the war on crime.

RoadSpike began as an idea for a retractable spiked barrier at Idaho National Engineering Lab and ended up as a product created by PMG, a manufacturing company in West Virginia. This was another technological transfer facilitated by NTTC. RoadSpike is a rolled-up strip of collapsible spikes. In a high-speed chase, a police officer in advance of the pursuit pulls it out of the trunk and unrolls it across a highway before a speeding vehicle passes. The spikes remain retracted until the officer activates them from a safe distance. When the car drives over the strip, the tires deflate at a rapid but safe rate. As the car rolls to a stop on rims and rubber, the spikes are once again retracted to safeguard following cars. The simple concept helps protect lives by shortening high-speed police chases.

That black strip contains spikes that can be activated to deflate the tires of the object of a high-speed pursuit.

Lt. Col. Gary Griffith of West Virginia's State Police says his officers face high-speed pursuits nearly every day. "Current methods to end pursuits are risky and can cause harm not only to those people involved but also to the general public," Griffith says. "We're always looking for ways to end these pursuits in a safe manner, and this strip has vast potential to allow us to do just that."

PMG already has 200 queries for the product, and important jobs will be created by the $40 million in revenue RoadSpike is predicted to generate the first five years.

Pennsylvania's E. A. Fischione Instruments provides another example of how NTTC puts knowledge to work and how a small community reaps the benefits.

Fischione, a manufacturer of electron microscopes, increased its sales dramatically and expanded its full-time staff by 100 percent over the past year because of a new product-the Model 3000 Ion Mill-which "shaves" specimens to improve the accuracy of electron microscope analysis.

When Fischione Instruments called in a technical assistance request to NTTC, it was referred to federal scientists able to answer key technical questions. According to Paul Fischione, president, every hour his staff spent on the phone with scientists saved the company ten to twenty hours of time in the development of the ion mill.

As a result of another collaborative effort, Fischione developed the Model 1400 Plasma cleaner, a tool that "cleans" integrated circuits of contamination with hydrogen atoms and allows them to be accurately analyzed under an electron microscope.

Fischione's future is bright. Its forecasters anticipate increased sales and new jobs as a result of the machine. "Not only are we providing much-needed products for our industry," says Fischione, "we also are providing the kinds of employment opportunities communities want-high-tech positions with professional development opportunities."

When NTTC refers a caller to a federal lab, benefits are not always measured in dollars or jobs. The Crew Response Evaluation Window (CREW) software, developed by NASA for use in flight simulators, simultaneously tracks pilots' eye movement, physiological stress, and brainwave patterns. Another use for this technology was in the education of severely disabled students.

"Past monitoring efforts on disabled people involved observing only external responses," says Tim Birt, rehab engineer for Deaton Ashcraft Group (DAG) of Dayton, Ohio. When DAG contacted NTTC, it was put in touch with NASA's research center in Hampton, Va. Together they developed software to show where a severely disabled person is looking and how he or she is being affected. The real reward of this partnership is that an educational curriculum can be designed to target accurately the special needs of severely disabled students.

Wheeling Jesuit, which has worked hard to build the NTTC, can be proud of its role in these and many other technology-transfer success stories. By playing a role in the transfer of knowledge and information, it is having an ongoing and direct effect on job creation and economic development.

MISSION CONTROL

TO GIVE STUDENTS hands-on math and science education and to honor the memory of the astronauts lost in the Challenger explosion, NASA developed Challenger Learning Centers (CLC) at sites throughout the States, including Wheeling Jesuit University. Over 18,000 children visited Wheeling's CLC last year to participate in simulated space flight missions.

In the CLC mission control room and its spacecraft simulator, students perform science experiments as if they were astronauts aboard a space station. The experiments present students with problem-solving and team-building experience to spark their interest in math and science.

Students from around the country come to the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit University to take part in simulated space missions that teach communication and teamwork.

"Rarely in traditional education settings are students given the opportunity to apply knowledge, solve problems, make critical decisions, and be held responsible for the results," says Nancy Sturm, director of Wheeling's CLC. "Many times only the best and brightest students are given the opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills. Placing students in space simulation-where success depends on teamwork-helps all students develop as leaders."

Among those who have experienced what it is like to work at the CLC are some who otherwise may never have had the chance to do so -- sight- and hearing-impaired students. Students from the West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Romney, W. Va., participated with the help of video monitors and cameras that allowed them to sign messages to fellow participants. Laptop computers replaced headsets, allowing deaf students to type messages to each other.

The goal is to refine the innovations and develop a program that can be duplicated in other CLCs. Sturm plans to train students with disabilities to teach other centers the techniques and procedures developed at Wheeling. "Science activities are important for science learning, but even more so for students with visual and hearing impairments," explains Sturm. "Creating opportunities for hands-on activities at CLCs will have a great impact upon the leadership skills, attitudes, and self-esteem of students with visual and hearing impairments."

Gerrill Griffith, a Wheeling, W. Va., native, is director of public affairs at Wheeling Jesuit. He served for seven years as a press secretary on Capitol Hill.