UT cultivates an incubator at Scott Park campus

Shanda Gore, right, vice president of the Office of Equity and Diversity at the University of Toledo, shows Oona Temple her new office at the opening yesterday of the minority business incubator on the UT Scott Park campus. Ms. Temple is the owner of Cosine Technical Group LLC, a technical staffing agency.

"Diversity strengthens an institution, strengthens a region, strengthens a city," University of Toledo President Lloyd Jacobs told about 80 education and business officials Wednesday at a ceremony marking the grand opening of a new UT Minority Business Incubator.

The incubator, in the Engineering Technology Center at the Scott Park campus of Energy and Innovation, is the culmination of several years of effort to create a site where fledgling minority-owned businesses can operate and get help with business services, research, and guidance.

"I think it's great because it offers more of the resources that you need, not just to start a business, but to be able to grow it," said Oona Temple, owner of Cosine Technical Group LLC, a technical staffing and recruiting firm - the first tenant of the minority incubator.

Ms. Temple employs a staff of eight. The incubator, she said, is allowing her "to take my company out of my house" and, hopefully, push it to the next level.

The incubator has space to accommodate six small businesses, and will be run through the UT business incubator program affiliated with its business school. Applicants will have to show six months of working capital, sound management, or a product development team, a potential for producing local jobs and revenues, and an intent to operate in the Toledo community.