Top of Mind: Ned Hill

Published Date July 11, 2024
News Type College News

Glenn College Professor Ned Hill’s final class this spring featured panelists who shared insight into their careers in economic development.

 

By Joan Slattery Wall

Anyone who knows John Glenn College of Public Affairs Professor Ned Hill can attest to his love of storytelling and humor to teach students, community leaders and business owners about manufacturing and regional economic and community development.

Here’s one of his favorites, which he used to open a publication in the journal Economic Development Quarterly last year:

“In 2002, Duluth, Minnesota’s Mayor Gary Doty asked if I could explain economic development at his city’s summit. That was when I started writing this commentary. I am a slow writer.”

In fact, Hill has been telling the tale of economic development and resilience, particularly in manufacturing, for more than 40 years. His expertise has resulted in top rankings among economic development scholars and researchers in the United States, improvements in manufacturing policy in Ohio, assessment tools companies use to digitize their business and a new Ohio State engineering technology degree. 

Ned Hill’s Backstory

As he retires from teaching this year, Hill, now Professor Emeritus, recalls what prompted his interest in manufacturing and economic development.

“I was a junior in high school in 1968 living in an industrial valley in Connecticut that was home of the U.S. brass industry. It was an old industry: Two river valleys came together, and Main Street had a plant on each end,” he said. “It was an arsenal of democracy.”

He watched the community and businesses deal with the 1970’s recession — unemployment in his town hit 20% — as well as civic disturbances and New York’s growing influence on Connecticut’s economic development.

“I became really interested in how these economies change,” said Hill, who has become a longtime trusted source of manufacturing and economic development expertise for businesses, cities, communities and news media across the nation.

Professor Ned Hill addresses community leaders at the 2023 annual meeting of Team NEO, the northeast Ohio region’s economic development partner. (Credit: Team NEO)

Hill joined Ohio State in 2015 from Cleveland State University, where, as dean, he advanced the Levin College of Urban Affairs through a period of financial instability. His recruitment to Ohio State — as professor of economic development at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs and the Knowlton School of Architecture’s section on City and Regional Planning and as senior faculty associate of the College of Engineering’s Ohio Manufacturing Institute — offered him the opportunity to return to writing about economic development and teaching.

“I wanted to finish off my career with my craft rather than a vocation in administration,” Hill said. “It really was reinvigorating.”

“The common point of the Levin College and the Glenn College is that both are multidisciplinary colleges, and both do it very well because they’re basically kind. They’re both very rigorous, but they’re accepting,” he said. “The intent of both of those colleges is to help develop the careers of the faculties, which then means also of the students.”

New Chapters for Manufacturing, Economic Development

Emphasizing engaged learning and applied solutions for economic development, Hill worked with Kathryn Kelley, director of the Ohio Manufacturing Institute at Ohio State, to conduct research to prepare manufacturers for “Manufacturing 5.0,” which connected and integrated digital manufacturing operations technology.

They worked with the MPI Group and the Ohio Manufacturing Extension Partnership to develop a tool to assess manufacturers’ readiness to undertake a digital transformation; about 200 companies used the tool to invest in and implement digital strategies for operations and production. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership funded the tool’s development with the goal of enabling small and mid-size enterprises to apply and integrate technologies such as robotics, 3D printing and artificial intelligence more efficiently and effectively.

Hill and the institute also gathered the data to support and launch an engineering technology degree at all of Ohio State’s regional campuses, responding to the needs of the state’s manufacturers.

What’s really good is hearing the employers rave about the graduates.

Ned Hill
Glenn College Professor Emeritus

“I was at The Ohio State University at Mansfield in March as they opened up the manufacturing labs and met the 40 students in the program,” Hill said. “What was awe-inspiring was employers saying, ‘A university finally figured out how to do experiential learning. This is outstanding.’”

Research and focus groups he conducted to help formulate the degree also led to the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association-endorsed formation of nearly 20 manufacturing Industry Sector Partnership Networks, a workforce development strategy where manufacturers within a regional labor market collaborate to influence alignment around common solutions with education and training, economic and workforce development and community organizations.

Top of Mind: Doug Jones
In the first of our series of Glenn College educator stories, we highlight the esteemed federal public service and career of Faculty Emeritus Doug Jones.

Hill is on the boards of economic advisors for the Ohio Office of Budget and Management and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. He formerly served on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Advisory Board, which he chaired for three years, and the board of MAGNET, the northeast Ohio affiliate of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

Hill also has been involved in improving manufacturing policy.

“The number of public policy issues we affected in the state from the Ohio Manufacturing Institute, Ohio Manufacturer’s Association and Ohio’s manufacturing extension partnerships and universities I’ve been with has been incredibly rewarding,” he said, noting one success was to lower the state tax rate on capital equipment in manufacturing.

“I also was involved the very painful battle to prevent the monopolization of the electricity regulation in the state,” he said. “I testified nine times in front of the legislature or the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on that.”

Academic Enlightenment

Among his academic publications is “A Methodology for Identifying the Drivers of Industrial Clusters: The Foundation of Regional Competitive Advantage,” a 2000 Economic Development Quarterly article he co-wrote.

John Glenn College of Public Affairs Professor Ned Hill, center, poses inside the Ohio State Faculty Club for a photo with the eight students in his final class.

In 2017 he co-wrote the book “Coping with Adversity: Regional Economic Resilience and Public Policy” with Hal Wolman, emeritus professor in the Department of Political Science at the George Washington University and research professor and founding director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy; Howard Wial, senior vice president and director of research at the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City; and Travis St. Clair, associate professor of financial management and public service at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Ohio’s Manufacturing and Economic Development Challenges

Glenn College Emeritus Professor Ned Hill offers solutions for what he calls America’s crisis in experiential education.

In another example of engaged scholarship, Hill last year wrote “What is economic development? What is the job of an economic development professional?” in Economic Development Quarterly. He developed the article after years of giving speeches to manufacturers and economic development groups and listening to feedback from practitioners.

He intends to continue conducting research and writing about economic development and the meaning and measurement of productivity. 

He’s also looking forward to continuing his long-term woodworking hobby, with plans to build furniture and hopes to construct a kayak.

“My goal is to become a woodworker and stop being a woodpecker,” Hill joked. “I’m really good at putting holes in wood.”

Read some stories from individuals whose careers Hill influenced:

Ken Poland, director of workforce services for the Ohio Manufacturer’s Association, is completing his PhD at the Glenn College under Hill’s advisement.

Ned teaches conversationally and will never be caught without an anecdote. Like most of my favorite teachers, he is adept at humor, an expert in his field and cannot resist telling a story.

I learned a lot from Ned about navigating academia — especially advocating for myself and prioritizing my professional well-being. Ned has a clear-eyed view of academic life and was always frank about its challenges and rewards. Oddly, I also learned a lot about making canoes from him.

My research with Ned is now the basis of my career at the Ohio Manufacturer’s Association, and what I learned from him is more important than any particular analytical method: Talking to people and telling their story well is the foundation of solid research.

I have been in school for my MPA, MS and PhD since 2017, and I have had several advisors and mentors. Not to discount those advisors, but Ned has doubtlessly played the most crucial role in my professional development. Ned and I seemed to just click. We work in similar ways, write in similar styles and value conceptual creativity. One way we differ actually improves our joint functioning: Ned is a chaotic font of ideas gleaned from a life of experience, and I cannot function without imposing order and consistency on a project. We quickly found that Ned could fire off brilliant ideas, and I could trim them down and make them function. I greatly appreciate Ned for his advice, guidance and sense of humor — and I feel extremely lucky to have received his mentorship before he departs to make canoes.

As executive director of the Ohio Manufacturing Institute, Kathryn Kelley has worked with Hill for almost 10 years.

The opportunities Ned has provided Ohio Manufacturing Institute — from our research on Manufacturing 5.0 to the most recent NIST-funded Digital Transformation for Manufacturers — has expanded our reach beyond state borders and strengthened Ohio State’s mission.

Most importantly, he steered me toward a research project on future engineering technology skills needed by manufacturers. The focus groups and data analysis led to a white paper and co-writing an Economic Development Quarterly article with Ohio Manufacturing Institute Senior Fellow and economic development expert Fran Stewart. I credit Ned for seeding Ohio State’s new engineering technology degree program in which our first class of students graduated this semester.

The word “empower” is overused, so I prefer the term “embolden” when speaking about the way that Ned interacts with others, whether they are students, industry partners or other academicians interested in manufacturing. That is the effect that Ned has on our student interns and definitely the impact he has made in my career. If I ever need a shot of chutzpah, Ned is my first call.

Hal Wolman, emeritus professor in the Department of Political Science at the George Washington University and research professor and founding director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy, is a longtime research collaborator of Hill, co-authoring with him the book “Coping with Adversity: Regional Economic Resilience and Public Policy” in 2017. 

Ned Hill’s work on regional economic development and resilience places him in the top rank of economic development scholars and researchers in the United States. He has made major contributions to both regional economic development theory and to research.

And, equally importantly, he has also directed his efforts to informing economic development practitioners how to do a better job of what they do.

Moreover, Ned has not shied away from engagement in public policy debates both in Ohio and nationally.

He has accomplished all this not only through his intelligence, but through his collegiality and his personality. He stands out among regional economic development economists and planners as akin to a force of nature.

In addition, on his own time he has built a mean boat, which, to my knowledge, has not sunk yet.