George Dials, president and general manager of BWXT Y12, and Hazel O'Leary, president of Fisk University and former Secretary of Energy, recently signed a mentor-protégé agreement in a ceremony in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The Department of Energy (DOE) Mentor-Protégé Program is designed to encourage DOE prime contractors to assist small disadvantaged firms certified by the Small Business Administration (SBA) under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act, which includes women-owned small businesses, historically black colleges and universities, and other minority institutions of higher learning and small business concerns owned by service-disabled veterans.
The program provides BWXT Y12 with a mechanism for entering into integrated working agreements and providing nonfinancial assistance to these entities.
The agreements are designed to enhance the protégé's business and technical capabilities and to foster long-term business relationships between these small businesses or universities and DOE prime contractors.
According to Dials, the agreement "will significantly contribute to Y12's achieving its objectives of promoting technological growth and business development opportunities within the university while new collaborative research and development opportunities will help Y12 in accomplishing its national security missions with DOE/NNSA."
More info: www.y12.doe.gov
