The same is true in Ardmore, home to a Michelin tire plant, The Noble Foundation, East Jordan Iron Works and IMTEC Corp., among others. IMTEC, which manufactures imaging systems for oral surgeons, is expanding by 20,000-sq.-ft. (1,860-sq.-m.) as it introduces IMCAT, a new compact scanner.
      In June, the Ardmore Development Authority opened the Ardmore Technology Transfer Center, which is an incubator for high-tech companies, at the Southern Oklahoma Technology Center (SOTC), which offers two-year degrees in a range of fields. The incubator's first tenant is IMTEC Imaging, LLC, a joint venture of IMTEC Corp. and HYTEC Engineering of Los Alamos, N.M.
      IMTEC CEO James Clark cites labor availability and the low cost of doing business in Ardmore as key reasons to locate there, but closer access to university research facilities for clinical testing of the company's products would make the area even more attractive. "In the field we're in, you literally cannot sell anything without some kind of clinical study behind it. It's a very important part of our work."
      The Ardmore area is in the midst of an education initiative aimed at improving the quality of the workforce so as to better compete with other in-state and out-of-state communities, which is an effort Clark heartily endorses. Michelin, the largest employer in town with 2,100 workers, is partnering with the Ardmore Scholarship Fund and has recently initiated two new scholarships, one for a four-year engineering degree and the other for a two-year technical degree.
      "The hope is that we will end up with trained, technical people who will want to come back to Ardmore to work after they graduate," says Dave Brenner, plant manager at the Michelin tire plant. "We like to recruit our technical people from the Oklahoma area rather than have people come here for a few years and then go someplace else," which is not always possible. Brenner has hired several engineers from around the U.S. lately, and he acknowledges it can be difficult at times to get prospects to come to the state. "But once they have been here for a while, they find they like the small town atmosphere, and that Oklahoma is a lot different than what people from, say, the East Coast think it's like."