A Vieux To The Future

By: James S. Tyree

Transcript Staff Writer

One Partners Place on the University of Oklahoma’s Research Campus-South always had plenty of windows. Now, thought, it truly has a room with a Vieux.

Vieux & Associates had its grand opening Friday at the structure also known as the Weathernews Building. The company, funded by OU engineering professor Baxter Vieux and his wife Jean monitors rainfall and water runoff in service it calls “ water information technology.”

Baxter Vieux, the company’s senior engineering, said the move isn’t the end of a process, but rather represents “ beginning of combing all these technologies.” Jean Vieux is the company’s chairman CEO.

In 2001, the company said in a release, Vieux & Associates “developed the first hydrologic model of its kind that relies on radar rainfall and digital maps of terrain to reconstruct or predict runoff and real-time soil moisture.”

Vieux & Associates, which has 10 employees, lots of computer models and popular foosball table, follows Weathernews Americas, Inc as the second company to move into the Research Campus building for private industry.

OU research faculty and staff inhabit the Stephenson Center for Research and Technology, and government will be represented at the National Weather Service building set to open next year.

“This is where ideas are generating,” Lee Williams, OU vice president of research, said of the university atmosphere. “Private industry can take these ideas and convert them to the marketplace.”

Jean Vieux said her clan represents the perfect example of family-university partnership. It began when the family moved to Norman in 1990 when Baxter became a professor at OU.

“And in every year since 1992 – with the possible exception of 200 – at least one family member has been enrolled in classes at OU” said Jean, a mother of five who started the run enrollment. “With expect this to continue until some year near 2010. That is a family-academia partnership.”

Williams said the presence of private business on OU’s campus enables students to get real world experience beyond the books and classrooms, adding “it gives then absolutely best vision” as they graduate and move into the workforce.

College of Geosciences dean John Snow and Warren Qualley of Weathernews also spoke at the ceremony attended by students, employees of both companies, Chamber of Commerce representatives and others.

“The theme of the day really is partnership,” Jean Vieux said.

More information on the company can be found online at www.vieuxinc.com.