Posts From: George Lorenzo

A new term was recently added to my lexicon: “real-time labor market data.” It came from research I am conducting about how community colleges work at building courses and programs that align with employers’ demands and the needs of regional economies.

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If you are interested in how progressive workforce and economic development initiatives can have a real and positive influence on solid employee skill building and the facilitation of meaningful K through 20 education environments throughout a geographic region, then look no further than Columbus, Indiana. This relatively little-known city with a population of about 77,000 has come to the forefront of my research as an interesting and innovative place where the creation of unique collaborations between universities; community colleges; elementary and secondary schools; employers; local, state and county workforce and economic development agencies; and philanthropic foundations have brought about dynamic and positive workforce and economic development growth to a population from ten counties in Southeastern Indiana.

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Call me a geek, but the book I recently started that’s on the top of my summer reading list is “Career Pathways for STEM Technicians,” written and compiled by Dan Hull through a $75,000 National Science Foundation grant sponsored by the University of Central Florida. Dan Hull sent me a complimentary copy of the first run of 2,000 editions that he is giving away to selected organizations, companies and educators across the country. At the time of this writing in late August, I had the opportunity to talk with him, as his book was getting prepared for sales in both printed and digital formats.

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As I was delving into the topic of Tuition Assistance Programs (TAPs), I remembered that during my years working as a marketing director for a mid-sized manufacturing company, I had taken advantage of a generous TAP in which they prepaid for a graduate-level seminar course I enrolled in called “Communications in the 21st Century.”

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My expedition into the skills gap did not end with the “Is There or Is There Not a Skills Gap?” piece that was posted last month. As I mentioned, I needed to conduct more research in order to possibly find the answer to that question, and I’m still working on it. Unfortunately, I can’t proclaim that I have found THE answer, but I do feel that I have a keener, more comprehensive understanding of the whole skills-gap issue.

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Keeping abreast of all the latest developments and progress (or lack thereof) in the community college sector is a fairly daunting task. There are numerous issues and trends that are couched inside a seemingly massive community college reform movement happening in our time, right now. On the workforce development side, the so-called “skills gap” is one of those issues, in my opinion, that is not easy to fully understand. The notion of employers having great difficulty with hiring qualified, high-skilled workers for a wide variety of decent jobs, primarily because there aren’t enough educated job candidates available, seems illogical in this period of high unemployment.

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I recently started to conduct interviews with lots of professionals in the community college sector for an in-depth report I am working on about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success Strategy, whose mission is “to dramatically increase the number of young adults who complete their postsecondary education, setting them up for success in the workplace and in life.” I have a tentative deadline to publish this report sometime during the summer inside the library section of The SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends and Strategies.

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In Part I of this blog post I introduced the non-profit organization, Corporate Voices for Working Families (CVWF), and the conversation I had with their Senior Director of Workforce Readiness, Peg Walton. I continue here in the same vein with a focus on advice and solutions that can bring about Learn & Earn-oriented collaborations between community colleges and companies that are what I referred to as win/win/win situations, where employees, employers and community colleges all truly benefit.

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It’s amazing to me how many non-profit organizations there are in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere that are specifically related to workforce development and corporate training . You can see a partial list here: http://www.edpath.com/workforcedevelopmentorgs.html

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I was recently reading about internship programs, and it took me back to the days when I was an undergraduate communication studies major aspiring to be a journalist. Two very fortuitous events happened to me during this time of my life when I was a self-supporting college student trying to make ends meet as best as I could. They both occurred when I was a junior. First, I was awarded a journalism scholarship because I had worked very hard on the student newspaper and had accumulated a lot of the so-called “clips” that can get your foot in the door for a job after graduation. Secondly, I was also awarded a summer internship as a feature writer with a major metropolitan newspaper – also partially due to the large number of clips I had in tow.

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