Posts From: Workforce Development

It’s a common belief that training managers are not thought of as strategic players on corporate leadership teams.

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Coaching is similar to training with a few notable differences.

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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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Every now and then, I have a conversation with a professional in the field of workforce development as it relates to postsecondary education who is so extraordinarily knowledgeable and more than willing to share copious amounts of information with me that my personal knowledge bank gets a big deposit and I basically come away with an entirely new level of understanding about what’s really going on in the field. I had one of those conversations recently with Keith Bird.

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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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