The Knoxville Chamber’s workforce development team has expanded to include a new Workforce Development Manager, Ahnna Estes.
Estes will work with the Director of Workforce Development and Education, Jennifer Evans, in various projects. She is currently undertaking the Tennessee Scholars program and is also dealing with the workforce development aspects of the new Innovation Valley Inc. programs.
Estes owned her own business in the Knoxville area for the past two years She also spent 20 years in the hospitality industry in operations management for hotels in Connecticut.
She said that she accepted this position because of the opportunity to work with Evans and to be involved in an area that is relatively new.
Estes said, “Helping the business and education systems reach their goals is important to me. I want to use my experience and knowledge to help reach the department goals.”
Estes is currently a student at Tusculum College. She is working on obtaining her bachelor’s degree.
She is married with three children, two grandchildren and a Dalmation.
You’ve heard it again and again from the Knoxville Chamber… improving education and workforce development is critical to the economic future of the region. But what can you do about it?
You can attend the Workforce and Education Summit hosted by Innovation Valley Inc.
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale recently challenged the Knoxville Chamber to plan the regional workforce development and education summit to identify strategies and tactics that will lead to the development of the workforce of the future. The summit, which will take place on March 24th at the Knoxville Convention Center, will include educators, businesspeople, parents, community leaders, faith-based institutions, and students throughout Innovation Valley. The education and workforce summit will begin at 8 AM.
The event is an opportunity to rollup your sleeves and dig into the work of improving the region’s educational systems, which ultimately determines the quality of the workforce.
“For the last couple of years, the Chamber has argued that education and workforce development must be improved,” says Mike Edwards, the Chamber’s president and CEO. “I think the organization has done a good job of convincing businesspeople that this is a critical concern. But, I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job of demonstrating how to get involved and how individuals can have an impact on the improvement of education, the increase of academic rigor, or the skills that students have when they leave high school."
The goals of the daylong summit are to outline what the region's future workforce looks like, to identify the barriers that may be standing in the way of achieving such a workforce, and for each attendee to leave with a plan of how he or she can individually contribute to the overall goal of developing a skilled and educated workforce.
The opening session will include a discussion of the future workforce and will lay out what the future workforce would look like. Following that general assembly will be a series of breakout sessions focused on K-12 education issues. Later sessions will focus on workforce development issues including bridging the gap between higher education and business, improving existing training programs, accessing the under utilized workforce, and attracting and retaining recent college graduates and other quality employees. Attendees will be challenged to be apart of breaking down all identified barriers.
Registration for the summit will be available online beginning February 22. Please visit the events page.
Summit agenda.
Summit registration form.
Summit breakout descriptions.
Tom Donohue, President of the U,S, Chamber of Commerce, remarks this week that the presidential candidates have been shunning educational issues in favor of discussing the Iraq war, health care and the economy.
Donohue said that what has been noted from the candidates has been a rejection of No Child Left Behind, which he credits with helping raise math and reading skills. The U.S. Chamber favors increasing the No Child Left Behind program and holding the education system more accountable for preparing students for the workforce.
"If we don’t bring urgent change to our K-12 system, how will we compete with India and China? Who will fill the high-tech jobs of the 21st century knowledge economy, especially as baby boomers begin to retire? What will happen to the dreams and potential of our kids?" Donohue wrote.
Donohue praised the Tennessee system and Governor Bredesen's action in education reform.
"Fortunately, the silence of our presidential candidates on education is sharply contrasted by substantial action at the state and local level. Officials like Chancellor of the D.C. Public School System Michelle Rhee and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen are rejecting a system that fails students, parents, and taxpayers. They are bringing innovation, accountability, and competition to schools with outstanding results."
Tennessee will soon kick off a million-dollar effort to teach educators the new standards that will be implemented as part of the American Diploma Project requirements voted on last month, according to a Tennessean article.
The standards involve additional math, science and foreign language requirements, among others. Conferences with school administrators and supervisors will be the first step in teaching the new curriculum. Then, these educators will share with their colleagues what they have learned so that all teachers are aware of the new policies.
"That's exactly what I want us to be able to provide our teachers: good teaching practices, great examples they can model and any additional knowledge about the content they will teach," said Susan Bunch, assistant commissioner of teaching and learning for the state Department of Education.
In a continuing series of columns on education, the Knoxville News Sentinel this weekend had a column from Pete Stevens about individual teachers and their effect on the education system as a whole.
Stevens placed teachers in one of three categories, wonderful, adequate but in need of mentoring, and terrible. He polled upper-level college students and found that through their experiences, up to 50 percent of teachers fall into that last category.
Former superintendent Charles Lindsey's recommendation was to ensure that students did not have two bad teachers in a row. Stevens' recommendation was to, "kill government schools."
Michael Peterson, a renowned county music star, will bring his "Real Life Tour" to Knoxville Feb. 18-23. The event will cap off with a concert at the Civic Auditorium on Feb. 23 at 7:00 p.m.
The purpose of the tour is both to entertain and educate. He and other musicians and entertainers hold shows throughout the week at various locations, but the message behind the show is helping teens and young people get on the path to a career.
He presents the "Tag You're It" program, which engages students in activities to guide them on the path to careers and personal improvement. He also visits adults at various ages and teaches them to share their experience and knowledge with the younger generations. He works with mentoring and internship programs to match students with adults who will help their future.
To learn more about these weeklong activities, visit the "Real Life Tour" Web site.
Note: This release was sent by Pellissippi State Technical Community College. The school is hosting a mathematics competition in April, which may be of interest to middle school students, parents and educators.
Challenging, yet fun, mathematics will be the order of the day on April 25, as middle-schoolers who know their numbers participate in the eighth annual Tennessee Middle School Mathematics Competition at Pellissippi State Technical Community College.
The event, which is hosted by the college’s Math Department, is 8 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Pellissippi Campus on Hardin Valley Road. Pellissippi State’s Math Department activities are supported by a grant to the Pellissippi State Foundation from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.
The competition is designed for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students, including home-schoolers, in the East Tennessee region who excel in mathematics. Participants will be able to see how their math ability compares to that of other regional students.
The contest is a multiple-choice exam designed by college math professors from Pellissippi State, Austin Peay State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Technological University, the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee at Martin and Walters State Community College.
Contestants should compete at their grade level and not at the grade level of the math class in which they are enrolled. Students will be permitted to use calculators, including graphing calculators, on the exams.
The registration deadline is March 31, and no registrations will be accepted after that date. The space for students is limited and may fill up prior to the deadline, so early registration is recommended.
To be eligible for the team competition, a school must bring at least four students at each grade level. Schools must limit the number of students at any level to a maximum of 10 percent of grade-level enrollment, or up to 15 students.
Check-in will take place at the Performing Arts Center 7-8 a.m. The competition test is scheduled 8:30-10 a.m., followed by a trip to Zuma Fun Center and then the presentation of awards.
More than $3,000 in trophies and gift cards will be awarded to the top 10 students at each grade level. All students in attendance will receive a free contest T-shirt.
For additional information, contact Jonathan Lamb, associate professor of Mathematics at Pellissippi State, at (865) 694-6699 or jwlamb@pstcc.edu.
A blogger for the U.S. Chamber's ChamberPost blog singled out Tennessee and Governor Bredesen as the leaders in making positive changes in education policies.
Lydia Logan of the U.S. Chamber writes, "While many reformers pay lip service to the idea that ready for college and ready for work are the same thing, Tennessee is walking the talk."
She cites the increased graduation requirements and one-track diploma programs as positive catalysts for change that have been made recently in Tennessee under Bredesen's leaderhip.
The Knoxville News Sentinel this weekend had a guest column from Athanasios Bayiates, president of the Knox County Education Association, who discussed hiring and retaining effective teachers.
He opined that individual educators are essential to student success and said that retaining high-quality teachers will help bridge the learning gap in struggling students and schools.
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