Goals Are Focus of Workforce Development and Education Summit Follow-Up Meeting

06/11/2008 09:43 am

Katie Kolt

Tags: knoxville education , knoxville workforce , knoxville workforce summit , workforce development education

Over 200 Knoxville businesspeople, area educators, parents, students, and others attended the Workforce Development and Education Summit follow-up meeting sponsored by EdAmerica and South College. Knoxville Chamber Workforce Development and Education Manager Ahnna Estes helped organize the event, hosted by Innovation Valley, Inc. at Cokesbury United Methodist Center, designed to create action plans that will solve issues identified during March’s summit.

“Participants will come away with an understanding of what is required from them as we move forward,” she said.

Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale led a panel discussion and spoke about the value of an educated workforce.

“Businesses are relocating and expanded to areas where a qualified workforce is available,” he said. “Our challenge here in Knoxville, Knox County, and East Tennessee is to make sure we have the country’s best workforce. Regardless of our outstanding quality of life here or our collective marketing efforts to attract businesses to the area, companies will find other places to call home if we don’t have qualified workers available.”

Attendees took part in five breakout sessions designed to develop action plans. Participants separated into Communications Campaign, Effective Teaching/Relevance Taskforce, Attracting and Retaining a Quality Workforce Taskforce, Bridging the Gap Between Higher Ed and Business Taskforce, and Under-Utilized Workforce Taskforce breakout sessions.

Chamber President and CEO Mike Edwards challenged those in attendance to focus on implementing action plans.

“Discipline yourselves not to talk about what the problems are,” he said. “We’ve already done that. Spend your time on action items and how we’re going to go about addressing the issues we face.”

For more information about the summit’s follow-up meeting or information about Workforce Development and Education, please contact Ahnna Estes, 865-246-2658.

Comments

June 10 work force dev't meeting

Victor Spencer

Thursday June 19 2008 02:12:25 pm

I would have liked to have seen specific action items and action plans coming out of this meeting. Spending the entire Communications session on arriving at a "Brand name" for what we are about to do, seems to indicate to me, that we really do not feel that the state of high school output is vitally important, and that people have not come to the realization yet about about what it really means economically when nationally our high school output is 34th, and TN is 41st within the nation (see knoxedu.info for details).

How many meetings do we need to define, say, the top three problems in order of priority (I don't remember seeing that). Why can't we start working on action plans, and start actions themselves?

By the way, in my experience, a definition of Brand and campaign slogans is generally the job of a savvy advertising exec with a lot of experience and a behavioral psychologist. Involving parents, students and so on in that activity did not make that much sense to me. But involving them in generating action plans makes a lot of sense.

I would like to see nothing more than see Knox County educationally become a leader in our country, meaning a consolidated ACT of +4 points (25 avg when 36 is max) and a graduation rate of 90% in not more than 3 years.

Please, no offense intended. This is a huge problem impacting everyone's future. And we better tell the public what it is, along with what we all have to do about it.

Goals Are Focus of Workforce Development and Education Summit Follow-Up Meeting

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June 10 work force dev't meeting

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