Edwards Successfully Completes Regional Sustainable Development Fellowship
Edwards Successfully Completes Regional Sustainable Development Fellowship
Knoxville, TN (August 25, 2010)-The Knoxville Chamber is pleased to announce that Mike Edwards, President & CEO has successfully completed the Fellowship for Regional Sustainable Development, funded by the Ford Foundation. The Fellowship is a unique 12-month program for regional leaders who build communities and economies that is organized by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives.
"Spurring sustainable development is one of the major issues facingbusiness-ledcivic organizations, as they seek tobroaden economic opportunityfor thepeoplein their regions," says Mick Fleming, president of ACCE. "The Fellowship allowed regional leaders like Mike to deepen their understanding of the policies and practices thatfoster inclusive long-term prosperityand enhanced quality of life."
Edwards was one of 34 Fellows, representing diverse communities and personal backgrounds from across North America, who participated in the program. There are now more than 120 graduates of the Fellowship program.
The Fellowship provides hands-on training, peer knowledge exchange, research, and examination of working models covering a wide range of growth and sustainability issues, including infrastructure, immigration, land use, housing, education, environment, and social inclusion. Drawing on the tools, policies, and practices learned during the Fellowship, each participant crafts a Regional Action Plan that addresses an opportunity for or barrier to creating sustainable, inclusive prosperity for his or her own region.
Edwards' Regional Action Plan was developed to examine how to deploy the Education Management Information System throughout the Innovation Valley. It showed the expansion would take a concerted effort by the business community to identify funding and to convince local school officials that this system is a game-changer for education. The Education Management Information System that the Knoxville Chamber has helped to build for Knox County Schools houses tens of millions of records, which allows the school system to transform data into information, and information into knowledge. It enables teachers, principals, and administrators to manage limited financial, personnel, and time resources to achieve desired educational outcomes. The system is unique from other informational systems begin used by K-12 education systems because it includes cost information and was built with the needs of school level educators in mind. While the system was launched in December 2009 and is being used by educators, it will remain a "work in progress" as more management applications are designed, developed, and implemented.