Emily Stover DeRocco Speech
Penn State Higher Education Economic Summit
State College, PA
December 5, 2005
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Through the process of engaging employers, it became clear that many face the same challenge; they are unable to find the workers they need to fill their available jobs. It isn’t that there are not people looking for work, but rather that those people do not possess the skills that are needed in today’s workplace.
That is why a cornerstone of the High Growth Job Training Initiative is to engage educational institutions, especially community colleges. Individuals must now learn more specialized skills to work in any industry and they must do so prior to employment because many traditional employer-based training programs are a thing of the past.
Pennsylvania has been an active player in the High Growth Initiative with 5 projects found across the Commonwealth focused on the cutting edge industries of biotechnology, geospatial technology, and advanced manufacturing.
Through the High Growth Initiative we recognized that many of the job opportunities available in the 21st century economy are begun with an associate’s degree and the President created a similar but new initiative called Community-Based Job Training Grants.
These grants, which we call the Community College Initiative, are designed to improve the training available at community colleges by connecting employers with the schools to provide more and better teachers, state of the art equipment, and a greater capacity to teach more students. In short, they will improve the ability of our Community Colleges to develop talent.
With these two initiatives well established, we are now looking to move talent development into a central role in the economy. This, of course, cannot be accomplished at the national level.
The U. S. national economy is actually the collection and integration of many regional economies. It is at the regional level where economic development is implemented and where the effects of economic shocks are felt. And it is at the regional level where talent development can help to spur economic growth and provide hope and opportunity to regions that have lost both.
Examples of such areas would be those most affected by global trade. Dr. Gary Green from Forsyth Tech Community College in North Carolina likes to say that back in the 1980s, North Carolina’s economy was well diversified. They had textiles, tobacco, and furniture. Well, 20 years later, all three are nearly gone from the state.
In each case, some communities have responded to the challenge and are now centers for innovation and economic growth. What they and other successful areas have in common are a strong group of talented professionals, usually centered around a university, that incubate new industries. I mentioned some examples earlier and I want to reiterate this model as a means for innovation and economic transformation.
Our High Growth Initiative offers a good example. The growth of the Research Triangle in North Carolina was spawned and supported by Duke and UNC and the other fine universities in the area. This brought the beginnings of the biotech industry to the area.
But Ph.Ds alone do not provide the talent required to rebuild a regional economy. Back in 2002, Dr. Green and others in North Carolina knew they needed a workforce to support the burgeoning biotech industry.
With support from a High Growth grant, a textiles to technology program was established at Forsyth Tech to train laid-off mill workers for the biotech industry. A year later, the final blow to the textiles industry came when the former Fieldcrest-Canon mill closed in Kannapolis. Kannapolis was the very definition of a mill town and the closure certainly devastated the region.
But the seeds of regrowth had already been planted. Just last month, their strategy was rewarded with the announcement of a new $1 billion biotech center to be established in Kannapolis.
Pennsylvania is hopefully at the beginning stages of a similar transformation. One of the grants you received under the High Growth Initiative was focused on the plastics industry. It sought to combine career awareness, internships, post-secondary education, incumbent worker training, and innovation research into a project that would not only offer training for workers, but seek to make the plastics industry in the commonwealth more competitive. Penn State has been an active member of that grant and has the opportunity to act as the catalyst for the expansion of the plastics industry here in Pennsylvania.
For each example of a successful transition though, there are numerous other areas that were not so lucky. Some areas of Pennsylvania and much of the Upper Midwest have yet to recover from the decline in the steel and auto industries. Other parts of the Carolinas are in a similar position. What each of these regions has in common is that a large percentage of their talent base possesses skills that are now obsolete.
Through a new initiative which we are calling Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development, WIRED, we hope to bring together the critical players in a region’s economy to develop the strategies and actions needed to successfully transform to a new economy.
This process must include an honest and open assessment of a region’s strengths and weakness and its opportunities and risks. It is difficult for all of us to break out of our narrow economic vision, or to provide the leadership required to do so. But that is what WIRED will seek to accomplish, thereby setting the stage for the solutions that will lead to economic growth and vitality.
Our efforts to transform the workforce system, the work of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and forums such this one today are all part of a growing national recognition that education and the development of talent are key to future economic success, both for our nation and for individual workers.
I am encouraged to see so many of you here today, working together to improve the economy of this great Commonwealth. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you this morning, and I wish all of you the best of luck.
Thank you.
