This week started with attending the Mississippi Corridor Consortium Workforce Summit, hosted at the Mayhew, MS campus of East Mississippi Community College. The summit spanned two days (Tuesday, May 24 to Wednesday, May 25th) and was focused on the discussion of current practices, issues, and relationships with other outreach organizations.
The initial meeting of the summit outlined some of the issues being faced by workforce training organizations, a fixture of the community outreach operations of the community colleges within the state and the Consortium. Special emphasis was placed on the need to tranisition from the traditional model of workforce development, where workers are taught basic skills and released into the workforce without follow-up, to a high-performance training model that involves a competency-based approach to education where skillsets are verified through the attainment of nationally recognized credentials. Through this appraoch the workforce training activities produce skilled production workers with multiple competencies in key areas desired by manufacturers.
The sessions that I attended covered issues ranging from adult basic education to assessment of programs to products offered through the NIST-Department of Commerce sponsored program known as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The wide variety of issues and missions highlighted the ever-changing environment faced by personnel in providing post-secondary education to workers while simultaneously fulfilling the economic development goals required by communities and corporate clients.
Thursday of this week I traveled to the Bancorp South Conference Center in Tupelo, MS to attend the annual State of the Region meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to disseminate information regarding the demographic changes, educational challenges, and economic development trends occurring in the northeastern section of Mississippi. The data was presented for the general public, but the information was of potential value for institutions of higher education for the design of curricula as well as the focus of community outreach.
The final event of the week was an existing business appreciation luncheon for manufacturers in Alcorn county. The businesses represented at the luncheon ranged from small businesses to the Fortune 500 giant Kiumberly-Clark. The affair was relatively informal and gave attendees an opportunity to network. The presence of the NEMCC Workforce personnel at this event was to maintain visibility with local politicians and business owners in order to maintain relationships for future interaction.
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