A push for better workforce training

Alarms have been sounding for decades, but lately with an escalating sense of urgency from the White House and local companies alike:

This nation could well find itself with a workforce lacking the skills needed for the jobs of the future.

Those jobs, labor researchers say, will be science- and math-intensive - to meet a demand for more health-information technology, clean-energy alternatives, and "the discovery of services, products, and industries we have yet to imagine," as President Obama put it last week in a speech to the Business Roundtable, a pro-business policy-advocacy group in Washington.

"We need to invest and nurture the industries of the future, and we need to train our workers to compete for those jobs," Obama said. "Nations around the world, from Asia to Europe, have already realized this."

As the president presses a national agenda for education and training initiatives, a call to action will go out soon for a similar workforce-development commitment from leaders of industry, academia, and government in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

"Innovation in STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is a mobilizing conference set for March 15 at Lincoln Financial Field, sponsored by the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, an economic-development agency.

"At the conclusion, we expect a more collaborative effort and commitment at educating our youth by all the stakeholders," said Mark Basla, vice president of marketing and business development for the DVIRC.

He has no illusions that developing a workforce proficient in fields of study many avoid will be an easy task.

"It's kind of like solving world hunger," Basla said.

America's labor-aptitude deficiencies have gotten considerable attention since at least 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued the report, A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.

For student shortcomings in science and math, the report spread the blame, from teachers not qualified to teach the subjects to school days deemed too short. It also cited a "cafeteria-style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses," and allowed students to migrate away from vocational and college-preparatory programs.

In calling for reform, the report concluded: "It is by our willingness to take up the challenge and our resolve to see it through that America's place in the world will be either secured or forfeited."

Carl Van Horn, director of Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development in New Brunswick, called the report "one of the first national alarm bells rung about the fact we, as a country, were falling behind other nations in our preparation, in high school especially."

"The record since then has been a lot of effort toward this, but we still are behind many other countries."

That's despite increased standards in almost every state, requiring more math and science curriculum, Van Horn said. The problem remains "a paucity of teachers certified in math and science . . . at high school levels."

George Cornelius, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Community and Economic Development, blamed a societal shift placing greater value on Wall Street jobs.

"The reality is, in our society, the money is not usually in math and science, it's in the financial-service industries or sales and marketing," Cornelius said. That's a significant change from the 1960s, he said, when getting to the moon was President John F. Kennedy's priority, and "math and science enjoyed a higher status."

At Delaware County Community College, president Jerry Parker chuckled when asked about all the attention the need for a better-trained workforce is getting now.

"We've been at this . . . for a decade or more," Parker said. The college's efforts came in response to pleas from local manufacturers, who, he said, were "desperate" for skilled workers and foresaw an even greater shortage on the horizon once baby boomers started to retire.

Resulting applied-engineering programs produced graduates with the skills those companies, including Exelon and Sunoco, needed, Parker said.

Much of today's workforce-development challenge is getting students interested in jobs they have little chance to know much about, he said.

TV could be a big help, he half-joked, noting that shows such as Grey's Anatomy have "glamorized" health-care jobs. "I wish we could find a way to glamorize a process-control technician."

Until then, the college intends to generate interest the old-fashioned way - in the classroom. Last month, it opened the STEM Center, 105,000 square feet of science, engineering, and math laboratories and classrooms. Part of a $60 million complex, the facility joined the Advanced Technology Center, which opened in September to accommodate the training requirements of business and industry.

DVIRC's Basla has this hope for the mid-March conference: that it results in a commitment to establish a STEM learning and activity center at the Navy Yard, one of Philadelphia's leading high-tech addresses. He also would like companies to support new high-tech programs in schools, and to open their doors to students so they can see how products "get developed, engineered, created."

Ensuring a capable and competitive workforce depends on educators, business leaders, and government officials all accepting a degree of responsibility, said Cyndi Gaudet, director of the Jack and Patti Phillips Workplace Learning and Performance Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi.

"Most often," she said, "different stakeholders want to point the finger at the other stakeholders."

Go to http://www.dvirc.org to register for the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center's March 15 mobilization session on the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) initiative.

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