Auto Workforce Collaborative

Many community college programs see high demand

Tough education task: Scarce resources challenge Fletcher

HCTC/Rotary partnership brings students to campus

Auto Workforce Collaborative
A cluster approach to building the skills of workers for industry

While auto manufacturing has its cyclical ups and downs, it still accounts for some 2.4 million jobs at manufacturing plants and suppliers and $111 billion a year in employee compensation, according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR).

But unlike the stamping plants of yesteryear, where three decades ago an employee could spend an entire shift drilling identical holes or repeatedly adding a part on an assembly line, these workplaces are looking for highly skilled employees who understand — and can improve — entire processes of manufacturing, including those involving external suppliers.

Close to 1.8 million auto-related jobs are actually with the companies that supply parts and materials to the car giants — nearly three times the more than 600,000 jobs at auto manufacturing plants. “For a company to be successful [these relationships] need to be very closely coordinated,” says C. J. Schroll, project coordinator for the Auto Workforce Collaborative, a consortium of 10 community and technical colleges, manufacturers and other partners in four states. Recognizing that the economic viability of local communities is riding on the ability of new and incumbent workers to manage the intricate and interdependent relationships in industry clusters, the initiative was formed to improve the training of both new and incumbent workers toward these higher-level
skills.

“It’s a very important piece of the economy,” Schroll says. “That’s a reason to come together, to collaborate, to work together to help the companies,” he said. “We can help people keep their job [or] get a job and be successful.”

The initiative has received seed money from Toyota, a name that has become synonymous in industrial circles with quality, lean manufacturing and just-in-time production. The carmaker’s flagship U.S. plant and the largest Toyota plant in North America, with more than 7,000 workers, is in Georgetown, Ky., near a leading partner in the collaborative, Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). Other partners are arrayed along the I-65 and I-75 corridors that run North-South, respectively, from Gary, Ind., and Detroit. Their proximity and interdependence in terms of manufacturers, suppliers and workforce, make them ideal partners.

“What we’re talking about is first doing some really good surveying with our business partners. Then we’ll talk about whether we really have the curriculum that matches up to the expected needs of industry,” said KCTCS Chancellor Keith Bird. “We’re going to be collaborating with all the colleges in our network to identify the best curriculum and then adapt that curriculum to the new learning technologies to really reduce the ‘cycle time’ for workers to acquire necessary skills and knowledge.”

Among the project’s goals are to work with industry to develop skill standards, develop and test more effective learning activities using simulation and adaptive learning and promote articulation and collaboration among secondary schools, community colleges, and four-year universities for automotive industry career preparation.

“Auto manufacturing is being done dramatically differently than it was just a few years ago, or in some cases, a year ago or even six months ago …. so there’s a very large demand for workforce development,” Schroll said. Beyond education in concepts such as Six Sigma, lean manufacturing and work cells; beyond foundation skills such as written and oral communication, problem-solving and team-building is “anticipatory learning,” Bird says, or preparing workers to adapt to rapidly changing technologies.

“I don’t like to distinguish between education and training,” Bird said at a recent conference on the role of education in economic development. “I believe if you educate someone under adaptive expertise what you are talking about is training someone to be prepared for the next technology change, that they know the concepts, that they’re familiar with those. You’re not just training someone for this equipment and when that piece of equipment goes away, they don’t have any skills, they’re not educable,” he said. “These are major transformations.”

Many community college programs see high demand
More colleges adding nursing and other cutting-edge programs

Graduates in allied health, information technology, skilled trades, business and public services continue to enjoy marketplace demand for their skills, but the seemingly insatiable demand for graduates of registered nursing programs is by far the most notable trend in a new survey of community colleges by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC).

Registered nursing programs accounted for nearly 20 percent of all high-demand programs identified in survey responses from 344 colleges nationwide and they were the most popular programs in all regions of the country.

The second most sought-after program was in law enforcement, but it accounted for less than 6 percent of programs most in demand. In contrast, more than 46 percent of the most popular programs were in allied health fields and these were programs most frequently being added, college leaders reported. More than 26 percent of colleges were adding programs in allied health, far surpassing growth in the field with the next most frequently added programs — information technologies. Seventeen percent of college leaders reported they were adding programs in that area, compared with the prior AACC survey of hot programs in 2000. That study found that 65 percent of all courses and programs added between 1997 and 2000 were in computer technologies.

The latest survey of hot programs, conducted earlier this year, finds that nearly two-thirds of college leaders have reviewed or modified curriculum to address homeland security needs. Of those, 20 percent have added new programs to meet local needs and half have added new courses.

Other cutting-edge programs being added, along with the percentage of respondents who said their colleges were including them are:
• biomedical engineering/biological technology (12.8 percent each);
• homeland security (11.9 percent);
• internet technologies and computer networking (4.9 percent each);
• law enforcement and multimedia (4.6 percent each);
• computer technologies and geographic information systems (3.6 percent each); and
• graphic design and manufacturing (3.3 percent each).

Fields of study in which more than 10 percent of college leaders indicated they were adding programs included skilled trades or industrial studies (14.7 percent) and public services (11 percent). Some 9.2 percent of respondents indicated they were adding programs in business, 7.5 percent in engineering technology, 5.1 percent in education, 3.7 percent in skilled trades-services, 2.8 percent in language and 1.8 percent in sciences. One percent of respondents reported adding programs that fit none of these categories.

While skilled trades-industrial was near the top in terms of colleges adding programs, this area also included the most frequently discontinued programs, as did engineering technology, allied health, business, information technology and skilled trades-services.

For example, as programs in registered nursing, health information technology, radiology and nursing assistant were being added, colleges were discontinuing programs for physical therapy assistant, general allied health, occupational therapy assistant and surgical technology. In skilled trades, agriculture and manufacturing were among the programs most frequently being discontinued but also the ones most commonly being added, possibly a result of regional differences.

“The fact that programs can be among the most frequently added and discontinued within the same survey demonstrates the way in which community colleges respond to the needs of local communities,” according to Hot Programs at Community Colleges, an AACC research brief based on the survey results.
“Community colleges provide the broadest array of programs to deliver high-quality and cost-effective education to those who are unemployed, under-employed, or seeking to enhance their career prospects and quality of life,” said AACC President and George Boggs.

—Above article is from the AACC report “Hot Programs at Community Colleges,” by Sara McPhee.
For the full text of the report, visit the AACC Web site at: www.aacc.nche.edu/hotprograms

Kentucky Post
November 11, 2004

Tough education task: Scarce resources challenge Fletcher

The plan provided to Fletcher on Friday essentially is a collection of feedback and concerns from education advocates asked to participate in the process of developing this wide-ranging proposal.

Fletcher said the draft puts a "little more meat on the bones."

A final draft is due Dec. 15. In the meantime, Fletcher said the plan is to "begin to set priorities" and determine what can be done with "the resources we have at each stage."

But resources are likely to be scarce.

Though revenues have been increasing recently, Kentucky is in a prolonged budget downturn. And when lawmakers come back to Frankfort to pass a budget in 2005 they'll have many issues to deal with, including finding more money for education.

Fletcher spokesman Doug Hogan would not release a copy of the draft, saying it was preliminary in nature.

The governor's "vision" is to advance the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 and the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997.

Deadlines set by these reforms are fast approaching. KERA calls for Kentucky schools reaching a level of proficiency by 2014 and the postsecondary act requires the state have two Top 20 research institutions by 2020.

Fletcher first publicly announced the vision in late August.

The ambitious plan covers all aspects of education ranging from preschools to universities. Some goals call for increasing pay for teachers, providing all-day kindergarten courses and more effectively using state universities to enhance economic development.

Since the initial announcement, officials in the Education Cabinet have been meeting and speaking with education organizations like the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, the Kentucky Association of School Councils and the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.

Susan Perkins Weston, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Councils, said the discussions on how to improve education have been useful and that relations between education advocates and officials in the Fletcher administration are markedly improved from earlier this year.

"All of the feelings of the strangers have come to town and taken over are gone," Weston said. "People have gotten used to the fact that the governor got elected and there's some new leaders, and we are working together."

Soon after taking office, severe budget crunches required Fletcher to make cuts to education at both the primary and postsecondary levels. The cuts sent many into an uproar.

Prichard Committee Executive Director Bob Sexton agrees that conversations have become much more pleasant now that talks are focused on improving upon education rather than cutting money from a system that's already under-funded.

"We all started off talking about the wrong things and talking about things that nobody really wanted to talk about," Sexton said. "Everybody wanted to talk about how to make things better."

It is Weston's hope that Fletcher's plans for education will include improving upon the amount of data made available to schools through the Internet. School workers need to have readily available county health and employment data to better connect with their communities.

Priorities for the Kentucky Association of School Administrators call for better training for teachers and administrators and better funding for schools, said Executive Director Wayne Young.

"The teachers know how to teach but we need to be sure they know what to do when the kids aren't getting it," he said.

HCTC/Rotary partnership brings students to campus

About 800 high school juniors were introduced to the merits of postsecondary education on Nov. 5 through an innovative partnership between Hazard Community and Technical College and the Hazard Rotary Club. Students visited the college from Hazard High School, Knott County Central High School, Leslie County High School, Perry County Central High School, Cordia High School, Buckhorn High School, and Letcher County High School.

At the request of KCTCS and Rotary, Governor Ernie Fletcher declared November 8-12 as “Access to Careers Week.” In conjunction with that designation, Rotary Clubs across the state have invited students in their communities to visit KCTCS college campuses.

“The students learned about the many different career choices because of our faculty members who spoke with them about their future,” noted Dr. Jay K. Box, HCTC president, who is also a Hazard Rotarian. “We were very pleased with the students who visited HCTC; it’s good for high school juniors to be thinking about careers and what education they will need for those chosen careers,” noted Hallie Bowling, who coordinated the event.

The Hazard Rotary Club provided lunch for the students, which was made possible by donations from: Appalachian Regional Hospital, Bank of Hindman, City of Hazard, Combs Petroleum, Community Trust Bank, First Federal Savings and Loan, Hazard Clinic, Hazard Insurance, Hazard Independent College Foundation, Hazard Kiwanis Club, Hazard Lions Club, Hazard-Perry County Chamber of Commerce, Hyden Citizens Bank, Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance on Morton Blvd., Kentucky Power, Kentucky River Properties, Peoples Bank and Trust Company, Perry Fiscal Court, Perry Manufacturing, Hazard Rotary Club, Trus Joist Macmillan, Whitaker Bank.

This is the fifth year that the Kentucky Rotary Clubs have sponsored "Access to Careers Week."