Post-Breakfast Report: August 18, 2010
Matching the Needs of Business and Industry with the Skills of the Arkansas Workforce
This morning’s Economic Issues Breakfast was the most technologically ambitious program we have attempted. It included the integration of the video feed with slide presentations, along with interactivity from all seven sites in the network. For the most part, it was a successful venture.
The program began with an economic briefing — and the one technology glitch of the morning. A delayed connection of the Fayetteville campus to the network caused us to miss out on Kathy Deck’s summary of national economic conditions. The rest of the network moved on to Michael Pakko’s overview of the Arkansas economy. The slides from both parts of the economic update presentation are posted here:
Economic Briefing Handout (pdf)
M0ving on to the main topic for the morning’s program, Charisse Childers of Accelerate Arkansas presented the business case for why it is so important that the students and future workers of Arkansas develop skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Slides from her presentation are here:
Charisse Childers’ PowerPoint Presentation
Assessing the current status of Arkansas STEM educational attainment, Phyllis Ponche of the Census State Data Center presented a comparison of regions around the state. Data from the Census Bureau and the Arkansas Department of Education were used to provide comparative maps. The maps from her presentation are available here:
State of the State’s Education Handout (pdf)
We wanted to give an opportunity for participants from around the state to share stories of success, so the next agenda item on the program was a brief report from the six locations that chose to participate. Miraculously, the technology worked nearly flawlessly for this interactive set of reports. Video recordings of these “success stories” will be posted here at a later date (if they are available).
It was a full morning’s agenda, packed into 90 minutes. In the final few minutes of the allotted time, we heard from Jerry Adams of the Arkansas Research Alliance, reiterating the importance of the issue of STEM education and calling on attendees around the state to get involved in efforts to help improve Arkansas’ peformance in this critical area of economic devlopment.


