You’ve heard it again and again from the Knoxville Chamber… improving education and workforce development is critical to the economic future of the region. But what can you do about it?
You can attend the Workforce and Education Summit hosted by Innovation Valley Inc.
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale recently challenged the Knoxville Chamber to plan the regional workforce development and education summit to identify strategies and tactics that will lead to the development of the workforce of the future. The summit, which will take place on March 24th at the Knoxville Convention Center, will include educators, businesspeople, parents, community leaders, faith-based institutions, and students throughout Innovation Valley. The education and workforce summit will begin at 8 AM.
The event is an opportunity to rollup your sleeves and dig into the work of improving the region’s educational systems, which ultimately determines the quality of the workforce.
“For the last couple of years, the Chamber has argued that education and workforce development must be improved,” says Mike Edwards, the Chamber’s president and CEO. “I think the organization has done a good job of convincing businesspeople that this is a critical concern. But, I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job of demonstrating how to get involved and how individuals can have an impact on the improvement of education, the increase of academic rigor, or the skills that students have when they leave high school."
The goals of the daylong summit are to outline what the region's future workforce looks like, to identify the barriers that may be standing in the way of achieving such a workforce, and for each attendee to leave with a plan of how he or she can individually contribute to the overall goal of developing a skilled and educated workforce.
The opening session will include a discussion of the future workforce and will lay out what the future workforce would look like. Following that general assembly will be a series of breakout sessions focused on K-12 education issues. Later sessions will focus on workforce development issues including bridging the gap between higher education and business, improving existing training programs, accessing the under utilized workforce, and attracting and retaining recent college graduates and other quality employees. Attendees will be challenged to be apart of breaking down all identified barriers.
Registration for the summit will be available online beginning February 22. Please visit the events page.
Summit agenda.
Summit registration form.
Summit breakout descriptions.
While our region has enjoyed great successes and accomplishments in the past, we must work harder and smarter to remain competitive and grow as a community. Confronting our region’s workforce challenges will require all of us to work together and have serious conversations about how to prepare a workforce to meet the current & future demands of the Innovation Valley. We need to identify current workforce development efforts and systems, and work to create a strategy that will help maximize effectiveness and minimize overlaps.
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale has challenged us to work together to decide what we have to do now. The Chamber has identified the various areas of workforce development that we need to tackle. On March 24 we will hold a summit, which is an opportunity to work together on these issues and develop a strategy for each one.
In order to organize the summit and form its agenda, we need your input and cooperation. If you did not attend the Jim Clinton event or were not able to complete the form at that time, please take the time to do so now.
Download a PDF of the comment card here.
Please return the completed form to Jennifer Evans.
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