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Preparing, attracting and retaining the talent demanded by the global economy is one of the major goals of Advance Northeast Ohio. And a new state effort will play a big role in helping the region achive that goal.
Ohio’s new Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program is making millions of dollars in scholarship programs available to innovative collaboration among the state’s higher education institutions. Seven programs received the first round of grants, including three led institutions in Northeast Ohio.
STEM Undergraduate Engagement in an Engineering Environment
The University of Akron (lead institution) will partner with Baldwin-Wallace College, Stark State College of Technology and Lorain County Community College to attract and graduate an estimated 790 students in STEM fields in five years. The winning collaboration shares $6.5 million in Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program funds awarded by the state.
Student Success in Mathematics
Cleveland State University (lead institution) will partner with Case Western Reserve University, Kent State University, University of Akron, Youngstown State University, Cuyahoga Community College and a number of the region’s high schools and school districts to attract and graduate more than 1,000 new STEM students over a 4-year period. The collaboration will share $4.5 million.
Building the Nursing Workforce in Northeastern Ohio
Case Western Reserve University (lead institution) will partner with Cleveland State University, The Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, to attract and graduate 56 new students in the area of professional nursing over a 5-year period. The collaboration shares $676,800.
Pharmacy Scholarships
Ursuline College (lead institution) will partner with the University of Toledo, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Cleveland Veteran Affairs Medical Center to attract and graduate more than 45 new students to the much needed STEM area of Pharmacy. The innovative pre-college and mentoring programs will attract and retain potential pharmacy students to a PharmD degree, which is quickly becoming a national standard in this field. This collaboration shares $364,000.
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The vision of Chancellor Fingerhut is to be applauded; now, we must take on the task of mobilizing from the top down AND from the ground up. The newly emerging P-16 Councils across the state can serve as essential partners in this process, as their aim is to bridge learning and community engagement. However, at the center of this success is: the relationship between schools and communities.
I am most excited about the "Ground Up" opportunities with schools and local businesses. If we look at each business as both a learning incubator and economic development incubator, we can begin to use the bright talent of children who (even in middle school) show great interest and entrepreneurship tendencies.
As schools create their Continuous Improvement Plans, and communities fine tune their Master Plans, an emphasis should be integrated that places SCHOOL AND BUSINESS connection as a center point for simultaneously improving learning and economic development.
The challenge is that this has to be community, ground level work - and this requires us to teach schools and communities the VALUE of innovative workforce development strategies. Both schools and communities must step out of the immediate - just long enough - to see the longer term benefit for students and community quality of life.
These K-12 school-community partnership models are essential to talent development and should parallel in importance to higher education initiatives.