(Back to the index) (Back to the beginning of this issue) © 2009 CORD	On September 30 through October 3, NCPN hosted its annual conference at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. As always, the conference brought together an impressive roster of keynote speakers and featured presenters. This year's keynotes were delivered by Stedman Graham, Gus Whalen, Bill Daggett, and Ron Clark. (Those sessions are the subjects of separate articles in this issue.) In addition, there were sessions by Lydia Logan and Greg Roth of the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Scott Hess of the U.S. Department of Education; Larry Warford of the League for Innovation in the Community College; and Bonnie Bracey Sutton of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development in Washington, DC. Pedro Esteva, CEO of IMCA (the Caterpillar Inc. dealership for the Dominican Republic and Jamaica), presented information on his company's involvement in an important project at the Dominican Republic's largest vocational school. (For more on that project, see also here.) Each year the conference provides a broad range of optional preconference events. This year attendees were able to choose from sessions on career coaching, contextual teaching, technology for educators, adult career pathways, green pathways, and grant writing. The session on grant writing was delivered in part by Michael Brustein, a nationally recognized authority on Perkins legislation and author of The Tech Prep Guide to Perkins IV (CORD Communications, 2007). For the last three years, one of the most popular optional events has been the Career Pathways Leadership Certification Workshop, which involves activities both prior to and during the conference. (This workshop is also presented at locations across the country. For more, contact the workshop's developer and presenter, Deb Mills at dmills@cord.org.) Several conference attendees took a fifty-mile bus ride to the Featherbone Communiversity of Gainesville. (For more on this destination, see the article on the NCPN member luncheon.) This is only a sampling of the featured and optional events. For more, see the conference program book, which will be available online throughout the coming year. For presentation PowerPoints and handouts, go here. A major focal point of this year's conference was the release of a new joint publication of ICW and NCPN titled Thriving in Challenging Times: Connecting Education to Economic Development through Career Pathways. (The publication was funded in part by the Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services, whose director, Cheryl Carrier, wrote the foreword.) Thriving in Challenging Times presents an overview of career pathways, including adult career pathways (ACP), and describes seventeen exemplary programs from across the country. The publication makes a special appeal to employers to get involved in education, as they are directly affected when schools fall short of their potential in producing work-ready graduates. "The education-to-career continuum is a kind of pipeline," the publication explains. "As students progress from secondary to postsecondary and beyond, they exercise choice in determining what directions they will take and how far they will go. The reason many employers struggle to find qualified workers is that the pipeline has become weak" (p. 7). As the publication points out, employers have a vital role to play in the success of career pathways programs: "Each program is governed by an advisory committee that includes representatives of the industry that the program is designed to serve. Employers shape the curriculum and provide other benefits—scholarships, fundraising, public relations, internships, job shadowing, mentoring, recruitment, professional development for teachers, equipment donations, and adjudication at student competitions, to name a few" (p. 9). Most of the programs featured in the publication focus on single career areas—aerospace, automotive manufacturing, biotechnology, construction, education, finance, graphic communication, green technologies, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, nuclear energy, and transportation. Three of the programs are designed to prepare students for multiple career areas. Each program description identifies partners, target populations, challenges, strategies, funding sources, results, how businesses are involved, and lessons learned. The publication sets an optimistic tone without downplaying the magnitude of the challenges that lie ahead. Indeed, these are challenging times, but through the partnering of educators, businesspersons, and policymakers, America's free enterprise system can be globally competitive. Each conference attendee received a complimentary copy of the publication. It can also be downloaded as a PDF file here. Back to the index     © 2009 CORD	Mark Whitney is CORD's manager of publication services and editor of Connections. His email address is mwhitney@cord.org.