Regional Education Workforce Survey will help guide the creation of the new Kirkwood centers in Johnson, Linn and Washington counties
Kirkwood Community College hopes to begin the construction process for at least one of its new regional education centers in early 2012, and needs input from businesses to do so. These centers will be in Johnson, Linn and Washington Counties.
The regional centers are being built with the goal of preparing secondary and post-secondary students to meet the workforce needs of the local communities. The facilities will integrate state-of-the-art technology with cutting edge instruction, in the spirit of collaboration that is central to Kirkwood Community College’s mission. In September, residents in Kirkwood’s seven-county service area overwhelmingly passed a bond issue to build these centers.
The college, local school districts and their partners look forward to the completion of these centers. Local employers are being asked to complete a short survey, provided by the college, to identify needs they may have. This data will be aggregated and analyzed in combination with a survey that was provided to the K-12 school districts related to course and career academy programming needs.
“Everything we do at Kirkwood is about following our mission,” said President Mick Starcevich. “Part of that mission is to identify community needs, and provide accessible, quality education and training. With employers filling out this survey, we’ll make sure these new regional education centers will do just that.”
Kirkwood Community College built its first regional education center in Monticello in 2008. It was created as a partnership of eight local school districts, the college and local businesses. In its short existence, it has become a model of how a college can serve its community’s education and training needs.
“When we built the Jones Regional Education Center three years ago, we specifically gathered input from local employers about their workforce needs,” said Jones Regional Education Center Director Kristy Black. “Based on that research, we created a larger welding lab in the new facility, as well as a metal fabrication lab that contains CNC machines. Employers also expressed the need for a health science classroom and pre-engineering lab. These areas and others were all set up to address the needs of the workforce in the area, in addition to meeting the needs of our local schools.”
“Part of the center was designed solely on the input of what employers needed, and now those companies, as well as the entire economic area are seeing the rewards.”
Kirkwood works with hundreds of businesses in the seven-county area it serves, through its Continuing Education and Training Services division. Kirkwood’s recent Skills 2014 study identified gaps between workforce needs of industry and the existing skills of the region’s workforce. Employers surveyed are concerned about the lack of “specialized technical skills” in the available workforce.
“Knowing what we do from finishing our fourth workforce Skills study, we now need to lean on businesses again with this survey, to make sure we are helping them grow in the best way possible,” said Vice President of Continuing Education and Training Services Kim Johnson. “This survey focuses on the region’s employers’ training needs related to their incumbent workforce as well as training that would assist job applicants to be more competitive.”
Additionally, the survey focuses on the types of technology employers desire students and workers to have access to, in order to be more competitive, productive and successful. Employer input will help seize the opportunities these education centers provide in supporting a workforce pipeline focusing on specialized technical skills.
The purpose of this survey of employers is to identify current and future workforce training needs including space, equipment and expertise that are considered essential to business success. The participation of employers in the area is vital in determining the education and training that will most affect the skill needs of businesses.
Kirkwood is sending an employer training survey out to businesses in Johnson, Linn and Washington counties to gather information that will assist the college in making programming and technology lab decisions in the regional education centers in these three counties. Depending on the size and complexity of the organization filling out the survey, it will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.
Companies can watch for a paper copy of the survey to arrive at their organizations, or can fill out the survey at www.kirkwood.edu/workforcesurvey. Kirkwood is asking for companies to complete the survey online or send in the hard copy by Friday, January 20.
Companies that want a hard copy of the survey should contact Karen Friederich at 319-398-5548 or karen.friederich@kirkwood.edu and ask that the Regional Education Workforce Survey be sent to you.