Colleges, state coordinate efforts to help displaced workers

Nine local colleges and universities are working with the state to align curricular and extracurricular offerings with industries that are seen as having high growth potential.

The goal of Gov. Jennifer Granholm's “Keep Michigan Working” Talent Action Committee was to create a complete database of resources available to displaced workers and other students looking to find work in nine general industries: alternative energy, aerospace and defense, advanced materials, information technology and software engineering, life sciences, entrepreneurship, education, logistics, and engineering/engineering technology.

“Our goal was coming together to align education, economic development, and workforce development so that we're all pointing our resources in the same direction, because in Michigan in the past we have not had that type of coordinated effort,” said Sharon Miller, dean of economic and workforce development at Oakland Community College.

The committee includes representatives from OCC, Wayne State University, Oakland University, Walsh College, Lawrence Technological University, Henry Ford Community College, Schoolcraft College, Macomb Community College and Wayne County Community College as well as officials from state and local economic development groups.

Miller co-chairs the talent action committee and said the task force has spent the past month analyzing the job market of those nine industries to identify in-demand jobs and those that will be in the future.

“We want to come up underneath and support those efforts to attract companies by claiming we have an educated workforce and being able to provide training to dislocated workers so they can transition into those industries,” Miller said.

So far, the committee has inventoried degree programs, certificate programs and workforce outreach efforts that would support the growth industries.

Next, she said, is identifying the top 30 jobs or positions in each industry and matching those jobs to schools that offer programs for those jobs.

“Each school has been challenged to come up with new programming, new initiatives, new services — do something different to rise to this occasion when our community needs us,” she said.

For example, Wayne State has 23 programs targeting the nine growth industries. The programs range in duration from as little as four to six months up to five years, and some of the programs are certificate programs that a student can complete individually to improve specific skills or roll into a master's degree.

“There are a lot of transferable skills that people have, so I think it's identifying what they are so that we have that clear match to see where would be the shortest transition time and retraining time. And we have to supply the educational product to support that,” said Ahmad Ezzeddine, director of community outreach communications at WSU.

Ezzeddine represents Wayne State on the state's committee. He said while many of the school's programs were in place before the formation of the committee, Wayne State is working on offering more certificate programs for displaced workers as it and other schools work to meet the needs of displaced workers in the region.

But sometimes convincing a person that more education is the answer can be tough for someone who has lost his job and has a family to feed and bills to pay.

“It's a challenge to have them think about training or education when they have that on their minds, it becomes a tricky proposition ... one thing that we have to do and we are doing as an educational institution is to come up with alternative delivery mechanisms for that education,” he said.

“So we cannot expect someone to go for four years; it's not realistic. So we have to give them new models where we give them this education in faster, more concentrated doses.”

Ryan Beene: (313) 446-0315, rbeene@crain.com