{"id":7691,"date":"2013-09-05T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/?p=7691"},"modified":"2013-09-05T01:04:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T06:04:16","slug":"tennessee-governor-bill-haslam-shifts-drive-to-55-initiative-into-high-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/2013\/09\/05\/tennessee-governor-bill-haslam-shifts-drive-to-55-initiative-into-high-gear\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam shifts \u2018Drive to 55\u2019 Initiative into High Gear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><em><strong>Goal to have 55 percent of Tennesseans with certificates or degrees beyond high school by 2025<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-384\" title=\"State of Tennessee\" alt=\"State of Tennessee\" src=\"http:\/\/www.clarksvilleonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/tnseal.jpg\" width=\"135\" height=\"134\" \/><strong>Nashville, TN<\/strong> &#8211; Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam today convened key stakeholders including members of the General Assembly and leaders from Tennessee\u2019s four-year colleges and universities, community colleges, colleges of applied technology, chambers of commerce, the business community, and the state board of education to discuss the challenges Tennessee faces in building a strong workforce for today and in the future.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_105761\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.clarksvilleonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Tennessee-Governor-Bill-Haslam2.jpg\"  class=\"thickbox no_icon\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105761\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-105761 \" title=\"Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam.\" alt=\"Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.clarksvilleonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Tennessee-Governor-Bill-Haslam2-480x360.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-105761\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!--more-->\u201cWe want Tennesseans working in Tennessee jobs. We want Tennesseans to have an opportunity to get a good job and for those in the workplace to be able to advance and get an even better job,\u201d Haslam said. \u201cCurrently in Tennessee, only 32 percent of us have a certificate or degree beyond high school, and studies show that by the year 2025 that number needs to be at least 55 percent for us to keep up with job demand. We have a lot of work ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>The governor outlined Tennessee\u2019s current situation including<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Nearly 70 percent of Tennessee students entering community college need remedial classes before they can take college level courses;<\/li>\n<li>More than 20,000 Tennessee high school graduates choose not to continue their education each year.<\/li>\n<li>There are approximately 940,000 adult Tennesseans that have some college credit but haven\u2019t earned an associate or four-year degree.<\/li>\n<li>On the state\u2019s current path, Tennessee is projected to reach 39 percent of citizens with a certificate or degree beyond high school by the year 2025. To reach 55 percent would be 494,000 more people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Two national experts participated in the event, held at the Music City Center in Nashville, to give global perspectives on workforce trends, the importance of workforce readiness, and innovations in post-secondary education.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff Strohl, the director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, leads a team that researches how education impacts the workforce and focuses on how to quantify skills and better understand competencies in the context of an evolving workplace.<\/p>\n<p>Anant Agarwal serves as president of edX, a worldwide, online learning initiative of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. He is also a professor in MIT\u2019s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department.<\/p>\n<p>The governor\u2019s special advisor for Higher Education, Randy Boyd, also gave an update on the progress made to date on the \u201cDrive to 55\u201d initiative including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$16.5 million in this year\u2019s budget for equipment and technology related to workforce development programs at Tennessee colleges of applied technology and community colleges, which institutions will begin receiving in the coming weeks.<\/li>\n<li>Launch of WGU Tennessee \u2013 an online, competency-based university aimed at the 940,000 adult Tennesseans that have some college credit but didn\u2019t graduate with an associate or four-year degree.<\/li>\n<li>Newly created endowment of $47 million using operational reserve funds from the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation (TSAC) to provide nearly $2 million each year to support scholarships for \u201clast dollar\u201d scholarship programs such as tnAchieves. These scholarships fill the gaps between students\u2019 financial aid and the real costs of college including books, supplies, room and board.<\/li>\n<li>Launching the SAILS program, Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support, to give students who need extra support in math attention during their senior year in high school so they can avoid remediation when they enter college.<\/li>\n<li>Legislation sponsored by Majority Leaders Mark Norris and Gerald McCormick to create the Labor Education Alignment Program \u2013 or LEAP \u2013 to better coordinate key stakeholders on the state and local level to address workforce readiness.<\/li>\n<li>And new online learning innovations in Tennessee through partnerships with edX and Coursera.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Haslam appointed Boyd to the position in January, and he has consulted with a formal working group made up of the governor, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR), and president of the University of Tennessee. Although Boyd\u2019s position is full-time, he is working for the state on a voluntary, unpaid basis.<\/p>\n<p>The governor will be traveling the state in the coming weeks making the case for a stronger emphasis on workforce readiness in Tennessee \u2013 equipping more Tennesseans with the skills and training they need beyond high school for the jobs of today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>For more information on the \u2018Drive to 55\u2019 initiative, visit <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.driveto55.org\" >www.driveto55.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Goal to have 55 percent of Tennesseans with certificates or degrees beyond high school by 2025 Nashville, TN &#8211; Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam today convened key stakeholders including members of the General Assembly and leaders from Tennessee\u2019s four-year colleges and universities, community colleges, colleges of applied technology, chambers of commerce, the business community, and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[3359,8285,8512,6420,8513,8518,6417,8511,284,8514,8519,8282,3195,8517,3722,261,4184,233,3350,5317,8515,5318,8516,343],"class_list":["post-7691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","tag-bill-haslam","tag-drive-to-55","tag-georgetown-university","tag-gerald-mccormick","tag-harvard-university","tag-labor-educaiton-alignment-program","tag-mark-norris","tag-music-center-center","tag-nashville-tn","tag-randy-boyd","tag-rbr","tag-sails","tag-scholarships","tag-seamless-alignment-and-integrated-learning-support","tag-tennesseans","tag-tennessee","tag-tennessee-board-of-regents","tag-tennessee-general-assembly","tag-tennessee-governor","tag-tennessee-higher-education-commission","tag-tennessee-student-assistance-corporation","tag-thec","tag-tsac","tag-university-of-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7692,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions\/7692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}