This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that is being shared at the National Career Clusters® Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers, and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Fort Worth, TX in June. Today’s guest blogger is Gregg Christensen, Entrepreneurship and Career Education Specialist, Nebraska Department of Education, Lincoln, NE.

Building Strategic Alliances with Business/Industry, Workforce Development, and Economic Development

Nebraska Career Education
SYSTEM

Business-Industry Linkages…

Partnering with Workforce Development and Economic Development

Stakeholder Involvement…

Do all these sound like familiar themes related to Career Technical Education?  It’s easy to give lip service to them, but difficult to make a reality in effective and efficient ways.

Bringing together key partners to achieve buy-in, support and advocacy for important career technical education initiatives and projects has never been more crucial. The bottom line for many business and industry professionals is that they feel called upon for money, equipment, and advice, but not really “heard.”

Workforce Development and Economic Development agencies have different missions, different measures of success, and different “alphabet soups” of programs and initiatives.  Bridging that divide is difficult but doable.

Engagement of key stakeholders has to be more than a surface “bring ’em in, talk at ’em and let ’em go” exercise to meet a state or federal requirement.  Identifying who needs to be at the table, why they would want to be there, and what they (and you) will gain from working together is crucial, but an often overlooked step.

This session will share best practices for building strategic alliances with diverse group and review examples of strategic alliances built by the Nebraska Career Education (NCE) team and explore the tangible outcomes of these NCE system-driven collaborations including:

• Nebraska Standards for Career Ready Practice
• Career Readiness Modules
• Professional Development Modules
• H3 Website
• Preparation for Tomorrow Food and Nutritional Sciences project

Gregg’s breakout session, Building Strategic Alliances with Business/Industry, Workforce Development, and Economic Development is Monday, June 10 from 3:35 p.m. - 5 p.m.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Career Clusters®. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.