Gov Con
This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2018 Governor’s Conference. I was really excited to attend because it was at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel this year, and the conference has definitely been the highlight of my internship. Governor’s Conference, or Gov Con, is an opportunity for hundreds of state and local officials, business leaders and economic development professionals to gather together. During the two-day conference, they listen to the governor and guest speakers discuss the state of economic development in Tennessee and also attend workshops. Faith Hill served as the opening keynote speaker, and Bill Lee and Karl Dean, who are both running for governor of Tennessee, spoke on the second day.
This was also a special conference in that Governor Haslam’s last one. It was inspiring to hear him talk about all that he had accomplished during his time in office in terms of bringing jobs and capital investment into the state and creating a stable and business-friendly economic environment. However, it was clear that the governor’s greatest legacy was in the realm of education, including his Drive to 55 and Tennessee Promise initiatives. The Drive to 55 is the governor’s mission to have 55 percent of Tennesseans equipped with a college degree or certificate by the year 2025. Meanwhile, Tennessee Promise is a program that provides students with two years of tuition-free attendance at a community or technical college within the state.
The Drive to 55 has proven to be quite successful, quickly gaining momentum as more and more people around the state learn about this opportunity. For instance, there has been a 13% increase in first-time-freshman enrollment in Tennessee’s public higher education system from the fall of 2014 to the fall of 2016¹. Specifically, there has been a 30% increase of at community colleges and 32% increase at the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology (TCATs)¹.
What is most interesting to me is the important role that workforce development plays at the intersection between higher education and economic development. This is because with the changing needs of employers, the people of Tennessee need more education and training opportunities to fill the jobs that are coming into the state. If the state does not have a workforce that has the necessary training or skills to do properly do the jobs that the employers are hoping to bring over, then the businesses will look into moving to other states.
I had never quite realized the interdependence of the relationship between education and economic development, but I attended a workshop that provided further insights into this revelation. This workshop featured a discussion of different players in Tennessee’s higher education and workforce development organizations. They highlighted the need for cooperation between the various players and noted that education and workforce development would not have been a topic at an economic development conference just a few years back. The panel also emphasized the importance of partnering with and holding the state’s K-12 system accountable, as that ultimately determines their pipeline.
This is the workshop that I attended on the second day of Gov Con. It was awesome to see that some of the people that I’ve worked with talking on the panel!
I had a great view of the governor during lunch on the first day!
- ://tnachieves.org/lib/file/manager/Miscellaneous/TNPromiseYear2Numbers.pdf