Inside Edge E-Newsletter discusses TPMA report about the Purdue Research Park in its June 14 edition. The article discusses TPMA's findings that the research park's economic impact in Indiana. To read the article, click here. The full report can be accessed here.
Thomas P. Miller and Associates has been retained as the Regional Operator for Indiana's Region 11 Workforce Board, formally known as the Grow Southwest Indiana Regional Workforce Board. TPMA was first selected as Regional Operator in 2008. The firm's new contract will begin for a three year period beginning in July 2011.
The region stretches from the Evansville area, encompassing the nine Indiana counties of Knox, Gibson, Posey, Warrick, Pike, Spencer, Dubois, Perry, and Vanderburgh.
"Serving as the Regional Operator for a geographically large and dynamic region provides us with great insight in terms of real-experience, best practices, and new developments that are taking place in the workforce and economic development worlds," says Tom Miller. "It keeps us grounded in the real world."
Tom Miller, president of Thomas P. Miller and Associates has named Jennifer Tanner as Partner and Executive Vice President.
"In addition to operations of the firm, Jennifer will be responsible for our community economic development practice area," said Miller. "She brings an incredible wealth of talent and expertise to our firm, particularly to the world of site selection and community economic development, one that will greatly round out our portfolio of services."
Tanner, of Nashville, Tennessee, has extensive experience in operations, administration, human resources, training, marketing, sales and research in site selection and economic development projects.
Most recently, she was a co-founder and principal of Janus Economics, a site selection, real estate and economic development consulting company with offices in Nashville and Atlanta. Tanner is currently leading a major statewide community competitiveness initiative with Louisiana Economic Development, and is conducting economic assessments of communities for strategy, leadership and marketing for Georgia Power. Her expertise is community economic development strategic planning, target industry analysis, land planning and development, and marketing strategy with completed projects in Oklahoma, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Montana, and Tennessee.
For an excellent critique of the economic development warfare currently being waged by state governments, see Richard C. Longworth's article "The Wars Between the States" which originally appeared in the Midwesterner magazine, and also posted on the Urbanophile blog. Longworth is a Senior Fellow at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and author of Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism. Longworth's opening paragraph:
"It would seem impossible for Midwestern states to get any sillier and more irrelevant, but they're trying. In a time of continuing recession and joblessness, with crunching budget problems, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure and no real future in sight, these states have decided to solve their problems by stealing jobs from each other"
For the full article, click here.
A report recently released by the Brookings Institute emphasizes the increasing role of community colleges in not only addressing the nation's skills shortage but in leading the economic recovery:
"Governors and other state leaders are under pressure to increase the odds that their states will exit the recession poised to be productive, attractive to employers, and competitive for jobs and wealth creation. One fact is inescapable: to achieve economic recovery and longer-run prosperity, states must produce many more skilled workers with postsecondary credentials, not merely short-term training after high school.
The current economic climate has placed renewed priority on the performance and potential of community colleges, the primary postsecondary institution serving local and regional workforce needs. These institutions are critically important to individuals seeking higher skills and to employers looking for qualified workers. States that fail to align their community college goals with economic development efforts to address their human capital challenges run the risk of losing out in the competition for good jobs and sustain¬able development.
For the full report, click here.
From the MIT News Office, comes a summary of a recent roundtable discussion by faculty members discussing ideas on how to reinvigorate America's goods-producing businesses. From the article:
But what form will new kinds of manufacturing take? At an MIT roundtable discussion... more than a dozen of the Institute's faculty shared converging ideas about how to reinvigorate America's goods-producing businesses. The roundtable followed a broader campus forum hosted by MIT President Susan Hockfield on March 1, in which faculty members, some of whom also participated in Monday's discussion, offered ideas about how to strengthen America innovation and thus its overall economy. These meetings are part of a larger effort by MIT to contribute the Institute's expertise in emerging technologies and innovation policies to the national effort to revitalize the American economy... "To recover from the current economic downturn, it has been estimated that we need to create on the order of 17 million to 20 million new jobs in the coming decade," noted Hockfield in her opening remarks at the event, which was co-sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness, an industry group. "And it's very hard to imagine where those jobs are going to come from unless we seriously get busy reinventing manufacturing." That question should be of great concern to scientists and engineers-- 64 percent of whom are employed in the manufacturing sector.
For the transcript of the roundtable discussion, click here.
For another take on manufacturing, this one from the state of West Virginia, Sonya Ravindraneth Waddell notes the loss of jobs, increased productivity and higher wages. Waddell is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Va. She notes that:
From 2000 to 2007, output per worker rose at an average annual growth rate of 4.3 percent in West Virginia's chemical manufacturing industry, 3.0 percent in the nonmetallic mineral industry, and 2.9 percent in the wood product industry. Output per worker fell at an average annual 0.7 percent in primary metals.
Furthermore, these industries do not have the sharpest increase in productivity of all West Virginia manufacturing industries; the computer and electronic equipment industry in West Virginia increased output per worker more than eight-fold since 2000. And, only four industries in the state saw productivity losses since 2000, including furniture, petroleum and coal products that had an average annual decline of 7.7 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively.
Waddell concludes that "with the increasing globalization of industry and continued productivity improvements, the share of the West Virginia economy that is devoted to manufacturing may remain on a downward trajectory for some time to come."
The full story can be accessed here.
