Testimony

Workforce Development in Pennsylvania

Thank you, Chairman Flick, for inviting me to speak today about Penn State's perspective on workforce development in Pennsylvania. We share with you and the other members of the committee a strong commitment to creating a workforce that can support the competitiveness and prosperity of our state's communities. We appreciate the effort and attention this group has brought to this vital area. Our University is eager to work with you and the many other stakeholders in workforce education to promote human and economic development for the Commonwealth. This is one reason we announced our support of HB1800 rather early and firmly.

It is surprising to some, but in fact Penn State's involvement in workforce development is extensive and longstanding. Yet despite all that we do, there is a continuing misperception among many that we are not active in this arena. The University is the largest provider of technical education in the Commonwealth and the second largest provider of related associate degrees. We enroll about 7,000 students in associate level occupational and technical programs at our locations throughout the state, including the Pennsylvania College of Technology. About 90 such programs are offered by our campuses in concert with regional industry needs.

Growing collaboration between Penn State and Penn College will further extend our involvement in workforce education and capitalize on the University's special research and teaching resources. For example, planning for a new instructional initiative in semiconductor technology is well underway. It will include three semesters of study at Penn College with a fourth, capstone semester at Penn State's Electronic Materials and Processing Research Lab at University Park that provides hands-on training in a state-of-the-art $37 million facility. We also are exploring offering selected Penn College programs at other Penn State locations across the state in response to requests from businesses and industries. As an option, some of these courses would be offered through distance learning, an avenue in which Penn State excels.

There is also collaboration across other Penn State locations that contributes to workforce development. For example, we are planning on offering at Penn State York the engineering technology associate degree program developed at the advanced plastics technology center at Penn State Behrend in Erie in cooperation with local industry, at the request of industry leaders in southcentral Pennsylvania.

Responding to regional workforce development needs was a major impetus for the recent reorganization of Penn State's Commonwealth Educational System. We have given our campuses greater flexibility to provide degree and continuing education programs most in demand in the communities they serve.

Many of our campuses also contribute to workforce development through their involvement in regional Tech Prep consortia that provide educational and career pathways for high school students entering business, engineering technology, and human services fields. Thirteen Penn State locations currently are involved in Tech Prep efforts and two more are in the planning stages. These consortia include about 400 of the state's 500 school districts.

Penn State's University Park Campus is the home of the Pennsylvania School-to-Work Resource Center that supports the implementation of the school-to-work initiative in the Commonwealth. The center provides staff development, technical assistance, marketing, and communications services to the 57 local partnerships and ten regional entities involved in school-to-work system building across the state.

Penn State recently entered a partnership with the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry to jointly identify, design, and deliver programs to meet the needs of the state's business communities. An early result of this effort was the Pennsylvania Business Technology Conference held last fall. Our partnership with the Chamber builds on our continuing and distance education activities that currently provide updating and training to 200,000 people each year. One example, Penn State's award-winning Customer Relations Certificate Program, was first introduced at AT&T sites in Pittsburgh and is now delivered across the Commonwealth.

Penn State Management Development Services, a program within our continuing and distance education operation, has 15 full-time faculty who teach exclusively off campus. Last year, they provided programs on supervision, planning, and more effective management practices to more than 5,000 employees of 200 Pennsylvania companies. At General Cable Corporation in Altoona, our Management Development faculty increased productivity 100 percent by retraining employees who were using a traditional assembly line manufacturing model and replacing it with a team based approach. At the Gettysburg location of Schindler Elevator, an international leader in the manufacture of hydraulic lift elevators, Management Development faculty have been providing training for more than seven years. In 1995, the Gettysburg plant was selected the most improved among all of the company's locations.

Our new Penn State World Campus will make available certificate, continuing professional education, and degree programs to location-bound individuals through the Internet and other distance education delivery modes. The primary World Campus audience is working adults who wish to upgrade their skills.

We further support individuals already in the workforce through a variety of technology transfer and business development programs. The Penn State Bioprocessing Resource Center last year provided training and technical assistance to 43 Pennsylvania companies. Our Ben Franklin Technology Center assisted nearly 200 companies in a 37-county service area with product and process development efforts and also helped another 130 fledgling companies located in 14 small business incubators. The Penn State Business Service Center provided market research, financial planning, and management consulting services to more than 100 small developing companies last year. The Penn State Small Business Development Center, which just opened in November, thus far has counseled 25 entrepreneurs. PENNTAP, the oldest of our technical assistance centers, in operation for more than 30 years, responded to more than 800 requests for assistance from Pennsylvania companies last year.

Let me translate these technology transfer activities into just a few concrete workforce development examples:

In response to a 1990 decision to close the Ingersoll-Rand plant in Athens, staff at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, with Ben Franklin support, developed and implemented a workforce training program that strengthened the competitiveness of the plant to the point that the closure decision was reversed and employment actually increased. Over a three-year period, more than 40,000 hours of instruction were delivered, including the efforts of 3 Penn State faculty members full-time on site.

WEA Manufacturing in Lackawanna County, one of the world's largest producers of compact discs, wanted assistance in developing quality practices and procedures for its workers and managers. PENNTAP responded with training through the Penn State Worthington Scranton Campus that the company reports resulted in $200,000 in cost avoidance.

AMP in Harrisburg needed an educational program to help apprentice tool and die makers at several of its southcentral Pennsylvania facilities obtain certification. Staff at Penn State York developed a comprehensive yet flexible program that offers courses to all AMP employees that can be applied toward an AMP apprentice program, or Penn State credit certificates and associate and baccalaureate degrees.

The York Industrial Education Consortium has been developed by the Penn State York campus with support from the Ben Franklin Technology Center and area companies. Tailored, on-site training programs have been established for each of the half-dozen participating companies that help address their workforce development needs and allow workers to simultaneously pursue apprenticeship certifications and Penn State credit certificates or associate and bachelor's degrees.

The Penn State DuBois Campus is the principal member of the Powder Metal Initiative that supports more than a dozen companies whose industry is one of the most important sources of jobs in the north central region of the state. The goal of this effort is to improve continuously the competitiveness of these firms through technology and workforce development.

And finally, the Pennsylvania Food Manufacturers Training Consortium was established at Penn State to help meet the industry's needs for workforce development and technology transfer, especially in food safety assurance. More than 500 workers from some 20 small and medium sized companies have received specialized training and a wide variety of specialized manufacturing technology has been developed and transferred to participating companies.

Looking across the many activities I have noted for you today, Penn State's involvement in workforce development not only contributes to initial educational foundations, but also supports the ongoing needs of the Commonwealth's workforce for new knowledge, skills, and technology. This continuum, although broader than the immediate concerns of House Bill 1800, is very important to the economic vitality of Pennsylvania. We believe that Penn State's ability to partner with the Commonwealth's businesses across this continuum adds substantial value to any one point of activity given the many inter-relationships of research, technology transfer, training, and the broader problem solving and communications skills needed by virtually all workers today.

We therefore feel it is important for Penn State to continue to be involved in the activities

that would appear to fall under the purview of House Bill 1800. Programs at issue under this legislation currently bring us just under $9 million in funding per year. Most of that funding passes directly to one of eleven Penn State locations involved in program delivery.

We remain supportive of this proposed legislation. We are convinced that it would bring better coordination and cooperation to an area that inherently involves many different parties. Yet we do have some reservations. Our concerns derive not so much from the legislation per se, as from the uncertainties it involves. It would be reassuring if we knew the following would occur:

• We hope that the fund distribution formulas transcend regional boundaries where statewide workforce needs and priorities are involved, for example, to support distance education programming.
• We also would like to see assurances that experienced providers receive priority for funding -- and by virtue of all that has been said here today, that includes Penn State and Penn College.
• We also wish to encourage the provision of reliable, predictable funding streams to enable providers to make the significant investments required for workforce education.
• Most important, we do not want to see funding for other critical higher education priorities diverted to occupational education.

In closing, let me say that Penn State wishes to be an educational rapid deployment force for Pennsylvania. We will be there for the Commonwealth and its people, however and wherever our educational resources can contribute to the quality of life in our state. This makes workforce development a major concern for our university.

Thank you.