St. Luke’s VP invited to President’s Economic Recovery Committee
January 21, 2010
St. Luke’s Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer, Mary Ann Osborn, MA, RN, was invited to Washington D.C. Jan. 6, to meet with the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board’s (PERAB) subcommittee on Education and Training.
Osborn, along with other leaders in business, labor and philanthropy from across the country were invited to Washington D.C. for a discussion on workforce development and employment training. The purpose of the discussion was to gather perspectives from industry leaders and other workforce partners on how to maximize the impact of federal investments in workforce development. This meeting was a follow up to President Obama’s Job Summit held in December and was based on the presumption that our nation is becoming competitively disadvantaged because too many of our workers do not have the skills required to meet labor challenges of the 21st century.
“I felt this invitation was a great opportunity to hear from other industry leaders about their challenges and dialogue about possible solutions,” said Osborn. “I also think we should certainly take advantage of opportunities to inform and influence the legislative process.”
Osborn was recommended to the subcommittee by Steve Ovel, executive director, Governmental Relations, at Kirkwood Community College as St. Luke’s has worked closely with Kirkwood on workforce development for a number of years.
“Iowa is recognized as having a very good workforce development delivery system and a very effective comprehensive community college system built on strong employer partnerships,” said Ovel. “Mary Ann was able to showcase those assets and her first hand knowledge of the challenges facing the health care industry in identifying the skilled workers you need to staff a hospital today and into the future.”
Osborn was able to communicate the workforce needs of a community hospital along with sharing successes of St. Luke’s, the Cedar Rapids community and Kirkwood Community College.
Key themes of the discussion included:
-The need for multi-employer collaboration to define competencies and partner with education.
-The need for long-term sustainability by all stakeholders. It’s difficult to build strategy around one and two year grant programs.
-Creating educational pathways for people so they can continually build on previous learning.
-Pockets of success across the country and what those regions do to generate that success.
“Iowa has done some tremendous work already, in that our community colleges are integrated models: they are able to offer basic literacy, GED and career preparation programs. In some states that is not the case,” said Osborn. “Here in Cedar Rapids we have great successes as well, such as the simulation lab at Kirkwood, Accelerated Career Education (ACE) program and the Workplace Learning Connection.”
