Business-Higher Education Forum announces public launch of BHEF’s National Undergraduate Partnership Strategy and Regional Workforce Projects

Washington, DC (May 22, 2012) — The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) will host The Introduction of a New Industry-Higher Education Solution for the NextGen Workforce, in the historic Kennedy Caucus Room (Russell Senate Office Building, Room 325) on Monday, June 11 at 3:30 p.m. Open to the public, this event will showcase the power of revolutionary industry-higher education partnerships designed to meet unique regional workforce needs. There, BHEF will announce twelve regional workforce projects in today’s high-demand fields: cybersecurity, big-data, life sciences, water, energy, engineering, and entrepreneurship. It will also feature a diverse panel of leading national industry and higher education experts who will discuss how these projects are poised to drive change for their constituencies.

Designed to resolve America’s toughest workforce challenges, the projects will be based in California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. These BHEF initiatives will build learning incubators for undergraduates in the education pipeline and will contribute to recommendations recently made by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, specifically calling for greater attention on the first two years of college and on the need for one million additional STEM graduates over the next ten years. They also respond to the recommendations of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competiveness, which include increasing the number of industry-driven undergraduate research internships and production of engineering degrees nationally.

BHEF’s national strategy has brought together industry and academic associations, professional societies, and federal agencies to develop a common action agenda on undergraduate education to meet workforce needs. Initial partners, including the Aerospace Industries Association, American Chemical Society, American Council on Education, American Society of Engineering Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, National Defense Industries Association, Semiconductor Industries Association, and TechNet, have committed to a set of joint priorities, operating principles, and strategies to better align and highlight the individual and combined efforts of the undergraduate community around common goals, thus creating an equal voice for industry, research, and academia.

This work is part of BHEF’s STEM Higher Education and Workforce Project, which aims to identify new forms of collaboration among business and industry, higher education, and government to increase the persistence of students, particularly women and underrepresented minorities, who graduate in STEM fields; deepen STEM knowledge and skills; and strengthen the alignment of undergraduate STEM education to workforce needs.

The Introduction of a New Industry-Higher Education Solution for the NextGen Workforce will take place on Monday, June 11 from 3:30 – 5:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Caucus Room (SR-325), located in the Russell Senate Office Building.