posted July 18, 2008
Dr. Kay Andrews, chamber vice president of the Education Initiative, was awarded first place in the 2008 Effective Education Partnership Conference (EEPC) case study competition for her essay on providing solutions to organizational problems in business and education partnerships.
Andrews’ submission was in response to hypothetical challenges related to building strong partnerships in programs. The essay was utilized as a focus for roundtable discussions at the conference in Fairfax, Va. July 10-11.
The Chamber’s Education Initiative will receive $500 in prize money from the competition. The Chamber introduced the Education Initiative last year as a means of forming partnerships and between public schools and businesses and to promote widespread community support for public schools.
“The challenge was to examine a hypothetical economic development organization facing problems of attrition, lack of program focus, too much fundraising, not enough return on the organization’s investments, too little instructional support for local public schools and a disconnected aggregate of workforce development programs,” Andrews said.
“What I did in the 1,000-word essay was to propose a plan to refocus and reform the organization in an effort to address these problems and move membership in the same direction toward a broader vision than had been in place. I used the work we have done over the last two and half years here with the Chamber’s Education Initiative as a model for the essay and now that model is being discussed and implemented in other communities around the U.S.”
The Effective Education Partnerships Conference is designed to bring together the various stakeholders in business/education partnerships, including businesspeople, leaders of business coalitions, school leaders, and others to share case studies and practical tips on building and maintaining effective partnerships. The emphasis is providing attendees with ideas and solutions they can immediately apply to their local efforts.
Speakers at the recent conference included Rick Hess, senior education scholar with the American Enterprise Institute; John Stone, president of the Education Consumers Foundation and David Mathews , president of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
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