First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

The people that keep our society running—electricians, laborers, technicians, and more—are getting older and nearing retirement. It’s a global issue, as dozens of countries around the world report their biggest labor shortages in skilled trades. Wake County is trying to move more people into those jobs. This week on First in Future, we talk with Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria about the unusual partnership between the county and Wake Technical Community College to help solve the shortage.

Across North Carolina, our 58 community colleges are designed to be within a few minutes’ drive of every person in the state. They have a broad core suite of services: degree programs, technical training, ESL, high school degree completion, and continuing education. They send some people out ready to transfer to four-year schools and accept some people back from four-year schools to get additional skills. Community colleges are a critical part of our state’s retraining challenge. If you’ve been paying attention to the work of the My Future NC Commission, that challenge involves raising up an additional 400,000 adults by 2030 with an education credential beyond high school. That is the kind of challenge Dr. Kandi Deitemeyer, President of Central Piedmont Community College, has been thinking about for most of her adult life. She has worked in community colleges in Florida and Kentucky, and before moving to CPCC, she worked in three smaller community colleges in North Carolina—Davidson, Moore and Pasquotank counties. What do all those places have in common? A responsibility to get people in their area the knowledge and skills they need to succeed.

If you were making a shortlist of family names associated with Charlotte, “Belk” would have to be near the top. Beginning in 1888, the Belk’s started a small retail chain in Monroe that grew bigger and then spread throughout the southeast.  John M. Belk once said, “The more you do for mankind, the better you’ll like life. Whether it’s a company or a city or state, you’ve got to leave it better for the next generation.” The Belk family continues to try to find ways to leave it better. Today’s First in Future guest MC Belk Pilon is the President and Board Chair of the John M. Belk Endowment, whose mission is to transform postsecondary educational opportunities to meet North Carolina’s evolving workforce needs. As you listen to her thought process, you can hear the origins of the My Future NC Commission.

As you look around Charlotte, one of the things you’ll notice is how diverse it is. Mecklenburg County is diverse racially, with 51% of its citizens nonwhite. It’s diverse geographically – 57% of its residents were born outside of the state of North Carolina. And 1 in 7 of its residents was born outside of the U.S. Today’s First in Future guest Reinaldo Panico Peres chair of the Centralina Workforce Board was born in Brazil and moved to the Charlotte region when he relocated a Brazilian company there.  These days, he assists other international firms locating to the Charlotte region, and he is on a mission to get the Charlotte region workforce to give up its old habits and reinvent itself.

A 2015 report on economic mobility in the U.S. caught Charlotte’s attention. The report looked at the likelihood that someone whose parents’ income ranked in the bottom 20% would grow up to make enough money to be in the top 20% of earners. In Charlotte, there was a 4.8% chance of moving into the top 20% if you were born into the bottom 20%. This made Charlotte 50th out of 50 cities in the report. Today’s First in Future guest is Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles. She talks about the report, how the city responded to it, and how other places in the state might approach similar issues. We also hear about millennials, potholes, and how Charlotte is dealing with being the fastest-growing city in the country.

Charlotte is a bigger city than Atlanta or Raleigh. It's the 16th largest metro area in the country. It is the fastest growing city in the country for millennials and has the state’s only real municipal public transit. Charlotte is taking on issues of race and class, economic mobility, affordable housing and quality of life in a very intentional way.  Today’s First in Future guest Jeff Michael, the Director of UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, is looking at the greater Charlotte region and the connections between the rural and urban. The Urban Institute locates the data that the region needs to make decisions. They explain it in a way that people can get. And they have the humility to let people decide what to do with it. Jeff is a native of Stanly County, a first generation college student who left to get degrees in business, law and regional planning, and then went back.

The best estimate of the My Future NC Commission for the number of people in North Carolina who started college but then dropped out is 905,000. In many ways, they have the worst of both worlds: they’ve spent money on college and often had to take out loans, but they don’t have the benefit that comes with a degree. Finding those folks and convincing them to come back to school again is a challenge that a lot of people are working on. You’ll hear about efforts at community colleges and public universities, but you might not have heard about the work of Charlotte’s Johnson C. Smith University. Our First in Future guest this week is Dr. Laura Colson McLean, Dean of JCSU Metropolitan College. She works very intentionally with working age adults to get them the skills and education they need to move to the next level in their careers.

The Institute for Emerging Issues recently provided a series of workshops at the state’s biggest gathering of underappreciated elected officials—the annual meeting of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners. The conference brought together most of the state’s 587 county commissioners and 100 county managers for three days to work through some of the biggest issues our state is facing—health care, education, jobs, opioid addiction and taxes. This week’s First in Future guest is Kevin Austin, the president of the state association of county commissioners. For the past 11 years, he has been a Yadkin County commissioner. We talked with him about the biggest priorities of the association, how to balance public service and a day job, and what it’s like to be on the front lines of making day-to-day decisions that affect everyone’s life, knowing they can second guess you on everything.

We are living in strange economic times. Right now we have a greater number of jobs in the US – 7 million – than we have people officially looking for work. That’s the biggest surplus ever. Figuring out how to make the match between job seekers and jobs is the mission of the Workforce Development Boards across the state. On this episode of First in Future, Leslie Boney talks with the director of the Mountain Area Workforce Board, Nathan Ramsey, and rediscovers the value of "connections" in job success.

Many people in NC think we've forgotten how to talk to each other. That's why the Institute for Emerging Issues is taking part in the Civic Conversations Project with Leadership North Carolina. We're encouraging people from across the state to talk about issues that divide them and get beyond the rhetoric. This week on First in Future, we talk to two people who have just participated in civic conversation—Mat Dull, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at Appalachian State, and Ged Moody, active entrepreneur, and we hear their thoughts on the conversation.

In the old days, getting a master’s degree or a PhD meant you’d likely go into academia. The focus was to get students ready for research and teaching higher education. But as competition for academic jobs has increased, students need to look elsewhere for jobs. Enter the Accelerate to Industry program, or A2i, at NC State University’s Graduate School. This week on First in Future, the Assistant Dean for Professional Development Laura Demarse tells us about how this unique program is giving grad students the skills they need to land a job.

Dr. Pat Mitchell has spent her career thinking about how to make NC a better state. She has been an economic developer, a county manager, head of rural development for the state, and a university professor. She’s currently the president of the NC Economic Development Association. What does she see as critical to the future of economic development in NC? The younger generation and thinking beyond county lines. This week on First in Future, we’ll learn from Dr. Mitchell about the importance of rural development and blending classroom learning with hands-on practice.

How can you get a degree without going into debt, get paid while you learn, and end up with a high-skilled job? In North Carolina, you could get an apprenticeship in health care, manufacturing, construction, IT, energy, and more. This week’s First in Future guest Kathryn Castelloes, Director of ApprenticeshipNC in the state community college system, talks about why this idea has so much potential.

In today’s job market, there’s a gap between the number of available jobs and the number of employees with skills for those jobs. It’s what employers call a “skills gap” – and there’s an organization in North Carolina working on bridging that gap. The Capital Area Workforce Development Board helps connect people to training and education so they can get jobs that become careers. Pat Sturdivant is not only the head of this board—she’s also president of the state association of workforce boards. In this week’s episode of First in Future, Pat talks about how workforce boards create a pool of qualified candidates for North Carolina’s growing industries.

Which is better – a fence at the top of a cliff or an ambulance in the valley below? Our world today seems to invest more in reactive solutions (ambulances) than it does in preventative ones (fences). But that’s starting to change. In southeastern NC, District Attorney Ben David is focused on stopping crime before it begins. The Prosecutorial District office for New Hanover and Pender counties works with the larger community to create pathways for people so they don’t turn to crime. The office helps prevent dropouts, provides food for kids during the summer and helps people with criminal records find jobs. In this week’s episode, Ben talks about the root causes of crime and how we can provide opportunities for everyone to succeed.