with specialized skills or educational
qualifications. For instance, Marshall
University partners with the Robert C.
Byrd Institute, which has trained more
than 19,000 workers over the past 10
years and assisted 6,000 companies with
product design or improvement of their
product manufacturing processes.
Entrepreneurship is another focus of
the alliance. “We know it’s great to have
large firms in the state but also that the
majority of our jobs in this country are
in small businesses,” says Gilbert. “We
want a lot of different combinations of job
opportunities for people—large industry,
small business, entrepreneurs or people
working out of their homes. There are all
sorts of things we can do for people to
plug them into the workforce and create
economic activity for the southern part
of the state.”
The alliance is still in its formative
stages, but it has big plans for Southern
West Virginia. One goal is to provide
pools of money for which institutions
and municipalities can apply. The alli-
ance has been in discussions with the
Appalachian Regional Commission and
hopes to find sources of funding to finan-
cially support the mission. This model
has been successful in other parts of the
country, including the South, where Dr.
Malcom Portera, former chancellor of the
University of Alabama system, fostered
a partnership between higher education
and industry.
“Dr. Portera has a history of showing
where a state can invest in an institution
of higher learning and that institution can
then develop a stronger outreach program
for an industry that would support that
industry,” says Gilbert. “He did that with
the automotive industries in Alabama
and Mississippi, where the state put more
resources into auto-related research and
development. Then there were co-op op-
portunities for students to work in those
companies to sort of create a pipeline and
a support system for those industries. The
students benefit, the university benefits,
the company benefits, the state benefits,
and the economy benefits.”
Marshall University has already formed
a partnership with West Virginia Univer-
sity and the West Virginia Department of
Commerce as part of the West Virginia
Forward initiative, in which the organiza-
tions are working to identify short-term,
large-scale projects to enhance economic
development efforts. It's looking at areas
with growth potential, such as tourism,
information technology, oil and gas, fine
chemicals and the automotive and aero-
space industries.
Gilbert is excited about all the ideas
for the future, the spirit of collaboration
and the potential he sees among West
Virginians.
“We have a workforce here that is hard-
working and committed and is wanting
to live here, and I think we need to create
opportunities so the graduates of our
institutions of higher learning can have
jobs in the state—high-quality jobs where
they can choose to live in their home
state and have a quality of life that is
better than what they've had in the past,”
he says. “That is what we want—to
create a better quality of life for all West
Virginians so it will be viewed as a state
where people want to stay and raise their
families and have that legacy for many
generations.”
Partners in Prosperity
The Alliance for the Economic Devel-
opment of Southern West Virginia is a
collaborative effort involving 10 higher
education institutions in the Mountain
State that are dedicated to spurring eco-
nomic development.
The alliance is focused on a 21-county
area that includes Boone, Cabell, Clay,
Fayette, Greenbrier, Kanawha, Lincoln,
Logan, Mason, McDowell, Mercer, Mingo,
Monroe, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Putnam,
Raleigh, Summers, Wayne, Webster and
Wyoming counties.
Bluefield State College
BridgeValley CTC
*The stars denote each
institution’s main campus.
Concord University
Southern WV CTC
Marshall University
Mountwest CTC
New River CTC
West Virginia School of
Osteopathic Medicine
Source: Alliance for the Economic
Development of Southern West Virginia
West Virginia State
University
WVU Tech
WWW.WVEXECUTIVE.COM
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