Final
Preparing for Math and Science-Related Careers
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Votes:
Action Taken:
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10:27 AM -- Preparing Colorado's Workforce for Math and Science-Related Careers, Ms. Midge Cozzens, Colorado Institute of Technology
Ms. Midge Cozzens, President, Colorado Institute of Technology (CIT), discussed preparing Colorado's workforce for math and science-related careers. She provided information on science and technology workforce issues (Attachment C). She explained that the CIT was created to bring business and higher education closer together. She explained her initiative to meet with businesses who use technology across the state to see if there was a disconnect between what was needed by businesses and what was being supplied by higher education. She found that some industries have identified severe workforce shortages in the future, such as the aerospace industry, in which 80 percent of the workforce is currently eligible for retirement. The industry is putting a lot of resources toward its workforce shortage problem. There will be 90,000 aerospace jobs that will need to be filled in 2010. There are only 35 freshmen computer scientist majors at Colorado State University; other schools also do not have a large number of students studying technology-related fields. She explained that other states have the same anticipated workforce shortage problems and that states will compete with each other for workers. The fast growing energy industry also has a lot of workers eligible for retirement. There is a lot of competition for mechanical engineers among science and technology-related industries.
Ms. Cozzens continued by indicating that the higher education system needs more resources to hire professors and that the state needs to attempt to get more younger students interested in math and science. Also, parents are discouraging math and science careers. She discussed a CIT initiative called "Cooperative Education in Colorado" (Attachment D) that allows students to alternate between academic study and paid employment. The CIT is working with eight institutions of higher education to coordinate cooperative education programs. She commented that the number of women in computer science education has significantly decreased.
Senator Evans discussed a cooperative education program at Colorado State University that could be used as a model. He also commented that higher education should be careful in working with K-12 education on attracting students into certain fields of study because of their different approaches to teaching. Senator Evans discussed his concerns about providing career education to younger people in K-12 education.