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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2000: article | |
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Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy receives $1 million grant By Jeff Deitrich | ||||||
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The Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at Penn State is making new strides in educating Pennsylvania’s workforce for future global competition. The Pennsylvania Department of Education has awarded a $1 million grant to the institute in response to the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, a federal effort to coordinate and streamline all components of the nation’s workforce development system. The Department of Education’s Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education administers the grant with funds from Title II, the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, of the Workforce Investment Act. The Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy is using the grant to direct and coordinate the Pennsylvania Workforce Improvement Network (PA WIN). The network’s goal is to develop a centralized, market-driven system of workplace basic or foundation skills services for employers and workers. This state effort has been implemented due to a variety of factors. Low unemployment rates and Gov. Tom Ridge’s call for a workforce to support higher paying industry jobs both play a role. A shift in management paradigms from hierarchical to flatter, team-oriented concepts requires that workers (and, therefore, trainers) have a higher skill level. Welfare reform with a “work-first” philosophy and, of course, the competitive global economy round out the driving forces in this movement to coordinate and streamline Pennsylvania’s workforce education system. In implementing PA WIN, the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy is marketing the program to Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education providers to identify and train a core group of “program developers.” These program developers will, in turn, market PA WIN services to employers and Pennsylvania’s new workforce investment delivery system — Team PA/CareerLink. The program developers will assist in identifying workers’ foundation skills needs, link employers with Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education providers and assist in developing high-quality workplace foundation skills programs. Support for developing such programs also is being provided by PA WIN in customized training for adult educators. These programs will enable workers to be more effective, productive, competitive and self-reliant. Competitive minigrants offered through PA WIN will help Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education programs offset the costs of starting new workplace education programs. “This system is really going to broaden what Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education providers do. They traditionally work with the ‘hardest to reach and serve’ adult learners,” said Priscilla Carman, senior research assistant for the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and co-director of the program with Barbara Van Horn, assistant director of the institute. “PA WIN will train Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education providers to go into business and industry and work with employers to identify workers’ work-related basic skills needs,” Carman added. The program will help the Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education system serve 1,600 already-employed workers to upgrade their skills in order to better meet the current demands for a job or to advance to a better job. The $1 million grant is in addition to a $199,000 grant the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy received in 1999. This grant will be increased by $80,000 to continue the grant through the end of June 2001. The $199,000 grant funded the Framework for Work-based Foundation Skills. The institute is working with employers, labor, adult educators and the five state agencies governing Pennsylvania’s new workforce investment system to come to a common understanding of what the “basic or foundation skills” are that every worker needs. | |||||
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© 2002 Outreach Communications, Outreach & Cooperative Extension, The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108, fax: (814) 863-2765, e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu |
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