Meeting the regional demands for tomorrow’s workforce may be a long and hard row to hoe if Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education doesn’t start to measure up soon.
  That was the verdict from more than a dozen experts who participated in a day-long look at innovations in workforce development on February 19th at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mt. Holly.
  The event was presented by SMART, a four-state coalition that works to enhance the competitive position of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware within the US Congress and around the world.
  SMART, which hopes to become the nation’s first legislated interstate regional science and technology authority, includes 41 Congressmen, 8 Senators, 20 federal agencies and representatives of the executive and legislative branches of state government from the four partnering states.
  Annmarie Moran from host Virtua opened the day for the 100-plus attendees by explaining the sophisticated talent matrices that her organization uses to evaluate and rank its employees.
  She was followed by Dean Leonard Soroka of Holy Family University who focused on the role of teachers in setting students on the path to becoming high performance contributors in the regional workforce. “The most valued teachers are those who ‘light a flame’ under their students,” Soroka told the gathering.
  He also questioned government spending priorities, commenting that “building prisons to deal with crime is like building cemeteries to deal with AIDS.”
  Paul Sklarski of Sandler Training urged the human resource executives in the audience to “do preventive maintenance on your most important asset—your people.”
  Chris Myers of Lockheed Martin remarked on “the poor competitive position of the United States” in STEM education and cited its effect on recruiting by companies like his. Noting that “energy is a global security issue,” Myers challenged the group to turn out students who can deal with issues such as how to “store” solar energy.
  “We need photo voltaic to be more efficient at a lower cost,” he said. “College kids today know that this is the problem we have to solve,” Myers added, but he questioned whether enough students were interested in the issue and were well enough prepared to meet the challenge.
  John Henry of EIRC expanded on the issues of interest and preparedness by saying that “if you energize the students, achievement will follow.”
  Also on the agenda were Jack Marcellus of The Focused Academy, the Deputy Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly Upendra Chivukula, workforce optimization experts James Gabster and Paul-Erik Raue from Quintiq, Joe Merlino from The 21st Century Partnership. Jules Lewycki from NAVAIR Lakehurst, Jerry Votta from Williamstown High School, and Paula Fett from the BCC Incubators.
  Congressman John Adler closed the event by commending the SMART organization and its Executive Director Bob Carullo for tackling “one of the most important issues that we face in this country.”