New institute to focus on workforce development
A new Binghamton institute will fill a gap in workforce development that’s needed as the Southern Tier pushes to revive manufacturing.
The Institute for Workforce Development Advancement in Research and Programming (iWARP), will be led by James Pitarresi, vice provost for online and innovation education.
In 2021, Binghamton University’s divisions of Research and Academic Affairs developed SPREE (Strategic Research Enterprise Evolution) to examine the new federal priorities for research funding, said Michael Jacobson, director of the Office of Strategic Research Initiatives. “Of the four SPREE subcommittees, the one that focused on climate change identified workforce development as a critical issue,” he said. “We have the technological setup, but we just don’t have the workforce to install it. And part of this, too, is to increase diversity in the workforce.”
Pitarresi and Vice President for Research Bahgat Sammakia have already met with local industry and healthcare leaders. These industries struggle to recruit and retain the workers they need.
“Workforce development is about a broad range of things,” Sammakia said. “Part is for engineering and manufacturing; we’re already talking with industry about how to bring their workers up to date and how to prepare them. These meetings we are having with the community are about understanding what the local and national needs are and how we can help people get ready.”
Pitarresi sees the institute as offering flexible, online courses that can be adapted for different industries. “Say someone in manufacturing needs a program on blockchain and we are able to develop a course for them, and then, someone in the healthcare industry needs a similar program,” he said. “We need to build our programs in a modular fashion that allows us to take our basic blockchain program and pull the pieces we don’t need, add some new pieces and remix it for different industries. That’s the philosophy.”