NWACC joins Global College
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/brog/News/60162/
BENTONVILLE — Northwest Arkansas Community College is working with a global partner to help fill the “ biggest talent gap our country has ever known, ” a group of employers learned Thursday morning.
Denise Reading, founder and president of the Global Corporate College, was on hand to discuss her organization, which the college recently joined. The group was gathered at the college’s Shewmaker Center for Workforce Technologies.
“ The Global Corporate College is designed to fill that gap, ” she said of the talent gap.
Reading said she was told as a teenager that there are three types of workers: the kind who does what he has to do to get by; the kind who does exactly what he is told; and the kind who shows initiative to succeed. She knows that companies need the third kind of worker — workers with not only the right attitude but the right skills to perform their jobs.
The GCC is a growing network of colleges throughout the country that can provide corporate training for a variety of business types. If a company in a given state needs a specific type of training, the GCC-member college can have access to a wide range of curriculums from other member colleges. It widens the colleges’ access to “ intellectual property, ” said Derek Crews, NWACC’s vice president for work-force development.
The GCC is also useful for national and international companies that need training throughout their organization. For example, if a company based in Ohio wants all of its managers in stores nationwide to be trained in a specific curriculum, the employees don’t have to travel to Ohio to be trained. The school in Ohio would work as the coordinating college, but the curriculum would be administered at GCC-member colleges wherever the training is needed. NWACC, for example, could train the employees for the company’s Arkansas stores.
“ It’s a way to standardize the cost, the curriculum and the quality of work-force education, ” Crews said.