Bridging Appalachia's Skills Gap: Gabriella Gonzalez, RAND Corporation

Rigzone: Two of your specialties as a sociologist are school-to-work transitions and workforce development. Looking at the area that will be served by the Appalachia Partnership Initiative, what are the most pressing specific needs in regard to school-to-work transitions and workforce development?

Gonzalez: In research I recently conducted in southwestern Pennsylvania and in West Virginia on the energy workforce development pipeline, it was clear that there is a pressing need for a skilled, adaptable workforce for the energy sector to fill high priority occupations (HPO). These are defined by state departments of labor as jobs that are in high demand by employers, have higher skill needs, and provide a family-sustaining wage.

Gabriella Gonzalez
Gabriella Gonzalez, Sociologist, RAND Corporation
Sociologist, RAND Corporation

Among the HPOs within the energy and advanced manufacturing industries in Pennsylvania and West Virginia most require only a high-school education with some on-the-job training, some work experience, or additional certification. Yet, to date, there hasn’t been a coherent and sustainable approach in which industry and public education and training providers work together to ensure that able talent are employable and filling these jobs. Most efforts to educate or train talent in the region had typically been single initiatives or one-off programs.  

Two factors are pressuring post-secondary education and training institutions to produce a highly skilled and agile workforce to keep pace with the sector’s evolving requirements. First, projected demand for workers has increased due to increased production and extraction, coupled with impending retirements from the baby-boomer generation. Second, the U.S. energy sector has become highly innovative in developing and applying new technologies and procedures, particularly in renewables, mining, and extracting natural gas. Because these innovations often require more – highly skilled labor, many members of the workforce may need to improve their skills.

Rigzone: Throughout its history, RAND has developed a reputation as a source of novel, practical solutions for problems in a host of disciplines. What's unique about API, and what do you anticipate it will yield in terms of practical solutions?

Gonzalez: At RAND, we aim to not only be a resource to national policymakers, but also address the emerging issues that impact our community here in Pittsburgh and around the globe in a meaningful way. What’s unique about this initiative is Chevron’s approach to public-private partnerships and how they convened the appropriate stakeholders together to help address and hopefully solve, important regional issues. Through the Appalachia Partnership Initiative, RAND will conduct research that analyzes critical needs for the region and focus on sustainable solutions. By providing measurement, tracking and reporting for the initiative, we aim to help support effective education and workforce development programs that produce real, measurable value for the region – determining which initiatives are making progress and therefore could offer lessons learned or promising practices for other initiatives in the region and for other areas within the United States that are confronted with similar workforce development challenges.


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