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ECONOMIC DEVELOPER
Rumbarger Sees New Lee County CTC as Major Player in Shaping Future Workforce Carl Smith This year, Lee County Schools opened a new career and technical center (CTC) officials hope will provide the community a new pipeline of workers to fill jobs of the future. School district stakeholders, members of the regional business community and public education supporters gathered this fall to open and tour the almost 35,000-square-foot center located at the Hive, a next-generation industrial park primed for new industries. Connections caught up with David Rumbarger, a veteran economic developer who is the president and chief executive officer of the Tupelo-based Community Development Foundation, to discuss the impact of Lee County’s new CTC on the local economy. Connections: Having a CTC placed in the middle of an industrial park like this must be a great recruitment tool. It’s a big deal to have a place where students 4
Summer 2022
can walk next door to see what jobs are available for them and to have workbased learning experiences right where they’re learning. Rumbarger: It’s giving the CTC a great identity, because now these efforts are truly in the heart and future of industry here in Lee County. We are focused on the school-to-work pipeline, whether it’s high school, two-year college, four-year institutions of higher learning or post-fouryear experiences. The goal is to give students an experience as close to a real-life, real-career experience. Most students aren’t getting that in high school, but we have it here in Lee County. In addition to the new CTC, we’ve done several things in the past 10 years to achieve this, including career coaches — where there’s an advisor in the high school who coaches kids on their interest area. We also have a battery of interest-level testing that’s more like a conversation. It follows them down their interest area to give them career ends for those opportunities they already have a
propensity toward. It gives them enlightenment so they can take elective credits their junior and senior years and then make that connection with business and industry. Connections: What are some of the big emerging job markets of the future? What are the next-generation jobs these Lee County students will train for? Rumbarger: Maintenance technology is the emerging demand. When I say maintenance techs, everybody thinks of custodians, but that’s not it at all. This is someone who has a technical skill and ability, whether it’s in computers, electronics or pneumatics, to diagnose and rectify problems. That troubleshooting piece is actually what makes the highest money. If you can pull a machine for maintenance, diagnose the problem and then triage and fix that problem, that is going to be a lot of companies’ most valuable job opportunity. If you have technical skills, you can become an ex-
