Hill Hosts Workforce Development Interim Study
Rep. Brian Hill, R-Mustang, hosted an interim study on Thursday, September 19, to examine Oklahoma's current and future workforce needs and how industry leaders and state agencies are working toward solutions. "Workforce pipelines are crucial to our long-term success as a state," Hill said. "It's critical that Oklahoma continues to innovate and ensure we are prepared to seize every opportunity presented to us." This is Hill's sixth annual interim study on workforce and economic development since taking office. "Too often we ask questions, do the study, send the press release, and then fail to follow up, which means we miss the big picture," Hill said. "Over the past six years, I've seen the ideas I heard about in my first few studies grow into programs that have started producing results, and I'm looking forward to seeing how those outcomes improve our state." Hill invited business leaders from several emerging industries to speak, as well as public officials. Oklahoma Center of the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST) Director Jennifer McGrail said conversations about the innovation economy center on Oklahoma City and Tulsa and sometimes fail to consider the rest of the state. McGrail said during FY23, OCAST created and retained 1,400 jobs within the state, totaling $74 million in salaries and wages. OKC Innovation District Chief Financial Officer Kathy Cullen explained that they are primarily focused on the bioscience industry. The District received $35 million through the federal Build Back Better grant, which they've allocated to several projects, including 10 translational research labs dedicated to drug discovery within the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center. Cullen told the committee that Oklahoma is in an advantageous spot. She said scientists recently began growing knee meniscus in microgravity, as well as experimenting with growing heart tissue. "We're here to talk about economic innovation, so that’s stuff that’s not currently happening today, it's new stuff," Cullen said. "You're going to need a kidney. They're going to take cells from your body. They're going to take them to outer space and they're going to grow a 3D kidney just for you and they're going to come back and put it in your body and you will not have rejection issues." Cullen told the committee that one of Oklahoma's biggest assets was Burns Flat, one of 13 licensed spaceports in the U.S. She also praised the efforts of Jim Bridenstine, former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator and U.S. representative, to connect aerospace industry CEOs with Oklahoma leaders. "So if you can land it, produce it, Oklahoma is the entire package," Cullen continued. "So we have some assets sitting here that have been developed with intentionality and what we need is the state to get behind us. We need the state to understand that this is the next 30 to 40 to 50 years." Dr. Jesse McCool, CEO and co-founder of Wheeler Labs, said Oklahoma is situated to be a top biomanufacturing state, but said there are challenges, including marketing. "We definitely need to tell a story about how Oklahoma is supporting new verticals and new industries," McCool said. "It's not just an oil and gas state." McCool said support from the Legislature would go a long way toward making Oklahoma a top destination for biomanufacturing and biotech. He gave the example of Australia, which implemented a rebate program to attract biotech companies and has made them a "go-to" country for phase one clinical trials for biopharmaceuticals. During the afternoon segment of the interim study, which focused on job seekers, Dr. Cassidy Minx with the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education said over the past decade, the total number of engineering degrees increased by 43.1%, while STEM degrees increased by 19.2%. Minx also spoke about resources OSRHE is developing to connect students with businesses offering tuition assistance, including the recently launched Tuition Assistance Benefit Survey. "It's a list that we've published on our website of employers that offer tuition assistance in some capacity to their employees," Minx said. "We then share this with our colleges and universities so they can share it with students to connect them with employment so they can see what businesses might offer a tuition benefit to help them continue their education." Secretary of Education Nellie Tayloe Sanders said that while an educational system that prioritizes reading as the best method of learning works well for most people, it presents many barricades for thousands of people. "We are not all worker bees," Sanders said. "We're not all made to do the exact same thing. And the education model we have at this very second is a very, very narrow lane." She said reading-to-learn models are particularly challenging for those with learning disabilities like dyslexia, including Sanders. When students get behind at an early age, she said, it's a constant struggle to keep up, let alone excel. "If we have people who are in a reading-to-learn model like we have right now, we're going to have more prison pipelines than we are workforce pipelines," Sanders said."