I can see that spring is within our reach! The days are getting longer and warmer.

In January 2021, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System office submitted its Report To Legislature on behalf of the Minnesota State Centers of Excellence. It was a year in review of our efforts to engage industry, enhance education and inspire students. This was especially important information to share our efforts to address challenges during the pandemic. The Centers of Excellence are legislatively funded and strategically located throughout the state to drive workforce innovation through education and industry collaboration. An important aspect of our work is to provide thought leadership on workforce development in our respective industries.

Within the Report, you will see the Centers of Excellence have different strategies on how we have supported educators, students, and industry partners over the past year. Together we provided many virtual resources from career explorations and pedagogy to workforce development and mental health resources.

A strategic initiative the Centers of Excellence focused on was establishing the Online Learning Resouce Center (OLRC) to support secondary and post-secondary educators as they navigate virtual and distance classroom settings. The Engineering Center's contribution to this initiative was to curate a collection of virtual-ready engineering, science, and mathematic resources for secondary and post-secondary educators. We anticipate virtual and distance education will become much more common as we move forward.

I am hopeful, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. These times have been challenging but all challenges create opportunities to get stronger and more innovative. We look towards these new tools to help overcome current limitations especially in our outreach efforts of supporting the engineering and engineering technology workforce of tomorrow.

All the Best,