The announcement that Vector Resources, a high-tech company headquartered in California, opened an office in downtown Harrisburg completed another chapter in the economic transformation of the region, left for dead less than 20 years ago.
It’s not easy reviving an entire region, particularly when its lifeblood, manufacturing, fell victim to the post-industrial decline of the 1980s. However, thanks to the vision and prescience of Harrisburg’s corporate, government, and community leaders, our area was reinvented with an eye focused on the future and a commitment to staying ahead of the curve.
Traditional (translation: safe) ideas and strategies (translation: ask for money) were nixed; tried and true usually begets a short shelf life. And with the region’s future at stake, brave, if not risky and audacious, solutions were encouraged.
A “let’s roll this boulder uphill” mentality took hold 15 years ago among a 150-member task force charged with putting Harrisburg back on the map, and innovation paved the way for the unique business-education partnerships that have elevated higher education to new levels while catalyzing the economic growth of the Harrisburg region and attracting business to the area.
The reality of the 21st century global marketplace—where companies’ abilities to succeed rely on a workforce that excels in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)—certainly hastened Harrisburg’s rebirth. And although the notion that studying these subjects advances students’ careers is not ground breaking, the method of instruction and the goals of a new learning institution required challenging the higher education status quo and developing a new educational paradigm to create the desired results.
The agents of this transformation are the faculty and staff who work at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. They are remaking the higher education model, integrating an interdisciplinary, competency-based academic format, courses designed and taught by corporate partners, and coaching students on life issues such as time management and work-life balance.
Championing STEM education and its vital role in maintaining a robust 21st century economy in Central Pennsylvania, while serving as the springboard to critical careers in STEM fields, has been Harrisburg University’s vision and goal since opening its doors to students in 2005.
The close collaboration of business and education – the “Moneyball,” if you will, of an economic-development strategy for our region – goes against the grain and, perhaps, makes the purist’s view of how to reform higher education permanently “old school.”
In a hopeful sign, the White House’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in a report released this month, singled out Harrisburg University as one of seven postsecondary institutions in the nation with effective programs to improve STEM education. The council, made up of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who directly advise the president and the Executive Office of the president, recognized the university’s efforts to take students through the STEM subjects in four-year programs that leave them well-trained for the technological workforce that companies seek and prepared to fit seamlessly into the corporate culture.
The report also cited the substantial benefit to downtown Harrisburg, where $30 million in annual economic impact confirms the viability for thousands of companies across the nation looking for an area where there is workforce either trained in the STEM fields or that has access to institutions that can provide the education and training needed to thrive in today’s marketplace.
This endorsement cannot be understated. It is made by the very people who are seeking to recognize and support the economic engines of the innovation economy and corroborates the vision of those community leaders who courageously set HU on its course.
Naturally, this is great news for all who’ve been involved – supporters, faculty, staff, students, investors – but even more so, it places Harrisburg on the national map. From the time Harrisburg’s leaders recognized the urgency to link business with education, and establish an academic institution to focus strictly on the fields this century now demands – science, technology, engineering, and math – till now, the objective has been to spearhead new ways of catalyzing education so innovation and a dynamic economy naturally follow.
The model is working in Harrisburg, where students are entering the workforce not only skilled in their jobs but savvy in the corporate environment, and where Vector Resources and other high-tech companies are flocking to become part of and contribute to a thriving and growing economy.
Mel Schiavelli is professor of chemistry and president of the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, the only STEM-focused comprehensive university between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
