Conference Highlights Filling Workforce Gap

The Oklahoma Association of Minorities in Career and Technology Education on April 10 will host the 7th Annual Leadership Conference, Kaleidoscope:Twisting Lenses, Seeing Changes. The event will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Moore Norman Technology Center South Penn Campus.

Hands-on sessions and a key panel discussion, “Filling the Oklahoma Workforce Gap by 2014,”are just a few of the scheduled activities for this event.

“Our mission in planning this event is to provide the types of sessions and information that will assist in leading students to employment as well as success in life,” according to OAMCTE President Gloria Pollard.

This year’s conference features barrier-breaking keynote speakers including Oklahoma native, Pamela McCauley-Bush. As a 1993 graduated of the University of Oklahoma, Bush was the first African-American woman to earn an engineering doctoral degree from the state of Oklahoma.

President and CEO of Tech Solutions Inc. and 2001’s Millennium Woman of the Year, Bush is an associate professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida. Bush is nationally recognized as a motivational speaker, a recipient of numerous national awards, educator, technologist, entrepreneur and author of “Winners Don’t Quit…Today They Call Me Doctor.”

Former assistant majority leader of the Oklahoma State Senate, Angela Monson, will also be a featured speaker. Monson was the first woman and first African-American to hold such a position in the Senate.

Key panel discussion speakers include:

• Victor Bird, Director of Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission.
• Sheryl Hale, Manager of Innovative Services, Research and Development Oklahoma Department of CareerTech.
• Wayne Jones, Director of Engineering Tinker Air Force Base.
• Bernadette Huber, State Executive Director of the American Indian Chamber of Commerce.
• Doyle Fortney, Chief of Human Resources at Oklahoma State Department of Health Care.
• Belinda McCharen, Francis Tuttle Endowed Chair for the Occupational Education Studies at Oklahoma State University.

“This conference offers cutting edge leaders working hand-in-hand with industry to fill economic development needs,” Pollard said.

Participants will attend breakout sessions addressing cultural areas in need of awareness including Hispanic culture, women and minorities in agriculture. Issues pertaining to Asians and Pacific Island populations, and Native Americans, also will be addressed.

OAMCTE is a non-profit organization committed to the promotion of greater participation by minorities in all facets of Career and Technology Education in the state of Oklahoma. OAMCTE started as the Oklahoma Association for the Advancement of Black Americans in Vocational Education in 1988.  The organization became the Oklahoma Association of Minorities in Career and Technology Education in August 2001.

This conference, as well membership, is open to all individuals who advocate and promote the goals and missions of OAMCTE.

Update: See photos of Award reciepients in image gallery Here (4/18/08)

Download Image for print; Pamela McCauley-Bush-Keynote Speaker

Posted March1 14, 2008

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