Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said he came away impressed with efforts at Cleveland State University to prepare students for the future after a visit to the university's Washkewicz College of Engineering Thursday.
Tressel, along with CSU President Laura Bloomberg, visited labs where students were working on projects like a hydraulic-powered bicycle, a robotic arm to help people with spinal cord injuries eat and a way to recover energy from "waste heat" from heating and cooling buildings. Tressel said he plans to tour other higher ed campuses in Ohio.
"I thought, they (CSU) are one of our best distributors of educational wealth to our business and industry and I hear they're doing good things so why don't we start there?" he said.
At the same time, Tressel also spoke about the need for colleges and universities to become more "efficient" in a time of "limited resources" before a panel of CSU staff, students, local workforce development agencies and local businesses.
"I've lived in this state for 70 plus years and didn't realize the number of needs because you know, you're in your own little world. And so with our limited resources and the number of needs, we really have to do a good job of evaluating. Higher ed sometimes has had more good ideas than we could afford and we... sometimes we do them and then we don't check the results."
Bloomberg said Cleveland State is constantly trying to build new partnerships with community organizations and local businesses to place graduates into jobs in the region.
"One of the things I really wanted to emphasize with the Lieutenant Governor as we welcomed him to campus was our deep commitment as a university in building a new kind of deeper, responsive, reciprocal and sustainable partnership with people in the community, with industry, with healthcare partners, with business partners, and certainly with organizations like the Greater Cleveland Partnership," Bloomberg said.
Baiju Shah, CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, an economic development organization, said access to a highly skilled workforce is one of the biggest challenges facing the region's economic health.
"We want to make sure that every student that's going through public or private universities in our region has experiential education as a part of their learning, so that we have a greater chance of retaining them when they graduate," he said.
Tressel's visit to CSU came as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has said he will likely sign Senate Bill 1, which calls for sweeping changes to how institutions of higher education operate in Ohio. Tressel, the former president of Youngstown State University, declined to answer if he believes institutions of higher education in Ohio exhibit liberal bias, a common complaint voiced by the bill's supporters. But he said he still supports the bill.
"I'd like to think as I look at the various component parts that it kind of meets that criteria of, how can we be more effective? How can be more efficient?" Tressel said.
Senate Bill 1 calls for elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at colleges and universities throughout the state as well as prohibiting faculty from striking. It also requires universities to eliminate of low-enrolled degree programs.
