The Bridge Hopes to Span School-Job Gap: Las Cruces Sun-News, 7/30/2008

Las Cruces Sun-News (NM)

July 30, 2008

The Bridge Hopes to Span School-Job Gap

Author: Brook Stockberger Sun-News Business Editor

Section: News

LAS CRUCES — The Regional Education Initiative is now The Bridge.

In one of his last actions as president at New Mexico State University, Michael Martin was on hand at the Stan Fulton Center to help the organization unveil a new name and logo for the REI.

"This is an experiment that has turned into a transformational moment," he said. Martin said he anticipates that, at some point in the future, educators from other places in the nation will come to southern New Mexico "and ask how to get it done."

The REI started out a year ago as a local group of community, business and educational leaders working to improve work force development in the county. The group is an extension of the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce's education committee and it determined that truancy and absenteeism in public schools were problems that needed to be addressed.

Now called The Bridge, the new organization will have a board of directors made up of representatives of the public schools — Las Cruces, Gadsden and Hatch districts — as well as Dona Ana Community College, New Mexico State University, the business community and government bodies of the City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County.

Garry Carruthers, dean of NMSU's College of Business who served with REI and will work with The Bridge, said the goal of the group is to "graduate all students prepared to work in an international work force."

He said three ways the organization hopes to achieve its goals are: reduce dropout rate; integrate the educational system with business; include technical and career education in the curriculum.

He said there is discussion about building a technical school on the West Mesa and what he called an "early-college high school" at the Arrowhead Research and Business Park at NMSU that would allow students to "take advantage of dealing with a technical career paths or dealing with the university."

Patsy Duran with Steinborn Realty and Kari Mitchell, CEO of Las Cruces Machine, helped get REI started last year. Mitchell said The Bridge will be calling on the southern New Mexico community for help.

"This is absolutely an it-takes-a-village initiative," she said. "The meat of the work is ahead of us." Duran said the group will need financial support as well.

"The bridge still remains under construction," she said. "I'm not shy about mentioning that we are going to have to raise money to be sure The Bridge is successful, so we're going to ask the community to support us on that."

Brook Stockberger can be reached at bstockberger@lcsun-news.com

Record Number:

10050308