Dr. Julie Murray-Jensen’s hopes and passions to serve Nebraska communities with robust and unified talent and workforce development
There is a growing awareness across the state and country that higher education is ripe for innovation.
In the age of accountability, you frequently hear public concerns regarding the growing cost of college, increasing student debt, and slow industry decision-making often inflexible and resistant to change.
You hear the business sector speak of college graduates that are not ready for applied professional work and may understand theory but are not adequately prepared to apply theory to practice.
You hear college officials speak of a lack of public and private investment in higher education, from both government and business, that has resulted in an under-funded silo approach to preparing skilled talent.
Although there may be some truth to each perception, we must do better to ensure that all Nebraskans, and communities across the state, thrive economically and socially now and in the future.
In these times of significant challenges, many golden opportunities exist to activate effective change. In some cases, there are current talent/workforce development models in place that must be further scaled.
In other communities, robust workforce development that actively and consistently partners business, government, and education must happen.
You can only unleash economic and social potential when ideas and plans are activated with community involvement, strong data metrics, unified goals, and the active and on-going involvement of systems.
The vision of creating robust talent and workforce development is the passion of Dr. Julie Murray-Jensen. She has spent her career in multiple roles higher education, with business and education degrees as her academic training and direct experience in building successful multi-dimensional external and internal partnerships as her passion and practical experience.
What must be done in Nebraska now is articulated in the book America needs talent: Attracting, educating, and deploying the 21st century workforce (Merisotis, J., 2015).
“What do successful cities do to encourage talent development? They set goals; they listen to what employers need; they offer multiple pathways to success for all types of people; and they work together, harmoniously, driven by the idea that this place – our home – can be restored, with people at the core to ensure that it is even better than it was before.” (p. 170)
This is what Dr. Julie Murray-Jensen is driven to do – vastly improve the direct connection between education and industry with the goal of robust workforce and talent development in support of thriving economic and social individuals and communities across the region.