UCI Dean of Education Dr. Richard Arum will serve as volunteer Chair of the CEO Leadership Alliance-Orange County’s (CLA-OC) Talent Leadership Advisory Board, announced CLA-OC President Mark Percy. Known as T-LAB, the Talent Leadership Advisory Board is a business-led coalition working collaboratively with leading education stakeholders on K-Career systems alignment.
Dr. Arum has served as Dean of UCI’s School of Education since 2016 His work analyzed student achievement gaps by race and class, school segregation and stratification, the effects of legal and institutional environments, and the evolution of discipline in American schools.
His research on educational interventions is designed to identify policies and practices that could mitigate the relationship between social background, disadvantaged neighborhood context and educational outcomes. This focus is a strong complement to CLA-OC’s mission of creating a true talent pipeline, especially for under-resourced students, leading to high paying jobs in innovation sectors.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to partner with the CEO Leadership Alliance, local firms and K-16 schools in their work to provide career training and opportunities for Orange County youth,” said Dr. Arum. “Measurement of these programs’ impact and effectiveness is essential to ensuring that we collectively develop the capacity to promote the type of workforce training and regional economic development needed for all Orange County residents to lead productive and meaningful lives.”
T-LAB was created to support CLA-OC’s mission of “a thriving OC for all” by creating opportunities for under-resourced students and young working adults to attain high-wage, high-growth innovation jobs. For the first time in OC, T-LAB brings together major stakeholders needed to form an innovation talent pipeline.
CLA-OC’s CEO members have made commitments to grow and retain talent in OC, especially around needed high-growth innovation core skills, such as cybersecurity, data analytics, and virtual and augmented reality. Together with community partners, CLA-OC recently launched a series of Career Exploration Experiences geared to Community College and High School level students, involving a number of its member companies. Among T-LAB’s immediate priorities include development of a dashboard and scorecard to establish relevant metrics and an evaluation system for these programs.