By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The city of St. Joseph is continuing to invest in its people by developing new workforce and workforce development opportunities.
Mayor John Josendale pointed to the investment as an objective during his state of the city address.
Josendale says assets like the Houlne Center for Convergent Technology provide new state of the art opportunities, such as.
“The cybersecurity is one of seven programs in the entire country,” Josendale tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So, the fact we’re state of the art in some of the stuff we’re doing, and how we’re producing our own from within.”
Expansion at Hillyard Technical Center has also added new workforce development opportunities. Development is also underway on the new UMKC School of Medicine as well as UMKC expanding its school of dentistry.
Josendale says these opportunities are all about producing our own from within to help keep them working and living in the community
“To grow our population, to train our population, to give them the opportunity that not everybody is going to wear a coat and tie and go to work, but we want to be able to offer all different avenues and approaches to get everybody to work,” Josendale explains.
Josendale says people learning in a community makes them want to work there and says growing your own is incredibly important.
“When I talk about the Community Alliance and we go out and talk and the visitation to other cities, we share our experiences with that and how we’re trying to grow within and other cities are trying to copy that because it’s so important,” Josendale says.
Josendale delivered his state of the city address during the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce’s Public Affairs Coffee at the InspireU Children’s Discovery Center.
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