MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC) formally launched Vision 2030 to the general public earlier this week.
Vision 2030, developed in collaboration with RTI International and Keen Point Consulting, is a plan designed to make West Virginia extra aggressive on the subject of science and expertise grants and create a talented workforce that may appeal to high-paying industries.
Dr. Janet Rorrer, Senior Director of Science, Research, and Technology at HEPC, joined WAJR’s “Talk of the Town” to additional describe HEPC’s call-to-action plan.
“It’s meant to be a blueprint for West Virginia’s universities, entrepreneurs, innovators, businesses, and industries to really utilize to see where they can fit in the state’s strategic plans, and how we can move forward together as a group,” Rorrer mentioned.
As a part of their joint group effort, RTI carried out over 60 interviews to obtain enter from universities, authorities companies, and industries to create 4 high-priority areas, by which HEPC will deal with. Those high-priority areas embody: Life Sciences: Health Science, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Resilience, AI/ML and Data Science: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Data Analytics, and Data Science, Advanced Manufacturing: Robotics and Autonomy, and, lastly, Advanced Energy: Energy Reliability & Efficiency and Exploration & Production.
HEPC’s 4 key areas can even goal analysis and STEM training for college students from kindergarten by way of group or technical faculties and universities.
“One of our goals is to really interact and engage with those young individuals, and create that curiosity and intellectual questioning, especially that relates to science, technology, engineering, and math,” Rorrer said.
In addition, HEPC’s government committee will meet at the very least 3 times yearly to examine in and see how they’ll work collectively to establish the place the preliminary growths are occurring, the place further assist could also be wanted, and to decipher how they’ll proceed to maneuver Vision 2030 ahead sooner or later.
Vision 2030 additionally meets key necessities that permit West Virginia to qualify for funding by way of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Search (EPSCoR).