YEAR IN REVIEW
Workforce Development
The Corridor focuses efforts on workforce
development that span the breadth of the
talent pipeline, from techPATH’s focus on
STEM education in middle and high school to
other workforce programs that focus on postsecondary education and beyond. techPATH
continued this year to bring educators and
students into technology industry environments,
giving students up-close and personal insights
into the careers they might ind across the
Corridor and providing teachers new ways
to share exciting subjects that will lead their
students down the right path.
2014-2015 Annual Report
This year, stemCONNECT partnered with a physics professor at the University
of Central Florida to demonstrate aerospace jobs and research to students
at Madison Middle School in Tampa, among other experts in academia and
private industry who continued to introduce middle and high school students to
high tech industries.
Additional workforce development programs supported by The Corridor during
2014/2015 include: STEM Day, a one-day conference introducing students to
high tech careers, hosted by the Zora Festival and Valencia College; the 60th
State Science and Engineering Fair of Florida, which recognizes and rewards
talented high school students for research in math and science; a NAO
humanoid robot purchase for STEM outreach in Hillsborough County schools; the
STEM Alliance of Central Florida, a campaign spanning 10 Central Florida K-12
school districts to strengthen achievement in STEM ields; and, the region’s FIRST
robotics competitions.
Entrepreneurial Support
The Corridor recognizes the importance of supporting the region’s
entrepreneurs and growth companies, which is why it has invested in two
important programs over the last several years: The Corridor’s Florida Virtual
Entrepreneur Center (FLVEC) and GrowFL, the Florida Economic Gardening
Institute at the University of Central Florida.
This year, the world’s largest modeling,
simulation and training (MS&T) conference, the
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and
Education Conference (I/ITSEC), was again
held in Orlando. Not only did I/ITSEC continue
to place a spotlight on The Corridor’s leading
MS&T cluster, which has a $5 billion impact
on our state and supports 60,000 jobs, but it
also provided an opportunity to introduce
students to high tech careers. During the
conference, The Corridor’s techPATH team
hosted two programs – one for students, and
one for teachers and school administrators
– to highlight high tech careers available
to students, with a focus on MS&T. Students
received a hands-on introduction to the
ield of robotics, while teachers and school
administrators were provided tools for teaching
new technology applications in the classroom.
The Corridor also sponsors a program called
stemCONNECT which engages students by
bringing expert speakers into the classroom
virtually through Web conferencing tools.
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FLVEC (www.lvec.com) is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurial and business
resources available regionally, statewide and nationally. Over the past year,
FLVEC received nearly 210,000 new and returning visitors to the site with out-ofstate visitors commanding more than 32,000 visits all viewing more than 300,000
pages on varying entrepreneurial topics and resources.
FLVEC has become not only a resource for those seeking to start, grow or
relocate a business, but also for our statewide economic development
organization partners that refer entrepreneurs and business owners to the site
through entrepreneurial classes, prep courses and more, expanding its reach
and accelerating growth.
GrowFL continues to grow second-stage companies in Florida through its
Economic Gardening® approach. It provides resources, mentoring, support
and more to help business owners overcome obstacles to growth and achieve
further success. Since inception in 2009, GrowFL has assisted more than 800
companies that have supported nearly 14,000 direct jobs across the state and
contributed more than $2 billion to the Florida economy.
During 2014/2015, The Corridor also continued its ongoing support of the
region’s university-based incubators, which have seen enormous growth and
client success, as well as international recognition.
A 2014 Corridor-sponsored study for the University of Central Florida (UCF)
showed UCF incubators have supported more than 250 early-stage companies
and more than 3,600 total jobs with an impact of nearly $2.5 billion in Central
Florida. It received a boost to expand entrepreneurship capabilities when it
was awarded some $750,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce in March