Community Campus Engineering Academy excites Students

Gorged by a golf ball and soaring over the moon, the bespeckled, fist-size Chick-fil-A cow landed with a thud against the window in Apollo High School’s front lobby.

“Not a bad shot,” mused Landon Meserve, squatting behind his homemade catapult on Friday. “It’s all about the distance from the arm to this crossbar, here,” he said, pointing to a complicated maze of screws, rope, wood and bungee cords.

Meserve is one of 24 regional students in Daviess County Public School’s Project Lead the Way, a national curriculum marrying reality-based college courses with local, hands-on instruction. Students from DCPS, Owensboro, Trinity and Owensboro Catholic high schools are dropped off at, drive or are bused to Apollo’s campus for first period before joining their home schools the rest of the day.

Technology educators Aaron Yeiser and Steven May challenged the teens to calculate distance, displacement, speed, velocity and acceleration from data and to design, build and test a vehicle that stores and releases potential energy for propulsion — all in two weeks’ time.

“We do a version of the competition every year,” May said. “This year, we thought of using cows and getting corporate sponsorship, and it worked out.”

Chick-fil-A sent out their mascot and donated small, stuffed cows for the event, while Mays and fellow teachers honored students with the farthest overall shot and gave points for a series of 10 accuracy shots.

No slingshots were allowed, Mays said, and students only got five practice shots. They got 25 points to shoot the cow over the hand-painted, 6-foot-tall moon; lesser points for landing in one of three 5-gallon buckets; and 10 points per pin for cow bowling. The points doubled for bowling, he said, if students got a strike.

Meserve aimed, pulling back four and a half inches — 10 feet worth of distance —- at a time. He missed, and then a strike. He and his OHS partner, Buxton Johnson, took first with 375 points, Catholic High junior Kali Paul rounded out the bottom with only 70 points.

“Ours is tiny, so it’s like the underdog,” Paul said, pointing to her own, cow-painted creation, at least two feet shorter than Meserve’s. “We didn’t do so well. My catapult is going to Chick-fil-A, and it’s going to retire there.”

Paul and her partner make up a growing minority of women interested in engineering, a statistic college and career readiness coordinator Marcia Carpenter said they’re working to overcome.

“Right now, the national average is 11 percent, and we have 7,” she said, “but hopefully programs like Project Lead the Way will help that.”

Megan Harris, 691-7302, mharris@messenger-inquirer.com

Owensboro EDC and Chamber pass Joint Resolution on the Work Ready Community effort

The boards of directors of the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp and Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce passed a joint resolution supporting the application that Owensboro-Daviess County be considered a "Work Ready Community."

The Work Ready Community program was launched by Governor Beshear and the Kentucky Workforce Investment Board (K-WIB)in August of this year. The Owensboro application, which was submitted last week, will be among the first applications considered.

The new program is designed to transform local economies and give counties a competitive advantage in attracting new businesses and jobs.

“We have business and industry in Kentucky that require a skilled workforce. This program provides us with a way to prove it, county by county,” said Gov. Steve Beshear in August. “In addition, the program promotes collaboration among key community stakeholders including education, economic development, elected officials, employers, workforce agencies and community organizations as they work toward common community goals.”

To earn certification, counties will have to meet established criteria in six specific areas. Highlights of the Owensboro application include the following:

· high school graduation rate- Work Ready standard: 82.32%, Owensboro region: 83%;
· National Career Readiness Certificate holders- Work Ready standard: plan to raise to 15% in three years, Owensboro: current 8% with plan to grow to 15%;
· educational attainment (2 and 4-year degree rate)- Work Ready standard: 25%, Owensboro: 32%;
· soft skills development- Work Ready standard: plan to address, Owensboro: a plan is in place;
· digital literacy (percent household with broadband available)- Work Ready standard: 90%, Owensboro: 96%.

The regional Work Ready Community effort was co-chaired by Helen Mounjoy and Judge Al Mattingly in conjunction with the EDC. The K-WIB will consider the application at their February meeting.

Study: Owensboro a high performing small metro

A new U.S. jobs growth report lists Owensboro as a “high performance” small metro based on summer employment trend data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Headlight, LLC, which provides economic and workforce development companies with data and software systems, conducted the analysis.

Owensboro’s annualized growth from June to September was 5.8 percent, and its actual growth was 1.4 percent.

The study also provides a look at how close cities are to their employment status in December 2007 — the start of the recession. Owensboro has a 1.9 percent deficit. This data indicates it would take Owensboro 17 months to get back to the December 2007 employment level.

“Any time you look at comparable data to see where other communities like ours are, and we’re in the top quartile, that’s good,” said Nick Brake, president and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corporation. “And any time someone labels you a high-performing metro, it’s a good thing. It shows we have growth, actual and projected.”

The report analyzed 386 metros — 269 were categorized as small. Owensboro fit the criteria of a “micropolitan” area as defined by the BLS. This group has an average population of 50,000-60,000 but can be as high as 195,000. And they are typically single-county “ex-urbs” that can be located close to large metros.

The report is organized by population size.

Only a couple of other Kentucky metros show up in the study.

Louisville-Jefferson County is a “high performance” metro in the medium category for summer 2011. It’s annualized growth was 4.7 percent; actual growth 1.2 percent. It has a greater deficit from -- or further to go to get back to -- the prerecession employment level than Owensboro does. Its rate is -3.4 percent, meaning it could take 37 months to reach that December 2007 point.

The conversion of the job deficit data into “months remaining” to reach the prerecession rate does not suggest that the recovery will take this long, the study states. It is another data point of reference on the speed of the recovery.

The study also shows that 45 percent of the small metros still were in crisis during the summer. And 41 percent of medium and 35 percent of large metros also showed negative job growth.

Elizabethtown ranked in the bottom 5 percent showing -2.9 percent actual job growth.

“That’s almost half the small cities that were in recession this summer,” Brake said. “If you look at the average job growth by metro size, the top 25 percent are doing pretty well, and the bottom are doing really poorly.”

The report indicates that Owensboro has a good strategy in diversifying its economy and pursuing different options for growth including “quality of place and quality of life,” Brake said.

Not surprising, Brake said, is that it also shows a corollary -- many cities in the top 25 are college cities or are focused on quality of place or quality of life issues.

“They’re focused on creating a strong workforce, attracting young people and attracting entrepreneurs,” he said. “Anything we can do to focus on aligning with this sector is important.”

“While growth has appeared slow but steady for the nation, the recovery has been far from uniform across metros in the U.S.,” the study synopsis states.

The public release about Headlight’s growth report is at http://www.headlightllc.com/bestsummer2011/.

Joy Campbell, 691-7299, jcampbell@messenger-inquirer.com

Riverfront Crossings

Owensboro Downtown Waterfront Hotel

Two years ago, this community said goodbye to the storied Executive Inn. This landmark hotel hosted scores of events, conventions, concerts, and helped define Owensboro as a premiere destination city in our Commonwealth. The City of Owensboro and the Daviess County Fiscal Court took a monumental step forward in 2009 with the ratification of the Downtown Placemaking Initiative. One of the key components of that plan involved the construction of a new hotel in conjunction with an indoor Convention/Events center.
At the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce Rooster Booster Breakfast this week, developer Malcolm Bryant unveiled his design for the proposed 151-room Hampton Inn & Suites. The hotel will be the only LEED-certified hotel in Kentucky, and will also include a full-service restaurant, state-of-the-art meeting rooms, bridge connection to the new 169,000 sq ft Convention/Events Center, and retail and cafe space that will complement the pedestrian and new urban feel of our revitalized downtown.

This is truly a landmark day for Owensboro! Congratulations to the Malcolm Bryant Corporation, the City of Owensboro, and the scores of others who are taking this giant leap forward!

Owensboro-Daviess Co. the next Silicon Valley?

Business Insider magazine has put Daviess County on a 20 county list that could be the next Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley sits in Northern California. It's where Apple computers were born.

"Silicon Valley is really the hub of innovation for the United States," says Madison Silvert of EDC.

What does Owensboro have to do with silicon valley?

Business experts say in the future, Owensboro could be the next Silicon Valley for several reasons.

"They have access to higher education, they have an innovative spirit, they're nice communities, moderately sized. Quality of life is one of those things that you absolutely have to have to be able to attract the talent that is necessary to promote high-tech growth," Silvert says.

Along with lower than average unemployment rates, Hollison Technologies CEO Kevin Humphrey says Owensboro's Center for Business and Research is a big reason why he thinks Owensboro made Business Insider's cut.

"Often entrepreneurs are people with good ideas. May not be um well suited to run their own business yet and need guidance in places and that being available is a wonderful tool."

"We're creating a bio-technology sector here in food and medical in pharmaceuticals specifically plant made pharmaceuticals where you can see some of the advancements that could be made in this kind of high tech environment. The seeds have been planted," Silvert says.

Daviess County was the only county in Kentucky that made business insider's list.

Interstate 69 opens in Kentucky

Members of the Indiana Department of Transportation Interstate 69 project team joined Kentucky transportation officials Tuesday to celebrate and learn more about their successful efforts to extend the interstate highway through Kentucky.

I-69 signage is now being installed along 55 miles of Interstate 24 and the Wendell Ford/Western Kentucky Parkway, which is being upgraded to interstate standards.

"Indiana congratulates Kentucky on receiving federal approval to upgrade some of their existing parkways for I-69," said Samuel Sarvis, Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) deputy commissioner for major program management. "Kentucky's efforts show Indiana ways the existing State Road 37 might be transformed into I-69 Sections 5 and 6."

Stretching from Texas to Michigan, I-69 has been designated by Congress as a High Priority Corridor of National Significance and one of six "Corridors of the Future." I-69 construction is regarded as a key component to the future economic vitality of southwestern Indiana and will provide necessary connectivity with the rest of the state and the nation.

The I-69 corridor from Evansville to Indianapolis was approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in March 2004, based on the Tier 1 Final Environmental Impact Study released in December 2003, which divided the 142 miles into six independent sections. Sixty-five miles of Sections 1, 2 and 3 are currently under construction and scheduled to open at the end of 2012.

In September, FHWA approved the route for 27 miles of Section 4 between Crane and the existing limited-access S.R. 37 south of Bloomington. Section 4 is scheduled to open to traffic by the end of 2014, and bids are being opened for the first construction contract this fall.