Elizabethtown College hosted the Workforce 2030 Summit, Lancaster County’s premier workforce development event which unites business, education, and community, on Aug. 1 for the second year in a row.

More than 250 Lancaster County workforce members, spanning across business, education, and nonprofit sectors, gathered at Etown for the summit, which was organized by the Lancaster County STEM Alliance (LCSA).

“Elizabethtown College is an ideal partner for the Summit as we are an integral part of the local and regional workforce,” Peter Licona, Elizabethtown College Education Program Director and Associate Professor of PK-12 STEM Education said. “Our undergraduate students are local, and many remain local to begin the first steps of their careers. As a key component of the workforce pipeline, the College has a strong responsibility in preparing Lancaster County’s next cadre of professionals.

Stephanie Zegers leads a session at Workforce 2030 Summit

This year’s theme was “How I Built It,” addressing workforce obstacles and innovative strategies to overcome them. The summit’s goal is to help attendees create cross-sector partnerships and address workforce development challenges to create an ideal workforce in Lancaster County by 2030. Featured keynote speakers Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski, co-authors of “When You Wonder, You’re Learning” and Michael Sack from Jobs for the Future (JFF), continued the summit’s efforts to address employee recruitment and retention, along with alignment between workforce demands and educational programming,

The Lancaster County STEM Alliance offered $100,000 worth of idea incubator funds to cross-sector groups who proposed an idea to address a workforce development challenge. The alliance’s goal was to take ideas generated at the summit and bring them to fruition.

Elizabethtown College President Betty Rider attended the event and welcomed attendees, while Assistant Director for the School of Engineering and STEM Relationship Development, Stephanie Zegers led the session, “Bridging the Social Capital Gap in Historically Marginalized Populations in Engineering.”

Zegers’ talk uncovered the challenges first-generation college, historically marginalized populations and female engineering students encounter, and how their skills are growing in the education field.

Data from the American Society for Engineering Education’s 2022 Survey for Skills Gaps in Recent Engineering Graduates informed  Zegers’ discussion.

The summit was built on last year’s event, also held at Elizabethtown College.