LEHRMAN

Sue Lehrman, founding dean of the Providence College School of Business, has been in Rhode Island for less than six months. But already, she understands the mismatch that has stalled the state’s economy.

Employers complain that they can’t find the skilled workers they need to expand, and college graduates can’t find work.

As a result, the state’s development — especially of knowledge-based companies in the new technologies and life sciences, which pay big salaries — stumbles along while the old economy continues to shrink.

The job losses are piling up. Last week, the state reported 11,300 jobs have disappeared in the last year and the unemployment rate spiked to 7.2 percent, the highest since 1994. More than 41,000 residents are out of work and looking for jobs they can’t find.

Lehrman told a group of business managers, owners and advocates at a meeting last week of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce that the misalignment among college graduates’ skills and employers’ needs was based on a “faulty model.”

Under the existing system, businesses make quick decisions to change products and services, and over a few weeks or months, require worker retraining or new employees with the skills to make the plan work.

But the colleges and universities that supply the workers take years to adapt curriculums.

“Government tries to fill the gap,” Lehrman said, but does it badly. Politics and scuffles over state priorities get in the way, and government takes years to fill the need, if it ever comes up with a solution.

The state needs a new model, Lehrman said.

She offered one based on her experience at Union College, in New York, where she was founding president of its spin-off venture, Union Graduate College. She had to take an existing way of doing things at one of the oldest, established schools in the country and change it to adapt to the needs of the workplace.

Her proposed model has three tiers:

•Company executives have to talk to academic leaders about changes in curriculums to produce the workers required.

•College faculty, who deal with students daily, have to talk to line managers at companies to understand the day-to-day business needs and changes in production.

•Students from day one in college have to be integrated into the business and nonprofit communities to get a taste of the world of work.

“The supply side has to overlap with the demand side,” she said. “Embedding students in businesses creates a much more responsive economic engine.”

She advocates placing students in their first year at companies. That’s followed by more intensive internships and project-oriented placements of upper-class students in companies.

That approach benefits students and employers, she said.

“If you have a student embedded, close ties are developed with the company and students can go on to work for the company once he graduates,” she said.

Students are able to “try out” firms and the type of business where they want to work. When they graduate, they “hit the ground running,” she said.

The model also creates a flexible, responsive way for employers to meet their immediate business needs and evaluate students they may want to hire.

Lehrman said Providence College already has an executive mentoring program that uses its strong network of alumni and taps business leaders to help students prepare for the world of work.

Peter Smith, director of the international naval program at Raytheon, said that the company for years has worked with the University of Rhode Island to bring in students to work in its engineering unit. Raytheon has now expanded that into other business areas and as an example said the company has had success placing a Providence College student.

He said the student has fit in with the work teams and brought creativity and leadership to projects.

“His new eyes saw things that we missed,” Smith said.

Lehrman has arrived in Rhode Island with a fresh perspective on an old work-force development problem in Rhode Island. Her ideas deserve a good hearing, and quickly.

While business owners continue to moan about the lack of qualified job candidates, another class of students graduated this month from Rhode Island’s colleges and universities.

Many still haven’t found jobs, or are headed out of state to look for work.

It’s a mismatch Rhode Island can no longer afford.

jkostrze@projo.com