Education

Launch of Education Pathways to Employment

On behalf of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado, and The Weld Trust, in partnership with Colorado Succeeds, I want to thank all who attended the Education Pathways to Employment Launch event. We are also very grateful for High Country Beverage, who donated their community room and hosted us today.

More than 150 people came together last Friday to support learners in Northern Colorado and identify potential opportunities to support them in ...

Read More

Chamber Welcomes New Front Range Community College President

One of the important roles that your Chamber plays in this community is that of champion.  As a champion, we are devoted to making our community a great place to live, work and raise families. But we don't do this work alone. We collaborate with various public and private partners to find solutions and opportunities.  One of those important partners is Front Range Community College. We are thrilled to introduce to the community the new president for FRCCC.
NEW PRESIDENT TAKES THE HELM AT FRCC...

Read More

Get Your Green On

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a Colorado State fan.  I wear green on fan Friday, my sister and I have season tickets for Volleyball, Football and Basketball and we travel—a lot.  We’ve been following various CSU teams as they play in other communities for a couple of decades.  We are headed to Iowa for the football game this weekend.

These trips to other college-based towns have always been a great opportunity to see and learn about new ideas and different ways of creating comm...

Read More

Thoughts on the Economic Impact to the Fort Collins Area of the Shutdown

The Board of Directors of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce held its first-ever virtual Board Retreat yesterday. A lot of topics were covered including reopening businesses and rebuilding the economy. Here are observations I shared with directors about how the public health shutdown will economically impact the greater Fort Collins area:

Lack of vaccine = a cautious public = reduced economic activity = slower economic recovery (a Nike swoosh instead of a “V” recovery). An 80% ec...

Read More

Cybersecurity: ‘They’ are Coming for You

I usually reserve this space to comment on some larger business or economic issue. Rarely do I use it to promote a Chamber event or product. But, sometimes the two merge, like the issue of cyber security.

Consider these stats (courtesy of cybintsolutions):

95% of breached records came from three industries in 2016 – government, retail, technology.
There is a hacker attack every 39 seconds.
Since 2013, there are 3,809,448 records stolen from breaches every day. That’s 158,727 pe...

Read More

Leaders and Disruption

Two seemingly unrelated opinion pieces crossed my electronic transom this morning that are in fact closely tied together.

The first is from MarketInsider.com and is titled The big lesson from Amazon and Whole Foods: Disruptive competition comes out of nowhere. The key point of the story is that all industries and companies are subject to rapid and unexpected disruption to their basic business models. As noted in the title, the most recent example of that is Amazon buying Whole Foods and in th...

Read More

Higher Education and Economic Vitality

Not a surprise to anyone doing business in the Fort Collins area, but higher education is important to the area’s economy. This is true in several ways: education and training generally make people more economically valuable and productive; collaboration between employers and education institutions drives innovation; and, of course, higher education institutions inject a lot of disposable income into the local economy.

In that light, here’s a post from Brookings Institution about the valu...

Read More

Successful Moving Fort Collins Forward! Campaign Buys Impact and Quality

As you know from the update in today’s Chamber SmartBrief e-Weekly, the Chamber’s annual Moving Fort Collins Forward! campaign is over and was very successful. When the residual pledges and numbers finish coming in, campaign volunteers will have raised over $700,000 and recruited 100 new members in just 11 weeks. Very impressive!

But while we measure progress with numbers, what do they really mean?

First of all, as I’ve said in this space before, we don’t raise money for the sake o...

Read More

May’s Summer Reading List

Summer time! Sunshine, long days, cookouts, family, hikes, travel and...summer reading! People who casually know me are sometimes surprised to learn that I can actually read, but it's true! Here's what I'm reading this summer.The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in Peace and War by H.W. Brands. This is a holdover from last summer's list that I didn't get to. Grant was revered in the North and despised in the South but was one of his generation's most capable leaders th...

Read More

Poudre School District Stacks Up Favorably

Everybody agrees that education is important. Few people agree, however, on how to measure the effectiveness of public education. ACT and SAT test results are one measure. Standardized state tests like the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) might be another.

Some people prefer to focus on inputs like per student spending or low student-teacher ratios.

Without agreed upon standards for measuring performance, it's difficult know how you're doing and to take corrective action to get b...

Read More