Graduateready

Sponsored by

J. L. Bedsole Foundation

#GraduateREADY

Presented by The Mobile Area Education Foundation & The Education Commission

10:30AM-11:00AM REGISTRATION

11:00AM-11:15AM OPENING REMARKS WELCOME Mr. Mark Spivey Board Chair, Mobile Area Education Foundation

Honorable Sandy Stimpson Mayor, City of Mobile

11:15AM-12:45PM THE STATE OF EDUCATION SETTING THE CONTEXT Dr. Jeremiah Newell, Chief Operating Officer Mobile Area Education Foundation

EDUCATION by the NUMBERS Jim Williams, Executive Director Dr. Joe Adams, Research Coordinator Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama

Q&A

12:45PM-1:45PM LUNCHEON & REFLECTING ON WHAT WE LEARNED Invocation by Rev. Brad Goode, Associate Pastor Dauphin Way United Methodist Church

The Economic Imperative

Bill Sisson, Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce

The Moral Imperative Rev. Charlotte Greene, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance The Student Perspective Joseph Alexander, Evening Education Options Program Graduate

1:45PM-2:00PM CLOSING REMARKS Carolyn Akers, Chief Executive Officer Mobile Area Education Foundation

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Dr. Joe Adams Joe Adams is the research coordinator for PARCA. He came from the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University (MSU) where he worked with state and local governments to improve operations. He has taught more than 40 college courses in the areas of public policy, political theory, program evaluation, and ethics in public administration, and served as an active participant on 15 doctoral dissertation committees as a member of the MSU graduate faculty.

Joe has 23 years of experience in government research, analysis, and planning, including eight years in state government, as a senior legislative research analyst with the Comptroller of the Treasury's Offices of Research and Educational Accountability in Tennessee, as a budget and performance analyst for the Texas with the Legislative Budget Board, and as the first director of planning for the Texas Workforce Commission. Before working in government, he was the research director for Political Research Inc., and a visiting assistant professor at Auburn University. He holds a B.A. from Texas A&M University (political science and history), and a Ph.D. (political science) from Vanderbilt University.

Ms. Carolyn R. Akers

Carolyn Akers is the Chief Executive Officer of the Mobile Area Education Foundation. Since the founding of MAEF in 1992, she has emerged as a leader among advocates for education on the state, regional and national levels. Carolyn is a graduate of Leadership Mobile and Leadership Alabama. She has received Leadership Alabama’s Outstanding Alumnus Award and The Little Red Schoolhouse Award from the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS), the statewide organization of school leaders.

She has served on the steering committees of Mobile United, Envision-Coastal Alabama and the state A+ Research and Education Foundation. She was appointed to serve as chairman of Mayor Sam Jones’ Education Task Force, Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s Transition Team and as -co chair of Governor Bob Riley’s State of Alabama Education Task Force. Currently, she sits on the Board of Directors for the +Research and Education Foundation, the John F. Will Scholarship Foundation and the Alabama Region Nine Southwest Alabama Workforce Development Council.

Other awards include: the prestigious national McKee Award for Partners in Education, the 2001-2002 Southeastern Association of Elementary School Principals Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Education, the 2002 Lillian McGowin/AFP for Outstanding Civic Leader, and the 2005 Wendy D. Purifoy Award which recognizes distinguished contributions by a local education foundation to create conditions of learning that benefit all children. In 2012, Carolyn was named Alabamian of the year by the Anniston Star.

Carolyn is a graduate of the University of Alabama, with a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry and a Master’s in Microbiology.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Rev. Charlotte Vernetta Greene Rev. Charlotte V. Greene, a native Mobile Alabama, is a graduate of Shaw High School and Troy State University, where she received her BS degree in Journalism. Upon completion of course study at Emmanuel School of the Bible Rev. Greene pilgrimage to Israel, Greece and Turkey. In October of 2002, she was ordained Itinerant Elder and is currently serving as Youth Minister at Bethel A.M.E. Church, under the leadership of Pastor Bobby B. Cox, Jr. Reverend Greene serves in the Southwest Alabama Annual Conference of the 9th Episcopal District of the AME Church as Conference Secretary and Christian Education Director and is a member of the Board of Examiners and the Nicholas Thomas Grady School of Religion. She is also the Christian Education Director for the Mobile District. She was elected President of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Mobile and Greater Vicinity and was the first female to serve in that position in over fifty years. She also serves on the Steering Committee for the Rodger Williams Outreach Initiative, a component of the Ministerial Alliance designed to work with the educational needs of children in the Roger Williams Project area. She has work with the Mobile Area Education Foundation in bringing community conversations to various churches. She is a member of the leadership council for United Negro College Fund.

Jeremiah Newell, Ed.LD

Jeremiah Newell is the Chief Operating Officer for the Mobile Area Education Foundation where he leads all aspects of the organization’s operations to meet its mission to improve public education in the greater Mobile Area, as well as to influence change in the State of Alabama. Before his current role, Dr. Newell served as a Harvard Fellow at the Rhode Island Department of Education. In this capacity, he led the 2015- 2020 PK-12 Strategic Planning Process for the state and served as chief of staff for the Division of Accelerating School Performance, which has statewide oversight of elementary, middle, and high schools, charter schools, low-performing schools, and federal programs. Prior to his work in Rhode Island, he was the Director of Multiple Pathways at the Mobile Area Education Foundation. In this role, he served as the program director for the Evening Education Options Program, an innovative school model designed to get off-track high school students to graduation and college, and the RAMP to Graduation Initiative, a systemic dropout prevention, intervention, and recovery initiative that helped hundreds of students reach their goal of graduation and postsecondary success in the Mobile County Public School System.

Dr. Newell has served as the City of Mobile’s representative to the Mayor’s Education Policy Advisor’s Network (EPAN) for the National League of Cities In Alabama, he has served on the Executive Committee of the Governor’s Commission for Quality Teaching and was also a member of the Alabama Select Commission on High School Graduation and Student Dropouts. He has been a national partner in education reform with such organizations as Jobs for the Future in Boston, MA, the Public Education Fund in Chattanooga, TN, Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta, GA, and the Carnegie Foundation in New York, NY. He has written several articles and book chapters on secondary education reform, public engagement, and the role of the State Education Agency. Dr. Newell received his B.S. in Secondary Education/Language Arts from the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama and a Doctorate of Educational Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Newell is a native of Mobile, Alabama.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES William B. Sisson

William B. Sisson is president and chief executive officer of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce. He has worked in the field of economic development for more than 20 years. Sisson earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Alabama, and a bachelor’s in business administration from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. He also holds a diploma from the Institutes for Organization Management, and is a graduate of Leadership Mobile and Leadership Alabama. Sisson is a member of the International Economic Development Council, Economic Development Association of Alabama, Southern Economic Development Council and Rotary International. He also serves on the boards of many community organizations throughout the state.

Mayor Sandy Stimpson

Mayor Sandy Stimpson is a native of Mobile and a 1970 graduate from University Military School. He attended the University of Alabama, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1975 in Civil Engineering. After graduating in 1975, he began what would become a 38-year career with Gulf Lumber Company and its successor, Scotch & Gulf Lumber, LLC. Mayor Stimpson has been very active in the education of Mobile’s youth. He served on the Board of Trustees of UMS-Wright Preparatory School for 28 years, having been its chairman twice. In 2007, he was a founding director of Prichard Preparatory School and served as its chairman for seven years. Mayor Stimpson also served on numerous other civic boards, both locally and statewide. They include the Boys & Girls Club of Southwest Alabama; Partners for Environmental Progress (PEP); the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce; The Alabama Policy Institute; and the Business Council of Alabama. He currently serves on the board of the University of Alabama President’s Cabinet and the University of South Alabama’s Board of Trustees. He and his wife, Jean, have been married since 1975. They have four children, all of whom are married, and ten grandchildren. They have been members of Ashland Place United Methodist Church since 1976. Stimpson was elected as Mayor on August of 2013 in his first foray into the political arena. His vision is to create One Mobile to become the safest, most business and family-friendly city in America by 2020.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Jim Williams Jim Williams is Executive Director of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA), a non-profit, non-partisan organization formed in 1988 to provide objective research to improve state and local government as well as public education in Alabama.

Over the last 26 years, PARCA has publicized numerous research reports covering various topics related to state and local government and public education. The staff has won nine national awards for research excellence.

Before coming to Alabama in 1988, Jim worked for 16 years in governmental research agencies located in Texas and Michigan. He is a past president of the Governmental Research Association of the United States. He was raised in Mineola, Texas, and holds a bachelor's degree from Baylor University and a master's degree from the University of Michigan, both in political science.

MOBILE AREA EDUCATION FOUNDATION 8 YEAR THEORY OF CHANGE

Clearly dropout prevention is not only a moral imperative, it’s an economic imperative. And dropout prevention is not only a school district problem, it is a COMMUNITY problem that requires the response of the WHOLE community. Since public schools play a vital role in our community, our community must play an active role in our public schools. Increasing the high school graduation rate is the single best thing our region can do, not only for our children’s future, but for the future of our entire community.

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NOTES

605 Bel Air Blvd, 4th Floor

Mobile, AL 36695

P 251/476-0002

F 251/476-0046

http://www.maef.net