DIGGING IN.

• Author: Blake, Kathy
• Position: COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP: EASTERN N.C.

A perennial agricultural powerhouse, eastern North Carolina is turning new leaves. It's refocusing and expanding, cultivating assets to create a bountiful future.

As springtime sunshine warms the ground, the emergence of tiny green sprouts, neatly planted in rows, will signify the start of another growing season in eastern North Carolina. Agriculture has dominated the region's economy and business dealings for decades. But more is stirring here.

Infrastructure improvements are underway, bringing new opportunities to longtime industries, such as health care, manufacturing and tourism, and support to more recent ones, such as biotechnology, which have taken root and are growing across eastern North Carolina. Educational and workforce development opportunities are also expanding, ensuring a skilled workforce is available.

Lawrence Bivins is managing director of policy and public affairs for Raleigh-based North Carolina Economic Development Association, and he's bullish about eastern North Carolina. "If it were a publicly traded company, I'd be buying shares of stock right now," he says. "Eastern North Carolina is in many respects a very rich place, not always financially, but in terms of history and culture. The infrastructure is coming in. The leadership is working on solutions. We're working on keeping the talent that we have."

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Greenville-based NCEast Alliance, which develops business and industry in eastern North Carolina counties, completed a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis in September 2020. It identified workforce and entrepreneurial development as ways to unite its 29 members. The analysis revealed that the alliance needs "to work specifically with the talent that we have, the economic landscape that we find ourselves in, while aiming toward the economic landscape that we hope to see in the future."

Bivins says economic development's priority is always the problem that's most difficult to solve at the moment. "And that's people--workforce and talent," he says. "You can invest in all the infrastructure, site prep, natural gas, broadband--but that's really putting the cart before the horse. So how do you change this overnight?

How can you change the hemorrhaging of young people leaving at [age] 18 and never looking back? You need to reach out not just to the 18-year-olds but the parents, too. You have to help the parents understand that staying around and going to community college and getting an associate degree in culinary arts, in aircraft maintenance. There are careers that are in high demand. That's a viable alternative to going away to a big four-year university so you can manage a hedge fund."

Two programs--Rivers East Academy for Advanced Manufacturing and STEM workshops--expose high school students to hometown career options. "These projects are pursuing the opportunity to better educate teachers on what jobs exist in eastern North Carolina to steer local students to those jobs," says Trey Goodson, NCEast regional economic developer and director of marketing and communications. "The plan is to expand these initiatives to [the Alliance's] entire 29-county region."

Rivers East Academy, funded by Golden LEAF Foundation to advance the Regional Advanced Manufacturing Pipeline for Eastern North Carolina--RAMP East--launched in Beaufort, Bertie, Hertford, Hyde, Martin and Pitt counties in October. It trains faculty from high schools and community colleges, along with community college student "ambassadors," to use inspiration, motivation and empowerment to ease students' transition from high school to community college to career. STEM East, in collaboration with businesses, economic developers and other entities, uses state-of-the-art instruction labs in Craven, Jones, Lenoir and Wayne counties, to educate about and align students with career opportunities.

The College of the Albemarle has campuses in Elizabeth City, Barco, Manteo and...