President Clinton last week announced four of his 12 appointments to the new National Skill Standards Board.
They are: Marc S. Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy of Rochester, N.Y., and a leader in the education-standards movement; Vera Katz, the Mayor of Portland, Ore., and a former Speaker of the Oregon House, who has been active on school-to-work issues; James R. Houghton, the chairman and chief executive officer of Corning Inc. in Corning, N.Y.; and Alan L. Wurtzel, the vice chairman of the board of Circuit City Stores Inc. in Richmond, Va.
Behind Schedule
The President’s eight other appointees have been identified, according to a spokesman, and may be named as soon as this week.
The Goals 2000 act created the board to certify training standards for particular occupations. It is philosophically linked to the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, created by the same law to certify academic standards. But while the new Republican majority in Congress may kill NESIC before it gets off the ground, most observers think that the business community’s support for the skills-standards board will prevent it from suffering that fate.
The Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, R-Kan., must make one more appointment, but the other 11 members to be appointed by Congressional leaders have been named. They are:
George Bliss, assistant director of training, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada; James Burge, corporate vice president and director of government affairs and human resources, Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, Ill.;
Kenneth R. Edwards, director of technical services, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Herbert J. Grover, professor of education, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and leader of the school-to-work consortium, College of the Menominee Nation; Carolyn Warner, president, Carolyn Warner & Associates.
Also, William Weisgerber, Michigan’s director of vocational education; William Crotty, a lawyer at the Washington- and Florida-based firm Back, Crotty, & Sims; Katherine Schrier, a representative of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees in New York; Michael Riccards, president, Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, W. Va.; Bruce Carswell, vice president for human resources, G.T.E. Corporation, Stamford, Conn.; and Stephen Sayler, employment manager, Winning Ways Inc., Olathe, Kan.
