Wyoming colleges assist diversification initiative

In a push to break Wyoming’s reliance on an unpredictable energy sector, private industry representatives, state agencies and institutions of higher education across the state are collaborating on the Economically Needed Diversity Options for Wyoming — or ENDOW — initiative.

The enabling legislation for ENDOW established an executive council to head the initiative and specifies that this council must work with the University of Wyoming and the Community College Commission for its economic diversification efforts.

But when Gov. Matt Mead’s office announced the executive council’s members in April, the list did not include representatives from either UW or any of Wyoming’s seven community colleges.

This is because the educational sector is going to be more heavily involved once the council has the chance to establish its goals, said Jim Rose, executive director of the Community College Commission.

“Until those meetings occur and they have an opportunity to develop a plan of action, the colleges — and I think perhaps to the same degree, the university — isn’t really in a position to know precisely what we’re going to be called upon to do,” Rose said.

Higher education in Wyoming was represented during the formation of the executive council and will continue to be represented in many other ways going forward, said Jerimiah Rieman, the initiative’s coordinator and the governor’s non-voting representative on the executive council.

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