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Thomas Edison State College Delivers for UPS
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Thomas Edison State College Delivers for UPS
Using Flexible Programs to Help UPS Retain and Develop Its Workforce TRENTON, N.J. (March 10, 2008) —UPS is working with Thomas Edison State College to retain and develop its workforce across North America through degree and certificate programs that can be delivered wherever an employee needs them.The company’s unique relationship with the college, based in Trenton, N.J., focuses on providing a coordinated group of academic programs, starting with a customized six-course Operations Management certificate that fits into an associate degree and ultimately, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree at the school.
“Thomas Edison State College is the type of institution UPS wants from both a quality and a cost standpoint,” said Patrick Myers, corporate compensation manager responsible for UPS Tuition Assistance Programs. “The college’s role is to provide our people with broad-based educational services, while maintaining the capability to also craft programs unique to our specific business needs.”
UPS is a company that takes its tuition programs seriously. Since 1997, the company has paid out more than $300 million in tuition assistance helping more than 140,000 employee students attend college.
Myers indicated that UPS expects to face challenges similar to those facing many other large corporations in relation to the ongoing retirement of the Baby Boom generation, the approximately 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964.
“As a major employer with 358,000 employees, our challenges concerning shifting workplace demographics are the same as any other organization in the U.S. today,” he said. “This makes our recruitment and retention efforts that much more important.”
According to Myers, Thomas Edison State College enables UPS to address several important company objectives simultaneously:
- leveraging a significant investment in the UPS Earn and Learn® program, designed to recruit and retain qualified part-time package-handlers
- continuing the ongoing effort to help adult learners who have some college credits from earlier periods in their lives.
“We have an interest in professionalizing operational jobs at UPS, which are typically associated with hard work and challenging conditions,” said Thomas Martin, corporate learning and development manager at UPS. “But the key to professional growth in our organization is in operations, so we wanted to focus first on this area and play to our core competency.”
UPS is developing additional uses of the model used to develop the operations management curriculum and is looking to apply it to other areas of UPS, such as sales, engineering and supply chain management. The ultimate goal is to direct employees toward undergraduate degree completion.
“We are honored to be selected as an educational partner of UPS,” said Dr. George A. Pruitt, president of Thomas Edison State College. “Our goal is to provide UPS employees with programs that fit around their busy lives and to provide UPS with the programs it needs to develop and retain employees and become a stronger organization.”
About Thomas Edison State College
Thomas Edison State College provides flexible, high-quality, collegiate learning opportunities for self-directed adults. One of New Jersey’s 12 senior public institutions of higher education, the College offers associate, baccalaureate and master’s degrees in more than 100 areas of study. Students earn degrees through a wide variety of rigorous and high-quality academic methods that can be customized to meet their individual needs. Identified by Forbes magazine as one of the top 20 colleges and universities in the nation in the use of technology to create learning opportunities for adults, Thomas Edison State College is a national leader in the assessment of adult learning and a pioneer in the use of educational technologies. The College is home to The John S. Watson Institute for Public Policy. The New Jersey State Library is an affiliate of Thomas Edison State College. For more information about the College, call (888) 442-8372, e-mail info@tesc.edu or visit www.tesc.edu
About UPS
Since its founding in 1907, UPS has become an employer of rewards, opportunity and achievement – an employer of choice. The company’s nationally recognized human resources initiatives, such as Earn and Learn, Community Internship Program, and various leadership training programs, are essential to helping UPS maintain one of the world’s largest and most talented workforces. To learn more, visit www.community.ups.com
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