Newport Welcomes Clinton School Team

September 16, 2014

For Immediate Release



Newport and Jackson County are pleased to welcome a new Practicum Team from the Clinton School of Public Service to the area.  The Team is composed of Joyce Akidi from Kampala Uganda, Alex Lanis from Ada, Oklahoma and Shanell Ransom from Columbia, South Carolina.  Joyce, Alex and Shanell bring a great experience to the local project having worked on projects in Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Uganda, Haiti and Brazil.

The Clinton School Team will be working with a local steering committee on the development of a county-wide alumni database.  The database will contain contact, educational and occupational information for people who have graduated from a high school in Jackson County or from ASU-Newport.  In addition to developing the platform for the database and the mechanism through which to gather information, the Team will be assisting the local committee in developing privacy measures and usage guidelines that will govern the use of the database in the future.

One of the primary uses of the database will be to connect alumni from the area with job opportunities that might interest them.  The hope is that by informing alumni of jobs in Jackson County that are in their field, it might encourage hometown people to move back to Newport and Jackson County.  Another use for the database will be to inform former residents of opportunities to support their hometown.  These opportunities could come through major fundraising efforts on large project, or through seeking their help to contact a broader range of political representatives concerning projects being sought by the community.  Finally, the database can be used to share information about the positive developments in Jackson County so that the alumni of the area can be ambassadors for the community wherever they live.

The team was introduced at the Newport Business Resource Center on September 16, 2014 and they started their work with the steering committee.  The final project plan and report will be due to the community and the Clinton School in April.  For more information on this project and other developments in Newport and Jackson County, feel free to contact the Newport Economic Development Commission at (870) 523-1009.The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.