Stephen D. Lease

Steve Lease, Associate Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development at UA For Smith (formerly Westark College is responsible for the formation and coordination of the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges (AATYC) statewide WorkForce Training Consortium (WFTC), a business and industry training network of 22 two-year colleges and the UA Fort Smith. The WFTC provides occupational skills training to 44,000 employees of 2,000 business and organizations annually, and implement programs customized for the needs of the existing, emerging, transitional and entrepreneurial workforces. The AATYC Workforce Training Consortium received one of 10 Bellwether wards for innovation in 1999 from the National Council of Occupation Education (NCOE) and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). Steve serves as the statewide policy coordinator and liaison to Cisco, Inc. for the 9 Arkansas Cisco Regional Academies, and coordinated the Kuder Career Planning Systems (Kuder CPS) network of 23 colleges and 450 secondary schools, technical institutes, and secondary education cooperative technical centers.

In 2001, Steve received the South Central (12 states) Regional Leadership Award for Arkansas workforce development form the National Council of Continuing Education and Training (NCCET). In 2003, he was selected to serve as the Arkansas Workforce Development Liaison to the NCCET representing 33 public colleges and universities. Steve serves as the Arkansas project team leader for a national Governors Association (NGA) Advanced Career Academy 2003-05 grant via the Lumina Foundation to promote best practices, policies and legislation in support of providing better access and attainment of postsecondary education by underserved Working Adults. He was also selected to represent the 22 presidents and chancellors of the AATYC as the Arkansas Liaison to the American Association of Community Colleges for federal policy and legislative relations with the U.S. Department of Labor in 2004 and beyond.

In 1996-97, Lease served as Vice President for Government Relations and Dean of Workforce and Economic Development at Westark College, following 6 years as the Director of the Westark College Business and Industrial Institute, which provided customized training to over 60,000 employees during his management. Steve also has national professional experience as the director of Corporate Support Services and Project Development for Beverly Enterprises, a Fortune Service 500 long-term healthcare corporation, and as the former appointed City Administrator of Fort Smith, Arkansas (pop. 75,000), following which he was elected to 2 terms (8 years) as City Director. Since 1997, Steve Lease has represented Arkansas as a gubernatorial appointee on the Southern Technology Council (STC) of the fourteen-state Southern Growth Policies Board (SGPB), and represented Westark as the only community college Affiliate Member of the multi-state Mid-Continent Technology Transfer Center. He was a founding member and served on the Manufacturing Resource Advisory Council of the Arkansas Manufacturing Extension Network, a Manufacturing Extension Partnership (M.E.P.) funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the state of Arkansas. Steve is a Westark Community College graduate (AA in Business Administration) and hold a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A) degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.