U.S. Representative Zach Wamp joined Bob Griffitts, Chief of Staff for U.S. Representative John L. Duncan Jr., regional higher education, government and business leaders today at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville to formally announce a new $500,000 grant to aid high-tech workforce development throughout the Tennessee Valley's growing science and technology corridor.

 The WAMP initiative will coordinate and focus the collective capabilities of 18 community colleges and seven technology centers within the Tennessee Valley Corridor to train the Corridor's future technology work force enhance Corridor business and industry recruitment and to serve as a catalyst for technology transfer.

 "The Tennessee Valley Corridor has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world for new technology investment and job creation," said Wamp.  "But with an aging and soon to-be-retiring technically-skilled workforce, many of our most important federal facilities and several of our most valuable high-tech business and manufacturing sectors could be at risk, so it is imperative that we strongly support our universities, community colleges and technology centers to aggressively prepare our high-tech workforce for the future."

 Wamp was joined at the announcement by Greg Sedrick, director of the New Economy Institute at the Southeast Development Resource Group in Chattanooga, who will take responsibility for running the new WAMP initiative.

 Sedrick said he looks forward to the challenge of coordinating job-training resources to advance economic development throughout the Tennessee Valley Corridor.

 "With such strong regional assets as the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal in Northern Alabama, the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma and the Tennessee Valley Authority, our academic institutions must provide first-class, technology-driven education solutions to help replace our aging work force," said Sedrick.

"From information technologies to engineering technologies, from industrial technologies to construction technologies, this new WAMP initiative will help us provide students the quality education needed to enter the technology work force."

The Tennessee Valley Corridor strategically links the technology assets of Southwest Virginia, Eastern Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Under the leadership of the Valley's congressional delegation and the Tennessee Valley Corridor's board of directors, the Workforce Aging Management Program is one of ten key initiatives designed to capitalize on and leverage the unique scientific and technological resources and institutions in the Tennessee Valley Corridor for maximum new job creation and economic development.