When it comes to dealing with change, Iowans could learn something from mice, says Rockwell Collins Inc.’s Clay Jones.

In Spencer Johnson’s book “Who Moved My Cheese?” two human beings in a maze resist change and wait for some missing cheese to return, while the mice go off to search for new cheese, said Jones, chairman, CEO and president of the Cedar Rapids-based aerospace company.

“You could say (Rockwell Collins’) ‘cheese’ has moved several times in the past 10 years,” Jones said. Similarly, he said, Iowa needs to adapt to rapidly changing global realities as it considers how to better attract talented workers to the state.

Jones keynoted a panel discussion during a Technology Summit held last week by the Technology Association of Iowa at the Science Center of Iowa.

Participants in the discussion, attended by about 150 technology company executives, were Barry Butler, dean of the University of Iowa College of Engineering; Navin Goel, CEO of Sogeti USA LLC; J. Barry Griswell, chairman and CEO of Principal Financial Group Inc.; Robert Koob, president of the University of Northern Iowa; Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Inc.; and Frank Russell, president and CEO of GeoLearning Inc. Martha Willits, president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, moderated.

Given current demographic and economic trends, Iowa’s outlook for attracting highly-skilled technology workers from out of state – or encouraging more students within the state to pursue the necessary math and science courses and degrees necessary to fill those positions – appears dim right now, Jones said. His company estimates it will need to hire 7,000 engineers within the next 10 years.

“If you add up all the elements, the status quo will not work anymore,” he said.

Regarding a better-prepared workforce, “I believe each one of us in this room has a responsibility to encourage a new generation to pursue math and science studies,” Jones said. In addition to sponsoring educational, hands-on programs to encourage that, the company is also working to increase the diversity of its workforce, he said. “We have found a more diverse team will outperform a less diverse team,” he said.

For Griswell, whose company employs about 1,500 information technology workers as part of its 9,000-person workforce in Des Moines, attracting and retaining quality technology professionals is a vital concern. Principal currently has 75 IT positions open, he said.

“I’m worried that we won’t be able to fill those jobs in Iowa,” Griswell said. Part of the solution, in addition to devoting more funding to early childhood education to lay the foundation for the future workforce, is to “make Iowa an opening and welcoming state for immigration,” he said.

A significant problem to overcome, said UNI’s Koob, is that Iowa has an “innate xenophobia.”

“It’s a change in culture that you’re after,” said Koob, who said he has found success in recruiting minorities to his university by using “cultural heroes who own that change.” One such individual has personally recruited 166 Hispanic students to UNI within the past four years, he said.

Dice’s Melland said his company’s online job board for technology professionals currently lists 85,000 open positions nationwide, a 400 percent increase from just three years ago.

“We see this continuing to go on in the future,” he said, “because IT is predicted to be the fastest-growing job category for openings, and at the same time you have an almost-declining supply of talent.” A recent survey of U.S. high school seniors indicated a 60 percent decrease in students planning to major in computer science, he noted, and the number of women entering technology fields has declined 80 percent.

From the University of Iowa’s perspective, the shrinking talent pool is evident on the teaching level. Only a handful of the approximately 100 applicants for a recent engineering faculty opening were educated in the United States, Butler said. Both U of I and Iowa State University work closely with technology companies to reach out to high school students, he said. Next summer, for instance, an initiative called Project Lead the Way will begin in an effort to better connect Iowa’s high school teachers with technology, Butler said.

“As a country, we don’t do a bad job of getting students into higher education,” he said. “Where we fall short is where they go (in terms of majoring in needed technology fields).”

Technology Association representatives plan to meet within the next week to develop areas for further collaboration and discussion from the summit, said Leann Jacobson, TAI’s president.