Jennifer Clark, director of the Center for Urban Innovation (CUI), Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and associate professor in the School of Public Policy, has been named to a new commission at the University of Virginia Miller Center that is focusing on job creation for small and medium-sized manufacturers. Part of the Center’s Millstein Symposium, the commission is co-chaired by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour and former Indiana governor and senator Evan Bayh.

The inaugural agenda will focus on renewing middle class jobs.  Three commissions will examine topics in manufacturing, entrepreneurship and self-employment, and infrastructure investment.

Barbour said, “The public has understandably lost confidence in Washington’s ability to generate common-sense, bipartisan solutions to our nation’s challenges. This commission will bring together policymakers, scholars, industry leaders and other stakeholders to craft those solutions—the type of people that can achieve broad consensus and develop actionable ideas, not just more rhetoric.”

The commission is expected to release recommendations in February.

Other members of the commission on manufacturing includeRebecca O. Bagley, president and chief executive officer, NorTech; Aaron Bagshaw, president, WH Bagshaw Co., Matthew Burnett, founder, Maker’s Row, W. Bernard Carlson, chair, University of Virginia Department of Engineering; John Engler, president, Business Roundtable; former governor of Michigan;James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic; James Manyika, director, McKinsey Global Institute and senior partner, McKinsey & Company; Kate Sofis, executive director, SFMade; Howard Wial, director, Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois, Chicago.

Funding for the initiative was provided by philanthropist, business and civic leader Howard P. Milstein.

More information on the Milstein Symposium is available at http://millercenter.org/conferences/2013/milstein.