Advancing Economic Mobility at Community Colleges:
2024 Convening Insights
Kerry McKittrick
Amanda Holloway
Ramiro Hernández
Simba Gandari
Arnold Lopez
Courtnei Sanders
INTRODUCTION
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In July 2024, the Project on Workforce, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), and the Education Design Lab convened more than 80 community college leaders from across the country to explore how those institutions can drive economic mobility for learners and workers in their regions. Building on the findings from America’s Hidden Economic Engines, the event spotlighted community college innovators who are shaping the future of workforce development and regional economic growth. This brief distills key insights from the convening.
The convening kicked off with a panel conversation featuring college Presidents Anne Kress and Lee Lambert and book editors Bob Schwartz and Rachel Lipson. They discussed key learnings from their work and reflections from America’s Hidden Economic Engines. Following this stage-setting conversation, attendees participated in a series of panel discussions and workshops designed to address some of their most pressing challenges and spotlight promising models at institutions across the country. The first section of this brief provides an overview of the community college programs that were featured at the convening:
Building employer-college partnerships: Northern Virginia Community College
Leveraging industrial policy for regional innovation: Lorain County Community College
Strengthening dual enrollment: Forsyth Community College
Connecting credit and non-credit offerings: Pima Community College
Leveraging labor market information: Northern Virginia Community College
Building student supports: Saint Paul Community College
Deploying innovative financing mechanisms: LaGuardia Community College
Developing college leaders: League for Innovation in Community Colleges
Driving regional economic development: Monroe Community College
Addressing the social determinants of work: Cuyahoga Community College
Integrating AI and emerging technologies: Hudson County Community College
Leaders exchanged practical solutions and charted new strategies to tackle shared obstacles. We identified key insights from the discussions, with the goal of amplifying the ideas and initiatives of those community college leaders.
PROMISING MODEL SPOTLIGHTS
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Building Employer-College Partnerships: Northern Virginia Community College
Panelists: Joseph Fuller, Steve Jolly, Dr. Chad Knight, Renee Haltom, Kordell Williams
Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have partnered to provide students with education and skills in high-demand technology fields, including cloud computing and data center operations. AWS contributed $300,000 to NOVA’s Information and Educational Technology (IET) Fund to develop certificate and Associate’s degree programs. Representatives from NOVA and AWS highlighted three elements of their partnership:
Dedicated Business Hub: NOVA created the Business Engagement Center to facilitate connections between the college, students, and employers. NOVA has implemented career programs, including Guaranteed Interviews, to ensure that students have access to job opportunities when they complete the programs.
Committed Industry Expertise: AWS contributes subject matter experts for curriculum design, providing adjunct professors for teaching, and participating in career services activities like mock interviews. This involvement makes programs relevant, practical, and beneficial to students.
Financial Investments: AWS offers financial support, including grants, equipment donations, or paid internships, to support the sustainability and impact of programs. Financial backing provides programs with the resources to deliver quality outcomes.
Industrial Policy and Regional Innovation: Lorain County Community College
Panelists: Bill Hughes, David Shahoulian, Tracy Green, Margaux Fontaine
Lorain County Community College and Intel are leveraging CHIPS and Science Act funds to develop innovative programs that prepare students to work in the semiconductor industry. Building on LCCC’s long standing expertise in microelectronic manufacturing education, the model includes:
Modernized Curricula: The college partners with Intel to develop new programs such as microcredentials, registered apprenticeships, and condensed core competencies to meet industry demands.
Inclusive Recruitment Strategies: College and business leaders are intentionally recruiting underrepresented populations for the programs to promote equitable access to job opportunities.
Statewide Collaboration: Intel is collaborating with multiple community colleges across Ohio, enabling the state to maximize resources and opportunities.
Strengthening Dual-Enrollment: Forsyth Technical Community College
Presenters: Dr. Paula Chrin Dibley and Dr. Jessica Lauritsen
Forsyth Technical Community College is focused on expanding equitable access to dual enrollment opportunities through its Career & College Promise (CCP) program. Like many colleges, the majority of Forsyth Tech’s current dual enrollment student population comes from a high socioeconomic background. To address this disparity, the college has implemented an equity-centered approach, including:
Student and family outreach: Establishing a Student Ambassador program and Parent Council that uses student-designed messaging to promote the benefits of dual enrollment.
Improved advising: Enhancing counselor training and developing a Career and College Promise portal on the college website to simplify the dual enrollment process.
Reducing logistical barriers: Addressing transportation challenges through a Transportation Pilot Program, in partnership with Winston-Salem and Forsyth County Schools and building pathways with adjusted class schedules to increase accessibility.
Connecting Credit and Non-Credit Offerings: Pima Community College
Presenter: Dr. Ian Roark
Pima Community College developed new credit and non-credit programs to meet the needs of older, mid-career students seeking more flexible, relevant, and accessible education pathways. To improve pathways for those students, Pima launched key initiatives, including:
Aligned transcripts: Non-credit courses are now listed on the same transcripts as credit courses, and efforts are made to align them with credential and degree programs.
Pima FastTrack: A program offering quick, intensive training designed in collaboration with industry to prepare learners for high-demand jobs with minimal educational prerequisites.
Prior Learning Assessments: This tool allows learners to earn college credit for knowledge and skills attained outside the college classroom. Students can earn up to 50 percent of credits required for a program of study through prior learning assessments.
Leveraging Labor Market Information: Northern Virginia Community College
Presenter: Steven Partridge
NOVA embarked on an initiative to expand its use of labor market intelligence (LMI) and become a more “workforce-centric” college. The LMI efforts enabled NOVA to better connect with regional employers, ensure its educational programs are aligned with workforce needs, and expand access to career services to all students. Key elements of the model include:
Office of Strategic Insights: NOVA created an Office of Strategic Insights to expand its data management and analytics capabilities. The office leads institutional research, LMI analysis, and planning and assessment. Leaders publish an annual workforce index report, highlighting long-term and large-scale labor market trends in Northern Virginia.
Targeted business engagement: The college created a center to connect employers with students and faculty. Employers can participate in curriculum advisory boards to shape curriculum and requirements for applied degrees and certificate programs.
Guaranteed Interviews: All employer advisory board members are required to participate in NOVA’s Guaranteed Interview program for graduates, which strengthens student recruitment and opens opportunities to good jobs.
Building Student Supports: Saint Paul College
Presenters: Dr. Deidra Peaslee and Kay Francis Garland
In 2023, Saint Paul College launched a strategic plan to prepare its diverse student body for the demands of the workforce through a student-centered approach. The plan prioritizes closing equity gaps and instilling a sense of belonging for underrepresented students. Key components of the strategy include:
Equity goal-setting: The college set a goal to graduate 1,500 more students of color by 2028 from academic programs that directly lead to high-demand, high-paying careers, holding itself accountable for progress.
Data-Informed Intrusive Interventions Project: This initiative uses the college’s Learning Management System (LMS) data to identify at-risk students and provide targeted support.
Equity by Design initiative: A college-wide effort to address course-level equity gaps by providing faculty training to recognize and address disparities. Equity training for other departments, like Student Affairs, will soon go into effect.
Student Support Programs: Saint Paul operates programs like iLead and We Thrive, which center on identity-based retention and success efforts, in addition to career counseling, financial aid services, and mental health resources.
Deploying Innovative Financing Mechanisms: LaGuardia Community College
Presenter: Kenneth Adams
Like many community colleges across the country, LaGuardia faced significant financial pressures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and decreased student enrollment. To address this challenge, the college undertook creative measures to diversify funding sources and make necessary updates to financial management:
Alternative Funding: The college launched the "Tomorrow Campaign," raising $15 million from philanthropic sources to support scholarships, grants, and internships for students. Executing this ambitious campaign required repurposing existing funds to build the college’s fundraising capacity.
Operational Adjustments: While pursuing state, local, and philanthropic support, LaGuardia also focused on managing expenses, including through a temporary hiring freeze.
Targeted Program Enrollment: The college directed energy toward increasing the enrollment of targeted populations. For example, the Adult and Continuing Education (ACE) focused on enrolling mid-career learners back into degree programs.
Developing College Leaders: League for Innovation in the Community College
Presenter: Dr. Rufus Glasper
Community colleges need dynamic leaders to foster innovation and respond to their community’s changing needs, while simultaneously creating lasting systemic and cultural shifts across the institution. Dr. Rufus Glasper highlighted the following competencies and priorities for community college leaders:
Fostering a Generative Culture: Building strong teams and nurturing relationships are essential for creating environments where people can do their best work.
Forging Strong External Partnerships: Community colleges leaders must cultivate partnerships with external stakeholders, including employers, to enhance their educational offerings and better support students' workforce success.
Adaptive Approaches: Leaders must help stakeholders navigate new and challenging situations that may arise in organizational improvement efforts. Successful leaders see change as an opportunity to build capacity, develop trust, and make meaning with their work.
Strategic Foresight: Leaders must anticipate the future needs of their students and communities, preparing their institutions to evolve proactively.
Driving Regional Economic Development: Monroe Community College
Presenters: Dr. DeAnna R. Burt-Nanna and Matt Hurlbutt
Monroe Community College partnered with the Greater Rochester Enterprise to address misalignment among regional workforce and economic stakeholders. Employers, colleges, and economic development agencies were not coordinating their efforts, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities to improve community growth. MCC and GRE built a partnership model focused on strategic and frequent collaboration, including:
Annual convenings: Key stakeholders across education, industry, and policy sectors convene each year to discuss the area’s workforce needs, identify potential talent streams, showcase their value, and build new partnerships.
Structured cooperation: Organized collaboration allows stakeholders to streamline implementation of jointly-developed strategies through clearly-defined roles and work streams.
Workforce development navigators: Provide a designated navigator for industry partners to connect with the workforce development system. Navigators alleviate the employer burden of maneuvering the workforce system, build bridges across the ecosystem, and identify workforce solutions to industry shortages.
Addressing the Social Determinants of Work: Cuyahoga Community College
Presenter: Dr. Michael Baston
To identify and address the barriers that prevent many individuals in Northeast Ohio from economic mobility, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) leveraged the Social Determinants of Work framework to develop support services that tackle the interconnected challenges residents face–from transportation access to healthcare and broadband access.
Build partnerships to remove barriers: Tri-C collaborates with the Regional Transit Authority, United Way, the Goods Bank, and the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland to provide access to transportation, household goods, and legal support.
Address academic and workforce gaps: The college focused on targeted skills training, flexible learning opportunities, and supportive networks to expand access to employment.
Work Readiness Fund: Help students cover the costs associated with securing work-based learning experiences and sustained employment, including licensure exams, work attire, and technology.
Integrating AI and Emerging Technologies: Hudson County Community College
Presenter: Patricia Clay
Hudson County Community College’s approach to integrating AI and emerging technologies is framed around the "4 E's": Empower, Enhance, Educate, and Embrace. This strategy guides the college in adopting AI while maintaining academic integrity and preparing students for future workplaces. Key components of this model include:
Empowering faculty: Providing tools and resources for faculty to make informed decisions about AI in their classrooms.
Updating assessments: Rethinking and revising traditional assessments to incorporate AI’s capabilities and ensure they remain relevant. At the same time, revising academic policies to include AI as an academic resource when properly cited.
Educating with ethics: Teaching faculty and students how to use AI tools, incorporating ethical considerations.
Building a learning community: HCCC developed a professional learning community for faculty to support the use of generative AI in teaching and boost instructor productivity.
KEY INSIGHTS
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Community colleges must adopt a "dual customer" approach. For colleges to succeed in improving students’ economic prospects, they must embrace employers as key stakeholders with the most important currency: jobs. While adapting to industry needs, institutions must also take a student-centered approach, developing programs that are designed around diverse student needs. Programs must be flexible, accelerated, and career-focused–with clear employment outcomes and wraparound supports.
Community colleges can be innovative and agile. With adaptive leadership, community colleges can be entrepreneurs in talent supply chains, financial restructuring, and curriculum development. They can leverage diverse collaborations to build financial capital and expand regional visibility. By keeping a pulse on local demands and responding quickly to employer needs, community colleges can become the “go to” workforce development institutions in their regions. Lorain provides a model for this approach.
Colleges can leverage data to connect to the regional labor market. Labor market information, like real-time job postings, can inform education program decision-making, employer partnership formation, and curriculum alignment. Community college leaders should invest in institutional data analysis capabilities to track the shifting labor market that their graduates will enter. LMI should just be the starting point, however. Leaders should validate and expand their insights through engagement with local employers to understand the full picture. NOVA demonstrates this strategy in action.
Economic development policy is embracing workforce development. Economic development policies, like the CHIPS and Science Act, are increasingly embracing workforce development as a key lever to drive equitable economic growth. Instead of tax incentives, leaders are leveraging the power of targeted economic investments in industry-driven community college partnerships to expand the skilled workforce and drive regional growth.
Centering equity and inclusion is crucial to student success. Community colleges serve the most diverse population of students, many of whom face significant barriers to academic and economic success. Student-centered initiatives focused on reducing financial and logistical challenges and providing personalized, wraparound supports can improve outcomes, but they require college investment. Forsyth Tech, Saint Paul, and Tri-C shared how their commitment to equity and economic empowerment supports students from all backgrounds to succeed in the evolving workforce landscape.
Employers are eager to engage with community colleges: Employers need a steady talent pool to fill high-demand jobs, and they cannot afford business disruptions caused by talent shortages. As a result, many are seeking to collaborate with their local community colleges or relocate to regions that have strong community college systems to build talent pipelines. Effective partnerships require investments from both employers and educators, which, when done well, can result in the development of workforce-aligned programs and career services that position graduates to succeed and businesses to thrive. NOVA, Lorain, and MCC demonstrate successful approaches to regional business collaboration.
We need better outcomes measures for community colleges. Existing community college outcomes metrics fail to capture the full range of positive impacts that community colleges can have on students and regions. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond has developed an alternative survey that provides a broader picture of student outcomes, taking into account the diversity of students and their goals. It captures insights on part-time students, dual enrollees, and non-credit students, while expanding measures of success to include transfer to four-year institutions, industry-recognized credentials, and persistence in enrollment.
By harnessing the power of community colleges, we can build inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Together, let us scale the insights from the convening and strengthen our collective efforts to support students and build our workforce.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the individuals who made this convening possible, including the panelists and presenters who shared their time and expertise. We would also like to thank the team that helped design, organize, and execute the convening, including Ali Epstein, Hope Matthis, Steve Partridge, Joe Davis, Lisa Larson, and Kathleen DeLaski. Lastly, we thank the Axim Collaborative for supporting this convening. Their commitment to advancing deep learning and institutional change made this gathering possible.