Helping Community Colleges Scale the Regional Workforce
ETIS was charged with assisting a consortium of Iowa community colleges in leveraging federal funding through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Strengthening Community Colleges Training Grants Program to create a sustainable, equitable, and industry-aligned training program to close the regional skills gap and support students in obtaining employment in high-demand industries.
The core of the challenge included addressing regional workforce shortages in high-demand industries by modernizing and expanding training programs, developing a framework for institutional collaboration to pool resources and maximize impact, and designing and developing pathways to provide access to equitable educational opportunities for minority and low-income groups paving the way to high-demand jobs in the economy.
Key objectives include curriculum evaluation, ensuring underserved groups have access, and program sustainability.
Challenge
Approach
As a newly engaged strategic partner, ETIS used a hybrid data collection model, which combines process-outcome evaluation with our quantitative research, to ensure the grant would be used effectively to meet the policy goals set forth by the grant.
The ETIS team implemented streamlined data collection processes. We created tools to track the outcomes of participation in support services, marketing and recruitment activities, and business partnership efforts. We developed surveys and focus group protocols to collect feedback from students and other key stakeholders. Additionally, ETIS produced a series of reports to assist project teams in understanding program engagement levels, student progress, and the perceptions of business partners and students involved in the programs.
ETIS’s collaborative approach fostered consistent engagement with project
teams, allowing us to gain deeper insights into the DOL’s core objectives, the colleges’ programs, and details of each institution's initiative rollout.
Results
The Strengthening Community Colleges initiatives reached significant milestones which included:
building partnerships with workforce development agencies, businesses, industry leaders and community organizations
alignment of curricula with workforce needs by establishing an advisory board and business & industry leadership team to help develop, customize and refine teaching assets
upgrading laboratories, equipment and technology
the development of two new technical bridge programs to assist underprepared students
launching comprehensive marketing and recruitment campaigns to boost student awareness, increase enrollment, and attract more business partners
one of the newly constituted programs achieving regional accreditation with others pending
establishing student support systems for underrepresented groups
recording high satisfaction among students and industry partners regarding program content, support services, instruction, and facilities
Our hybrid evaluation model delivered meaningful results for our community college clients and the U.S. Department of Labor.