Insights, Information, Inspiration: Lessons from Our ‘FoW’ Experts

Pam Sornson, JD on November 16, 2020

The Panelists, keynotes, and sponsor speakers at Pasadena City College’s 2nd annual Future of Work Conference, “Advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Workforce Development,” shared a host of perspectives, experiences, and insights about how work might get done as we move deeper into the 21st Century. While the conversation touched on many topics related to employment, jobs development, economic factors, and social realities, it was loosely directed toward exploring possible responses to three critical questions:

How do we manage COVID-19 concerns?

Are there ‘best practices’ for workforce development solutions?

How do diversity and inclusion affect today’s and tomorrow’s workforce, employment, and economic opportunities?

The panel discussion encompassed thoughts on these topics while adding nuance and perspective to each, based on the speaker and their role in the economic and workforce development community.

In addition to the panel discussion, our PCC Superintendent/President, sponsor’s representative, and two keynote speakers offered their insights about what employment, jobs, diversity, and workforce development mean for the economy of the community and country. Their inputs added extra color and depth to the overall day.

 

A Word from Our Superintendent/President

Dr. Erika Endrijonas

Lending her full support to Salvatrice Cummo, who spearheads PCC’s EWD initiatives, Dr. Erika Endrijonas is PCC’s leading champion for career and workforce development efforts, noting that California’s community colleges aim 50% of their effort toward economic and workforce development mandates. She also stated that, while unemployment is currently high and that many jobs won’t be coming back, she’s confident that new jobs will replace those lost and that the future’s more diverse and inclusive workforce will be able to drive everyone’s growing economic success.

 

A Word From Our Sponsor – Verizon

Jesus Roman, VP of Government Affairs & Community Engagement at Verizon

As a leader in a company engaged in, perhaps, the world’s predominant industry, telecommunications, Mr. Roman is very aware of the power of digital connectivity and its impact on the future of both the global economy and global workforce development efforts. He noted that the telecom giant is already deeply involved in projects that offer internet services to underserved populations.

He is also rightfully proud of Verizon’s admirable inclusive policies and practices, including ensuring pay equity across all its systems. Mr. Roman shared that the evolving 5G network brings with it significant opportunities not just for improved communications but also as a generator of jobs and careers. Verizon will be looking for qualified workers to deliver those new services to anyone who needs them.

 

Our First Keynote Speaker

Josh Davies, CEO – Center for Work Ethic Development

Our first keynote speaker immediately engaged everyone with his distillation of how 2020 has disrupted traditional occupational expectations:

It has probably permanently eliminated many jobs (he suggests as many as 42% of previous employment options will not be coming back).

It’s causing us to redefine ’employment,’ with many companies shifting away from a full-time workforce to part-time and ‘gig’ workers.

The biggest economic power brokers are getting bigger, so an ever-decreasing number of people are gaining ever-increasing levels of ownership and control of global resources.

These three factors are causing significant disruptions in the country’s four-year education systems.

 

He also suggests ways for educators to prepare their learners for future opportunities:

Stop training for repetitive jobs, which are being assumed by automated machines.

Provide training that develops ‘high-touch’ skills: those human capabilities to think critically and solve problems.

Evolve apprenticeships beyond the trades, and diversify the apprentice pool to include more women.

Generate workforce assets based on skills, not degrees. Skills are applicable in many jobs; degrees, not so much.

Make life-long learning the norm. Every job evolves, so educators must offer upskilling and extended training to ensure the opportunity to achieve better economic growth.

 

Our Second Keynote Speaker

Sheneui Weber, Vice-Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office

Ms. Weber discussed how the COVID-19 lockdown disrupted so many lives, especially for those students who didn’t have an online learning option, either because of connectivity issues or other significant social factors that prevented continuing studies after campuses closed. She also noted other pre-existing factors that exacerbated the problems:

The coronavirus revealed the gaps and holes that currently exist in community social safety nets, including how higher ed systems have largely left out adult learners as well as other underserved populations.

Other gaps are caused by how businesses and corporate capitalization systems are currently structured and how those structures reduce people’s value while elevating the value of money.

Financial systems also contribute to some underserved populations’ inability to access educational resources, and

the digital divide continues to grow wider.

 

However, according to Ms. Weber, the State of California is taking steps to mitigate these concerns by:

developing a Racial Equity Task Force to address these concerns.

looking for resources to build businesses that are ‘social enterprises,‘ combining the passion and compassion found in non-profit work with the drive for economic success found in the for-profit sector.

And she emphasizes the importance of digital competence to economic growth, urging listeners to look closely at and seek solutions for the digital disparities that occur in their communities.

She concluded by encouraging all attendees to make the most of COVID’s disruptive capacity to address and alleviate the challenges it revealed.

 

The Panel Discussion

Our panelists offered a broad scope of ideas, suggestions, and factual realities regarding economic and workforce efforts, based on their careers and their work. It was a lively and enlightening discussion.

 

From A Government Perspective

Reg Javier, CA Employment Training Panel (ETA)

Regarding the virus, Mr. Javier noted that virus concerns brought an unexpected bonus that his agency will build upon: the ‘virtual meeting participation’ opportunity led to higher attendance at agency meetings than before, opening an engagement option he intends to pursue. On the downside, while the ETA has been swamped with requests for funds for covid-related training, it’s also struggled with how to allocate those resources. Does it cover costs to keep workers’ employed’ for now? Or is it better to fund opportunities for future jobs when they become available?

Regarding workforce development, Mr. Javier discussed how some populations aren’t ready yet for ‘career training’ because they don’t have the underlying skills needed to succeed in that educational endeavor. When it arose earlier in his career, his solution for that problem was to develop a talent pipeline that began at a much earlier academic stage, at the middle or high school level. Introducing potential job and career opportunities at this age lets kids know what’s available, contemplate what choices they might make, and plan to achieve those foundational skills, so they are ready to tackle their actual job training program.

 

From a Corporate Perspective

Erica Jacques, Executive Director of External and Government Affairs at Verizon

The COVID pandemic ‘changed things’ for Verizon. As it emerged, the company focused its outreach efforts by providing micro-grants to small businesses to help them survive the closures and sales slumps. It then also pivoted to providing resources and support to communities affected by the co-occurring wildfires and earthquakes.

During the year, one thing became abundantly clear: the lack of reliable connectivity negatively affected too many people as they worked to cope with their particular situation. Verizon provided more than one response to that concern by offering community partners ‘hot spots’ so locals could access the Internet from where they were. These ‘locals’ included both the first responders working in remote locations where the need was greatest, as well as the one-in-five students with no home-based internet services. The company worked hard to provide as many services as possible to help mitigate these problems and move toward solutions.

Looking forward, she noted that many young people are not following a traditional college or trade path, and she’s concerned about helping them, too.

 

Clayton Pryor, Director of Workforce Development, Advocate Aurora Health (AAH)

The health sector was impacted in numerous ways by the COVID-19 pandemic, and AAH made many accommodations to respond to the needs of both its patients and staff. The crisis accelerated the company’s use of emerging IT to remain connected while also informing it about IT=related skills and abilities it will need in its future workforce.

Those factors will influence the work AAH is already doing to develop its incoming workers’ skill base. It is creating pipelines of middle and entry-level healthcare jobs by building partnerships with both businesses and technology schools, with an emphasis on the clinical side of the industry. It’s also providing micro-grants to community healthcare businesses that can provide training on that clinical side.

Mr. Pryor also noted the need to provide pre-career-prep education opportunities. He sees many benefits in taking a multipronged approach to that problem:

COVID revealed opportunities to innovate how people access learning.

Collaboration among schools, businesses, and industries will benefit all three plus the students they support.

He further emphasized the need for both industry and business leaders to keep the schools informed about what their needs are going to be.

 

Donald Bradburn, Director of Workforce Planning and Development, Kaiser Permanente

Regarding diversity and inclusion, Mr. Bradburn discussed KP’s intentional efforts to ensure all aspects of its business are actively engaged in welcoming the talents and skills of all potential workers, including those of their partners and third-party contractors. He noted a particular strategy that connects workers newly released from detention with healthcare facility construction projects. The healthcare giant also requires its partners and community members to build in apprenticeships wherever possible. And not insignificantly, KP has just opened its new medical school to expand the diversity of the professional healthcare population. It also reduced the cost of that education to eliminate cost as a barrier and facilitate access to an even broader scope of potential future doctors, nurses, etc.

Kaiser is also looking at other ways to improve its business by improving the lives of its workers and customers:

It’s revising how it views its current work staff, with an eye to upskill already valuable employees. For example, the unsung housekeeping staff is also the front-line infection control team. The company considered how those skills build in a logical progression into sterile processing, which, in turn, builds into the next level of corporate infection controls. By continually moving people up, Kaiser retains its valued worker, building loyalty and skills along the way.

Technology also offered the opportunity to expand existing worker skills. Many of the KP patients weren’t particularly adept at connecting through their devices. KP trained its front-end staff to work with those patients to improve their technology skills so they could better access their health care services.

And, the company is moving forward with its ‘drive through lab’ experiment, which would speed services while also (hopefully) reduce the risks that arise in crowded waiting rooms. That project is in the pilot stage, as they contemplate how to ensure sterility while performing ‘car side’ injections and other services.

 

From a Policy Shaper Perspective

Tamar Jacoby, CEO – Opportunity America

Ms. Jacoby believes that COVID accelerated the demand to define and construct the ‘future of work’ so its innovations are available today, not tomorrow. She suggests that community colleges should look at themselves as the focal point for the future of career education and begin establishing their ‘ownership’ of the concept and the space. To emphasize her point, she notes that ‘career tech’ graduates can earn a very good living (up to $100,000 per year) and that publicizing that fact would attract more potential students.

She also asserts that the development of ‘soft skills,’ most notably, teaching the critical thinking skills necessary for solving problems, should be embedded in all career tech education programs. And she believes that more diversity in all programs, especially apprenticeship programs, would be an excellent development. Hurdles to overcome on that trajectory include lack of access to learning opportunities and existing teaching strategies that don’t accommodate many of life’s realities, such as needing to work full time or care for one’s family.

Ms. Jacoby noted that Opportunity America addresses these concerns and offers possible solutions in its recent 2020 study, “The Indispensable Institution: Reimagining Community College.”

 

Dr. Darlene Miller, National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE)

Ms. Miller’s thought is that conversations about equity must also include adult students, whose needs are often overlooked in favor of younger learners. Many of them also are lower-skilled, either because of social circumstances or perhaps because of their immigration status. Many working adults lack fundamental literacy and numeracy skills in addition to lacking digital tools. They, too, need the same types of remedial interventions to access career training opportunities.

However, according to research, older workers often experience the same barriers as younger students, including the inability to attend traditionally scheduled classes, class unavailability in general, and challenges with obtaining the funding and transportation resources needed to attend school.

Dr. Miller encourages community colleges to consider building new pathways that address and overcome these barriers.

 

Dr. D’Artagnan Scorza, Social Justice Learning Institute

Dr. Scorza agreed that many of his constituents also suffer because they don’t have the fundamental skills needed even to begin a career training program. Accordingly, the SJLI provides training and soft-skill-building programs to teach these necessary skills to the economically challenged youth in its communities. He says they start ‘where the student is’ and funnel their learners through the fundamentals and into the pipelines that will eventually feed the community colleges with learners ready to learn.

Dr. Scorza notes that the SJLI enjoys collaborative partnerships with several local universities that support these and other critical social programs. Those schools have programs that aim at assisting these populations into the career path pipelines, such as Paths-Up, UofC’s Early Academic Outreach Program, and the Upward Bound Program offered by the U.S. Department of Education. He adds that the University of California at Riverside also launched a medical school designed specifically to train ethnically diverse health care professionals. More students need to know about these options, he says, and the training they need to qualify for them.

Also crucial to this work, he notes, are the businesses and business associations that can structure their activities to meet these needs. The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation is just one example.

 

The Wrap Up

        &       

The event co-moderators also offered some significant insights. Co-host Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief of WorkingNation, encouraged everyone to look at 2020 as a teaching tool. “We’ve been here before,” she says,  “and we can move forward.” Co-Host Salvatrice Cummo, Executive Director of PCC’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development department, encouraged panelists and audience members to look carefully at their sector to determine who’s being left out? Who is included? How can we address inequality while also rebuilding our economy?

Other suggestions for possible next steps included:

Redefining certifications by skill sets, not by program titles.

Being open to developing new ways to teach existing and emerging skill sets. Technology skills will be critical, and those apply in many job settings.

Recognizing the ‘currency’ value of a degree and use that mindset to define a new ‘currency’ title for skill sets that transfer across several occupations.

Broadening the scope to include learners of all ages and from all locations. Rural communities are often overlooked but have the same needs and assets as any other community.

 

The FOW Conference was successful on many fronts:

It’s digital Zoom platform performed flawlessly, eliminating the health and transport challenges that would have prevented the gathering and kept attendees away.

Its subject matter was timely and necessary. Everyone is affected by an economy, so the performance of a community’s workforce affects every member of that community – local, regional, national, and global.

The expert analysis and optimistic perspectives of its participants provide guidance, leadership, and hope, providing listeners with strategies to move forward and tools they can use to make a difference where they share their expertise and influence.

Ms. Cummo summed it up nicely: “As we gain control over the pandemic and look to the future, we must use our workforce development strategies to attain our ultimate goal: achieving recovery with equity, and through a lens of optimism.”

 

 

 

PCC’s Diversity and Workforce Development Conference: Our Outstanding Participants

Pam Sornson, JD on November 16, 2020

Attendees at PCC’s second annual (first virtual) Future of Work Conference, “Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Workforce Development,” were well rewarded for their time.  Its panelists, moderators, and keynote speakers shared the profound insights and wisdom they’ve gained across decades of experience in their government, corporate, and thought leadership sectors.

Streaming seamlessly through a Zoom portal, listeners heard about how America’s workforce faces numerous challenges, including those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a suppressed economy, a suppressing economy, and a myriad of long-standing, as-yet-unaddressed social concerns. They also learned about how America’s businesses, industries, and educational sectors can pivot to harness the lessons taught by the pandemic to produce the enlightened, innovative, and inclusive educational and workforce development programs that will power the 21st Century economy.

Most importantly, perhaps, they also felt a sense of:

relief that long-ignored problems are finally getting the attention they deserve;

gratitude that so many intelligent and compassionate people are working on these issues, and

optimism that the future is brighter than they knew.

 

Here’s the list of who was speaking and where they are bringing their expertise and influence:

 

Our Moderators

Salvatrice Cummo

Executive Director – Pasadena City College Office of Economic and Workforce Development

Ms. Cummo brings years of commercial, entrepreneurial, and big and small business experience to her role as Director of the Economic and Workforce Development department at Pasadena City College (PCC EWD). She builds on the many ‘business development best practice’ strategies she’s developed to engage both PCC’s teaching faculty and its neighboring businesses and industries in her efforts to strengthen the regional and local economies.

Within the EWD, she’s instituted four foundational ‘pillars’ that each encompass one of the defining aspects of the department’s work: The Small Business Development Center, Workforce Training, Work-based Learning, and the Robert G. Freeman Center for Career and Completion.

 

Ramona Schindelheim

Editor-in-Chief, Working Nation

Founded in 2016 to bring attention to the country’s looming unemployment crisis, the non-profit WorkingNation presents solutions to unemployment and economic disparity concerns as stories to inspire change. In her role as Editor-in-Chief, the multi-award-winning Ms. Schindelheim leads by example after a long career as a writer, producer, and executive in journalism (The Wall Street Journal, among others) and broadcast media (Power Lunch, Conversations with Michael Eisner, among others).

Looking forward, she emphasizes highlighting ‘skills’ as the definer of worker competency and urges job seekers to refine their skills as they look for their next employment opportunity.

 

Representing Pasadena City College

Dr. Erica Endrijonas, Ph.D.

Superintendent-President, Pasadena City College

After many years of leadership in the Los Angeles Valley community college system, Dr. Endrijonas joined PCC in early 2019 as its 16th Superintendent/President. In addition to her roles as Executive Vice President and Dean at Oxnard College (in the Ventura County Community College District) and at Santa Barbara City College, respectively, she’s also contributed significantly to the Boards of the Community College boards of the Chief Instructional Officers, the Chief Student Services Officers, the Association for Occupational Education, and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA), among others.

Her comprehensive understanding of the many facets of career and workforce development practices as those play out in schools, businesses, and industries, make Dr. Endrijonas eminently qualified to oversee those efforts at Pasadena City College.

 

 

Representing Our Sponsor

Jesus Roman

Associate General Counsel & VP of Government Affairs & Community Engagement at Verizon

Verizon was a natural fit to sponsor this conversation. Its deep and broad investments in its ‘V Team’ workforce development practices both in and outside its corporate perimeter demonstrate its commitment to improving the lives of its workers. It also works to improve the communities in which they live and raise their families.

One of two sponsor representatives (see also Erica Jacquez, below), Mr. Roman shares his employer’s passion for investing time and money in workforce development initiatives, noting that it’s the qualified workforce that’s propelled Verizon to its current position at the top of the telecommunications industry. His message that the company will require a highly-skilled workforce to implement and manage its emerging 5G capacities is a call to action for students and colleges alike.

 

Our First Keynote Speaker

Josh Davies

CEO – Center for Work Ethic Development

Noted as one of Denver’s ’40 Under 40′ for his nationally recognized (top 10) training skills, Mr. Davies has been engaging and enhancing workforce skills in numerous industries for years. As the former President of the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (CHART) and a former board member for the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals, his experience spans all levels of workforce capacities, from front-line hotel operations to the development of national workforce development policies.

For us, he shared his enthusiasm and insights about where our current workforce practices are insufficient and provided innovative suggestions for improving them.

 

Our Panelists

Our panelists brought decades of knowledge, wisdom, and experience to the Conference, from government, corporate, and thought leadership sectors. Their insights about and plans for the future guide their respective agencies into the new world of how work gets done.

Government

Reg Javier

Executive Director, CA Employment Training Panel (ETP)

Over twenty-five years with the California Employment Development Department, the San Diego Workforce Partnership, and the Workforce Investment Board, Mr. Javier has always worked at the nexus of workforce and economic development and higher education. In his role at the Employment Training Panel, he coordinates business, union, and government representatives’ efforts as they provide funding to help the region’s employers train and upskill their employees.

Most recently, the ETP awarded $8 million to fund 28 contracts that will train 6300 workers, 100 of whom are e ployed in the hard-hit manufacturing industry.

 

Corporate

Dr. Erica Jacquez

Executive Director of External and Government Affairs at Verizon

An accomplished government relations expert, Dr. Jacquez spent 20+ years assisting governments, non-profits, and corporations to develop creative solutions to pressing healthcare, education, energy, and environmental concerns (among many, many others).

As the Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement Liaison at the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, her in-depth government knowledge and exceptional communication skills ensured the accuracy and integrity of President Barack Obama’s Statements of Administrative policies.

 

Clayton Pryor

Director of Workforce Development, Advocate Aurora Health (AAH)

Coming from a hospitality and HR background, Mr. Pryor brings 12+ years of workforce development leadership to his current role at AAH. Covering all aspects of workforce program design, development, and implementation, he is well-practiced in turning eager learners into confident, competent professionals.

Since 2015, Mr. Pryor has been leading Aurora Health’s efforts to develop pipelines of middle-skills candidates to fill that demand for the Healthcare company’s needs. He oversees Aurora’s college and university partnerships and its internships and educational assistance programs.

 

Donald Bradburn

Director of Workforce Planning and Development, Kaiser Permanente

An HR professional for many years, Mr. Bradburn built his leadership capacities in workforce development over many years in civic government, directing the management and development of HR resources for the County of San Diego, City of Indio, and the County of Riverside, most recently as its Executive Director of Administration. As a U.S. Army veteran, he’s also well versed in managing complex and diverse populations, and his multi-linguistic skills enhance his communication abilities across multiple KP communities.

This is Mr. Bradburn’s second year bringing his wealth of knowledge to PCC’s FoW Conference.

 

Policy Shapers

Tamar Jacoby

CEO – Opportunity America

Opportunity America, a Washington D.C. think tank, focuses on restoring economic mobility opportunities to millions of poor and working Americans. Its work influences policy at the highest levels, and its perspective on the value of the nation’s community colleges resonates across the country.

Ms. Jacoby’s insights and comments are honed by years of journalism excellence, as Justice Editor at Newsweek, a featured writer for many of America’s premier newspapers, and as a highly respected author.

 

Dr. Darlene Miller

Executive Director, National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE)

Her long career with innovative economic and workforce development programs in community colleges makes Dr. Miller the perfect leader for this group. The NCWE offers resources and support to help community colleges enhance their local economies by improving their student’s opportunities for economic success.

In her leadership role at the NCWE, Dr. Miller contributes to and advises several national initiatives, including serving as Lead Faculty for the agency’s New Workforce Professionals Academy, and the Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations Programs’ “Building Community Partnerships to Serve Immigrant Workers” (BCPIW) initiative, among many, many others.

 

Dr. D’Artagnan Scorza

Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI)

Dr. Scorza brought the full scope of his extensive education back home to improve the future of the youth growing up in his childhood community of Inglewood, California. Beginning with his Black Male Youth Academy, which aimed critical literacy services at African American males to enhance their academic advancement, he expanded his efforts to establish Veteran’s services at UC Campuses, and secure $90 million to support Inglewood school construction projects.

As its founder, Dr. Scorza’s SJLI uses education to empower communities of color to create thriving economies in safe neighborhoods and change the systems that present only barriers. He launched the agency to ensure all its constituents have the resources they need to achieve their goals, partnering with food distributors, neighborhood associations, and schools to open doors and opportunities.

 

Our Closing Keynote Speaker

Sheneui Weber

Vice-Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO)

Working in the education and training sectors for more than 25 years, Ms. Weber brings needed leadership skills to assist the CCCCO’s 19 colleges in serving their 2.1 million students. Her career focus is on developing entrepreneurial growth, and she’s launched several multi-million dollar projects across the Southern California region.

Ms. Weber provides leadership and guidance to numerous schools, industries, and businesses on workforce and economic development strategies, best practices, and operations. She’s also served as Director for the Software Engineering Forum for Training (SEFT), training software engineers of major aerospace companies, and for the On-Site Implementation team for the Southwestern Division of Adecco Group North America, a Global Fortune 500 company.

 

Pasadena City College is honored to facilitate for its constituents – students, faculty, business partners, and industrial community – the insights flowing from the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience embodied in this amazing cadre of speakers. Thank you, Panelists, keynotes, and sponsors, for sharing with us, and thanks to our audience for joining us in this critically important conversation.

The Future of Work: Meeting the High Demand for Upskilling and Training

Pam Sornson, JD on November 2, 2020

COVID-19 has caused innumerable headaches, forcing millions of workers into unemployment and shutting the doors of thousands of companies. However, it’s also driven the development of new technologies and workforce strategies as technological adaptations facilitate the ‘work from home’ necessity.

Industry leaders are now talking about how the pandemic has already changed the forecast for the future of work. Once that menace is contained, and with the right tools and partnerships in place, most organizations should be able to pick up (most of) the pieces of their enterprise and resume operations, although they’ll need a better trained, upskilled staff.

 

Skills Gaps Widen During COVID-19 Pandemic

Even before the pandemic, global leaders were eying the necessity of upskilling their workforce. In 2019, the International Labor Organization Global Commission on the Future of Work declared that then-current skillsets would not be sufficient to fill the roles and jobs of the future. Worse, the group suggested that even newly acquired 2020 skills may become obsolete, considering the speed at which the global community is transforming.

Instead, the Commission called on the world’s governments, employers, and workers to embrace and engage in ‘life-long learning strategies,’ recognizing that almost every job will require workers to receive ongoing education to maintain competency. Amazon elected to invest $700 million in retraining support for up to 100,000 workers, and PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse Coopers) pledged $3 billion for the purpose.

Note, too, that these decisions occurred pre-COVID when there weren’t millions out of work. During and after the pandemic, thousands of displaced workers will also be looking for training, upskilling, and new skills acquisitioning. Thousands of employers will need workers who are prepared and able to take on the post-pandemic challenges. The COVID-19 crisis appears to have accelerated that push for enhanced training opportunities.

 

Skills Gaps Span Industries and Sectors

The demand for upskilling options is higher in some industries than in others, based on the nature of the work. Especially these days, technology is changing how many industries operate, and workers are more than just laborers. Often, their knowledge of the product or service they’re generating is dependent on their equal comprehension of the technologies they use during production.

The manufacturing sector provides a good example. Early this year (pre-pandemic), manufacturing companies had already budgeted $26 billion to cover upskilling and retraining costs so that both existing and new hires had the abilities needed to do the work. According to a study done by the Manufacturing Institute, 70% of manufacturers were expanding existing or creating new training systems. Three-quarters (75%) of respondents reported that their upskilling efforts improved employee morale, improved production values, and even aided in promotion initiatives.

Further, in a review of nine quarters reported by the National Association of Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey, 80% of manufacturers admitted to struggling to find the workers they needed to fill existing openings. That challenge will worsen, too, if data provided by Deloitte is any indication. Between worker retirements and natural industry growth, the manufacturing sector should add as many as 4.6 million jobs between 2018 and 2028. However, if the persistent skills shortage remains, only 2.2 million of those will be filled.

The impact on the manufacturing industry would be significant:

Without the workers to do the job, production levels will decline and

up to $454 billion in potential revenues would disappear.

That $454 billion represents as much as 17% of America’s forecasted GDP for 2028.

Other industries will have different numbers than the manufacturing sector, but the point is the same: Too many companies need workers with better skills, and not enough workers have the training right now to fill those positions.

 

Pasadena City College: Building Tomorrow’s Talent Pipeline

The labor demand situation is creating a challenge for all sectors. After the pandemic subsides (and it will subside), newly reopened businesses will have to reinvent themselves to reflect that post-pandemic ‘normal.’ And they’ll need a workforce trained with appropriate, post-pandemic skills to retake their share of the market. Unfortunately, not all organizations have several billion dollars available for workforce training investments, so how will they address and surmount this concern?

In the San Gabriel Valley, they should partner with Pasadena City College (PCC) to not only find current training opportunities for their organization but also to share their perspective of what they’ll need from new training opportunities in the future.

PCC’s Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWD) aims to connect and build the resources of the school, its students, and its industrial community toward a more robust economy. To accomplish this effort, PCC reaches out to numerous entities to collaborate with and to coordinate industry and workforce-related initiatives.

Our work is mandated by the State of California, which has tasked its community colleges with developing the well-trained human resource population envisioned in its “Strong Workforce Program.”  Not only do we regularly engage with our fellow community colleges, but we also engage regularly with government agencies and industry regulators so we can base decisions on the most current best practices and policies.

The PCC EWD leadership team actively participates with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, providing unique PCC insights to local and regional policy and project developments.

We routinely invite local and regional businesses to partner with us by sitting on our advisory panels to provide their input into program and curricula development. And, when those businesses are looking for assistance training their own workforce, we can provide contract training designed and delivered precisely to meet their needs.

Also included in the EWD are departments dedicated to ensuring student success in career and job placements and to directly connect students to work-based learning opportunities to enhance their classroom activities.

 

The Robert G. Freeman Career Center (Freeman Center)

One of the pillars of the EWD is the Robert G. Freeman Career Center. The Freeman Center is the hub of our student’s career and job development activities.

This bustling enterprise provides career and job counseling, course and program guidance, informational resources, and more to help students find the work they want. From resume development to mock interviews to job fairs, PCC students looking to find work in their chosen fields can start and continue that search with the help of Career Center professionals.

The Freeman Center is also the home of our many Career Fairs. We invite our local and regional businesses to participate in these events, display their good work, share their insights with both faculty and students, and provide students with an overview of what working for the company might entail.

For those companies that need employable workers to fill open positions, the Freeman Center acts as a job-posting hub for PCC students. Jobs posted here are readily available to any PCC student who’s looking for employment.

 

Work-based Learning Opportunities

Another pillar of the EWD is the office of Work-based Learning (WBL) which coordinates the connections that facilitate our students’ work-based learning opportunities, including internships, apprenticeships, and more. These arrangements are win-win: the student gets exposure to hands-on learning, and the business receives a curious and engaged worker to fulfill company demands.

Internships are very beneficial, giving the student job-related experience and the employer a will and able laborer. Internships can be both paid or unpaid, and, in some cases, students are also eligible to receive course credits for their internship efforts.

In some cases, the work-based learning opportunity matures into a full-time position, assuring the boss that the newly minted employee has the exact right skills for the job.

Industry site visits are also beneficial for learners looking to experience the real world while still in school. Companies that open their doors to these events enjoy face-to-face engagement with potential hires and can help PCC students understand their operations’ nuances and subtlety.

Mentorships and job shadows also provide learners and business owners with an enjoyable and productive experience.

 

 

PCC’s EWD is Training Tomorrow’s Workforce

PCC is already training its students to fill the jobs that are available today. By engaging our local and regional business leaders in our program development process, the EWD department can use their immense library of expertise and experience to train students for tomorrow’s jobs, too. And according to the statistics, there are going to be a lot of new jobs available.

 

Want to learn more? Join our “Future of Work Virtual Conference,” Thursday, November 12 from 9 till 11 am. Our panel of industry experts will discuss how the working world is evolving for workers, employers, industries, and communities.

 

 

PCC’s Future of Work Conference – Why You Can’t Miss It

Pam Sornson, JD on November 2, 2020

Making sense of the ‘future of work’ discussion requires a focus on whole industries and industrial sectors as well as on the mom-and-pop businesses down the street. Today’s corporate leaders must navigate the intricacies of both if they intend to master their daily production goals and improve or grow their market share. Regardless of its size, however, no organization will master anything if it doesn’t have the trained and operational workforce it needs to thrive.

That reality is why Pasadena City College (PCC) is presenting its second annual Future of Work Conference on Thursday, November 12, from 9 to 11 am. This year, because of COVID-19, the Conference is virtual (just click on this link to register), so attendance requires nothing more than registering, then settling down with a good cup of coffee in your favorite comfy chair.

Regardless of its ‘virtual’ status, our presentation’s quality will exceed even last year’s high bar. This year we’ve pulled in more than a dozen industry, education, and government experts to talk about how they envision the ‘future of work,’ both because of and despite the coronavirus.

Here are the experts weighing in on this critically important topic:

 

Our Co-Hosts are:

Salvatrice Cummo, Executive Director, Pasadena City College Economic and Workforce Development.

Salvatrice brings years of commercial, entrepreneurial, and big and small business experience to her role as Director of the Economic and Workforce Development department at Pasadena City College (PCC EWD). She builds on the many ‘business development best practice’ strategies she’s developed to engage both PCC’s teaching faculty and its neighboring businesses and industries in efforts to strengthen the regional and local economies. Her long-range vision sees PCC as the San Gabriel Valley’s premier workforce developer, trainer, and supplier, providing the regional business and industrial community with the highly skilled workers it needs to grow and thrive.

Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, Working Nation

As a journalist, Ms. Schindelheim covered the business impacts of 9/11, the Enron scandal, and the collapse of the housing market. As an executive producer, you’ve seen her work on Power Lunch and Conversations with Michael Eisner (and many other ABC and CNBC productions). She has two Emmy’s, two Peabody’s, and two Golden Mics for investigative journalism. Need we say more?

 

 

A welcoming by our President:

Dr. Erika Endrijonas, President/Superintendent, Pasadena City College

Dr. Endrijonas has been providing guidance and insights to LA’s community colleges for more than 20 years. Prior to assuming individual college leadership roles, she served on several state-wide California Community College boards, including those of the Chief Instructional Officers, the Chief Student Services Officers, and the Association for Occupational Education. Her passion for football underscores her appreciation for teamwork and collaboration.

 

 

Speaking for our Sponsor is:

Jesus Roman, Associate General Counsel and VP of Government Affairs, Verizon

For 17 years, Mr. Roman has been developing policy positions and legislative strategies to facilitate Verizon’s opportunities to grow, innovate, and enhance wired and wireless services across 13 western states. He works at the nexus of communications innovation, business strategy, and government regulation.

 

 

Our Keynote Speaker is:

Josh Davies, CEO, Center for Work Ethic Development

More than 20 years of globally based workforce training and consulting have honed Mr. Davies’ appreciation of highly skilled, talented, and productive workers. Named one of America’s Top Ten Trainers by Training Magazine, Mr. Davies will share his knowledge of inspiring the best effort from virtually every employee.

 

 

Sitting on our Panel are:

(This is where it will all come down. These voices bring perspectives from industry, government, and educational institutions to discuss how our economic communities will build, grow, and thrive in the next 10 to 20 years.) 

 

Industry Representatives

 

Healthcare

Healthcare initiatives are advancing fast as the sector continues to add more technical features to the broader spectrum of the healthcare delivery system. Accordingly, budgets within the industry are expected to grow by 10% by 2030, adding enhanced care options delivered by a highly educated workforce.

Donald Bradburn, Regional Director of Workforce Planning and Development, Kaiser Permanente

As a long-time human resource professional, Mr. Bradburn brings deep insights into managing workforces, balancing risks with innovation, and the high value of communications in evolving employment landscapes.

Clayton Pryor, Director, Workforce Development, Advocate Aurora Health

Mr. Pryor leads strategy development and operations in his workforce development efforts. His focus is on creating a pipeline of well-prepared candidates for the middle-skill roles demanded by Advocate Aurora Health. He works with universities and colleges to develop partnerships, internships, and educational assistance programs.

 

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector expects to add up to 4.6 million new jobs by 2028, but the current workforce supply generators will provide only 2.2 million workers to fill them.

Philip June, Director of Engineering, Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA)

Engineering Design Center in Southern California and Leader for Boeing Global Services’ Commercial Modifications and Conversions Engineering Team

If you have questions about how engineering impacts design in workforce development as well as in airplane manufacturing, Mr. June has your answers. With more than a decade in Engineering Leadership for one of the world’s premier airplane manufacturers, Mr. June knows what it means to launch and land a successful workforce initiative.

 

Telecommunications 

The COVID-19 pandemic has blown up the telecom industry as every entity reaches for technology over face-to-face encounters to facilitate communications. As 5G architectures and cloud computing ease the communications channel even more, experts anticipate the telecom market to push past $2.5 trillion by 2030.

Dr. Erica Jacquez, Executive Director of External and Government Affairs, Verizon

Dr. Jacquez’s expertise spans several social and economic sectors, including public affairs, education, natural resources, and government relations, to name just a few. Her perspectives on the future of work at a local, regional, and national level will certainly be complex, diverse, and fascinating.

 

Education Representatives:

Tamar Jacoby, President and CEO, Opportunity America

A former Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and a long-time journalist, Ms. Jacoby’s work on promoting economic mobility for poor and working Americans has been published by the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others. She will share her insights about America’s immigrant struggles, their efforts to pursue the American dream, and the barriers they experience in that effort.

Dr. Darlene Miller, Executive Director, National Council for Workforce Education

After 20 years of innovating economic and workforce development programs for several American community colleges, Dr. Miller has spent the past ten years sharing her wisdom with the community college sector as a whole. With her inputs, schools across the country enhance student success through excellence in education and training.

D’Artagnan Scorza, Ph.D., Executive Director/Founder at the Social Justice Learning Institute

A long-time advocate for African-American and Latino youth, this U.S. Navy Iraq War Veteran launched the SJLI to empower all communities of color to change their lives and the lives around them through education. The agency partners with JPMorgan Chase, the City of Houston, and the Sacramento City Unified School District to support stakeholder engagement in education, public utility, land use, water, and other positive social initiatives.

 

Our Government Representative

Reg Javier, Executive Director, California Employment Training Panel

Mr. Javier has been effective in workforce development programs for more than 15 years, providing leadership and guidance for both San Diego and San Bernardino Counties, as well as many other private clients. At the ETP, he coordinates workforce funding distributions to thousands of California businesses, so he knows a thing or two about workforce investment and strategy.

 

Providing insights from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office is:

Sheneui Weber, Vice-Chancellor, Economic and Workforce Development, California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office

A long-time voice for small businesses, Ms. Weber acted as the Executive Director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program for Long Beach Community College District and the Chief Operating Officer for College Advancement and Economic Development before stepping into her role as Vice-Chancellor. Her work includes numerous million-dollar projects as well as innovative leadership of the Los Angeles Region Small Business Development Center Network.

 

Sign up now

This line-up of stellar workforce development innovators and leaders promises a rousing and enlightened conversation that will impact the speakers, industry leaders, and attendees alike. You won’t want to miss it. Register now.

 

 

 

 

Embracing Growth Through Diversity

Pam Sornson, JD on October 25, 2020

For too long, too many people ignored the world’s various forms of inequity because they didn’t believe those notions, behaviors, and policies adversely affected their lives. Unfortunately, their belief is in error, as research on the subject reveals how any form of inequality adversely affects the entire community in which it exists (including the global community). As this reality becomes more apparent, local communities are making changes to resolve their inequity challenges and mitigate the damages they cause.

 

Historical Inequity is Everywhere

The social and economic gaps between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ have never been wider, as more people express pessimism about resolving the fundamental inequities that exist in their communities. Race, religion, caste systems, ability challenges, and ethnicities are all used as tools to limit access to social and economic resources by those people who are deemed ‘less than.’ In some cases, skin color is the only differentiator; in others, where differences in skin color aren’t as obvious, religious beliefs, cultural practices, and historic rivalries continue to dictate who gets what portion of a society’s collective resources.

Usually, it is a limited class of governors that determines who reaps the highest proportion of a community’s bounty in most instances. Too often, that determination rewards those who are most like those governors than those who actually generated the resources. By always favoring their same-class cohorts, not only do their neighbors and friends fare better than they would without the boost, but the determining class also retains its power to maintain that status quo. The consequence is a society run by a single, narrow category of people that excludes those with differences from both decision-making opportunities and the resources those opportunities provide. The outcome is a community populated by diverse interests and abilities ruled from a single, narrow, and limiting perspective. And that perspective negatively affects every person within that community.

 

 

Embrace Diversity = Embrace Vision and Resource

Perhaps the saddest consequence of a lack of diversity in community determination and participation is the loss of the immense resource within diverse populations. When many or most facets of a community are excluded in favor of one or two small groups, everyone, including those in the one or two, loses out on the benefits and values that are ignored.

Why does this matter? It matters because cultures that embrace and include their full complement of diverse elements do better socially and economically than those that don’t.

 

 

Social Benefits of Inclusive Diversity

Research is revealing how positive social connections between culturally divergent people enhance the lives and work of them all.

A 2018 Danish study looked at how social interactions among internationally based team members improved not just the individual’s personal sense of well-being but also their collective sense of community well-being too. The study analyzed the interactions among 30+ teams in a company with 7,200 workers representing 118 nationalities. Through observations and discussions, researchers noted that highly diverse groups (those with multiple nationalities represented) interacted more often, enjoyed a higher sense of social cohesion, and improved their sense of well-being at work. These social gains were recorded separately from the economic impact generated by the enhanced teamwork capacities.

Ultimately, the scientists concluded that enhanced connections between diverse team members created a ‘virtuous circle’ of mutual assistance and team coherence across the enterprise.

Other researchers found evidence that increased exposure to people of different backgrounds and cultures also enhances one’s personal sense of well-being. Interaction with people outside one’s unique cultural bubble tends to both open one’s understanding and perspective about the larger world and reduce the innate prejudice and fear that ignorance and unfamiliarity can cause.

Being open to new ideas and possibilities offered by a diverse community also opens doors to innovation, as cultural standards are shared and adopted.

The studies suggest that people who live in diverse communities and share ideas, experiences, and opportunities are more socially connected and happier than those who do not.

 

Economic Benefits of Inclusive Diversity

Research also strongly supports the position that businesses do better when they actively engage in including diverse populations within their workforces.

The broader workforce base also creates a more qualified workforce since candidates aren’t limited by irrelevant cultural factors (race, religion, etc.)

As noted above, that diverse workforce also works better than a non-diverse staff because they encourage each other’s creativity and imagination.

Not insignificantly, the diverse workforce also attracts – and the business is better informed by – a broader, more diverse consumer base. Diverse perspectives and needs generate equally diverse commercial responses and opportunities. Studies show that companies can increase their market share simply by diversifying their workforce.

Both economically and socially, the science indicates that engaging every diverse element within a community raises the overall community sense of well-being and prosperity.

 

 

Overarching Benefits of Inclusion of Diverse Cultures

Additionally, other community factors improve when an entire community, including its diverse populations, contributes to the overall well-being of its whole. According to Deloitte, inclusivity also:

reduces the societal costs of social services;

improves overall mental and physical health in all members;

improves the employment outcomes of individual workers, and

increases corporate productivity.

In sum, it no longer makes any sense to exclude any community members from social or economic opportunities based on irrelevant cultural factors. Instead, research indicates that including every person and all that they represent into all facets of community life only enhances the community’s overall social and economic well-being as a whole.

 

Community Colleges Enhance their Focus on Diversity and Inclusivity

Fortunately, America’s community colleges are already deeply engaged in righting the past’s wrongs and building pathways to a brighter future for everyone. For many years, they have invested their assets in attracting and educating the broadest possible population of students. The endeavor is immense because their typical student population is also often the most diverse, encompassing learners facing a wide variety of challenges and barriers.

Almost half (42%) are the first in their families to attend a college of any kind.

Some have language barriers.

Others must manage work and family obligations on top of their school work (13% are single parents).

More than 10% have disabilities that interfere with their learning capacity, mobility, or opportunity to engage.

Many, if not most, have economic concerns that interfere with their ability to pay for their education.

Despite these challenges, the nation’s community colleges continue to build their internal resources to support these students’ efforts to succeed. The professionals at PCC’s Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) work to ensure that all students experience an inclusive and welcoming culture as they enter and move through their college experience. With help from counselors and faculty from across the campus, the CCC helps every learner overcome their personal hurdles as they pursue the education path that best suits their needs.

PCC also focuses on helping its students find the work they want after graduation. The efforts of its Robert G. Freeman Career Center (RGF) are designed to ensure that they have the skillsets needed to fill available positions in the industries of their choice. Its Work-based Learning initiative provides internship opportunities to hone classroom learning and prepare learners for the actual work of their career. And all the effort provided by the The Freeman Center is tailored to match the needs of each individual student, regardless of race, religion, or other culturally distinct traits.

 

Pasadena City College is proud of its efforts to ensure all of its students achieve and succeed in the jobs and careers that they choose, and is looking forward to continuing this track for years to come.

 

 

CTE Explained

Pam Sornson, JD on October 25, 2020

Although technically it stands for “Career and Technical Education,” the acronym ‘CTE” could also stand for ‘Commit to Excellence’ as community colleges cut through the mixed messaging of this highly valuable education track. A quick history of the philosophy and development of technical (versus academic) education reveals how most of the world we live in was built by the masters of these ‘middle skills.’

 

The Early Years

The unique circumstances of the 20th Century launched the theory that a ‘university education’ was deemed both the best possible education AND became accessible to the masses. Before that, people who gained any kind of ‘higher education’ were typically of an elite class and had a decidedly religious perspective – America’s first universities focused on developing a ‘learned clergy.’ They included a seminary as well as a classroom for their students.

The vast majority of the population didn’t have social access or a spiritual bent in the first place. And most often, attending ‘college’ was not an option, anyway, when the family needed that extra laborer in the field. Instead, the ‘education’ received by ‘non-elite’ people came in the form of the work they did to survive – farming, carpentry, smithing, etc. This work provided the foundational assets needed to build communities, businesses, and communities and facilitated the broader labor force that generated the aggregate industrial successes of the 19th Century. The more fortunate workers were also sometimes able to sign on with trades masters as apprentices, where they learned the intricacies and artforms inherent in the mainly manual work. These apprenticeship arrangements transformed over time into ‘vocational training’ and provided the impetus for the ‘career and technical education’ track as an alternate option to the four-year university.

 

 

Vocational Training as a Public Investment

In 1917, the U.S. federal government passed the National Vocational Education Act, which provided the first federal funding to the States for trade, industrial, agriculture, and home-making education programs. Over time, the Act and the volume of investments rose, adding more subjects to the vocational training roster:

Funds for teaching and marketing occupations were added in 1936.

Agricultural investments grew in 1946, adding support for the Future Farmers of America (for white Americans) and the New Farmers of America (for black Americans).

In 1956, funds for practical nursing and fishery operations were added.

 

As the subjects covered by federal vocational funding grew, the financing and support grew for the students, teachers, and schools that participated in the lessons.

In 1963, vocational training expanded its eligible student base by adding “persons of all ages in all communities.”

That year, the federal government also changed its allocation strategy to provide funding to individual states based on their student population numbers, which now also included academically and economically disadvantaged students as well as disabled students.

In 1968, Congress amended the legislation to include ‘post-secondary’ learners, and in 1976, women and girls were (finally) mandated to have equal access to vocational training opportunities.

 

Perhaps the most significant CTE and vocational training changes came in 1984 when Congress aggregated the collective vocational legislation initiatives into the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. Since its inception, the government has amended the ‘Perkins’ Act four times (II, III, IV, and V) to embrace ever-widening elements of America’s educational landscape.

In 1990, the name of the Act (version II) was amended by adding ‘Applied Technology Education’ to its title. That amendment also included secondary and post-secondary alignment, academic integration with CTE programs, and business partnerships as added values to the CTE experience. It also noted that accountability was a critical element of the success of any CTE program.

The Act doubled down on its integration and alignment focus in 1998 (version III) by allowing states to control 85% of its funding for state-based initiatives, and

In 2006, the Act’s name changed again (version IV) to reflect its current focus, the “Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act.” The revision added new available subject matters, re-envisioned its perspective on CTE in general, and supplied $1.3 billion to support Basic State Grants and ‘Tech Prep Education’ funding. (Tech Prep funding was discontinued in 2011.)

 

In 2018, Congress renamed it again, and it is now the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V). The new version reiterates all the values of the past while adding significant parameters for the future:

It requires ‘data-driven decision-making’ based on appropriate assessments and accountabilities;

It enhances supports to special populations, and

It encourages innovation in the CTE strata of educational opportunities.

Perkins V became operable in this 20-21 academic year.

 

 

Addressing the ‘CTE’ Stigma

Despite these investments and insightful developments in CTE strategies, CTE courses and programs continue to lack the respect enjoyed by four-year colleges and universities. In most part, that ‘stigma’ grew out of the mid-20th Century’s elitist mentality that asserted only a four-year degree could provide the best opportunity to find the best-paying job. Schools offering two-year and technical programs were considered second class and second choice. They were looked on favorably only by students who would be content earning less than their four-year university-bound cohorts.

One reason for the misconception that a ‘college degree’ was more valuable than a CTE program is the fact that the 1944 GI Bill essentially said so. Returning World War II heroes were able to successfully ‘reenter society’ after first receiving a four-year academic degree. The free college opportunity would level the playing field between elitists (that 5% of the then-population that would certainly go to college) and the majority of the returning soldiers (the 95% who would not attend college otherwise).

The promotion of an academic education over a technical one persisted as governments across the country asserted its superiority. By the 1980s, society had absorbed the shift in the occupational perception of professions being more valuable occupations for everyone over technical, managerial, and clerical work.

That shift was based on economic theory, however, not pragmatism: academic work paid better than technical work, so everyone should pursue a profession even if it doesn’t fit their predisposition or aptitude. So young people were encouraged to attend the higher-level college regardless of their innate abilities, talents, or skills, and even if they didn’t want to participate in the first place.

Unfortunately, that perception (and its consequence of millions of reluctant or ill-suited college attendees) has skewed America’s educational system for decades:

Even with all the accommodations available to ease the four-year university process, upwards of 40% of all undergraduates drop out of college, and 30% of first-year college students leave before the end of their sophomore year.

More than 30% of those undergraduates are also the first in their families to attend university, meaning they have no family history or culture supporting college success.

In 2019, less than half of America’s 25-to-35-year-olds had acquired any credentials beyond high school. So even if they had tried college, they didn’t finish, nor did they complete any other type of post-high school education.

And even while the push towards four-year schools maintained high popularity, millions of highly paid trade jobs remained unfilled.

The overall consequence is that America is now overflowing with young people seeking a better future (but without the resources they need to achieve it), and thousands of trade positions that can’t be filled. The new response to that challenge: offer additional training and skills-attainment opportunities across a wider swath of occupations so that more people can attend a school that suits them and find work in a job or occupation they enjoy.

 

 

Opening a New World for Workers

Since 2010, California has been pursuing that very goal by investing heavily in the CTE and advanced technical training programs in its community colleges. Data reveals why those investments are both smart and prescient:

Because they typically cost less than a four-year school, community colleges are more cost-effective and can attract a broader student base.

Because the commitment to achieve a certificate or associate degree requires fewer time and economic resources to obtain, community colleges also attract older learners, those with lower incomes, or are the first in their family to attend college. For many, community college is their only opportunity to pursue any form of advanced education or skills training program.

The ‘middle skills’ training offered through most community college programs leads to significant and well-paying jobs, allowing more students to attain the lifestyle they want without taking on the excess cost of pursuing a four-year university degree.

Those programs are also (usually) more flexible than the academic tracks, allowing the schools to adapt to accommodate the changing needs of local and regional industries.

The rising interest and investments into community colleges as workforce pipelines are seeing success. Between the 02-03 and the 12-13 academic years, the number of CTE graduates with certifications or associates degrees grew by 54%. The number of bachelor’s degree graduates rose by only 36% in the same time frame.

 

And for students, the rewards are even better:

Short-term certifications and diplomas (6 – 17 credits) raise the learners earning capacity by 14%.

Longer-term associates degrees (60 or more credits) increase earning capacities by 45%.

 

CTE Moving Forward

Of course, the relative earning capacity changes based on the education received and the nature of the work. The point is that California’s community college CTE training is providing more people with job opportunities tailored to their skills and abilities than ever before.

Today’s truth is that industries are clamoring for well-trained and educated workers who provide the critical middle skillsets they need. The PCC EWD Future of Work Conference is an excellent opportunity to learn more about how Pasadena City College is responding to that demand.

PCC Supports Career-Focused Student Success

Pam Sornson, JD on October 8, 2020

This is Part Two of a two-part series on PCC’s six Career Communities and the supports offered by the school to assist its students successfully navigate them.

Like many community colleges, Pasadena City College (PCC) took a two-pronged approach as it re-engineered its programs to reflect the demands of its local and regional industries. Its dual focus was to respond to its corporate neighbors’ workforce preferences while also providing success-building support for the students seeking those jobs. The result is a network of interrelated systems and processes, designed to assist the learner in finding the program best suited to their taste, and then progress through that program into employment.

 

 

 

Student Success One Student at a Time

PCC recognizes that each of its students is an individual with unique skills and talents, as well as specific challenges and sometimes, barriers. It designed its student support services to meet each individual student’s needs regardless of what those were. Accordingly, PCC learners of all ages and backgrounds can find the exact type of support they need to enter into and progress through their PCC college career.

 

 

 

Explore All the Options

PCC offers six Career Communities, each designed around several occupations and jobs that share similar requirements and educational outcomes. The wide variety of employment and career options facilitate almost every student’s wishes, from those who simply want to find a good job to those who aspire to a four-year degree and beyond. Each Community offers training for entry-level learners, emphasizing ‘middle skills,’ those skills that aren’t taught in high school, but that don’t require a more advanced degree. California will need one million more middle-skilled workers by the end of this decade, and PCC is doing its part to deliver at least a portion of that number.

But choosing a career option is just one element of finding educational success. Many learners haven’t finished high school, didn’t do well in high school, or look back years or sometimes decades to when they were last in a school environment. For these students, the processes involved in just entering college can be overwhelming, let alone taking on the task of actually learning a new skill base. PCC has their best interests in mind, too, and offers a series of supports designed to help them get through the entry hurdles and into the education processes beyond.

 

 

Guided Pathways:

Just as the name suggests, Guided Pathways provide a clearly marked educational map of processes to follow to enter, complete, and graduate from college. Designed around specific job and career options, the pathways help define any barriers that might slow students’ success and suggest possible resolutions to those impediments. It then sets out a detailed map of the courses needed to achieve those educational goals. Throughout the process, PCC counselors maintain contacts with the learners to help them through any subsequent hurdles that might pop up during the semester. Finally, Guided Pathways assist the students in graduating from PCC by facilitating their individual next steps, whether those include transferring to a four-year school, completing certification requirements, or finding a job.

 

Getting Started at the Robert G. Freeman Center

The Robert G. Freeman Center (Center) is PCC’s one-stop-shop for getting started. The Center provides a full scope of services for students at all stages of their education, from beginners to internship-seekers to graduates planning their careers.

 

 

Beginning College Students

Often, the most challenging step for a beginning college student is the first one. Learners seeking a new college experience but who may have no personal or family history with college can be especially challenged by the prospect of starting a new education track. Further, many new students aren’t fully aware of what they want to do or even what they’re good at, nor are they familiar with all the available options. PCC designed its Student Success supports with tools to help these hopefuls clarify their wishes, skills, and aspirations, then match those to appropriate programs and careers.

 

Career Surveys

For most students, the initial step is to take one of the two available Career Surveys. The simplified six-step “Quick Assessment” explores what the learner likes to do, how they use their skills in their daily lives, and how engaged they want to be with others in their optimal job. The 60-question “Detailed Assessment” delves deeper into personal skills, preferences, abilities, and ambitions. Each assessment then provides an overview of the student’s strengths and suggests possible career options that work well with those attributes. Insights gleaned here can help the new students identify which jobs or careers offered in the Career Communities are the best fit for their skillset and satisfaction expectations.

 

Counseling

PCC’s counselors have all the tools needed to help any student resolve a concern or move forward in their education. Typically available in person, they are now accessible online, so no one chances a COVID-19 exposure. Additionally, the website hosts a series of “How To” tutorials available to learners whenever they have the time to look.

 

Tutoring

PCC’s ‘Success Centers’ provide tutoring services, technology access, study space, and more, and are dotted across the campus when classes are in session. These days, they are also available remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their Success Coaches are available to direct the student to the resources they need at that time, and also to review longer-range plans and strategies.

 

Special Groups

Many PCC students manage personal and family challenges in addition to being new to the college experience. PCC’s Special Services unit helps learners coping with language concerns, students whose lives are impacted by incarceration, foster youth, Disabled students, and learners who must also work or provide care services for family members. Students of African descent, with sexual or gender diversities, and those with military veteran status will find the assistance they need to reach their goals. Each of these situations presents unique challenges; PCC designed its counseling services to encompass them all.

 

Continuing Students

Sometimes staying in school is more difficult than getting started in school, as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated. PCC’s focus is on helping its student body progress through their chosen programs then graduate into careers of their choosing, and it offers help and support every step along the way. Program maps keep learners on track with their eventual goals, while the guided exit process moves them through graduation and into their next steps, whether those are toward a four-year degree, a new job, or a new career.

 

PCC Student Success Metrics

PCC measures its success by the number of students that progress through and complete their programs, fully prepared to find their future. It knows its Pathway program works because the metrics derived from a 2019 study prove that fact:

* 87% of students following Pathways tracks persisted from fall to fall (compared to 80% of non-Pathways students);

* Almost half (48%) successfully completed transfer-level English and math courses (32% of non-Pathways students)

* 64% were prepared for transfers (43%);

* 44% were ready to transfer (28%), and

* 39% completed their program (22%).

 

PCC has learned that connecting students with the supports they need as individuals is the key to facilitating their success. As an institution, PCC knows that its students can find success when school-based supports include counseling that is sensitive to their personal concerns, clearly marked pathways lead them from college entry to taking the job, and they get individual attention for coping with all the details of life that pop up along the way.

And PCC isn’t finished in its evolution to job-training Mecca just yet. Like the economy, job skills evolve over time, and PCC is as committed to meeting those future needs as it is to meeting today’s labor force demands. Maybe the pandemic has you thinking about what your new future might look like? For more information, start here.

 

 

PCC’s Six Career Communities and California’s EWD Revolution

Pam Sornson, JD on October 8, 2020

This is Part One of a two-part overview detailing how PCC’s six Career Communities tie into its regional industries and businesses. Part Two discusses the support systems PCC provides to ensure its students can thrive in both their education and their future careers.

 

 

Rethinking Career Options After COVID-19

For many people these days, the future is foggy. The COVID-19 pandemic may have forced them to work from home, and they’re finding that the at-home mandate isn’t to their liking. Others may have lost their job altogether and wonder where and when they will find their next one.

The reality is that the virus and its impact on jobs and the economy have given people the time to think about not just what they can do to earn their living, but also what they want to do once it’s over and the world gets back to ‘normal.’ The pandemic is providing a departure from our culture’s ‘business as usual’ mentality and allowing people to truly ponder their future. Many are taking the time to consider possible changes they might make that are more in line with who they want to be. And for a significant number, the answer to their soul-searching inquiry is to pursue advanced educational goals.

Fortunately, the State of California is way ahead on that thought process.

 

 

 

Strategizing the Future of the State …

In 2012, at one of its Economic Summits, the State of California convened to evaluate and strategize a revision of its economy. That gathering resulted in two public policy principles that are now playing a significant role in the work of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) and its 116 community colleges:

Rethink the overall monolithic economy as one of many regional economies, and build each one per its individual assets, and

Expand the career and technical education options (CTE) in each regional economy to meet its respective industries’ needs.

For the State, revisioning means a realignment of state-based resources to enhance the best economic growth opportunities as those arise in each region. For the local and regional community colleges, the revisioning means redirecting school resources towards teaching and training to the requirements of their local business and industrial communities.

 

… and of Pasadena City College

For PCC, the revisioning means developing relationships with its corporate neighbors and engaging them in the process of building a more robust, more relevant workforce. It also means ensuring its students have the training and skills needed to find work in those businesses. To do that, PCC is implementing California’s Guided Pathways strategy to assist every student enter college, attain the education and credentials they seek, and graduate into successful and fulfilling careers.

 

The Business Needs Survey

In 2018, PCC conducted a ‘Business Needs Assessment‘ survey, seeking direct inputs from the companies and employers who needed to workers that PCC would train. The assessment had three goals:

To identify employment trends and anticipated industry growth, including the skill requirements for entry-level jobs within those sectors;

To assess the business community’s interest in providing on-the-job training and internships opportunities for PCC students, and

To assess the business community’s perception of PCC, and its willingness to join the jobs-creation effort as PCC’s partners.

The survey focused on businesses in Pasadena’s ‘primary industrial sectors,’ which offer the most promise for future growth and development.

 

The Business Needs Assessment

That assessment provided all kinds of interesting insights:

Of the 112 company respondents, over 40 were information technology (IT) businesses. This strong response indicates that technology skills are in high demand AND that those skills are deployable in more than one industrial sector.

Business leaders were also optimistic about business growth possibilities, with almost 80% expecting gains in the near term of five years, and 70% expecting gains to continue through the next ten years.

Approximately 48% of respondents reported they would need workers with at least some advanced education beyond high-school. Of these, almost half were looking for Associates Degrees, while the others required some form of certification or advanced training that wasn’t available in high school but was necessary to qualify for the work.

Perhaps most optimistically, over 60% would be available for job shadowing, and most of those would also be available for internships. These forms of training provide the on-the-job skills needed that respond to the ‘more-than-high-school-but-less-than a degree’ demands.

Overall, the survey provided a vast wealth of information that PCC has used to streamline and guide its program-based planning and investments.

(Note that PCC conducted the study before COVID-19, so it may not be as accurate now as it was then. However, it does reflect the attitudes of business leaders; assuming many or most of those businesses were not lost to the pandemic, those attitudes were based on known business and economic realities that should rebound in some form as the epidemic recedes.) 

 

 

 

Providing an Optimal Learning Platform

PCC’s six Career Communities offer a wide variety of occupational and career options, so each PCC student can choose to pursue the one that best suits their aspirations and goals. Each career community title clarifies its course offerings, and identifies the industries driving the demand for those programs. Some training straddles multiple sectors, such as IT courses, while other programs are narrowly designed to meet the needs of specific specialties, such as dental hygienics.

 

 

 

The Arts, Communication & Design Career Community

LA’s vast entertainment industry offers many enticing career options, including creative pursuits like multimedia arts and animation, directing and producing, and film and video engineering and editing. Similar design-based occupation options include architecture and industrial engineering, speech-language pathologies, urban planning, and Internet-related design and development.

 

The Business & Industry Career Community

This Career Community covers a vast array of subject matters and career options, from accounting and auditing to hospitality management and paralegal studies. PCC designed these programs to respond to the various training levels sought by its students, from relatively simple on-the-job skills through to both Associate Degrees and Four-Year Transfer Degrees. The umbrella covers justice administration, automotives, business management, business information technology, electrical tech, culinary arts, and fire technologies.

 

The Health Sciences & Wellness Career Community

LA’s health and wellness industries continue to grow, and PCC course offerings reflect that demand. Students can train to become physician assistants and dental hygienists, health educators, nursing specialists, and radiology technologists.

 

 

 

 

The Liberal Arts Career Community

These career options span every interest from audiology to writing, with several education-based training programs sprinkled in. Here, second language learners find the training they need to pursue higher education opportunities in foreign languages and linguistics.

 

The Social & Behavioral Sciences Career Community

Students interested in these subjects are often caring and compassionate individuals who want to help others. Career options cover a wide variety of education-related occupations (administrators, child-care specialists, school counselors, etc.), and programs in social work, mental health therapies, and human resource services.

 

The STEM Career Community 

Science, technology, engineering, and math are the core sciences driving this Career Community. Students can learn the skills needed for many different industries in these programs, including forensic investigations; information systems security, analysis & statistics; environmental science concepts, and surveying and mapping technologies. Since IT employment accounts for 13% of California’s gross economy, it makes sense that PCC would adopt IT education as one of the pillars of its STEM career college.

 

After the Pandemic – PCC?

Thousands of displaced workers are wondering what their future holds and what their next steps should be. Pasadena City College provides both answers and solutions to those concerns. It offers a selection of programs that appeal to a broad stratum of learners, as well as the coursework and hands-on-learning they need to find a job.

Everyone whose job is affected by the COVID-19 concern (or who is just wondering what else they might do with their time) should take the opportunity to explore further career options that are a better match for their skills and abilities and that may lead them to the work that satisfies their personal ambitions and goals.

Stephanie Fleming: Supporting PCC’s Frontline Teaching Troops

Pam Sornson, JD on September 17, 2020

“There are no work policies for pandemics,” deadpanned Stephanie Fleming, Dean of Instructional Support for Pasadena City College (PCC). She was speaking, of course, about the abrupt halt to standard college operations in March 2020, due to the unabated spread of the COVID-19 virus. Her role as Dean gave her both a front-row view of the virus-control processes rolling out across campus, and the opportunity to collaborate with Dr.’s Bob Blizinski and Terry Giugni (VP’s respectively of HR and Instruction) on strategies and next steps. She’s learned a lot from her experience assisting with redirecting a highly organized and connected institution and helping it juggle its myriad of obligations and aspirations when faced with what was truly an insurmountable barrier.

 

Many Perspectives to Consider

At first, like much of the world, all of PCC paused when the volume of both information and misinformation muddled everyone’s capacity to address the advancing health threat. After carefully reviewing all facets of the situation, the leadership team launched the first of many steps in response to the crisis, recognizing the need to craft short-, mid-, and long-term decisions.

 

Short-term considerations:

Initially, simply getting students out of the classrooms and off-campus was the goal. That was handled pretty quickly, and the physical site went dark just days after the call was made to close it. But the swift switch to remote learning prompted many more questions:

For the school as a whole:

How would the school handle those classes and courses that don’t translate to remote learning? Hands-on labs, courses with lots of field trips, or programs that engage heavily in work-based learning situations suddenly lost those training opportunities.

Even courses that do shift fairly easily to online learning posed problems when the student didn’t have the resources available to connect to them. Could the school help them, if it had the resources available to do so?

For the faculty trying to finish the semester:

As the Dean of Instructional Support, Fleming’s role on the leadership team focused her attention on assisting the faculty to achieve their semester goals despite the COVID-19 concern. The project wasn’t an easy one: most of PCC’s teaching staff relied on years of standard teaching strategies, very few of which transitioned smoothly to an all-digital format.

Further, the ‘digital skill’ level of the overall faculty wasn’t balanced either; for some, the transition was more comfortable than it was for others. However, no matter their skills, all of PCC’s faculty was at a loss for what to do when they suddenly had to move all their curriculum online and, simultaneously, become adept at reaching their students remotely. Fleming was busy sorting who needed what and determining how she could help them.

She set her focus on maintaining as much instruction as possible while prioritizing safety for all.

No Easy Answers

However, Fleming quickly learned that there are no short answers to the questions she and the team were facing. Every decision had subsequent, significant, and sometimes devastating consequences, if not thought through thoroughly.

Individual issues illustrate the depth of the challenge as it existed in March and April 2020:

Some courses typically assigned grades based on hands-on projects, while others relied on technology to determine students’ marks. Without access to the tech or the data, how would students complete their work or professors grade those students?

Some courses simply couldn’t continue from a remote perspective, so they made an early decision to assign those students an incomplete grade, which wouldn’t affect their GPA. This election eliminated the requirement of assigning a merit-based grade, but also hindered the educational careers of students who needed that prerequisite grade to continue in their course of study.

It also raised the issue of the student loan that paid for that course. Would the lender pay for that course again? Would the school absorb those costs for the second go-round? How could the student remain unaffected in this circumstance?

The changes mandated by the transition to online teaching also created havoc with PCC-affiliated contracts and standards. In some cases, the virus interfered with long-standing agreements, and those terms needed review and sometimes revisions in the face of the pandemic. Other COVID-19 related accommodations resulted in violations of teaching and institutional standards, putting the school’s accreditation in jeopardy.

Never far from her mind, though, were the circumstances of PCC students, some of whom were facing potentially college-ending situations.

International students were facing the loss of their F1 visas if they weren’t able to attend classes. That loss would mandate their departure from the country.

Many other students were struggling to find the resources they needed when they had no access to the resources available at the school. Students without technical resources or Internet access at home were unable to remain as students. The pandemic had revealed the cultural divide between those students with assets and those without.

Teamwork to the Rescue

Fleming noted throughout the conversation how the ‘success’ of PCC’s transformation to an all-digital school was the result of the collaboration of its faculty and administration staff. Everyone from the Dean’s office through all the ranks and divisions came together with their talents, skills, and know-how to solve immediate problems and contribute insights that might generate strategic solutions to longer-term concerns.

The Distance Education team was a critical component of the school’s success. Those professionals contributed a variety of resources and efforts to get every teacher and every office online.

Decisions were hammered out in all-in meetings that included faculty, staff, and leadership. Together, they explored each element of every decision for its potential impacts across the campus.

The Professional Development team was also instrumental in getting classes online. They worked tirelessly to implement the ‘Just in Time’ training that the Distance Education department developed in response to the pandemic. That process brought the entire teaching staff onto a single strategy, so courses and learning would be at least consistent if they couldn’t be optimal.

In remarkably short order, PCC was back ‘in business,’ at least to finish the Spring semester.

 

Mid-term Decisions

The work done to get the school online also informed the strategy for PCC’s Summer Session.

Theories developed early on around student support were put to the test, including those that promised hope to learners with sensitive access and capacity issues.

Faculty training shifted from digital competence to ensuring the achievement of as many necessary teaching standards as possible. Grading plans and student supports were put in place, and Fleming assisted the VP of Instruction, VP of Human Resources, Dean of Distance Education, and the Faculty Association to craft parameters for appropriate additional training.

While all teaching staff received sufficient training to remain accredited, some elected to attend an extended course that gave them accreditation for distance teaching as well.

All academic staff also received at least basic training so they could understand what their colleagues were doing.

Summer Session also brought its own set of challenges:

Enrollment was impacted in strange ways. Some classes were almost empty (not surprising), while others filled up quickly and had waiting lists.

Some courses needed not just digital learning but also some semblance of an on-site opportunity, too. The health sciences departments are currently working through possible solutions to allow on-site work but in as safe a manner as possible. Hopefully, those announcements will come soon.

Fall Session is also revealing unexpected nuances to the challenge:

Fleming expects the college will continue building on the faculty’s newly established ‘uniform training’ platform, which lays the foundation for future building opportunities.

That platform is also proving advantageous for more esoteric training beyond getting lessons to students. Fleming is especially enthused about using it to develop a broader base of equity and diversity training, as an example.

Face-to-face teaching opportunities continue to present concerns, but the school continues to consider multiple options to provide as much learning as possible despite needed protections.

These and other concerns, challenges, and opportunities will continue to develop over time, as PCC works to build its ‘new normal’ in this decidedly different world.

 

Long-term Considerations

Looking back, Fleming is immensely proud of the work being done by PCC and all its teams through this entire adventure. It’s managed to save as much instruction as possible, and to preserve stability across its curricula. She is also immensely grateful to the teaching staff who, admittedly, have born the burden of learning how, adopting, then learning from their new digital teaching practices. She notes that both the faculty association and the district are seeking ways to recognize their effort.

Looking forward, Fleming is accepting the situation as an evolving strategic planning session. Regardless of the solutions in place now, it is almost assured that circumstances will change and that new solutions will be needed tomorrow. She will continue to work with the PCC leadership team to support the school’s professors, so they can accomplish their session goals (as much as possible) while also retaining the joy they experience in their teaching role. As the Dean of Instructional Support, that focus seems to be the best ‘policy’ available when there are no other policies to which to turn.

 

 

 

 

Shelagh Rose: Finding Opportunity in an Unlikely Situation

Pam Sornson, JD on September 15, 2020

Well, here’s some pretty sweet lemonade made from one fairly bitter lemon: Shelagh Rose, Career Community Faculty Coordinator at Pasadena City College (PCC), looks at the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Like any other unexpected development, the situation forced her and her colleagues to re-evaluate the work they do to keep PCC’s stellar faculty and staff well able to teach and serve PCC’s equally stellar student population. She’s using both data revealed by inquiry into student experience at PCC and the conclusions it suggests to address long-standing concerns while building a healthier future for the entire PCC region.

 

 

She’s also enthused by the present mindset of the PCC faculty. The pandemic has opened their collective eyes to challenges they’d not otherwise been in a place to see. With their heightened attention also piquing their interest, Rose hopes to engage them in new considerations that better serve PCC’s greater diverse community.

 

Always Learning; Looking to Teach

Rose is currently a student in the doctoral program in Educational Leadership at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSEIS). She is also fortunate to be a part of a long-standing Research-Practitioner Partnership with faculty and Ph.D. students from GSEIS. As a member of this partnership, Rose, along with a multiconstituent group from PCC, participates in a Data Inquiry Group (DIG) focusing on student ‘career decision-making processes‘ at all stages of their education. As the research partners gather data about the barriers and supports PCC students face in their career exploration and decision-making process, Rose gains insights about the additional supports that would benefit students engaging in this process.

One of the significant drivers of the UCLA program is its focus on equity and how inequitable access to information affects long-term outcomes for historically underserved students. The COVID-19 concern is acting as a substantial disruption to ‘standard operating procedures,’ revealing where those inequities lie and how destructive they are. She intends to partner with others campus-wide to use the information to inform the changes she hopes to see at PCC. She likens the COVID-19 situation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, which educated millions of Americans about long-standing injustice, and ushered in years of enlightened legislation to address those challenges.

 

Deeper Insights = Better Decisions

One of the first concerns Rose noted when reviewing data provided by PCC’s UCLA partners was how often Latino/Latina/Latinx and Black/African American students choose career paths that may respond to their personal values, but that don’t necessarily lead to a livable wage or a wider range of career options. While most seek jobs that will improve their community, they may limit themselves to a narrow field of known choices and fail to discover a wider selection of careers related to that occupation. Rose and her team of career community faculty leads are working to introduce them to those expanded options, many in the STEM field, that address their concerns with social issues while also facilitating a more lucrative future.

At PCC, she’s bringing her insights to her work with the Robert G. Freeman Center, its Work-based Learning department, and the PCC Transfer Center, who have partnered with her and her team to organize PCC’s six Career Communities. Supported by a federal Title 5 grant dedicated to Hispanic Serving Institutions, she has also engaged the partnership of a collaborative “Equipo” (Spanish for ‘team’) – an advisory board of students who work with their PCC faculty colleagues. The six Career Communities they advise now provide a space for all students to explore career and major options while also connecting them to the academic, career, and personal support they need to achieve their goals. Because her work is faculty-facing, Rose also supports the faculty in their role as leads for their respective career community. (When asked, 28 faculty members applied for the Team Lead role, and the college hired all. Many of these leads attend the UCLA inquiry partnership, gaining valuable information about students, which they can then take back to their specific Career Community development team.)

 

Pre- and Post-COVID-19: It’s All Good

Rose is just in her second year as Career Community Lead, after spending 13 years fully dedicated to classroom teaching as an ESL instructor and another ten as faculty lead for the First Year Pathways programs. During these years, she participated successfully in campus leadership positions:

As a member of the Senate Executive of Academic Senate, she suggested that updates on the school’s Guided Pathways program be added to every meeting agenda to report on the program’s progress for the full faculty.

As a member of the Pathways team, she coordinated College 1, developing professional development, in which over 200 faculty, administrators, and staff participated.

Rose is proud of the long-term relationships she enjoys with PCC’s faculty, staff, and administration, including several significant friendships that she treasures and on which she is relying as she moves forward. She deeply understands that it takes many collaborators to transform a college so that their processes actually improve students’ lives.

For the early part of the 2019-2020 school year, Rose collaborated with her team to develop several events to introduce students to explore the broadest possible range of career options. The highlight was a two-day ‘Explore Your Career Comunidad’ fair that attracted approximately 1,000 PCC students. Since that event occurred in March immediately before the college went remote, it has been challenging to plan additional events. Instead, Rose has taken the opportunity to team up with Myriam Altounji, the Guided Pathways Faculty Lead, Jacqueline Javier, the Director of Work-based Learning at the Freeman Center, and Jason Barquero, the new Freeman Center Director, to develop a strategy for ongoing collaboration between the Center and the instructional side of the campus.

 

Past Lessons; Forward Progress

Looking back, Shelagh Rose wouldn’t change anything that’s gotten her to this point in her career at PCC, and she’s very excited about taking those next steps towards her Ed.D. She recognizes that making any substantial change in an academic setting is a process. In her opinion, PCC is already deep into the process of ‘awareness building,’ as more faculty, staff, and administration members acknowledge the social realities of bias and inequality. There is a growing realization that the campus must play a role in achieving an equitable outcome for Latino/Latina/Latinx and African-American students.

Looking forward, she’s excited about PCC’s Career Communities’ ‘Social Justice Conference,’ running September 15th through the 17th. Following the conference, she and her team, with support from Strategic Communications and Marketing, will roll out a new website designed to streamline the PCC student’s user experience. And she’ll continue to plan career events for the future while exploring new ways to help PCC teachers help PCC students gain the satisfying careers they want. Far from being dismayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Shelagh Rose has embraced the opportunity it created to sharpen her focus and commitment to find even more success for all of PCC’s student body. Now isn’t that refreshing??

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas Thoen: Electrifying Online Instruction

Pam Sornson, JD on August 31, 2020

It’s no surprise that Professor Thomas Thoen, electronics instructor at Pasadena City College (PCC), is popular with his students. He’s been an avid fan of electronic gaming since childhood, and most of his students identify as ‘gamers,’ too. Thoen shares his natural affinity with his students and works to make his classes as much fun as they are educational.

 

Finding a New Circuit

When the PCC campus closed down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both Thoen and his students were non-plussed that the learning fun was screeching to a halt. In this case, that cessation of classroom and lab activities was particularly challenging because so much of the Electronics Technology that Thoen teaches requires hands-on learning. His students learn about the strategy and design around electronic circuitry, printed circuit hardware design, microcontrollers, digital electronics, and robotics, all of which require skillful manipulation of materials and tools. Without those hands-on training opportunities, they won’t gain the skills they need to enter today’s thriving electronics technology industries.

Thoen was equally dismayed about how to digitally replicate – if that was even possible – what he does at the school. His PCC lab is populated with special lab equipment, machines, tools, circuitry boards, etc., all the paraphernalia needed for the students to complete their labs. He was confident none of his students had those resources just lying around at home. However, after an almost 20-year teaching career (preceded by several years as an electrical engineer), he also knew he would be able to solve that problem, too.

 

 

An ‘AHA’ Moment – the Light Bulb Goes On!

While he had no problem moving his theory lectures online, he knew he had to provide his students the opportunity to practice the electronic skills those theories suggest. Fortunately, he had Strong Workforce Grant funds available, a stable home-based Internet connection, and a reliable car. He would purchase the parts his students need and meet them near campus, and in some cases deliver them to their homes, where they could practice what he was attempting to teach them. This possibility offered its own challenges:

Typical electronics equipment is expensive, and he needed to stretch his financial resources as far as he could. Shopping online, he found less costly but still eminently usable alternatives for each of his students.

He also needed licenses so his learners could access the designs and software they’d need to add to their home computers. The “Autodesk” online store came through with the solution to that problem. They directed him to comparable open-sourced software, which was free.

He also pursued a variety of reduced price options offered by companies actively helping students gain the resources needed to continue their education from a remote location.

Within a few weeks of going remote, Thoen had provided his students with both the equipment and the software they needed to implement at home what he would teach online.

Not that the situation was easy. The campus was closed, so Thoen only returned to it to retrieve needed supplies. Otherwise, he collected his wares in his home office/supply depot/family room, and the back of his car on delivery days. He also developed the video capabilities needed to record and upload his lessons to PCC’s online portal. Regardless of the difficulties, between Zoom meetings, video chats, and supply drop moments at each student’s home, he was able to retain almost 100% engagement with all of his learners right through to the end of the term.

 

Creating New Connections

According to Thoen, a big part of the success of his first COVID term was the excellent engagement by his students. Spanning the full scope of PCC’s student population, they included electronic tech wanna-be’s, yes, but also entrepreneurial types looking to build or improve on their big idea, budding electrical engineers, and just recreational folks looking to have some fun and learn some science. Almost all completed their labs and their term, and Thoen can’t be more proud of their accomplishment.

Looking ahead, Thoen is now more excited than he has ever been about his teaching future since he’s learned so much about how to optimize his already formidable skills for an online format. He has a clearer understanding of all the necessary bits and pieces that go into lab work, so he’ll have those ready and organized for his next class. His video’ing skills now capture the intricacies and nuances of electronic circuitry building and design, and he’s getting officially certified to teach via Distance Learning through an eight-week course provided by PCC. All in all, he’s much better prepared to meet student needs from a remote position.

However, as good as all that is, it is still not the icing on the top of Thoen’s cake when it comes to the COVID crisis. In his opinion, the best lesson both he and his students learned through the Spring 2020 PCC semester was how to be resilient. Regardless of the barriers and pivots and equipment swap-outs, he and they were able to meet the course goals as they were initially designed. Plus, everyone is now also skilled at online activities – how to attend virtual meetings, connect through the Internet, and follow through with strategies when they’re working at home, and there’s no one watching them.

All of these benefits will serve his students well, Thoen thinks, as they reach into their respective electronic technology futures. Those looking for careers now have more than just technical skills; they also have the work habits and collaborative abilities that will make them valuable employees somewhere, sometime, after the pandemic has passed.

As far as program updates, currently, Thoen is working with other faculty on updating the curriculum by developing new electronics courses based on the Internet of Things (IOT) and Audio Electronics.  These courses will bridge the gaps between different disciplines and help students to understand the “bigger picture” of how electronics connect to different industries.  Additionally, a stronger social media presence has been developed, including updating the PCC website, along with creating Facebook and Instagram pages.  Please feel free to check these out!

Jesse Torres: PCC EWD’s Guide to Industry

Pam Sornson, JD on August 28, 2020

Pasadena’s Economic and Workforce Development (EWD) department works with a myriad of agencies, industries, and businesses to gather the information needed to drive its programs and services. However, connecting with all those resources takes time and strategy to maximize both the effort and the result. Consultant Jesse Torres, principal of ArroyoWest LLC, a Los Angeles-based economic consulting company, takes on the task on behalf of the department and brings a long and well-versed personal and corporate history to the project.

 

 

Education + Experience = Value for PCC EWD

Torres’s communications and business development talents were already sharp when Pepperdine University hired him as the Director of Alumni Relations for its Graziadio School of Business. He had received his MBA in finance from that alma mater, and his focus was always on helping businesses and industries thrive economically. That focus paid off, apparently, when he left Pepperdine two years later to become the Regional Director for the LA Small Business Development Center Network (LASBDC), and then again three years later, when he left the LASBDC to join the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

In both agencies, Torres’s attention was on working with companies and regional industries to grow and develop new economic opportunities, whether through direct contacts and communications or through the strategizing and development of business-friendly policies. Both jobs also revealed to him the diverse eco-systems in which California’s industries thrive, based on their geographic location, cultural backgrounds, and community connections.

What his education and experience have taught him is that the State of California is bursting with talent, innovation, and opportunity and only needs connections across its resources to nurture those opportunities to fruition. In his position as a principal at Arroyo West, he provides those insights to his clients as they develop their small businesses into bright futures. Through his work, he is helping PCC EWD foster industry connections even during the COVID-19 pandemic.  In addition to a notable Rolodex of who’s who in California’s business community, Torres brings a wealth of knowledge about what’s what and how to get things done.

 

Macro View; Micro Details

His position with the SBDC, gave him an understanding of the finer details of managing a successful business: customer management services, HR practices, and even regulatory compliance and his state-level position offered insights and information about the interplay of industry, communities and small businesses at large.  Knitting the two views together creates in Torres a formidable bevy of tools, strategies, and comprehensions that are applicable in almost any corporate or enterprise situation. It’s this bevy of tools that Torres offers to the PCC EWD. He helps the department make connections with its industry and corporate neighbors, while also engendering success in those relationships for both the school and its business compatriots.

From these perspectives, Torres brings several lessons to the PCC EWD table as the department reaches out to new and potential business partners:

To a company eying Pasadena as a potential home base, the available labor pool is as significant a deciding factor as other economic incentives or something more intrinsic like our year-round good weather.  Companies won’t make any city their home if they can’t find the labor resources they need to thrive in that community.

That labor pool also needs to develop the skills and abilities demanded by regional companies, tailored as much as possible to both the relevant industry and the specific business. Teaching students anything less serves no purpose.

Successfully connecting the two – corporate and labor – requires a strategy that ensures the needs of both are met, and that they can successfully partner to achieve their common goals: good jobs, healthy communities, and successful companies.

It’s from this perspective that Torres’s real work begins: helping PCC EWD advance on its industry priorities and supporting EWD leadership in determining and developing what programming is needed to attract and retain corporate engagement and to demonstrate that PCC is in step with the evolving industry sectors.

 

 

 

It’s All in the Details …

As in all other LA and California regions, there are identified industrial sectors that have a higher representation within the area, so those are the sectors that determine the scope of PCC programming. In his initial scope of work as a consultant for the department, Torres’ work involved researching key industries, reaching out to industry representatives and introducing them to PCC’s unique labor-development resources for those industries.  He played a significant role in the design and implementation of the department’s first Future of Work conference which brought many industry, academic and legislative contacts to PCC to discuss the opportunity for greater collaboration on economic and workforce issues.

Part of his work also involved exploring how to best support PCC EWD in developing strategies to connect industry and academia in term of talent development and upskilling.  From the school’s perspective, the business’s information about its specific needs not only impacts curricula development but also often defines economic investments in books, tools, and even lab construction.  From the business’s perspective, seeking well-trained staff may also be an indicator of corporate growth, which will, in turn, require analysis of the company’s finances, its capacity to take on more workers, and even a review of its HR protocols.

 

… Pivoting in COVID-19

As noted, the original scope of work entailed face-to-face meetings, seminars, and other networking opportunities. Then COVID-19 hit, and, like the rest of the world, it compelled Torres and PCC EWD to adjust his tactics and scope to reflect that new reality. Again, his past experience informed his decisions and his steps forward.

Back in 2018, while still at the Governors’ Office, one of Torres’s projects was to assist the countless small businesses impacted by that year’s devastating wildfires. The ability to adapt to one’s circumstances quickly rose to the top of the ‘most desired skills’ list, and the impact of Torres’s experience both personally and from observing the effort of those business owners remains with him today. That experience helped him pivot (like other PCC colleagues) to accommodate the virus while maintaining a steady focus on his goal of connecting PCC EWD resources to the businesses and companies that need them.

 

Looking Forward

The COVID-19 pause has also allowed Torres and the PCC EWD to regroup and rethink their next steps, although those will be different after receiving the benefit of Torres’ inputs. They’ve engaged in a retreat to review overarching intentions and resources, and have already implemented new communications tools (such as podcasts for both Torres and PCC EWD) to get the virtual work out to the community. Moving forward, outreach will be more strategic, and goals will be both clearer and most cleanly defined, which will help with metrics and measuring success.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that Torres’s work remains unchanged, regardless of the pandemic or any other barrier that has already popped up or will in the future. His focus remains on helping companies find success within their industry, and workers find success within their jobs. Adding in assisting students to find their future seems a logical next step in Jesse Torres’s already stellar career trajectory.

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