Nov 15, 2022
00:00:00 Sandra
When we shift the burden away
from the student, then we make our institutions more accessible to
them; where we don't burden them with proving that they are in fact
poor to access resources, when we don't burden them with having to
buy textbooks for specific classes, when we look at initiatives
that are intended to support them unconditionally as they're in
their educational journey - those are the types of things that will
help us keep our students.
00:00:27 Christina
The workforce landscape is
rapidly changing, and educators and their institutions need to keep
up. Preparing students before they enter the workforce to make our
communities and businesses stronger is at the core of getting an
education.
00:00:40 Christina
But we need to understand how to
change and adjust so that we can begin to project where things are
headed before we even get there. So, how do we begin to predict the
future?
00:00:52 Salvatrice
Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice
President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City
College, and host of this podcast.
00:01:01 Christina
And I'm Christina Barsi,
producer and co-host of this podcast.
00:01:05 Salvatrice
And we are starting the
conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like
how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable,
and how to attain one of our highest goals; more internships and
PCC students in the workforce.
00:01:18 Salvatrice
We at Pasadena City College want
to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our students are
learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they
enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us. You, the
employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions, and the
community as a whole.
00:01:38 Christina
We believe change happens when
we work together, and it all starts with having a conversation. I'm
Christina Barsi.
00:01:46 Salvatrice
And I'm Salvatrice Cummo, and
this is the Future of Work.
00:01:52 Christina
If you missed last week's Future
of Work conference presented by Pasadena City College, then this
episode is a great snapshot of some of the thought leaders who took
the stage.
00:02:02 Christina
We are sharing with you the
panel discussion that took place featuring some familiar speakers
you might recognize from the podcast like Will Walls and Kelly
LoBianco. We hope you enjoy our recap of the panel segment of the
Future of Work Conference presented by PCC.
00:02:22 Leslie
My name is Leslie Thompson and
I'm the Director of Operations for Economic and Workforce
Development here at Pasadena City College. We're excited to have
with us here today, a strong lineup of panelists to help us further
dig deep into our discussion areas, and we're really thankful to be
joined by Jessica Ku Kim, who will be serving as our panel
discussion moderator.
00:02:38 Leslie
Jessica Ku Kim is the Chief
Deputy of the newly formed Los Angeles County Department of
Economic Opportunity. Jessica's worked in economic and workforce
development within LA County since 2005, and brings local community
knowledge and trust, field expertise, subject matter expertise,
organizational, and sector leadership, and demonstrated outcomes
for economic and workforce development programs and services,
public-private partnerships, and collaborative systems
change.
00:03:02 Leslie
As Chief Deputy of LA County's
Department of Economic Opportunity, Jessica oversees the operations
of DEO to ensure enhanced economic and workforce development
policy, programs and services, commissions, administration, public
affairs, and communications, and information technology, and data
management and analytics that serve to create quality jobs, help
small businesses and high road employers start and grow, and build
vibrant local communities and spaces.
00:03:27 Leslie
Previously, Jessica had served
at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, as Vice
President of Economic and Workforce Development, where she had
oversight of worker and small business-focused programs and
services, strategic engagement with the public, private, social,
and philanthropic sectors, and increasing regional resources,
opportunities, and alignment. Let's bring in to the podium now to
begin our panel discussion. Please help me in welcoming Jessica Ku
Kim.
00:03:55 Jessica
Thank you, Leslie. Whenever your
bio's read, it always makes me tingle a little. But hopefully, you
all are having wonderful morning, I'm really glad to be back to
this Future of Work forum. I was here for the inaugural one and
it's such a great opportunity for us to come together and discuss
it.
00:04:10 Jessica
And my colleague Dr. Su Jin Jez,
hopefully, you enjoyed her presentation this morning as well. Let's
begin with our panelists. So, if you could please share your name,
title, organization, and your reason for participating today, and
I'll start here to my left.
00:04:23 Will
Hello everyone. My name is Will
Walls. I help small business owners and entrepreneurs get more
through the language of sales. I am also an alumni. I started at
2020 non-traditional student at PCC in February of 2020, right
before the pandemic happened, I had no idea - decided to go back to
school, and then there was a pandemic. So, it was quite an
interesting thing. I started February, 18th, graduated this past
year, now at UCR, and on the panel, I'm the student representative
to share my perspective.
00:04:55 Jessica
Thank you.
00:04:55 Micah
Good morning everyone. I'm Dr.
Micah Young. I serve as the Dean of Health Sciences here at
Pasadena City College. My reason for being on the panel is to
represent both the academic community, but also, representing the
interests of students as they're looking toward those pathways, and
those true career pathways and alignment from education to industry
and beyond.
00:05:11 Kelly
Hi everyone. My name is Kelly
LoBianco. I'm the director of the LA County Department of Economic
Opportunity. I work closely with Jessica. We are one of the newest
departments in the county, bridging Economic and Workforce
Development. So, I'm really excited to be here with you all today
to talk about how we can bring together our public workforce and
education systems for shared impact. Thank you.
00:05:32 Sandra
Good morning everyone, Sandra
Sanchez. I'm the Interim Vice Chancellor for the Workforce and
Economic Development Division of the California Community Colleges
Chancellor's Office. It's a really long title.
00:05:44 Sandra
So, I'm excited to be here this
morning. You know, part of the responsibility of the system office
is to make sure that our colleges have the resources to meet our
students where they're at, and to support them along their career
journeys. So, I'm really excited to be here today to kind of share
with you a little bit about what our system office is focused on
and how we're moving this work forward. Thank
you.
00:06:02 Martin
My name is Martin Hernandez, I'm
the Senior Program Associate with the LA County Department of Arts
and Culture. So excited for all the county representation on the
panel today. Big thank you to PCC for having me. I actually
administrate the LA County Arts Internship Program on behalf of the
department. It's alongside the Getty's Foundation. It's the largest
paid arts internship program in the country.
00:06:20 Martin
PCC is a very strong partner of
ours and has worked closely with us to ensure that their students
have access to the program. Over the past couple of years, we as a
department have been embarking on a multi-year effort to build
deeper relationships with the community colleges to facilitate more
students from the community colleges participating in the program.
And so, I'm here to share a little bit about that
today.
00:06:38 Jessica
Thank you. So, Will, let's begin
with you, and congratulations for graduating and moving on to UCR,
another great university nearby. So, as a PCC graduate and as
someone who worked in the Freeman Career Center here on campus,
what factors do you think hinder a student's ability to achieve
their career objectives?
00:07:01 Will
Well, I want to start with, I
love the video that we started out with when they were asking the
kids about what are they here for? That type of thing. That was
good. I think if you were to ask the next question like "Do you
have an ed plan? Have you met with a counselor? Have you met with
an advisor? Have you been to the Transfer Center?" I just have a
feeling that they might not have done any of
that.
00:07:26 Will
So, as a student that worked in
the Transfer Center, I was actually surprised at how many students
didn't have an ed plan or had never met with a counselor or an
advisor, or never been to the Transfer Center. The Transfer Center,
oh my God, I cannot stress from day one, the Transfer Center, you
need to know the game plan. When I went in there to the Transfer
Center my first week, I had no clue.
00:07:54 Will
I'm a non-traditional student, I
don't know what ... I went in there and I said, "Look, I don't know
what I don't know." They grabbed my transcripts, I did have my
transcripts, and they start reading them like ones and zeros from
the Matrix and they start telling me what to do.
00:08:06 Will
So, it's going to land on
goal-setting. And when I say goal-setting, what I mean is having a
dream. When you show up here to PCC, I think that you need to know
what your dream is because if you can have a dream, you can have a
goal. And if you have a goal, an advisor can help you, a counselor
can help you.
00:08:26 Will
So, I kind of think that the
customer, which is the student, I think PCC should be in the
business of selling dreams, because if they never make that
connection, going to school and when you have an issue, like if
they accidentally sign you up as out of state, that's a problem
that you're going to have to advocate for yourself to get them to
fix it. Because sometimes, people don't fix it right away and
you've got issues. So, advocating for yourself, having a dream,
having a goal.
00:08:57 Jessica
I love the point you made about
you don't know what you don't know, right?
00:09:01 Will
Yes. That's so important. I said
that so many times. Whenever I met with anybody, "Look, I don't
know what I don't know, but here I am." And whenever I would say
that, they would come up with all this, "Oh well did you know you
can do this? Oh, did you know you can do that?"
00:09:17 Will
No, I don't know what I don't
know. I tell people, I have a friend of mine whose daughter's
19-years-old, she just started at PCC, and I told her to go into
the Transfer Center, say, "Will Walls told me to come here. And he
said, 'I can say I don't know what I don't know.'" It works. People
are going to help you.
00:09:34 Jessica
I like that. And I think the
institutions, as we think through it, how do we empower our
students to know it all? How are we delivering that capability for
that student to know it, right?
00:09:44 Will
Yeah. They're not going to know,
they're not experts. And one of the things being in the Career
Center, some of the students that come in and you can tell, I mean,
they're trying to get up the nerve to talk to adults and say, "Hey,
this isn't right." I watched this happen, and so they don't know
what they don't know. They're not experts and it's up to us to help
them.
00:10:06 Jessica
Thank you. Thank you. So, Dr.
Young, you know we're talking about transfers and one of the
important things is that we have curriculum that is aligned to what
industry needs, that it's aligned to the skills demand of
employers. What do you think are effective strategies for education
to do that.
00:10:24 Micah
So, when we're talking about
alignment between industry and academics, I would say you have to
look at the competencies that are required in both in terms of
having effective educators. And I think the California community
colleges does a great job of procuring highly effective educators,
but then it's a competency-based curriculum that leads to
employment opportunities.
00:10:39 Micah
And making sure that our faculty
and our staff are all committed to that same goal of understanding
how do the building blocks in the classroom lead to employment
opportunities on the backend. Sometimes that means retooling on
both ends, retooling both the student as well as the faculty to
understand that the industry has changed and industry will
continuously change as the economies of scale
change.
00:10:58 Micah
And as we move from regional
economies to global economies, and understanding that we're in
Southern California, which is a large global market - we have to be
positioned to not only prepare workforce for the local California
economy, but for that global economy, which the Southern California
region also provides as well.
00:11:13 Micah
So, that alignment has to be not
just at the K through 12 cycle, but also, at the community college
cycle. And then beyond making sure that there's a value for
education. I know we all say we value education, but getting that
true value for education across the penumbra of institutions that
exist.
00:11:26 Micah
We have a lot of students who
have to work during the time that they're in college in terms of
work-based education and work-based knowledge basing with things
that we're supporting. But how do we build on that capacity for
students so that they can migrate into a starting career and
additional career?
00:11:38 Micah
Understanding modern work says
that the average person will probably change careers five to seven
times within the course of their lifetime. How do we create
capacity within an individual and the autonomy and the advocacy,
and an intentionality behind the student to be able to say, "Hey, I
need help, I don't know what I don't know, but I want to come here
to get my start and have this position me long-term for success
within industry."
00:11:56 Jessica
I appreciate that. You know,
building on that, Sandra, we know that the future of work, like Dr.
Young mentioned, many of us, people are going to change careers
multiple times, but we know that first career is essential to
catapulting your career when we talk about earnings and wages. What
transformation needs to take place today to address that reality,
and how do we center that transformation around a student-centered
design?
00:12:21 Sandra
Thank you for that question.
Well, I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the vision for
success. And I think at the Chancellor's office, we are doubling
down our efforts on the vision for success, but the governor's
roadmap very much aligns with our vision for success. He very much
believes that the work that we have started needs to
continue.
00:12:38 Sandra
And so, part of this
transformation is really putting an emphasis on how our colleges
are creating empowered learners and creating unconditional
belonging on our campuses. And I think one of the key things is how
do we facilitate career mobility for our students? How are colleges
implementing these transformations to ensure that our students do
have access to every possible opportunity or work-based learning
experience that's going to help them land that first job, that will
then catapult them to greater opportunities.
00:13:08 Sandra
So, in terms of the work that
we've been doing, is really helping the colleges to transform their
institutions to think about how they serve students and walk
alongside them as they are coming to access resources and services.
And if we know that an individual is going to have about 17 jobs
throughout their lifetime in five different industries, then the
old paradigm of creating an expert and sending them off to work,
and that they'll retire in that old economy model, no longer stands
true.
00:13:39 Sandra
And so, we need to change the
way we meet students, we help them and we walk alongside them on
their journey. One of the things that we recently did at the
Chancellor's office is we commissioned a landscape analysis to look
at nationally, what is happening with experiential learning and
work-based learning across the country.
00:13:56 Sandra
And what we learned from that
landscape analysis and the report we published in the spring, is
that the first job has an impact on their lifetime of learnings for
an individual. So, that really makes it super important for our
colleges to make sure that work-based learning, experiential
learning, jobs and internships are a key component of every pathway
that a student enters and participates in if we're going to help
catapult them, as you stated to that next opportunity for
success.
00:14:25 Sandra
And so, it's really important
that we double down on our vision for success. Part of that is of
course, owning our data and looking at how our students are
actually doing. Are they thriving? Is it disproportionately
impacting certain populations of students? How we address that
matters.
00:14:40 Sandra
And so, if we center our
students in that design, if we focus on meeting them where they're
at, pairing high expectations with high support, we can hope to
have better outcomes for our students. But I think integrating that
conversation with our faculty and making sure that they understand
that students will not have one job in their lifetime, how do we
prepare them with those competencies as was stated earlier, and the
skills that they need to manage and thrive in multiple
industries.
00:15:09 Jessica
Thank you. I appreciate that. I
often joke with my husband, he was a teacher, then he worked at an
IT company, and then he went into occupational therapy, and then
now, he's in sales. And so, it definitely moves around, right? You
don't stay in one career path and one occupation, but we did pay
for all that education. So, that's the joke.
00:15:31 Jessica
So, Martin, let me move this to
you. So, you are working with all the community colleges to foster
work-based learning, especially in the arts. Can you describe your
experience fostering work-based learning in partnership with our
community colleges?
00:15:44 Martin
Yeah, I really appreciate Dr.
Jez opening up our conversation, talking about values, and
encouraging us all to think about our values and the approach to
the work.
00:15:53 Martin
I exist in this kind of
interesting space in that our internship program, we do not do the
placements. So, all of the arts nonprofits that are part of our
program that receive a grant from us actually go and do their own
hiring. So, I kind of just go out and cheerlead for the program at
large in front of students and say, "Hey, in the springtime every
year, we have about 230 of these 400-hour paid internships in the
arts, please apply."
00:16:16 Martin
And so, when I joined the
department in 2018, specifically to increase our outreach in the
community colleges, one of the things that I actually had been in
alignment with my previous work, but in this new role, is I think
every college has its own set of values and sometimes, those things
are very apparent and sometimes, they're not.
00:16:32 Martin
And I think what happens,
unfortunately, when I'm coming into a college that has a lot going
on, whether it's a community college or otherwise, when those
values are kind of put off to the side, it makes it more difficult
for me to understand who are the key players, who are the people
that I should be talking to, who is best poised to do the warm
handoff to their students or other faculty so that we can increase
enrollment or excuse me, participation in our community college
students into the program.
00:16:58 Martin
And so, here at PCC, it was
actually a music faculty that we had a connection with that
introduced me to folks at the Freeman Center. And actually, this
music faculty had been advocating for our program for many years
before our department had the infrastructure to support with that.
And that was a really vital connection.
00:17:12 Martin
And I then was able to be put in
contact with, I think, it was just Leslie who was on the team at
that time a couple of years ago. But from there, we grew up really
strong formal partnership where now, I'm able to come onto the
campus every year and speak about the program and share this
opportunity with the students.
00:17:26 Martin
And I don't have to restart the
process of meeting folks all over again to figure out who's going
to help me book the classroom to be able to come and speak and be
in front of the students. And I will just say for our department, I
know both because of my previous work, I worked in workforce
development programs both at the city YouthSource Centers, WEO
programs before I came to the county.
00:17:44 Martin
So, I kind of know how the ball
moves, and I know that sometimes for the career folks, the goal is
get the students the jobs. I know that sometimes for the teaching
faculty and the professors, it's get the students into the
classroom and passing the class.
00:17:56 Martin
And if you're not careful and if
the values are not in alignment, then those things can actually be
opposed to each other. And one of the things that we're seeing a
lot in our program in the era of COVID, is that if you make a
student choose between their internship or their schooling, they're
going to choose their schooling over their internship 9 times out
of 10.
00:18:11 Martin
And so, I work really hard to
make sure that students are aware that this program is very
flexible. We actually do not require students to major in the arts
to participate in this program. We know there's a lot of
arts-specific misconceptions and anxieties or students that may
want to participate in this program feel like they can't or what
have you.
00:18:29 Martin
And so, it's really, really
helpful when again, those values are present enough that we can
have that conversation at the outset. We have again, 228 of these
opportunities every single year as far north as Palmdale, Lancaster
South to Long Beach, West to Santa Monica and east to Pomona. And
so, we just want your students to be able to
participate.
00:18:47 Martin
So, when the staff are all on
the same page, both in the Career Center as well as in the
classroom, that can be a wonderful starting place for us. And when
we're not there, it obviously takes a lot more work and
navigation.
00:18:59 Jessica
I really appreciate your point
about the values alignment and having those conversations. I think
that's a key to get people to row in the same
direction.
00:19:06 Jessica
Kelly, so our newly formed
department has a mission to help unlock LA County's economic
potential by connecting workers to quality jobs, streamlining
resources to businesses, and building vibrant, diverse communities.
What does that look like in practicality and how do you tie into
the work of the region's community colleges?
00:19:27 Kelly
Thank you, Jessica. Yeah, and
before I even dig into a little bit of our department, I want to
piggyback on my colleague from the arts department's commentary
about like this sort of shared vision of success. Because I really
appreciate that too. You know, there's amazing partnerships through
the arts department for these great creative career
pathways.
00:19:43 Kelly
And I think we all can do at the
county a better job of connecting to our community college systems
about the sort of world of work-based learning opportunities that
we have available to us. Like through our department - and I'll get
into in a second a few of the other ways that we can better
align.
00:19:58 Kelly
You know, we oversee the Youth
at Work Program, which supports 14 to 24-year-olds in getting paid
work-based learning experiences. And we work with about 10,000
young adults per year. And sometimes, the goal is supporting
educational attainment. Sometimes the goal is really connecting to
that first job that's unsubsidized and not paid by the
county.
00:20:17 Kelly
And through the American Rescue
Plan, we've been able to enhance our programming for a little under
a thousand folks in the next couple of years for a much longer
internship experience. So, there's a lot of opportunities to
connect to the arts, to connect to a variety of sectors, and even
connect to county jobs.
00:20:33 Kelly
You know, we are a huge
workforce ourselves, 110,000 employees in counting I think, in
almost every occupation you can think of. And so, a lot of what
we're trying to do with our work-based learning experiences through
our public workforce system is also create a pathway to county
jobs, which are really great with good benefits and offer lifelong
pathways for folks.
00:20:50 Kelly
But to take a step back, our
department is brand new. I talked to some of you, I see some
friendly faces in the room, about what we're trying to do here. We
launched July 1, and are so lucky to have Jessica have joined our
team recently as well.
00:21:02 Kelly
We're bridging economic and
workforce development for the first time for the county under one
roof. We are at the beginning of this, in Jessica's bio, you heard
our mission. We're really here to build a more equitable economy
with thriving local communities, inclusive and sustainable growth,
and opportunity and mobility for all. And how do we do
that?
00:21:20 Kelly
We do that through creating
jobs, through supporting small businesses and high-road employers,
and building vibrant communities in local spaces. And then what
does that work-work really mean?
00:21:30 Kelly
So, we oversee one of the LA
County workforce development boards. That means that we oversee 58
of the 88 cities in the unincorporated areas and we work really
closely with our other six workforce development boards, making
sure that we're supporting workers and businesses in all 4,000
square miles of LA County.
00:21:47 Kelly
We run 19 of the American Job
Centers of California, again, in partnership with over 40 with our
collective workforce development boards. In that work, it's
outreach to communities. We're offering job readiness training,
industry-informed occupational skills training and credentials,
oftentimes in partnership with community
colleges.
00:22:04 Kelly
We're working with businesses,
making sure there's incentives for them for hiring and training and
bringing on new talent. And we're supporting that job connection
and offering follow-up services for retention and advancement for
workers throughout LA County.
00:22:16 Kelly
And then on the flip side, sort
of as we're thinking about that connection to economic development,
we offer a lot of support for businesses directly outside of hiring
and training, but also that, so we run the office of small
business, and this is really a concierge for small businesses and
entrepreneurs to get education, technical assistance, capital
access, networking opportunities.
00:22:36 Kelly
We support the connection to our
preference programs and certifications so that small businesses and
community-based organizations can access the $6 billion of county
purchasing power every single year. And we're also, doing things
like bringing together industry clusters, making sure that we're
thinking about our high-growth industries here in LA
County.
00:22:56 Kelly
We're supporting business
attraction, business improvement and literally, looking at county
space as opportunities for economic development in areas that we
can build more affordable housing and commercial opportunity. So,
we're doing a lot, but really at the end of the day, we're focused
on workers and businesses, and all of that through an equity lens
to bring it back to our mission and vision.
00:23:16 Kelly
You know, we have a lot of
resources but they're still limited. And so, we want to make sure
all of the investments that we make are for those historically
disinvested communities who are working with workers who need our
resources the most. And we're working in sectors that have the
highest opportunity to get folks family-sustaining wages and
pathways for that mobility that we just talked
about.
00:23:35 Kelly
You know, we're really excited
to be this new department and work more closely with the community
colleges. And so, the teams that sort of compile this department
were about 200 strong, have been working closely with the community
colleges for a long time. We co-locate centers, we have a lot of
training programs that we offer together, whether it's for the
green economy or for county positions or beyond.
00:23:56 Kelly
And we do that because we know
that the folks that are in community college classrooms, or walking
into our public workforce system, or entrepreneurs sitting in our
office of small businesses, are all the same folks and with same
families and same needs. And so, there's a real mutual advantage
for us to align our efforts together. And we know that's difficult
sometimes because we're like two large bureaucracies trying to move
together in sync.
00:24:19 Kelly
And so, some of the things on my
mind as we're a new department and refreshing our relationship with
community colleges and how we can work better together is really
this thinking about - Will, you used the word
customers.
00:24:30 Kelly
Like if our students are our
customers or our participants in any of our workforce programs,
what is their experience in accessing the public workforce system
or economic development systems or public education
systems?
00:24:40 Kelly
And how can we come together to
map that experience for them so that they get ... I like to use the
term sort of overwhelmed with the support that they actually need
to be present in classrooms, achieve their educational credentials
and degrees, and get that job that really helps sustain their
families.
00:24:54 Kelly
I think a lot about industry
engagement. You know, we talked about like how do you make sure
you're aligning the work in the classroom to the evolving needs of
our external environment. We're all out there talking to
businesses, whether it's major industries, small businesses,
nonprofits, hiring managers.
00:25:11 Kelly
And so, what can we do as two
large systems (our county and our community colleges) to think
about industry engagement and make sure all of the work that we're
doing is industry-informed? And to the presentation before mine by
the California Competes folks - not competing against each other
but actually thinking about how are we serving the individuals the
best way that we can, but also thinking with a systems change
lens.
00:25:31 Kelly
I think there's opportunities
for us all to think about how to connect students to other services
of the county. You know, we're one access point focused on economic
and workforce development, but we know that there's an opportunity
cost to upskilling and gaining an education. So, how do we make
sure that where are the resources for wraparound support, cash
assistance - there's a lot that the county can offer that we're
braiding that together.
00:25:56 Kelly
And DEO, our new department of
economic opportunity really hoping to be a point of access for
community colleges to make the county make a little bit more sense.
And then lastly, I think that there's opportunities for us, like I
said at the very top of this, around shared
impact.
00:26:09 Kelly
So, we have an opportunity to
set strategic goals together to look at the region and think about
the macro-level change that we really want to see and set those
goals. And so, that when we're doing the hard work of moving a
community college system or moving the county, that we have shared
goals in mind, and that we're working in concert on those. And so,
I'll go ahead and stop there.
00:26:30 Jessica
Thank you. A lot to think about,
especially from this morning's presentation too. Kelly mentioned
centering those in disadvantaged communities. This morning's
presentation shared some unfortunate data regarding significant
decline in enrollment across California community
colleges.
00:26:47 Jessica
And the additional painful
reality is that students of color, that is African American and
Latino students are disproportionately impacted. And so, I pose
this to all of the panelists and I'm hoping Will, I could start
with you to start with the student perspective; what action should
we be taking to improve enrollment?
00:27:07 Will
I think of a story of a
gentleman that I met - well,, I met his mom at my other office and
she was telling me about her son who wanted to go to UCLA but he
wasn't in school right now. I guess he ran into some issues or
whatever, so now he's just working a job but he's not in school but
he wanted to go to UCLA.
00:27:26 Will
So, when I think about this one
kid, when he ran into the issue of the school saying, "Oh you're
out of state," you know that whole thing, it was going to cost him
$900. $900 he didn't have. So, he was just not in school and just
going to go on with life. That's not okay. That's absolutely not
okay.
00:27:45 Will
I told his mom, "Meet me at the
Career Center, bring him with you." And I followed up, I walked him
over to the Transfer Center and we solved his problem, and that kid
was in school, he was back enrolled. So, this is a customer who had
went away because he ran into some issue. This is an African
American customer who had went away, but we got it
resolved.
00:28:05 Will
And I think one of the things
that I think would be really good here at PCC is if someone is
enrolled in school and all of a sudden, they're not, who cares?
Does anybody care?
00:28:19 Will
I mean, so what I'm saying is
that what if there was a department that all they did was customer
service was like, "Hey, we noticed that you're not in school. How's
it going? What's up?" You know, if somebody was to call, just
simply call to find out what the issue is; "Why are you not
enrolled? Where did you go?" In sales, we call that low-hanging
fruit. That's a customer that will become a customer again just
because somebody called.
00:28:48 Will
So, I don't know if PCC has a
customer service department. I don't know, I have no idea. But if
they did, I think it would make an impact if there was someone that
followed up. And really, what's interesting is that you don't have
to be in customer service to follow up.
00:29:05 Will
If someone came to your
department and asked for help for something or whatever, what would
be the problem with somebody just following up to find out did that
student get what they needed? Did you get help? Was it resolved? I
don't think that happens anywhere in any department. I don't think
it does.
00:29:21 Will
But I'm saying it would have an
impact towards bringing those, I'm going to call them customers
(I'm calling students customers) - bringing those customers back.
Just simple follow-up. I don't think it would even ... what would
be the cost to that? Simple, "Hey, where are you? What happened?
What's going on? How can we help?" So, I don't
know.
00:29:42 Jessica
I like it. I think that's a
great idea. And there's a report that was commissioned by our
region's community colleges here called Community Colleges at A
crossroads. And in that, one of the best practices that was pointed
out was to take a look at these data points like when a student
doesn't purchase a book, can someone follow up with them because by
a certain week that means they're going to drop it or something's
not going right.
00:30:04 Jessica
Could we use that data to then
follow up with the student, and colleges that have implemented that
have seen better student retention. And so, there are opportunities
like that. And so, I appreciate what you're saying and thank you
for sharing that. Panelists, anyone else?
00:30:18 Sandra
So, I think one of the things or
a few of the things that our colleges need to focus on in terms of
how we serve our students better is really around the idea of
retaining the existing students that we have. We have really high
attrition rates across our system for students who start with us
one semester and then never come back.
00:30:37 Sandra
So, I think in business you say
it's easier to keep a customer than to get a new customer. So, part
of that, I believe, is how do we become institutions that create
environments where students feel like they belong
unconditionally?
00:30:53 Sandra
And so, what are the
institutional barriers that we have created for our students to
protect our institutions that are not welcoming to our students?
And so, I think that, to your point of customer service, when we
shift the burden away from the student, then we make our
institutions more accessible to them.
00:31:12 Sandra
Where we don't burden them with
proving that they are in fact poor to access resources, when we
don't burden them with having to buy textbooks for specific
classes, when we look at initiatives that are intended to support
them unconditionally as they're in their educational journey -
those are the types of things that will help us keep our
students.
00:31:30 Sandra
We know that there is an overall
demographic decline in babies. Nobody had babies 20 years ago and
it doesn't look like for the next 10 or 20 years, there will be
babies that are coming of age to enroll into our institution. So,
it becomes even more important that we really think about how we
are welcoming to students of all walks of life.
00:31:52 Sandra
And so, adult learners, for
example, how do we facilitate them accessing resources? What are
the barriers that we've created to keep them from accessing
resources? And so, those are some of the things that ... I know at
the system office we're focused on, I know I hear a lot about like
we have to do paper applications for adult learners and then CCC
applies terrible and all the things.
00:32:14 Sandra
And so, those are some of the
initiatives that we are working on at the system office to make
sure that that is not the reason why our students can't access our
institutions, but also, access the resources. And I think that
rather than having a customer service department, we should be
focused on everyone being a customer. So, we lose students, the new
graduates will come and fill them.
00:32:35 Sandra
That's not going to happen
anymore. There is a complete demographic decline on the number of
students that are going into the K12 system. So, we can't expect to
replace them from that. So, we need to make sure that our systems
welcome students wherever they come to us, especially adult
learners and especially focus on the retention of the students we
already have. Because that's what's going to make us one, sustain
our enrollments, but also, help us achieve greater success for the
communities that we serve.
00:33:01 Micah
I'd like to add, we also have to
make a value proposition to our students. What is the value added
to going to a California community college? I think oftentimes,
that's overlooked in terms of the value proposition on the front
end as well as on the back end. Because if you save a student
indebtedness, they're able to take a job at a lower reimbursement
level.
00:33:19 Micah
You don't have as much turnover
in employment with folks job-hopping to find the highest salary
because now, they can take a job and stay in that job and grow with
that job because they're financially stable.
00:33:28 Micah
Also, when we're talking about
disproportionately impacted communities, we have to look at what
are our approaches to making sure that when we talk about
disproportionately impacted communities, we also have to look at
what are the barriers that they face outside of the educational
arena.
00:33:43 Micah
So, most of our educational
institutions are built for middle-income, upper middle-income
individuals, nine to five scheduled traditional college schedules.
Most of those students may be working. We have to look holistically
at our student populations.
00:33:53 Micah
Are our classes available when
they need classes? Are we intentionally making the value
proposition of higher education to the students? What are we doing
to make sure that the classes are accessible, and have pathways
that lead to not only life-sustaining wages, then family-sustaining
wages. Because if we want to retain that population, and want them
to reinvest in our system in terms of sending future generations of
students into our system whether it's California community colleges
or any other public institutions, I think that's
important.
00:34:19 Micah
The last thing I'll say is that
we have to make the value proposition because we have competition
for those very populations that we historically have always been
there, that we somewhat and sometimes historically, have ignored,
now, they have options. And if those options are making the value
proposition to those students but not showing them the price tag
but the value proposition is being there, those students will make
the best decision that's in front of them.
00:34:41 Micah
So, we have to look at
holistically at our students in terms of retaining, yes, reaching
out, following up, the cold calls, et cetera - but we also, have to
make that general value proposition to why the California community
college is the best bang for your buck regardless of your
background.
00:34:55 Micah
And then we have to understand
who our students are. And I ask people who is the California
community college student? And I tell people, it's everybody. It's
those students that are at the UCs who need an extra class. It's
the students at the Cal States who are taking classes because their
system is just as impacted as ours, but ours is more accessible
than theirs.
00:35:10 Micah
I would always say that we
should do a study on the number of degrees we actually save from
the Cal State system. We really should because they're taking
classes with us because they can't get them at their home
institutions. So, we're adding to the baccalaureate level education
for preparation of students along the continuum, which also leads
them to transfer to graduate schools and go
beyond.
00:35:28 Micah
So, we really need to look at
our customers and make that value proposition to all the
communities that we serve, that the California community colleges
are uniquely equipped to serve all students without
barriers.
00:35:40 Kelly
I'll just add quickly too,
because that's a great point Dr. Young, that I think that there's
an opportunity as well for us to better connect the county systems.
Like we have clients and customers that come to the county for a
variety of goods and services and programs and whatnot , and making
sure that we're both sharing the value proposition that you're
speaking of as well.
00:36:01 Kelly
Not just sort of having the
system butt up against each other, but also, mutually reinforcing
that sort of continued follow-up, that sort of like retention
support, and that sort of advancement support as well. You know,
like how do we bridge that so it's not just sort of the full staff
of the colleges, which I think is a really good
point.
00:36:18 Kelly
But also, the folks that are
following up with individuals who graduate in that first job,
telling them about how that additional degree or additional
credential can help them on that mobility pathway. So, I just think
it's really important for that sort of mutually shared goal be set
among us.
00:36:32 Martin
Just briefly, for me, in my
position, I think the community colleges are in this really unique
space of being able to keep a really wide definition of success.
Degree attainment is certainly one type of success, but I don't
think that it's necessarily the type of success for all students.
And specifically, with the internship program, as I mentioned
earlier, like we don't require students to be majoring in the arts
to participate.
00:36:56 Martin
That was actually a change
implemented many years ago out of many students at the colleges
saying, "I would love to participate in this program, I literally
can't major in the arts because my parents won't allow me to or
they won't financially support me in majoring in the arts. So, it's
a passion of mine. I'm taking classes where I can in the arts, but
I'm majoring in computer science because that's what I need to do
to pay the bills or that's what my family or generationally, I'm
being told is what I need to do in order to make the next jump in
my career."
00:37:23 Martin
So, what is it to say to a
student like come take art classes just for the sake of taking art
classes if you're able to? Like what is it to say that you're going
to school for the sake of learning what it is that you want to do?
I think I'm guilty of this as well in that we have this very - it's
an expansive definition of the arts, but it's an arts program.
That's really what we're here to kind of connect folks
into.
00:37:45 Martin
But even within that, there's a
huge variety of experiences. I think about how arts faculty on
community college campuses are huge undertapped resources in like
how did you get to become a professor of theater or a professor of
music? Like what is your career look like? What are you doing
outside of this institution to feed that creative part of your
spirit?
00:38:04 Martin
What would it mean for a student
to be able to major in computer science but also, have a career in
the arts as a musician or a performer or a dancer, so on and so
forth? So, like how are we keeping our definitions of success
expansive enough to be able to kind of cast a wider
net?
00:38:19 Martin
And even within the field of
arts and culture in LA county, it's estimated that 400,000 people
work in the creative sector in LA County alone, but an additional
150,000 of them are more independent contractors, entrepreneurs,
artists, performers that don't necessarily have a nine to five in
the arts. But they're contributing to the economy, number one. And
number two, they have livelihoods that just look a little different
than working for the county or working for a major financial
institution.
00:38:47 Martin
So, again, I think for me, the
magic of community colleges can really be that once they know what
they know or once they get to know what they know, isn't it an
opportunity for them to kind of build something that looks a little
bit different than just I'm going for my AA or my bachelor's or my
master's, and how can the community college institution support
them in that, I think is really exciting in a unique
position.
00:39:09 Jessica
Let's continue with that
direction Martin. So, we were talking about barriers to enrollment
and now, let's talk about the system changes that we need to
strengthen our system alignment to the future of work. What are
some of the system changes that we need that you all would
recommend?
00:39:26 Martin
So, my program looks completely
different than it did before the pandemic. My job description,
everything that I'm doing on the day-to-day has completely changed.
I cannot overstate that enough. I think the county gets a rep of
like being a little bit slow to move sometimes, and certainly,
there are bureaucratic levers sometimes that need to get pushed and
pulled in order to make things happen.
00:39:46 Martin
But what I can say as a county
employee in the heat of the pandemic for specifically our
department, we were running around like chickens with their heads
cut off to meet this moment and to be able to actually move forward
some things that we had wanted to do for a really long time that
were not possible in the pre-COVID world. I'm going to give a
really specific example for remote work within our internship
program.
00:40:08 Martin
So, before the pandemic, our
internship program was summer-only. Interns would start in June,
end in August, they would work 40 hours a week full-time. We did
let them drop down to 30 occasionally, and there was no allowance
for remote work whatsoever. So, the expectation was that the intern
would be onsite either at the nonprofit organization or in the home
office. And we had no exceptions to that.
00:40:28 Martin
The program that I administrate
now is a nine-month program with internships starting in June that
can go all the way to March of the following calendar year. And we
allow for all different kinds of remote experiences. So, some
interns are working fully remote, some interns are not working
remote at all, some are doing the hybrid.
00:40:45 Martin
So, I think as maybe low-hanging
obvious as it is, like I don't know that we should be doing
anything the same that we were before the pandemic. And when it
comes to work, I have interns asking me, "Well, Martin, is this a
hybrid position? Are these remote positions? Are these in-person
positions?"
00:41:01 Martin
Language, I was like not even
thinking about three years ago as many of us are. I imagine with
instruction, it's similar. So, I think leaning into those
questions, even if we don't necessarily have the answers, we pull
both our supervisors and our interns every single year about,
especially since the pandemic, about how the structure of the
program is working for them.
00:41:21 Martin
And we ask both our supervisors
and our interns in the post-pandemic world; "Is the remote work
working for you? Are you enjoying it? Do you feel like it's
compromising the quality of your internship?" And we're being told
"No, actually the flexibility, I appreciate. I appreciate being
able to talk to my supervisor and say, hey, my kid is sick at home,
can I just jump on my laptop and work here?"
00:41:40 Martin
So, this is a moment for us to
kind of stop, pause, reevaluate what has been working for us. It
was, we've had these ideas on the back burner, like making the
program more year-round that were not necessarily feasible before
the pandemic.
00:41:53 Martin
And we saw that as an
opportunity to say, "Hey, we know that a 40-hour a week internship
in the summer from June through August only serves one type of
student. A student who is not working another job during the
summer, a student who has the summer off, which like is not always
the thing of course." And so, how can we build a better program
that's more expansive to a wider range of
students?
00:42:11 Martin
So, again, I think it's daunting
and we're trying a lot of things and I'm looking at the data
rolling in and hoping that everything comes up roses and so far, it
has, but we have to be constantly willing to rethink these
things.
00:42:22 Martin
You know, this is a legacy
program of our department, it's been around for 22 years, and I'm
the first person to have said, "Hey, can we make this a year-round
program now because of the pandemic?" And we were able to do that
and it's been really successful. So, again, how are we taking this
moment to kind of challenge and change some of those things that
before didn't feel broke, so didn't get fixed.
00:42:41 Jessica
Sandra, you gotta have some
thoughts on this.
00:42:46 Sandra
I do. I think that during the
pandemic, our system demonstrated that it can change. In a matter
of weeks, the entire 116 colleges went fully online. So, in terms
of what are the changes that we can make? I think that we have
proven to ourselves that we are able to make
changes.
00:43:03 Sandra
I think to support the idea of
shifting our own workforce, we are making a lot of investments in
professional development for our staff and our faculty to make sure
that we can fully adapt to the new world of work. But also, things
like trying to figure out the funding formula for competency-based
education.
00:43:23 Sandra
We changed regulations. Part of
that is understanding how could we do it differently. If we focused
on competencies, then we're no longer worried about how much time a
student spends in a classroom. We're focused on the competencies
that they are learning as they progress across their journey, but
also, then meeting them where they're at if they have to work
full-time.
00:43:41 Sandra
How they access our
instructional programs from a competency perspective really gives
them much more flexibility to ensure that they can complete a
program on their timeframe based on whatever their life
circumstance is.
00:43:53 Sandra
The other thing that we've
recently done - well, I will say that in the last three years,
we've updated or changed 22 new regulations for the system. And a
lot of it is around what we learned through the pandemic, where we
had old regulations that were really outdated and didn't support
colleges, and their ability to adapt.
00:44:12 Sandra
So, recently though, we also
passed the work experience regulations and it used to be called
Cooperative Work Experience. It was heavily focused on burdening
the student with finding a job, and then having to figure out how
to manage that system.
00:44:26 Sandra
So, part of the update, one, is
that regulation was 50-years-old. Didn't even get updated when
economic and workforce development became the third primary mission
of the colleges. It's continued to stay in its old
form.
00:44:37 Sandra
So, we updated the regulation to
really shift the burden from the students to the institutions and
to be more collaborative with employers, and ensuring that our
institutions are better able to partner, but also, created the
flexibility that allows our faculty to think about how they would
embed experiential learning and work-based learning opportunities
in their curriculum in a more intentional way.
00:44:58 Sandra
Also, one of the updates is
making sure that when you create those opportunities, we are
intentional in designing those to fit the pathway that a student
has chosen. And how do we support that?
00:45:10 Sandra
What it's going to require is
that our colleges and our system as a whole rethink how we support
students in that endeavor. How we support, to your point earlier,
about, is it like you have to know the faculty member in the music
department? Or is there a career and job placement center that any
employer can go to? Or does it look different on your
campus?
00:45:29 Sandra
Whatever it is, the intent of
updating those regulations is to make sure that our colleges have a
flexibility to do whatever it's going to take at a local level to
ensure that they are able to meet students where they're at. But
also, to shift - shift that burden from the student to the
institution and to the partners that they're working with. Because
as we stated also earlier, students don't know what they don't
know. And so, since we know better, we should do
better,
00:45:52 Jessica
I appreciate that. Bishop
Desmond Tutu wisely advised that we eat an elephant one bite at a
time. What is the big bite that the Los Angeles region should be
taking together?
00:46:04 Kelly
I really appreciate the point
you just made around shifting the burden from the student or our
customer to the institutions. We can take on some of that burden
and make it a little bit easier for folks to get what they need out
of our collective institutions.
00:46:19 Kelly
And so, I would say, I think the
big bite we need to make is really setting some ambitious goals
together about the kind of impact that we want to have on the
region. Whether it's like we want to dramatically increase our
graduation rates in that we take the opportunity cost away from
students in joining and completing programs, or rapidly reducing
the poverty rate.
00:46:42 Kelly
Like I think that there's an
opportunity for us as large systems to come together and speak our
future into existence and we have a lot of the sort of like power
and resources and minds with us to be able to do
that.
00:46:54 Will
I'm going to jump in here and
I'm going to say that I think that the success story needs to be
elaborated on. I'm here because my mentor in February of 2020, I
was on the phone and I remember this person was unemployed, not in
school, not doing stuff in the past; but this person - I remember
this person saying, "PCC changed my life bro" and I watched it
happen. I literally watched this person's life become way
better.
00:47:24 Will
And today, today, this person is
a professor here at PCC. I watched that happen, and that had a
whole lot to do with what made me want to enroll because PCC
changed somebody's life and I was like, "I want PCC to change my
life."
00:47:39 Will
So, there has to be more success
stories told as to what it did for this person, what it did for
that person. We have a lot of the data and it's good, it's
important. We should have the data to find out where we are. But
what about those success stories in terms of how it helped this
person. From a customer's perspective, you got to tell the success
stories. So, I think there should be more success stories
told.
00:48:07 Martin
I would just add, I mean it's
been mentioned several times, but for me, breaking down silos, I
have a picture of like two people on the opposite sides of a wall,
like knocking it down. And I actually think that breaking down
silos is like swapping sides or like stepping into each other's
shoes to really understand this person that you're trying to build
a partnership with, like what is their day-to-day look like, and
how can I use that information to inform the ways that I am
stepping into this partnership.
00:48:32 Martin
I think that I would like to say
that because of my experience working directly with students and on
the community college campuses before my current role - when I
approach a community college in my current role, I'm like, "I will
bring my own flyers, I will make the QR code, I will pick the date
and time, you just get me the room." Because I understand that for
faculty on a community college campus, finding the room, making the
reservation, who's printing the flyers, who has the printer ink -
all of those things are additional barriers.
00:49:01 Martin
So, if I can alleviate any of
those pieces, it is helpful to the partnership that I know that
ahead of time. I seek to mitigate as many of those things as
possible.
00:49:11 Martin
So, for me, whenever I'm
building those, trying to break the silos, it's not really just
about being more intentional. It really is, I think, gaining a sort
of empathy and awareness around what it looks like on the other
side of that wall, and coming together in partnership to try to
alleviate those areas of tension.
00:49:27 Martin
I can't tell you how many
professors have been like, "Oh my gosh, you'll make the flyer for
us? You know how to do that. Thank you." Like that's just one less
thing to have to worry about. But for me, that's how you go about
breaking down the silos. And I think the more we can do that, the
more transformation we can expect to see.
00:49:41 Jessica
Thank you. So, if you could join
me in giving a round to our panelists today.
00:49:53 Salvatrice
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00:50:01 Salvatrice
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