1. Moving From Strategic Initiative to Sustainability
Introduce myself – in positon since March of this year; but spent 6 years doing CP work at a rural college in Oregon. Director is housed at a community college; closely connected to the Community College and Workforce Development Department for the Higher Education Coordinating Commission in Oregon.
Dr. Ali Mageehon
Statewide Pathways Initiative Director

2. PART ONE: What’s A Career Pathway and How Did We Get Here?

3. Career Pathways – Program and System
Career Pathways Program: A clear sequence of stackable credits and credentials, combined with support services, that enables students and jobseekers to secure industry-relevant skills, certificates, and credentials and advance to higher levels of education and employment in high demand occupations.
Career Pathways System: Multiple career pathways programs that span educational institutions, workforce and support service partners.

4. Briefly review definition and share how the college initiative has interacted with each of these buckets over time

5. Guiding Vision and Goals
In service of meeting Oregon’s goal for the “middle 40”
Certificate completion & continued education
Address the changing needs of employers, job seekers, workers, and students
Focus on Career & Technical Education (CTE) short-term certificates tied to occupations
Provide web-based, just-in-time roadmaps for students, advisors/counselors, job seekers
Ease transitions across the education continuum—high school to community college; pre-college (ABE/GED/ESL) to postsecondary credit; community college to university; and to employment
Brief explanation of 40/40/20

6. Launch and Scaling
Launched with five colleges in 2004 with initial funding from the Governor’s Workforce Investment Fund through the Oregon Workforce Investment Board
Expanded to 11 colleges in 2006
Scaled to all 17 colleges in 2007
Has been funded each biennium, most recently from strategic fund dollars
Community College Presidents Resolution, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014…planned in 2016
All 17 colleges have Career Pathways Coordinator
Took approximately 3 years to scale and learned a lot along the way
17 colleges have implemented things slightly differently; all have a person who coordinates the grant work (often those positions also have involvement in other grants – e.g., Perkins or have a combination of responsibilities
Resolution – college presidents have committed every biennium – was particularly important/significant as they supported the work out of the strategic fund

7. Stackable Credentials
Career & Technical Education (CTE) – have over 400 short-term certificates on the books across all 17 community colleges; over 14,000 certificates have been awarded since 2008
Occupations in six career focus areas
Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
Arts, Information and Communications
Business and Management
Health Services
Social Services and Education
Industrial and Engineering Systems
Short-term certificates (12-44 credits):
Career Pathway Certificates (CPCC)
Less Than One Year Certificate (LTOY)
This is the part that is clearly scaled – colleges develop CPCCs as part of their normal practice
Certificates should be tied to labor market need – expected that colleges will work with employer advisory groups to identify value of short-term credentials

8. Career Pathway Grants
Career Pathway Grants have been provided to colleges each biennium to build capacity and increase number of completions
Grants awarded on competitive basis
For past five bienniums grants awarded to all 17 colleges ( , , , , )
Grants focus on goals & strategies to build capacity & increase completion outcomes
Funding: WIA Title I-B, WIA Incentive Grants, Governor’s EWTF, Perkins, CC Strategic Fund, TAACCCT
Continue to fund colleges to “incent” continued statewide implementation of career pathways approach.
Talk about TAACCCT funds and CASE grant – 18.6 million dollars, three year grant (CASE had three pronged approach – career pathways, career coaching, credit for prior learning)

9. Career Pathway Grants 2015-2017
Increase number of certificate completers
Sector Strategy connections and IRCs
Peer learning
Online navigation
Outreach and recruitment
Options: High School Articulation, Contextualized and Accelerated Learning, Career Coaching
Goals for grants
Sector strategy work has been especially important since WIB regions have changed, now have 9 (used to have fewer with one large rural group)
Have also needed to make more intentional connections with K-12 as the state has invested heavily in CTE at high school level, without an always obvious tie to community college CTE programs
This biennium has been a transition period – changes in governance of higher ed at state and changes at national level(CCWD now department under the HECC, for example; retirement of prior director who was with Oregon CP from inception; and authorization of WIOA)
Next grants, presuming funding, will look different

10. Role of the Oregon Pathways Alliance
Oregon Pathways Alliance: collaboration of leaders from 17 colleges meeting quarterly since 2004
Co-Chair model for the Alliance – one chair from an urban college and one from a rural college (this biennium, we have three chairs – representing large, medium and small colleges)
Professional Development and Peer Learning
CCWD statewide coordination role
Strategic Planning
The Alliance is made up of teams from all 17 colleges, includes CP Coordinator, often ABS Director or Dean, sometimes CTE Dean; state leadership attends and provides updates; we invite guest speakers as well as strategize about next steps in the grant; share best practices; have had joint meetings with other affinity groups in past and are working toward this again (adult basic skills directors group); leadership from the colleges; my role with the alliance as initiative director; workgroups, including strategic planning group

11. PART TWO: Online Navigation Resources
With dwindling resources for student support we invested in online, web-based technology providing visual online roadmaps for students and job seekers as well as advisors, counselors. Open source tool.

12. Career Pathway Roadmap Webtool
Alliance collaborated to design Career Pathways Roadmap Webtool
More than 350 roadmaps and high school to community college plans of study online
Lane CC hosts server and training/technical assistance funded by CCWD; Effie Siverts
(guest login)
Open Source
Adopted by state of Washington and others
With dwindling resources for student support we invested in online, web-based technology providing visual online roadmaps for students and job seekers as well as advisors, counselors. Open source tool, has been adopted by state of Washington, Florida TRADE Manufacturing Institute; Michigan Coalition fo rAdvanced Manufacturing; National Aviation Consortium; County of Humboldt, CA

13. If there is internet in conference room, go directly to mypathcareers
If there is internet in conference room, go directly to mypathcareers.org to pull up maps

15. Plan of Study Templates (POSTs)
Visual chart/roadmap of high school to community college articulations identify courses 9th-12th grade through CC CTE program certificates and degrees.
Database driven
More than 200 POSTs developed by community colleges
Tool is under review
If there is internet, pull up RCC’s POST example
Sustainability in funding becomes critical with technology – in process of working with software developer to come up with plan for changes that need to happen moving forward – accessibility issues; various devices and readability of roadmaps; need to make POSTs more dynamic and user-friendly

16. Part Three: Sustainability and Future

17. Planning for Sustainability
All colleges developed a sustainability plan in Assessed career pathways efforts along eight dimensions:
Leadership
Leveraging Resources
Certificates and Roadmaps
Articulations with High Schools and Universities
Pathways for Adult Basic Skills
Student Services and Support
Connection with Workforce Partners
Employer Engagement
Using Data and Coordination with Institutional Research
Have asked colleges to revisit this year; one of the challenges with this – if a college acknowledges being able to sustain, will state still fund? Still, thse are the dimensions around which the grants have been built, so it is valuable to track where colleges are in terms of the three stages: Building Critical Mass and Shared Understanding; Building Capacity, Quality and Infrastructure; Institutionalizing and Sustaining Career Pathways

18. Career Pathways/Guided Pathways
Guided Pathways overview
Nationally
In Oregon
Strategic planning for guided pathways
Points of Commonality
Integrated student services and wrap around services
Integrated and accelerated remediation
Clearly identified on-ramps and roadmaps
Completion milestones as markers of success to help students navigate their path
Clear intentional pathways to guide students to progress; acceleration
Collaboration across silos and systems
Clear alignment with secondary systems through mapped out pathways
Presidents Resolution
Guided Pathways “presents courses in the context of highly structured, educationally coherent program maps that align with students’ goals for career and further education. Incoming students are given support to explore career, choose a program of study, and develop an academic plan based on program maps created by faculty and advisors” (What we know about Guided Pathways, CCRC, Research Overview, March 2016). The four dimensions of the Pathways Model are to 1) Clarify paths to student end goals; 2) Help students choose and enter a pathway; 3) Help students stay on path; 4) Ensure that students are learning (from “What is the ‘Pathways Model?’”, CCRC and AACC).
In Oregon, Linn Benton CC was selected as one of 30 institutions nationally to take part in the American Association of Community College Pathways Project; other colleges are having conversations.
Pathways Alliance recognizes that there are similarities between career pathways and guided pathways
This biennium’s presidents resolution includes more general pathways language that reflects this national movement

19. National Landscape Ability to Benefit (ATB) back
Financial aid not available for short-term certificates
Engagement in national policy work – part of CLASP Alliance for Quality Career Pathways
ATB back – some colleges have been slow to implement; however, this supports the contextualized/accelerated remediation work that has been occurring in Oregon (Definition of Eligible Career Pathway Program - Aligns with the skill needs of industries in the economy of the State or regional economy involved;
Prepares an individual to be successful in any of a full range of secondary or postsecondary education options, including apprenticeships registered under the Act of August 16, 1937 (commonly known as the ‘National Apprenticeship Act’; 50 Stat. 664, chapter 663; 29 U.S.C. 50 et seq.);
Includes counseling to support an individual in achieving the individual’s education and career goals;
Includes, as appropriate, education offered concurrently with and in the same context as workforce preparation activities and training for a specific occupation or occupational cluster;
Organizes education, training, and other services to meet the particular needs of an individual in a manner that accelerates the educational and career advancement of the individual to the extent practicable;
Enables an individual to attain a high school diploma or its recognized equivalent, and at least one recognized postsecondary credential; and
Helps an individual enter or advance within a specific occupation or occupational cluster.)
Challenge of financial aid policy – not available for declared short-term certificate…so…students have to declare the longer path…making it difficult to tell who students are in a career pathway – esp. for purpose of tracking the value of the short-term credential
Oregon has been involved in the national policy landscape – is part of the CLASP Alliance for Quality Career Pathways; importance of continuing to make national connections for the future sustainability of career pathways; Alliance for Quality Career Pathways has developed National framework for Career Pahtwyas benchmarks and metric and National framework for Career Pathways Conceptual Model

20. Data Pathways Descriptive Study – 2013
Data Challenges
Future
An initial study was conducted in 2013 with the plan for a second study to be conducted in Initial study was focused on short-term credential completions and wage data (able to match this info between data systems). Provided some perspective on continued education; wage gain based on region; etc.
A second study was started in 2015, is currently on hold because of some of the challenges in accurate data. Because of federal aid policy, most CPCC completers have declared a 1 year or 2 year program so hard to tell if they intended to stop after a CPCC or not; also, many colleges in Oregon are now auto-awarding short-term certificates, so also hard to tell if student who was awarded intended to earn a CPCC; data does not reveal value of CPCC as momentum point; challenges with data for students in ABS who are co-enrolled (lack of consistency of coding across system – may be resolved by WIOA and new Title II requirements). Oregon changed data system which will impact ability to track data from initial cohorts in first study longitudinally; So – we are working on doing some data matching between similar populations; also exploring qualitative data gathering so that we can find out more about how students and employers perceive the value of the CPCC.

21. Future
Continued innovation in program design, particularly based on industry input.
Continued conversations with K-12 partners with focus on continuing work to make CTE a viable path for high school students, as well as to support a college-going culture in communities. Colleges would like to further develop outreach and recruitment that would reach out to students in middle school.
Professional learning opportunities for rural schools to learn from each other to develop accelerated/contextualized programs for students in ABS, as well as continued work in partnership with OCABSD to develop robust contextualized programs in ABS throughout the state.
Increase in wrap-around services, particularly in supporting transition between high school and college, ABS and credit coursework, and between 2 year programs and 4 year programs.
Review of programs and certificates: colleges see value in removing paths as needed, revision as will meet industry needs, and expansion into new areas that recognize future changes in industry.
Working on updated tools for the POSTs: colleges recognize the value in having an advising tool for high school students, but also feel that the POSTs are outdated.
Data collection: colleges recognize the need to better track how students are progressing on a career pathway when they start on a pathway in high school via dual enrollment, as well as tracking accelerated learning for students in ABS, and tracking CP certificate completers/leavers and their progress.
Based on conversations with stakeholders (via site visits, via discussions with affinity groups, via discussion with state leadership) have identified areas for future exploration in the career pathways initiative in Oregon).

22. Questions and Discussion