ļ»æ45. What's Your Impact Episode with Gretchen Schmidt, PhD, Charles Lloyd, Ed.D. & Mark S. Bonta
Michelle Rathman: Hello one and all and welcome to the Rural Impact, the podcast that works hard to connect the dots between policy and rural everything. I'm Michelle Rathman and as always, I do mean it when I say I'm so grateful that you've joined us and I'm so appreciative to all of our listeners and our subscribers and followers.
Please know that it is because of you that we are inspired to bring you this content. Now, today's episode will bring our wonderful collaborative work with Ascendium Education Group to a close. And in case you're not familiar with the multiple episodes and series that we've done this year, produced with their support focused on post-secondary education, workforce development, apprenticeships and their unique connections to policy and quality of life. Here is a quick recap of our two series made possible, as I said, by Ascendium. And this is before I introduce you to today's guests.
Now, first up in May of 2024, we dropped the first episode in our sixth series called "Pathways and Policies to Ensure Rural Learners Succeed in Place and Why it's Essential for America's Future," not just rural America, but America's future. And we kicked things off with a conversation I had with Deputy Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training for the U. S. Department of Labor, Manny Lamar, where he and I discussed the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's mission and vision for opportunities for vulnerable populations, and communities, industry partnerships and what they call the care economy, and this includes long term care, short term care, and childcare. And we know this is something that we've been talking about as a nation for quite some time. And we also talked about the future of work where these things are involved.
Now, also in this episode, we heard from Mary Wurtz during her time as Policy Analyst at the Council of State Governments. As well as Andrew Campbell, Policy Program Manager at the Research to Action Lab at the Urban Institute. That was a jam-packed episode. I remember it very well. Now in the second episode of the series I had the opportunity to talk with Kirsten Yeado, Senior Program Officer at Ascendium Education Group, and also Shaniqua Corley Moore, Head of Tech Talent Development, and Mike Gutman, Workforce Development Manager. Both of these two brilliant minds with the Center on Rural Innovation.
And in the last episode of this series, super inspirational, we heard from Joe E. Ross. Joe is the President of REACH University, as well as we learned the story of Nancy Mondragon. Nancy is a one-time rural Arkansas primary grade school paraprofessional who was able to earn her degree through REACH and giving her the opportunity to have a classroom of her own. And with that. Of course, as we know, upward economic mobility.
Now, in the second series, we dove deep into rural data related to post-secondary education, racial and gender inequities, the impact on rural economies, and so much more. A quick recap of the guests for these three episodes in this particular series included, you may know the name, Jeff Strohl, Research Professor and Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce.
And we discussed the findings in the Center's Small Towns, Big Opportunities report, which is absolutely a must read for any entity looking into rural jobs, workforce and economies, super relevant, even as this episode drops today. And we also spoke with Dr. Kayla C. Elliott. Kayla is the Director of Workforce Policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which is America's only black think tank.
I really encourage you to go back and listen to that episode if you have not already, because I can promise you it is as relevant today as it was when we did that talk, I think, back in the summer sometime around August of 2024. Now moving on, our next episode took us to the topic of the role of community colleges in providing bachelor's degree programs, something that I totally took for granted.
I thought, well, community colleges, why not provide a bachelor's degree program? But if you think this is not a policy driven issue, think again, because it most certainly is. And for this reason, we invited Senior Policy Analyst, Ivy Love, and Senior Program Associate Tiffany Thai, both of them from the Center on Education and Labor at New America.
And we also invited Executive Director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges and Professor of Higher Education at Appalachian State University, one of my favorites, Dr. Andrew Koricich, to help us sort out all of these issues. And finally, in the last episode in the series, we welcome Dakota Pawlicki, Director of Talent Hubs with Civic Labs, where he highlighted the work of Civic Lab and advancing civic collaboration, and of course, improving post-secondary attainment and communities.
But I find this part so fascinating. He also introduced us to the Talent Hub designation, a marker of an exemplary cross sector partnership. And emphasized the importance of the content and context in community collaboration. And the icing on the cake of this episode was tying it all together, where we heard from Elaine M. Morgan, CEO of the Berkley Chamber of Commerce, who shares just exactly what it means to be a community resource hub in rural South Carolina and all the lives that they touch because of it.
Now in all and because of the support of Ascendium we were able to drop six episodes that included 15 dot connecting conversations. But we're not done, because as I said from the start, this is the last, bittersweet is the last one focus on the topic, but it is certainly not the last word because we know that the future of rural prosperity is absolutely, without a doubt connected to sound rural education policy. And we expect a lot of changes on this front in 2025.
So, I'm going to ask you to set your calendar for next year and join us for those conversations. But with that said, and I want to talk about what's on the table today. So let me tell you about our first guest. I had an amazing conversation. You know, when you talk to some. People, sometimes you just have that instant connection with them.
And this is the way I felt when I spoke with Gretchen Schmidt, PhD, with the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement. Gretchen is a national leader in higher education, transformation, focusing on issues of guided pathways and rural student success. And her work includes Aspen Prize for Community College, Excellence, the California Guided Pathways Project, Texas Pathways, Jobs for the Future of Students, Success Centers, the Gates Foundation's Completion by Design, and the Lumina Foundation's Beyond Financial Aid.
Through these and other efforts, she has supported change work at hundreds of institutions through cohort-based projects and engaged in deep work via direct relationships with individual colleges. Including our second and third guest, Dr. Chuck Lloyd, who serves as the vice president, excuse me, Vice Chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire and Mr. Mark Bonta, whom as you will hear, was the Littleton, New Hampshire Plant Director of Kamek Outdoor Footwear for over 20 years. And during that time, so inspirational served on the board of the local chamber of commerce, the local public health network, and state of New Hampshire Advisory Council for Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative. and partnered with White Mountains Community College for the Rural Guided Pathways Project.
And you're going to hear his story, as I said, quite inspirational. Each of these conversations, we hope, we know they're not light subjects, but we say often, we hope that you're enlightened. And I have no doubt we'll further connect the dots between policy, rural education, the importance of collaboration and investments in shaping rural lives and thriving communities.
All right, with that said, my friends, I invite you to tune out whatever in your background and listen to my conversation with Gretchen Schmidt, Chuck Lloyd, and Mark Bonta. Are you ready? You know, I always am. So, let's go.
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Michelle Rathman: Hey, hey, Gretchen Schmidt with the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement. Welcome to this very special episode of the Rural Impact. We are thrilled to have you with us today.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Good morning, and thank you so much for having me, Michelle. I'm so happy to have this conversation.
Michelle Rathman: I am too, because you know, we are closing out our 2024 series focused on rural colleges, post-secondary education, access and degree attainment, training, apprenticeships, good jobs, and of course, the policy threads that connect all of these things. So, in this very special recall, What's Your Impact Episode, we want to leave our listeners with I should say a deeper understanding of how rural serving community colleges are working to implement, what is known as evidence based institution wide reforms that ultimately remove the barriers and provide clear pathways to success. However, that's defined.
And Gretchen, our partners for this entire series at Ascendium Education Group, they let us know that the Rural Guided Pathways Project, which is something that you are very involved with, engages in all the things I've just described.
So let's start off the conversation by talking about your work and the impact that it has on rural.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Well, thank you, Michelle, and thank you for allowing me to talk about this really important work that we're really excited to have been leading for the last three years with help and funding from Ascendium along with other regional funders. And these are 16 community colleges in 13 states in the country that were selected as part of a competitive process.
So, they had to apply to be part of this project. They had to commit to coming to in person events that are working meetings that really get them focused on what their student experience has been and how they want to shift their student experience so that more students are on a path to a job with a living wage in their community, or to junior standing in the major, if they are transferring to an institution, a four year institution.
And so we, the thing that's different about this project, then projects we have run around guided pathways, which is an evidence based framework for institutional reform, is this project is focused on rural community colleges. Because we found over time that rural community colleges have different capacities, both at the human resource level, but also the fiscal level, then their urban and suburban counterparts and that support structures and resources and materials really needed to be targeted towards rural institutions and overlying in the materials and resources and support structures that were built more globally for urban and suburban institutions had a very difficult time being retrofitted for the smaller, more rural institutions. So, that's the first piece that's different about this project.
The second piece is that we extended the teams in the beyond the community college and really told the colleges that they had to bring regional cross sector partners to the table from the beginning. So that it to bring their K12 partners, to bring their employers to bring their economic development agencies, to bring elected officials.
We let them identify where their greatest points of leverage was. So, we didn't tell them who to bring. We told them to bring the people that they thought that would come to the table with an open mind to create a vision for economic opportunity in the region that was common across sectors, but also really focus on how to help the college change the student experience so that they could increase the economic mobility for the students that they serve.
So that means early pathways in K12, starting with career exploration as early as the middle school in doing that in an ongoing way to provide dual enrollment opportunities that are on a pathway to the community college and beyond, that are aligned with good jobs. And also really bringing the employers to the table to have transparent conversations about wages and the number of job opportunities, and also what the employers can do for the college, job shadowing, internships, apprenticeship, early applied learning experiences for students that help keep them engaged in their educational experience.
And so we have, it has been a privilege to work with these 16 institutions for the last 2 and a half years. And we are in the process of expanding that cohort now. We're just about to release an application to bring in additional colleges in the original colleges are going to stay on for an additional three years to advance and extend their work, but also to serve as mentor institutions for the institutions that we're taking on in the spring to start this work.
Michelle Rathman: You know, I think about what, what I've been reading is that so much of this work is really rooted in advancing equity. And uh, I was, I had a conversation with, I was in, in DC recently and I had a conversation with somebody and I was, I was kind of sharing with him kind of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation kind of framework around the difference between equity and equality.
And could you talk a little bit about the Advancing Equity Through Guided Pathways? Just a little bit about that. I mean, it seems to be the thread through everything that you're doing there. Why? And how does it, what's the tangible ways that it's happening through this project?
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Absolutely, Michelle. This is all about creating equitable opportunities, particularly for students who have been underserved historically by post-secondary education, and that's not just based on race. While it is, it is in a lot of places, the focus is on students of color and the opportunities that students of color have or have not had in post-secondary education, but it is also first-generation students.
It's students living in poverty. It is single mothers who are returning for to work and what that looks like for them in practice. It is also adult students overall that are trying to upskill and reskill or advance their credentials so that they can increase their economic opportunities for themselves and their families.
So, we really work with the colleges to disaggregate their data and really look at where their gaps are and not just in enrollment, Michelle, but we're really having the colleges dig deep on program equity. Which students are, which programs and why are they recruited into those programs? Do they back into those programs?
Is there a disproportionate number of women in the trades? Is there a disproportionate number of students of color in high wage programs like engineering technologies? And so how do we help balance that so that it is equitable, particularly in those high wage, high opportunity jobs? How do we really make those programs represent the community that the college serves?
And so, it, it goes beyond just enrollment access in in the distribution of who's in your enrollment pool overall. But really digging deep into who's in what programs, who's staying in those programs and what happens post-graduation to those students in an opportunity in jobs or in transfer?
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, I would love to track, you know, and understand those, you know, after working with the institutions and then, you know, what does that mean for the learner and then beyond? Let's talk about leadership for a moment because leadership is certainly a part of every conversation, whether it's, uh, education, healthcare, business, you know, economic growth, it's all rooted in good solid, measured leadership, in my view.
And you all have come up with a Rural Community College Leader Series and I kind of pulled the different briefs that you've done. And I'd like to just kind of walk through those with you and maybe give us a little background. bit of a snapshot of what those are. So, the first brief was called Creating a College Going Mindset.
What is it? Where does it start? Is that kind of that K through 12 preparing?
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: It is Michelle, and it's also really an ongoing conversation with the community about the value of post-secondary education. So, the faith-based community, the Chamber of Commerce, it is with your community-based organization. So, it is with K-12, but it is also really having a community mindset. Where the college really goes out into the community to talk about the value of the credential, post-secondary credential, and post-secondary opportunities, so that those underrepresented students and those underrepresented communities can see themselves in post-secondary education.
The college can't just do it through educational institutions. It really has to be a community-based approach to changing the college going mindset. And we've heard more and more in the rhetoric in this country about how college isn't necessary to get a job in this country.
And while you can get a job without a post-secondary credential, we know now from another report, just released by Georgetown Center for Education in the workforce that to get a good job in this country all the way projected to 2034, and I don't believe that that is going to change in 2034, that you need a post-secondary credential.
And in most fields, you need a bachelor's degree. And so, you can get a job, but that is not a living wage job and it is certainly very far from a family sustaining job. And so, we really have to shift that rhetoric in communities and talk about, yeah, you can get a job. But what does that job mean?
What does that salary equate to in the, in the cost of living in that region? And, and, and what the difference is, is if you have a post-secondary credential and the opportunities that are opened up with that credential.
Michelle Rathman: For our listeners go back into our library because we did have a conversation with Dr. Jeff Strohl about the good jobs in small towns, big opportunities, both of those reports. And we have those links on our website because it's really fascinating data. And then the brief too, and I love this, just so out there, the title, Acting Boldly to Build Financial Solvency. Let's talk about that brief.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: It is, and it's really thinking about strategic finance and how that the state-based support in most all states for higher education is dropping precipitously at the same time that high school enrollments are dropping. And so, presidents are having to really be creative about how to knit together funding, but also prioritize.
What do you stop doing that's not working, that is costing both human and fiscal resources that you can reallocate to the things that you know are working? So, it's not just adding more funding. And some of it is that. How do you, how do you apply strategically for federal grants? How do you knit that together with state grants?
We're seeing some colleges work together with their K-12 districts to apply together for Department of Education grants, which makes the grants much greater reach and much more attractive for funding, both by philanthropy and by the federal government. But it's not just getting more money.
It is really rethinking how you allocate your limited resources as a leadership team and at a college so that the money is following your priorities, and if something doesn't fit within your umbrella of priorities, you either stop doing it or you don't take it on because it becomes a drain of resources away from your institutional priorities.
Michelle Rathman: That is such a great point. I think about how precious philanthropy dollars are and so to make sure that those are, you know, to the fullest extent used in the most efficient, effective ways possible. All right, brief number three, Cultivating Partnerships to Support Studentsā€™ Basic Needs. I, maybe there is a different opinion about students' basic needs, what they are.
So, let's talk about that brief for a moment.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Absolutely, Michelle, we over time in research has shown that a lot of the reason why students don't persist and complete in college, particularly community colleges, which have disproportionate number of first-generation low-income students is the outside responsibilities that come with that. So, whether it is food insecurity, housing insecurity, transportation insecurity, that they have to care for children, they have to care for adult parents.
And so, there has to be more transparency about that. We have to, when students come in our front door, we have to ask them, and even starting in the high school, but particularly when they are entering a community college, we have to ask them their full story. So, what are your outside responsibilities?
How many hours are you working? How in rural communities, how far are you driving to come to school? And how often can you do that? And you have broadband. That's absolutely. Do you have broadband? Do you have access to a computer in taking that information? And in holistically packaging aid so that students can see that having going to the food pantry, or the clothing closet, or getting a gas card, or being connected to mental health resources, that that's part of the experience at that college. That that that is there is no stigma around it that this is part of what it means to be a student here.
And that students only tell their story once, and then as they are advised and as they have to, that there is interventions, whether it be by faculty or student support services, folks, they check in on those pieces, not just on their academic issues, or kudos for their academic success. Is there something that you need that you do not have that we can help you provide so that you are more successful?
Michelle Rathman: I mean, it, it makes me feel like, oh, that sounds like a place I want to be, you know,
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Yeah, it's a sense of belonging.
Michelle Rathman: Yes.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: enormous.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, and what a difference. It could be so, I mean, the stigma that sometimes goes with it. I just think about some of my own experiences and what a difference that would make in the lives of, of somebody who really wants to achieve greater things for themselves, but the barriers are, you know, almost insurmountable.
What you're talking about removes those. All right. The next one sounds pretty straightforward. Diversifying Faculty at Rural Colleges. Could not agree with it more, so go into that one for a moment.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: No, Michelle, it's about, first of all, it's about creating an environment where diverse faculty feel like they belong, just like our diverse students feel like they belong, right? Like, so that when, when you are interviewing and recruiting and bringing faculty in, really talking to them about the community and what it means to live in this community and how they will be supported in this community.
And then when, making sure that you have diverse representation on hiring committees and making sure that your questions have no bias in providing faculty mentors for faculty that come in and, and we're seeing some very interesting like faculty development structures community colleges now, where you have a three year induction process that you really are being brought into this college into the culture, into the community, into the expectations into what it's what the expectations are for serving your students for 2 to 3 years with a faculty mentor and ongoing professional development.
So, not only does that faculty feel like they have a sense of belonging. But that they want to stay because it's really expensive to recruit faculty, and to onboard faculty and particularly for rural colleges that have limited resources to bring, go through that whole process and have someone leave after a year or 6 months or 18 months, even that, that the cost, the hard cost to the college for replacing that faculty member, not only, not only for the loss of that faculty member and that diverse member of that community, but also the hard costs and rehiring that person is significant. So how do we create that culture of belonging in our recruitment in our hiring and our onboarding process?
Michelle Rathman: And how that would impact learners. You know, because they grow to trust and, oh my gosh, you know, these are things that most people don't even think about. And it's not like just like replacing somebody. It is, it's actually, it's, it's very, but much bigger than that. It's about you know, you can't, you can maybe replace someone to do a particular job, but in terms of just that, that, uh, intelligence, that relationship building that, that, that they bring to the table.
Are you, we've got two more I want to touch on really quickly. Redesigning, Advising, and Support Services. Redesigning, Advising, and Support Services. What, what's that one all about?
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: It is really changing advising so that it is an ongoing case management model so that students have a person. So they identify with a person. So, whether that person is the same person throughout their journey at the college or that there is a team, some colleges have moved to advising team models. So, that they have an advisor, a faculty member in the department, an assigned financial aid person, and an assigned kind of tutoring supports per person model, or you have an advisor that is your case manager for the entire duration of your experience.
So that person follows you all the way through from beginning to end, or you have a handoff. It's some point between a professional advisor who onboards you and does your career exploration, gets you on an academic plan, gets you into a program of study, and then hands you off to a faculty advisor. And then you have a faculty advisor in your department for the duration of your time there.
But thinking about it as a holistic from point of, uh, in, from point of interest to point of graduation, how do you create those support structures? And if there is a handoff, how do you make that handoff seamless for students? That the student doesn't have to do the handoff that is incumbent on the institution to do the handoff in a way where the student sees that is the progression of their academic career at that institution.
Michelle Rathman: I love it. Okay. The last one is collaborating to create regional economic opportunity. And, you know, we know that so many you know, I mean, we just take a look at past events. This episode is dropping a little bit later this year, but we passed events. You know, we're whole communities have just been totally impacted by climate events and things of that nature.
And so, I understand how important it is to have a, you know, kind of a regional plan for resiliency. But talk about collaborating to create regional economic opportunity. It sounds, it sounds really logical, but I would imagine there's some challenge to that as well.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: There is Michelle, and I think that that is the, this, this brief was the basis for this project that this was the precursor to the conversation about why rural community colleges in particular, because in urban institutions, you have urban areas. You have a lot more players at the table, right? That there is so many different cross sector partners and it'd be very, it's much more difficult for the college to be the convener, first of all, because there's so many different like convening structures in urban areas. But also, for the, there to be a common vision around economic opportunity and economic mobility is very different in say, Houston than it is in Kilgore in Texas.
So, this brief was the precursor to the telling these rural colleges in this project why it was essential to bring these partners to the table and to shift the conversation. And the thing about being part of a national project that's a benefit is that you get them out of their regular space and you get them out of their regular meetings and you bring them to a two or three day meeting with support structures. They have coaches. We do bring in national presenters so they can see what's possible, which is hard to do when you're in the same kind of conversation that you've had for the last 10 or 15 years. Shifting that without some kind of event or some kind of motivator to change the conversation is really difficult.
But to take your superintendents to a meeting where superintendents from other places in the country are saying, we did this and this is why it mattered. And this is how we collaborated, true collaboration, not just like, like, you know, this is your role, this is my role, and we'll meet every once in a while, but true constructed collaboration.
It, it matters, and it has mattered to these colleges, the feedback that we've gotten from both the colleges, but from the community partners, the employers, the superintendents, the elected officials in the economic developers were, 'oh, we see why this is important to change now.' Because people have to have a reason to change Michelle, you know, the change is hard for everybody and in fear and change often look like the same thing.
Fear of change and resistance to change, I should say, often look like the same thing. And so really showing them what's possible and giving them a construct for a facilitated conversation outside of their normal space allows them to go back on a different footing to have a different conversation than they would have.
Michelle Rathman: And Gretchen, I, dare I say, I think that this approach is what makes programs like this sustainable
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Yes. Yes.
Michelle Rathman: Because when you have so called buy in that means that it's both feet in the water we're swimming together. And it makes it so that, you know, when like one partner, you know, pulls out, but there's others there. And that's what makes us sustainable to be sure.
Oh, my gosh. I could talk to you all day. Real quick before we close out because I know, I mean, you talked about the national cohort, the competitive process. There's 16 rural community colleges. We actually have one coming up next after our conversation, but maybe if you could just touch on just a little bit about where they are, and maybe one punctuation point about some of the success that you've seen working with these cohorts. You're two years into this now, right?
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Yeah, two and a half years into it, and you're talking to our colleagues from White Mountains in New Hampshire, which we're thrilled about, who really changed the conversation and the dynamic between the advanced manufacturing community and the role of the college to create really a sustainable pipeline of people coming both out of the college into an advanced manufacturing shop, but then how we can create advancement structures so that those people that come in at an entry level in that advanced manufacturing area, how do they get to the next level?
How do they get to a job that may now be a living wage to a family sustaining wage? We've seen shifts in conversations with K-12 and our colleagues in Ohio and Texas that brought superintendents to the table that really have changed when they start talking about careers, and when they start talking about connections to college, and who has access to dual enrollment opportunities and whether those dual enrollment opportunities are truly on an academic plan so a student can see themselves, not just getting out of high school with college credit, but actually transitioning to the college.
So, there is then some incredible, incredible cross-sector work that's been done with the colleges in this cohort. And it's just the, it's just the start of this. And so we are really excited to see in the next three years how those colleges and communities have changed because they've committed to doing work differently.
Michelle Rathman: Well, we'll certainly be following it. And I think you just made me think about something. It's very difficult to achieve something you cannot imagine for yourself. And so, the work that you're doing is, you know, it's a light bulb in my head is that you're helping people imagine what they can achieve and then creating the conditions for that to happen.
Gretchen Schmidt, it is really truly been an honor to talk with you. Congratulations on all the work that you do. I know you; you travel all over the country during this work and we'll be following. And we really do appreciate you sharing everything that's happening in your world. And again, really appreciate your time.
Dr. Gretchen Schmidt: Thank you so much for having me, Michelle, and for highlighting what we think is really important work for our communities.
Michelle Rathman: Well, it's our pleasure and our duty. So, but I'm going to tell our listeners do not go anywhere because we are going to be right back with the second part of this Rural Impact conversation. Stay tight.
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Michelle Rathman: Hey, Dr. Chuck Lloyd, Vice Chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire and former President of White Mountains Community College, and Mark Bonta, Executive Director of Recovery Jobs Foundation. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us. You've got a great inspirational story and we can't wait to have you share it with our listeners.
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Uh, great to be with you. Thanks for having us, Michelle.
Mark Bonta: Yes, thanks very much. Great opportunity.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, it is a really great opportunity because, you know, for both of you, we just heard from Gretchen Schmidt, and you know the name, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement. And we had a really robust conversation that included the vital role, and we've been talking about this in the entire series of rural community colleges and how they're enhancing access, not just to, you education but economic opportunities.
And again, it's a really good story. So, with that in mind Chuck, I'd like for maybe you to have us begin by giving us some background about the rural population that White Mountains Community College serves and how participating in this Rural Guided Pathways Project supported through Ascendium came to be.
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Yeah, first of all, thanks once again. And I'm always happy to talk about our rural community colleges and specific to White Mountains Community College, which is in the north country of New Hampshire. We literally serve the top half of the state as far as geography goes. We've got multiple locations and you know, one in Berlin, New Hampshire, Littleton, New Hampshire and embedded in Kennett High School, which is in the North Conway area for the skiers out there, the number one ski town in America.
Our population, roughly a thousand students or so, and you know, that that group is broken up by folks in health care, in technical trades from diesel, automotive, welding, but also into our liberal arts, general studies, criminal justice, conservation law, you know, multiple programs.
And then the, the, the physical breakdown of those students. So, some of those students, about half of them are high school students. A lot of those students are nontraditional, meaning not the 18- to 22-year-olds, but also the 28-year-olds, the 40-year-olds, the 50-year-olds, the career changers, we call them. And a lot of them coming from, from underrepresented, meaning socioeconomically from being close to the poverty line or below.
And also from a geography, a lot of those folks are commuting to the college from an hour plus away. So, when you break that down from everything I'm talking about, just seems like I just put up a bunch of barriers,
Michelle Rathman: You're right.
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: So, working through these barriers. So that's a, that's a general scope of our population and our, our, our reach.
And then how did we get tied into it you know, NCII and and Gretchen and Chris and, and super support from Ascendium. There was a call for rural community colleges interested in really looking at the entire student life cycle from how we recruit onboard our students, register them, and ultimately persistence, retention, and completion.
As a college, we had been recognized in the past as an Aspen nominee, top 150, just for the folks that are familiar with the, uh, community college excellence program. And we said, well, that's great, but we want to be better. You know, graduation rates hovered around 50%, which for community colleges was particularly high, but we knew we had more work to do.
And just the conversations with Gretchen and Chris and some of our partners, you know, Mark, you'll hear from in a moment, really knew we had more work to do. And just the engagement from that application process to the individual sessions and trainings and webinars that have been put on. We have learned a lot about ourselves.
How we serve students, how we attack these barriers that are in place, whether they're real or perceived, and how we are ourselves as faculty and staff can, can do more to, uh, to alleviate those in advance. So really, it's been a, it's been a comprehensive and holistic approach to student success.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah. Thanks for teeing all that up for us. You know, I, what I love about this program, so many things, but what I love so much is that we kind of have these silo conversations. So, we've got post-secondary education, and then we talk about jobs and we, we talk about them in the same context, but very rarely do we see opportunities to connect the two so, just so tightly is the way that you all have done there and through this project.
And so, Mark, I think I'll turn to you because, you know, you were on the other side of things. What about what is the impact of this project and engaging employers to partner with the college? I mean, let's talk a little bit about how they became not just hey, in the same community, but how they became so linked together. It's such an integral part of each other's mission.
Mark Bonta: Right? Yes. So great question. So, you know, the area in northern New Hampshire is very typical rural. It's an unskilled labor force a lot of disadvantaged young people to be not having the funds to be able to go to, you know, four-year college, things like that. And so, you know, our workforce, we're always dealing with bringing in unskilled labor and trying to train them either in house, et cetera.
Um, we had been partnered with White Mount Community College for a few years prior to this Rural Guided Pathways project. And you know, being a part of the project really created fresh new ideas for workforce development. One path we took was to bring WMCC into the workplace itself to do some presentations to our workforce on the affordability and access.
Because, you know, you think, you know, college especially, you know, when you're in a disadvantaged area like that, you think college is out of the question. You know, it's too expensive. You've got to work. A lot of the younger adults already have kids early in life, and so they've got to work full time jobs to care for their family, etc.
They don't realize that college can be accessible. And, you know, to be able to bring that into the workforce like that and you know, dedicate some time to explain that to them. You know, we gained some interest. We even set up a little, uh, corner in our cafeteria to uh, put out some pamphlets and more information and, uh, some contact numbers for, and email addresses for employees to you know, call and, and inquire.
Michelle Rathman: You know, I, I think, Mark, about your experience and I'd, I'd love for you to share more about that with our listeners because you were a plant manager at one of the employers that was, as you were discussing involved with this project. GenFoot is the name of the, of the company, U. S. home to Kamik, am I saying that right?
Outdoor Footwear, and they were the employer partner, and you joined the college for all six of the Rural Guided Pathway Institutes. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about how that experience impacted the organization, because we're talking about the benefit to the learners. We're talking about for those who, who maybe believe that as an adult, this is, this is a flat line here.
This is where I'll go, but this is also very important for local employers. And I don't think we talk about that enough.
Mark Bonta: Yeah. So, yeah, you know, the first impact on me personally when I was at the institutes was to be able to sit in a room with all these different groups, you know, I don't know how many tables there were, how many colleges were there, I don't remember, but to have that many people sitting there and realizing that all these business leaders in the community college system of the US are interested in helping. Helping others. You know, making higher learning accessible to them and affordable. Uh, that was, that, that, that had an impact on me, you know, and it really really helped me to open up my, uh, imagination a little bit more. And so, you know, we, we had with the partnership with WMCC, we developed two certificate programs.
One was called intro introduction to engineering, and the other one was a frontline management series, which is a leadership program. And that one in particular was really popular with not just with my workforce, but with other businesses, neighboring businesses in the area. That went on for a few years.
I'm not sure if I think they might still be doing it. So that's really a question for Chuck. But, uh, you know, that was a great opportunity. We were able to work with WMCC to you know, make it into something customized that we, we needed in our leaders. And I sent over two or three years. I sent eight, the first year, and then six, the next two years each year.
And each time, every one of those students came back you know, with more professional behavior at the workplace and more professional work at the workplace, you know.
And we've got, I could even you know, tell you, we've got some uh, some of our employees that turned out to be business leaders themselves now. One of them owns a series of recovery homes in the area. One of them is managing several retail facilities and one went on to become the, financial director for the chamber of commerce.
Michelle Rathman: You know, I recall reading in the story, and this is interesting because you run the risk, you know, and I love that the organization that you work for didn't see it as a risk. You run the risk. If we educate them, there's that saying, and I'll try and think of it. What if we educate them and they leave and then worse off, what if we don't and they stay?
And so there was no fear factor saying, Hey, listen, if you, but the other part of this, which was so interesting is because of the industry that you, that you work in very, there's proprietary information and you are working to educate, to skill people up, bringing them in at, at a certain level and then providing them with the training that they need.
And Chuck, that also requires, I understand, a shift in the mindset of how we take a look at, how institutions take a look at perhaps being more flexible in the way that they design their curriculum. Let's talk about that for just a moment because there's some give and take here, right?
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: There absolutely is. And that's, it's a great train of thought. It's the flexible, it's adaptable, but accessible to use Mark's word from earlier. And, you know, Mark is humble. He's a, he's a great leader and he's, he was part of an industrial park of a lot of just great business leaders, whereas we understood we weren't educating and training the North country.
We weren't educating and training Kamik employees where, you know, wrote it back. I can go right through all the folks. There was an understanding and Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but, really, that the understanding was we're training folks that are going to be in our community, and they may go to different employers and whatnot, but the understanding is we are training the community.
And that is really a mindset in the rural area that you don't see outside of that. I am currently down in an urban area in the southern part of the state, and really, it's very specific to the business or, or even industry sector, but not necessarily a community. And that's, that was a differentiator in the area.
And that Mark really led the effort to say, it's okay if they leave, they may come back. But you know, what we're doing is we're training the workforce that is available in the community. And it is a different mindset. And the customizing aspect of it is, you know, us understanding what are the needs?
Mark came to us with the needs for supervision or, or technical training within engineering, et cetera, but also saying. You know, this is a foundational skill that can be adapted to other businesses. So, there was real intentionality around the specific training and understanding that, you know, we are investing in certainly employees at that time, but community members, active citizens and folks that we really want to be interacting with, you know, try to, the, the all tides, all boats relationship in the community.
So, it's really, it was a different mindset than I've seen other places. And I'll tell you that that'll continue to cascade you know and pay dividends for years.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, I can't wait to see because the story isn't over. And it won't have an ending. I just wonder what the overall impact, economically speaking, you know, being able to, you know, we talk about retain people and then them become contributors back into their own economy and so forth. I think it's just so exciting.
Have you seen this kind of your case study and your story? Have, have you been able to kind of expand it and, and now see yourselves as. One of those models that we hold up high and say, this is what we can learn from, what are some of those lessons that you could share with maybe those of our listeners who are saying maybe this is something that we could pursue in our own community, even if we don't have the backing of, you know, someone like Gretchen's organization.
How, how can this be something that's homegrown perhaps?
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Well, having the backing of Gretchen's organization and the facilitation and connection is huge. I want to make sure we're clear about, you know, appreciation and gratitude, number one. Number two, what they taught us was also to identify what is scalable. And I think that's really where, I hope that's where you're heading. Because what is scalable, you know, it's a mindset shift of, you know, we're in a community college system in New Hampshire of seven colleges, 10 locations and saying, okay, if we take a different approach, instead of saying, let's look in our own community, who are the individual partners we're working with, which is great.
We do have great relationships, but if we were to say with our 10 locations, how do we best serve the needs of the state? And taking that approach is, okay, let's respond to workforce number one, but what are the skills and training we can provide to educate the community at large, meaning the entire state.
So, taking that same mindset and scaling it from the rural aspects of New Hampshire, the North country to say, no matter who we're training, they're going to be at one of our employers, or these are the folks that are going to be your neighbors. They're in our communities. They're going to come back for retraining, upskilling. And it's really a, you know, I wouldn't say a shotgun approach to trying to work with everybody, but it's, it's beyond specifically targeted toward a single employer or sector, and I do think that is scalable.
And we're working as the community college system now. I've taken what we've learned from, Gretchen and Chris and in our 16 other colleges that were with us out there and saying, I've heard best practices and I'm listening, you know, I'm in touch with Kentucky, for example. They're looking at coming together as a single entity. And we're saying, how do we do things more efficiently to allow this innovative approach?
and bandwidth to be out there to do some of this work. So, it's really started our wheels spinning around scalability even the, uh, the responsiveness to workforce and [00:14:00] also, you know, not trying to, to have the one-off approaches, but build things that are sustainable.
Michelle Rathman: And, you know, this podcast is also about connecting the dots between policy and rural everything, and I think that there is a policy component to this, whether it has to do with the institution, but we also have to recognize the important investments that are required to make sure that the funding remains there in place and that the student population, the local businesses can all take advantage of something that makes their communities better.
Mark, before we leave you know, your story is so inspirational to me. I know in my personal life, a lot of adults who maybe gave up on the idea that that pursuing a higher education at their age, if you will, is just out of reach. Can you just share a little bit about your own personal education journey and, and maybe how that's shifted, changed you, shifted some of your mindset?
And I certainly don't want to put thoughts in your head and words in your mouth.
Mark Bonta: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I have been working on the degree, you know, 20 years ago, and I then I got promoted to the plant manager job at Kamik and figured I got the big job. I don't need this anymore. So, I. I dropped it, you know, I stopped working on it. And you know, I, I went to this Rural Guided Pathways project and it, again, it, it really inspired me and it, it reinvigorated my interest in completing my degrees.
And I figured at the same time, why not be a test subject for White Mountain Community College so that they can, you know, kind of test out their pathway, they knew creating pathway skills on an adult learner. And so I re-enrolled. And I've been working with the, I've been working with Nicole at the White Mountain Community College to create a pathway for me and I'm still working on it, despite the fact that I have retired from Kamik and I've moved down south, I'm in Florida now I'm still a student at White Mountain Community College and I'm still working with uh, still working with them towards that degree. I expect it's part time, so I expect to complete the bachelor's of science probably in 2028.
Michelle Rathman: that just gave me chills. That's so wonderful. Chuck, that must make you feel so good. All right, Chuck, before we leave, I have kind of the last question. I always work to work in every conversation. Advocacy is such an important part of the work that you do. So, if you could give a few ideas about what is in your advocacy toolkit when you're advocating for the philanthropic dollars, the policy shifts and whatnot? What do you say to others in your position for how to stay the course and advocate for the resources that are so necessary for this important work to continue?
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Yeah. Great question. Love to love to expand a little bit. So, I, you know, I was the president of White Mountains Community College and now that I'm the Vice Chancellor for the system, you know, across the state I would employ the same, the same concepts. Number one, build relationships before you need to leverage them.
You know, we in New Hampshire and across the country, we just had some elections that people might have heard. There were just elections recently. We've got some new senators and state reps. You know, in New Hampshire, we have 429 elected officials. So there are plenty around.
Within that, it's reaching out. It's meeting with folks, getting them to know about the community college system, our impact meet with them with a couple of your, your business and industry partners, you know, get to say, these are the fruits of our labor. So, it's not just us telling our story. It's a group, you know, story tell that you know, really identifies the workforce needs.
So, I always say build relationships before you need them. Number one, number two is tell our story, but also help have other people help tell our story. And then, you know, the final piece I would say is, you know, our students are from New Hampshire.
You know, a lot of folks, talk about, you know, going out of state, bringing out state students in New Hampshire. 93 percent of our students are from New Hampshire and stay in New Hampshire. So these are your neighbors. These are your, your, your cousins, your uncles, your sons, your daughters, your friends you know, all of the investment you make stays right here in New Hampshire.
So taxpayer dollars are well spent and there's the obvious ROI on every dollar spent close to 4 comes back in economic development.
So, I think there are a couple of strategies there, some taglines and quite timely as we go into a budget cycle here coming up. But we've got the relationships before we need to make the phone call.
Michelle Rathman: Yes, that's such an exceptional piece of advice. I echo that completely my gosh to both of you. It has been truly a pleasure. I've been excited to have this conversation, Chuck and Mark. Mark, kudos to you for your tenacity for your commitment and for showing us all what it means to invest in yourself and, and pursue something higher for, for your own personal reasons, but it sure is inspirational for others.
I hope who say maybe this is the year I'm going to do it.
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Awesome. Well, Michelle, and thank you so much. And I've made a lifelong friend out of Mark. I can't thank him enough for his leadership and openness to work closely with the college.
Michelle Rathman: That is wonderful. Thank you to you both. We'll be watching for your future success and for the rest of you, stay tuned. We've got a closing for this very special Rural Impact conversation. We'll be right back.
Mark Bonta: Thanks, Michelle.
Charles Lloyd, Ed.D.: Thank you.
