MTWC hosted this webinar on February 9, 2017. What follows is the transcript of that webinar. The full webinar recording may also be viewed at the link below. Additionally, the slides are available for download.
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Transcript
ADAMS: Welcome to our webinar series on accelerating apprenticeships in the transportation sector. Today webinar will focus on the critical role of community colleges in creating and delivering apprenticeship programs. MTWC has partnered with Harper College to deliver this webinar series. Harper College is a recognized pioneer in developing best practices for community colleges and sponsors of registered apprenticeships.
ADAMS: During the webinar, please remember a few things. Please first remember to put your phone on mute so others don’t hear your background noise. Also you can type questions at any time in the chat area. These will be visible to everyone and we will try to answer as many as possible during our Q&A time. And, finally, you can download the files at any time from the File Share area. Also, there are instructions for joining the MTWC Community of Practice.
ADAMS: This is Teresa Adams, I’m director of the Midwest Transportation Workforce Center and the University of Wisconsin. For this second webinar in our series on apprenticeship, we have over 150 people registered representing all the stakeholder groups. …We have participants from community and technical colleges interested in establishing apprenticeship programs. We have participants representing employers including state departments of transportation, trucking, rail, and other industries in transportation. We have many participants from community-based and regional workforce development organizations including state workforce investment boards, state departments of labor and economic development organizations. I want to extend a special welcome to members of the MTWC advisory board. And, welcome back to those who participated in our first webinar in this series.
ADAMS: For those who are not familiar with the MTWC, we are one of five centers funded by the Federal Highway Administration to facilitate innovation and strategic partnerships in transportation workforce development. The five centers work together as the National Network for the Transportation Workforce.
ADAMS: At MTWC we are happy to announce the addition of the new searchable database to the MTWC Clearinghouse on our website at MTWC.org. The Clearinghouse has over 1300 entries including links to various resources including apprenticeship programs, internships, educational opportunities, professional development opportunities, scholarships, and so forth. The Clearinghouse is helping us to understand the current state of transportation workforce development in our region and identify gaps in the pathways for transportation careers. We’re continuing to add new resources. To get your resources listed, you can submit the submission form on the website or just send your information to Maria Hart who is on the staff here at MTWC.
ADAMS: So, our first webinar in this series was held in December. The slides, recordings and transcript from that event are available on the MTWC website. Today’s webinar is what community colleges need to do to become sponsors of registered apprenticeship programs. Our target audience is the community and technical colleges and all of their partners interested in registered apprenticeship programs. Our objective today is to lay out all the nuts and bolts of what it takes to successfully establish an apprenticeship program. In this webinar you’ll learn what Harper College did and their decision to offer a registered apprenticeship program and what they did to create that program. You’ll learn how to establish an apprenticeship program that’s a win-win-win scenario for the college, businesses, and students. We hope that the webinar will help community and technical colleges in their decision to offer a registered apprenticeship program.
ADAMS: Here’s our agenda. We’ll spend about 20 minutes with Rebecca Lake from Harper College who will tell us their story. And then we have some time for Q&A. Melissa MacGreggor who is the Manager for grants at Harper College will take on facilitation of the questions. Then I’ll do a short closing and then we’ll ask Rebecca to give you a little bit of an update on what we are planning for webinar number 3.
ADAMS: So, let’s get started. Today’s speaker is Dr. Rebecca Lake. She’s the Dean of Workforce and Economic Development at Harper College. Dr. Lake is an ApprenticeshipUSA leader. She’s held academic positions. Currently, at Harper College she oversees the Job placement resource center, the small business center and the office of apprenticeship. Without further delay it’s my pleasure to Welcome Rebecca Lake.
LAKE: Thank you so much and welcome everybody. I think this is the way community colleges can get involved with their community. That’s why the word is in our title. The real push now is for jobs and one of the ways to get there is with Registered Apprenticeship programs.
LAKE: What we’re going to cover in this webinar is these kinds of things. What is a registered apprenticeship program? The win-win-win initiatives. And, then, as Teresa was talking about, we need to get to the nuts and bolts. So how do you do this? Where do you decide? How do you decide? What do I need before I decide? And then some of the programs we have and how did we develop those. And, becoming the program sponsor.
LAKE: As we heard in the great webinar number one is that the registered apprenticeship program is a proven program that ensures quality education. It combines these two things. It’s the on-the-job training and that’s with the employer. And the related classroom instruction, that’s what we at technical and community colleges provide. So we prepare the student and that apprentice for the high-demand career. It’s what we’re used to calling: Earn and Learn. They earn a salary and work with the employer while they learn and go to school.
LAKE: We’ve had lots of questions as we started looking at this. One of the questions always was, well a registered apprenticeship is a registered apprenticeship program and that’s just what they are. The truth of the matter is that the programs are not all alike and you need to know what they are. So you can fulfill your part in that. Providing related instruction or become a program sponsor. There are three common types but you can easily work with all three of these.
LAKE: Here are the three types. There’s a generic apprentice and that’s when a company hires a person and pays them and then pays them for any class they might take at your facility. They do all the on the job training and just call it an apprentice. They can call it anything they want. It’s not a registered apprenticeship program but that’s OK. At least your school is providing those kinds of courses and skills they need to enhance their job. That’s not a bad thing there are you get students who come in along with the others in your classes. Number two is where the company is the sponsor of a registered apprenticeship program. And this is what everyone is used to here in the US. But this is mostly the building construction trades, the electricians, plumbers, drywallers, even UAW. Those are the large companies and trades with their own registered apprenticeship programs. They have registered it with the DOL and they usually teach the same thing across the country. So, they are very knowledgeable about whether the student went to Arizona or Florida, they all learn the same thing. If the company sponsor had a related training instruction that they wanted a community or technical college to do, we certainly could offer that. We would probably talk to them about what is needed and it might fit into some of our programs already developed. Or we might need some tweaking or might even run it under CE or credit bearing or corporate training. And number three is what we do, and I put in University here because some states have 2-year institutions that actually it’s a university system but with 2-year institutions, also. We have now this big push from the federal government, office of apprenticeship, for, us, as the college to become the registered apprenticeship program sponsor, which means we can write and guide many of those programs.
LAKE: Here are five core components and you all have to meet them if you’re looking at developing your own registered apprenticeship program or at least the RTI part along with a company that might be a program sponsor. Is the employer assistance with designing the curriculum and you have to do that. There has to be some documentation that you have companies in and they tell you what is needed for their hire-ees to learn. On-the-job training: The company has to have a mentor and sort of a plan. Some plans are very sophisticated with coming in with hours or numbers of hours that they meet a certain competency. Others are a little more or less proscriptive. Related training and instruction, that’s what you do. Here at Harper, all of ours are an AAS degree at this time, so you know that everywhere across the country that’s around 60 credits, so we have 900 hours there. The company, because they hired the registered apprentice — don’t forget it’s earn and learn, he’s earning a salary while he’s learning with you. Every time you build skills and knowledge gained you have to have some sort of wage increase, so the company has to give them a wage boost. At the end they get a national credential awarding that they have finished a registered apprenticeship program.
LAKE: One of the things that I have been asked frequently is “Who do I go to? (in whatever state)” Here is a contact list. It’s a 50-50 shot. You can either be an OA state where the office of apprenticeship is run through the federal government like Illinois. Or you can be an SAA system like Wisconsin. There’s a nice map in there you can go in and find the contact and the name and what kind of system you are. Know that there are these two systems, however they all lead to the same thing. It’s just that some states opt to have their own system.
LAKE: What Teresa was saying was absolutely correct. This is a win-win-win initiative. There has been a big push over the last two years. States have gotten money to develop registered apprenticeship programs and enhance it. Even states, for example Georia, have gotten money. They have purposely made sure that all of their community colleges are program sponsors. We have a grant, too. It’s an American Apprenticeship Grant. Here’s the win-win. Companies are learning to fill their skills gap. It’s not just the companies in the building construction trades. These are companies like the advanced manufacturing, anybody who needs and industrial maintenance mechanic or CNC, healthcare for LPNs or for coders or medical assistants. We even have general insurance. So they’re looking at all different kinds to fill their gaps. Students get a win because they are starting or changing their career. And colleges are seeking to fulfill their mission, grow enrollment and improve retention and completion rates.
LAKE: One of the things I put up here is the benefits for companies. You want these at your fingertips. You and your staff that’s going out and talking to companies in your area. Not only do you have advisory committees, but you can’t just make sure that you talk to those companies on your advisory committess. You really need to go out and touch base with your community. When you meet with those employers, you want to be able to say how they will benefit from hiring a registered apprentice. Such as filling your skills gaps, growing your own talent, you have a mentor-led on the job training. Don’t forget there are a lot of guys who are going to be retiring in five or six years and you need to make sure that all of those seasoned experts pass on their knowledge. It increases employees loyaty, increases diversity and reduces turnover rates and recruiting costs. You have a stable, predictable pipeline. When you hire them and they are in college for either two or three years, most of our companies are asking the registered apprentice to sign a contract that says that when they are done with their college program, that they will stay an additional 18 months or 2 years. So you have registered apprentice who will be locked in for four to five years. Don’t forget you’re starting employees on a career path. It’s not just a job. So you can move them up through the company.
LAKE: Benefits for Apprentices. This is important too. We have monthly information sessions. We always talk about this to those who are interested in becoming registered apprenticeships. Guaranteed employment, zero debt at graduation, companies let you have time off so you can go to class. Don’t forget when you are done with your program, you have 2 or 3 years experience.
LAKE: Benefits for the College. Helps to fulfill the mission. Meets employer needs. Helps reach enrollment, retention, and completion rates and helps build those critical relationships with employers.
LAKE: Deciding to Offer a registered apprenticeship program. You need to ask these basic questions. Is there overall institutional buy in? It can’t just be the president saying I think we ought to do it. You have to look throughout the departments of the college to see if they can all work together and are all on the same page. There are some processes and systems that will need to be put in place. And you need to know if there is an allocated college staff to direct the initiative. We always talk the champion. I’m going to tell you point blank, if you don’t have a champion, don’t do this. The champion needs to guide and direct this and push and talk to people and do everything. Be creative so that this moves forward. Last but definitely not least, do you have the companies? Every company will give you a letter that will say they are in support of it. But do you have companies who will drop the dime and hire registered apprentices and pay for their college as they go to school. You have to know who’s committed. Do you have enough?
LAKE: Starting the program you can only do that if you have faculty that is willing to work with you. They have to be fully engaged. Here at Harper the program coordinator she is definitely on board. Admissions must be willing to work with you. I have a guy named, Bob. You can’t have Bob but he is really good and he gets it. He understands this is a way to help students, the college, and the employers. You have to have a champion. It can’t just be lip service. Someone must invest their time. And then you have to have employers willing to hire apprentices. If you don’t have these, don’t do this. If you do have these, then you have other decisions to make.
LAKE: How do you decide which RA programs to offer? What’s the number one occupation in your area that employers keep telling you they have a skills gap. Do you have a CTE program or AAS degree that’s already you don’t have to do it from scratch. If you do, that’s a huge plus for you. Make sure that the occupation, such as advanced manufacturing, make sure it’s on the list of available occupations. If you can’t find something or don’t know, contact your office. They are great and they have been good for us.
LAKE: The curriculum. Here’s the neat thing about this. It dovetails with any of the current AAS degrees you have in your CTE program. We have a program director in advanced manufacturing. We already had an AAS degree. We talked to employers in the area to discover the skills they needed their apprentices to have. He made sure those were embedded in the curriculum. We had competencies in the curriculum. We had standards frm the federal standards that are embedded in the curriculum. Next is to decide what format you want to have it in. Do you want to have it every semester or start it only in the fall. How long do you want the program? 2 or 3 years? For example advanced manufacturing for us is 8 weeks every semester. That’s their job, they don’t go to work, they come here for 8 weeks in the spring and 8 weeks in the fall to have those courses. Now our general insurance runs 12 weeks. You get to decide. You talk to faculty and employers. How is it you want to construct this. Decide on the days of the weeks. Monday through Friday for these 8-week classes. But for the 12-week, they go to work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday but on Tuesday and Thursday they come in for classes. You might run it on the weekend. There are many ways to do this. There are many ways to craft these.
LAKE: Selecting our RA program. You have to do some internal marketing. We spent a year talking to people throughout the college about what is a registered apprenticeship program. External outreach activities to employers and potential apprentices. You need to talk to employers wanting to hire apprentices. Develop talent pipelines with your high schools or your local WIOAs. What do you want to establish as admission criteria? For us, since they are all AAS degrees, is that they have to read write and do math.
LAKE: So marketing ideas. For potential apprentices, we have them Tuesday 6-7:30 we had 35 people there. Potential apprentices. High Schools. Our admissions do email blasts to current students taking the first course. Work with your area WIOAs. We are doing that now and setting up ways we might be able to use them. In the new regulations they were registered apprentices 47 times and they are supposed to work with registered apprenticeship programs. We do lots of targeted mailers. We do lots of outreach.
LAKE: Marketing with employers. We do two large business information breakfasts per year. All sorts of other activities. We have people who go out and touch base with business associations. We do mailers. We have tables at events. The things that you are very used to doing. You just do that to talk about registered apprenticeship programs. We have consultants who go out and meet with employers. And we hold targeted employer information groups.
LAKE: So here’s what we have at Harger. Indsutrial Mechaning, CNC, and Supply Chain. You know about non-traditional, General Insurance is non traditional. But registered apprenticeships can be for anything that your employers want and that your faculty will work with you.
LAKE: Here’s a quick picture of the Harper RA cohort.
LAKE: What would your college’s obligation be? You need to provide quality and qualified faculty, which you all have. You need to get new equipment. One of the things, as we all know with CTE programs, they don’t want your guys to learn on very old equipment. So, you know, the new and up to date equipment that you can get. The curriculum needs to be vetted by companies. Every year we bring in the companies and we say, How was it? What do the students need to learn? Is there anything missing? Is there anything that needs to change? You always want to be doing that continuous quality improvement. We embed national creditials in the curriculum. Someone asked me what that was yesterday. And I say that like with our general insurance, it’s call The Institute, they have all these credentials. And the students can go take this national test and have a credential that is useful to them throughout their professional life. Just like in manufacturing it’s NIMS. We also provide tutors because our whole thing is how do you help apprentices succeed. We have coaches who work with apprentices and employers. We ask faculty how are they doing? As we all know tutors are really good for English and math in particular. So we have those set up for the apprentices. We keep the employers notified as to what their grades are. If someone is continually late. Apprentices sign a release form, because the company is paying their tuition, the company, the apprentices, and us all know their grades. So we all try to keep on the same wavelength.
LAKE: Here’s our program in brief. I always tell the companies, give me your students for 16 weeks a year. The other 36 weeks they are with you. Then you teach them your kinds of things you need them to learn at your company. The foundation is the AAS degree when they work with you and the mentor at the employment. That’s the time they really understand the “Bob’s Tool and Die” way. After talking to the companies, they wanted them to go Fall, spring and summer, they wanted them done in two years, so we crafted it that way. You can either have it in day or evening.
LAKE: There’s a big elephant in the room. How much does this costs is the thing they all want to know.
LAKE: For us, it’s a flat $15,000 for the entire program billed through corporate training. We invoice them every semester and divide it by 6 semesters. Includes tuition, books and fees. Remember that the graduation for the AAS degree is a cumulative GPA of 2.0. Our whole position at Harper is that this registered apprenticeship initiative must be sustainable in the long run.
LAKE: Just so you know, we are located in the workforce economic development. We are more outward focusing. I am the champion. I have a wonderfully creative and energetic staff. The grants manager, Melissa MacGreggor is a god send and everyone works together wonderfully. We have 5 full time a 3 part time people. And we have some short term consultants off the grant. Some colleges only have one or two people like my friend in Alabama, it’s just her. You can do it with just one person, but you have to decide how you want to do it. What makes the most sense for your college.
LAKE: Harper is a registered apprenticeship program. What does this mean? You can become a sponsor and you would be group, non-joint. All of these little companies, they just send us one apprentice. We aggregate all of those numbers, this is the benefit of being the program sponsor, and they can all go into one classroom. We do all the paperwork, so there’s no paperwork for the employers to do. We register the student in a DOL database, so they can get their certificate at the end. Harper is then eligible to write other registered apprenticeship programs needed by employers. For example, I’m going to be writing one for the banker’s association. Illinois banker’s association came to me and said we need to find the people who will be in the corner banks. They lose them a lot. There’s a lot of turnover. So we are going to write a banking and finance registered apprenticeship program. The automobile dealer came to us. So we are going to write one for sales. You could do it for HVAC and many others. And healthcare, too.
LAKE: Just so you know, we’re currently writing for 4 more. As of January 2017, we’ve only been in this since fall 2015. We have 51 apprentices and we’re going to double this number by next fall. We have 14 employers and we’re going to double that. We have train the trainer videos and a booklet up on te website.
LAKE: Here is where you can get lots of tings and you ca call us if you want to. Everything we have is on the website. You can download it and make it your own. This is an overview, not a lot of detail. It’s very doable, we have doubled the numbers and we’ll double them in the fall again. It is a doable strategy for helping, students, employers, and colleges.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
ADAMS: Thank you Dr. Lake. We really appreciate you taking the time to lay out all the information in an organized way and share it with the audience. I’d like to hand this over to Melissa MacGreggor to handle the Q&A portion. I want to remind the participants to put your questions in the chat area and we’ll try to answer as many of those as we can today.
MACGREGGOR: I’m just going to go over some of the questions in the chat area and I may cover some of those questions that were submitted ahead of the program. Lisa asks. She’d be interested to know how the curriculum development is funded. There are not federal funds or gransts that I know of that are available for this type of work. As Dr. Lake had pointed out earlier, the best thing to do is to work with what you already have. You don’t even have to approach your curriculum committee if you’re just making small tweaks. If you have a program in business administration already and you just need to add a course or change a learning objective to meet the federal standards, probably the best way to go about starting your first program. Faculty update curricula routinely. This is a common process. I’m sure community colleges have at least monthly meetings to send things to the board. So these tweaks can be easily managed to match the standards.
LAKE: It didn’t take us very long to do the industrial maintenance mechanic one. We sat together in the summer time and the dean came in and was involved, too. It really went very well. For general insurance and that sort of thing, everyone that I know, there are over 1000 community colleges in the nation, we usually all have associates degrees in business and we have those general classes that are in there. And we have some emphasis courses. When I write the one for the bankers or the sales and merchandising I can take those four out and just put four new courses in. It’s extremely doable but my suggestion is you start with what you hve.
MACGREGGOR: Amy asks if the employers pay wages while the students are in class. The answer is yes. The students should have a 40 or a 37.5 hour a week job. When they are in class, their job is to go to school and get good grades and educate themselves. When classes are not in session, they are certainly at work.
MACGREGGOR: Mike suggests that you can work with your IDES. Just to give a plug for our next webinar which is on partnerships. And we are partnered with our IDES. He has worked with our IDES to distribute our brochures and to recruit people.
LAKE: That takes into account also working with your WIOA. When we talk about partnerships you should make sure that you’re working with and talking to your WIOA.
MACGREGGOR: Amy asks if we had employer buy in at the outset or did you have to do some convincing.
LAKE: Zurich came to us. We were very lucky. Because they are a swiss company. They couldn’t find claims adjusters and underwriters. They came to us and would you like to work with us on a registered apprenticeship programs here. There was not one on the list of available occupations. They took it up through the federal office and so now it is on the list. So anybody across the country can have that. We designed it with AAS degree in business administration, did not start it from scratch. Was quite an easy one to do and we have the four extra courses in that. One of the things that is really important is you have to make sure those companies will buy into hiring the person and sending them to school. We found that the $15,000 cost is not the issue. It is truly a cultural shift in American companies in that they have –and I’m talking about Bob’s Tool and Die, not the bigger companies – they have to switch the culture and know that they need to pay while the student is going through the program. But what they end up with a person who has an AAS degree, who has this foundation, and has 3 years experience working at their company and is going to be there at least two more years. It’s very workable.
MACGREGGOR: Jill asks if we do quality assessments at the employers work sites.
LAKE: Yes, we do! Melissa, do you want to tell them about the coaching sessions when we go out to the company? This is what I’ll say — and Melissa will tell you how it’s done. We don’t through the students to the wolves and we don’t throw the companies to the wolves. We go out there and see the companies because they have the curriculum map. And we have competencies that they have to attain. We make sure we’re always there for them and to answer their questions.
MACGREGGOR: This is a good question and I just want to make one small distinction. Earlier Dr. Lake talked about the three different types of apprenticeships. If a company has come to you and you’re just providing the related instruction, this is not as necessary. Obviously you want to do some quality assessment for the program. But if you are the sponsor of the program, you are required, actually, to go and do assessments at the employer work site. So the answer is yes, if you are going to be the program sponsor you will be going out to all the companies routinely. We go out at least after every semester to provide the companies with the student grades and make sure they’ve got some academic progress to find out what kinds of projects they’re working on and they really do have a mentor and the mentor is aware of what the apprentice is doing. That there has been some attention to the list of competencies for that occupation and the mentor has been checking that list off and observing those competencies. We help the employers by training those mentors. We have a train the trainor program, we let them send anyone they want. If they want to train a guy who’s working with the apprentice at that particular time. Yes you will routinely, continuously be working with your employers because that’s actually a requirement if you’re going to be the sponsor.
MACGREGGOR: Robin asks can high school students get started or is a diploma required first? I’m just going to say, we’re a community college so we deal with people who are already at the college level, and our program is an associates degree so you do have to have a diploma if you are going to get an associate’s degree. But if you are going to be the sponsor, you can build a program that meets your needs.
LAKE: If for example, if you wanted to set up a pre-apprenticeship program, there are funds. Illinois for example has an RFP out for youth building preapprenticeship program. There are many states that have those preapprenticeship programs that lead right into registered apprenticeship programs. You might check with your state apprenticeship program. We have tried to set up that talent pipeline with high schools. A lot of high schools are pushing internships so they might be out at different companies. Those are the times we will try to go out to those companies that we know high school students are in to ask those companies are you thinking about an apprenticeship program? Might this intern be the right person to be your first apprentice? We don’t do this here but it is done many places.
MACGREGGOR: Bill asks is the employer input causing continuously updates to curriculum and you’re embedding the national standards, how do you align that.
LAKE: When I told you that we always touch base with the companies, we do. But companies don’t change my entire curriculum. They may say we need another assignment in there or bring another book in. But I don’t rewrite the whole curriculum every time we have a meeting. I do bring those kinds of things to the faculty to look at what we might do to enhance the learning opportunity but we don’t rewrite the curriculum. The curriculum is pretty well set once you become a program sponsor. But there are ways that you can enhance it. All of us in CTE know that you enhance or tweak every single course that we have. But we don’t take it down to the Illinois community college board.
MACGREGGOR: He also asked if the program was longer in contact hours than the state approved.
LAKE: Our program is 60 credits, that 900 hours. We have one other one that’s 61. And that’s fine. We’re trying to pair all of our AAS degree down. As we know for registered apprenticeship programs, your RTI needs to be at least 140 hours. Of course we’re at 900 for the AAS degree. And for contact hours, our is at 3900 to 5600 hours. Because ours is a three year program for advanced manufacturing. But we all have competencies based on the end so if a student was really good and the mentor checked off the competencies at 3600 and he’s done with the RTI, he would be done with his registered apprenticeship program. I hope that helps.
MACGREGGOR: Mark wanted to know if we have a minimum number of enrollment in order for them to run.
LAKE: I think that’s a great question. Yes we do. The first class came to us and we had 24. Because of many things we now have around 20. But, here’s what I found out. We all thought oh well we’ll make this its own cohort. What we realized that’s probably not the best way to do it. I lock in the seats of a course. I save 5 or 11 seats, then I allow other enrollees to come in the course. So essentially, I can run a class with one registered apprentice and 19 other people coming into the course. So that’s how we did it. We found that having its own cohort with no one else in it is not the best way to go. The only thing I do for advanced manufacturing is the gen eds and I drop a gen ed into every semester. I try to keep those people in the gen ed class by themselves because I get them tutors that they really need.
MACGREGGOR: If there is some attrition – and we have had a little bit of that – how do you handle that and do you break even?
LAKE: I don’t have to break even because we have other people in it. We did have one student flunk the math course and one of the students just didn’t like the company he was at. You know things happen. Life happens. Illness happens. Those kinds of things. We are at about 83% retention rate. So we’re doing pretty good. And I think we’ll be doing better and better. The companies hire them, so the companies have to make that great hire. We all know that that hire doesn’t work out. So, I don’t have to break even as if I had 10 and 2 left my god what am I going to do. I don’t have to do that because all the courses except the gen ed, I let the courses be back filled. I simply save the seats.
MACGREGGOR: Maureen asks how did we become the sponsor? I think that I’m going to interpret that as How did you approach the Department of Labor. I hope that’s a good interpretation.
LAKE: What we did was, when this first came out. Assistant Deputy Directors of Education and Labor were talking about this and I asked can community colleges be sponsors. Can we be the drivers of the bus? Can we aggregate students? Can we try something new? And they said yes! They want us to be program sponsors. They understand that community colleges can be the link between communities, those employers out there, and getting us together. You can talk to them. They are like community and technical college folks. They are the guys you can actually talk to. They said OK, we’ll help any way we can. We all got on a conference call and when I submitted the program sponsorship for the industrial maintenance mechanic, I also submitted the paperwork to become a program sponsor and it was granted in January of 2016.
MACGREGGOR: Amy wanted to know if we ever run a program with short term non credit certificate classes rather than degree programs.
LAKE: That’s a great question. Thos four things that I put up where if you don’t have this don’t do it. We had some faculty that weren’t convinced that we should do this. So we wrote a grant as part of the American Apprenticeship Initiative grant. We wrote cyber security as a CE credit. So you can do it. But, you really need to work with your state agency to make sure that all the paperwork gets done well. Now, cyber security is on the list of available occupations, so we’re going to write it as an IT generalist with enough flexibility that we can move it to credit bearing. But we’ll be running cyber security out of CE. Yes there are ways to do it out of CE but check with your state about paperwork. Make sure you dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s. You have to have hours. Make sure it’s on the list and that you meet those hours both for RTI and OTJ training.
ADAMS: I think I’m going to jump in here now. Sorry that we couldn’t answer all of the questions. Maybe there’s another way we can get those questions answered. Thank you again Dr. Lake and Melissa.
Earlier I told you about the MTWC Clearinghouse. We also have Google Community of Practice that’s open to anyone. That’s a good opportunity for us to answer a few of those questions. We posted this recent report on the benefits and costs of apprenticeship programs. The report should really be required reading for anyone interested in getting involved with registered apprenticeships. It does a great job of explaining the business return on investment. The other thing I’ll point out is another list of resources you can download.
And then finally, we want you to stay connected. Please reach out to me or Rebecca or Maria Hart if there is anything we can help you find out.
Our third webinar will be next month on March 9. In that webinar you’ll learn more about the role of industry and best practices for partnering with industry. We’ll be working with Harper College and Dr. Lake to help us organize the program for this third webinar. And, I’ll turn it over quickly to Rebecca to give us an update on the latest thinking of what we’re going to do in webinar three.
LAKE: We set this up, one, two, three. The third part is coming in. We know what registered apprentices are. Now we know how to make the decision to become a program sponsor. Next, how do I get the partnerships and making those works. How and in what ways do I build those employer partnerships. What types of partnerships do I need to have. How does that employer work with you as the community college. How do you negotiate. How are you working with the WIOA that will be involved in there too. Maybe if we have time, some ways that we might be able to do all three together, the student, the employer, and the college. How do you build those partnerships in many different ways. Will be joining us to talk about how they made the decision to work with us as the community college. And we’ll have someone from the transportation sector. How you make these partnerships work is the key.
ADAMS: Thank you. So we’re trying to get some boots on the ground to help us elaborate on that discussion. Thank you all for participating. Join us again on March 9 for our third and final webinar in this series. Thank you and goodbye.