In his All College Days address, American Association of Community Colleges CEO Dr. Walter Bumphus spoke about the AACC report “Empowering Community Colleges to Build the Nation’s Future.” In many ways, MCC is meeting and exceeding the recommendations in the report. Through October 15, members of the President’s Cabinet are using the Wednesday Message to highlight and celebrate those MCC initiatives that align with the report’s seven recommendations. This week's message comes from Todd Oldham, Vice President, Economic Development and Innovative Workforce Services.
The report's third recommendation is to “close the American skills gap by sharply focusing career and technical education on preparing students with the knowledge and skills required for existing and future jobs in regional and global economies.” (“Empowering…Future,” p. 20).
Let us consider one of the actions AACC advises community colleges to follow under this third recommendation and some of the ways MCC is responding.
Better understand labor market trends and employer needs with emphasis on communicating them to students.
Over the last three years, MCC has invested significant time and effort to not only better understand the skill gaps that exist in our regional economy, but also communicate those gaps in ways that maximize access to relevant career information for the community. One of our more significant efforts has been the launch of MCC Career Coach to empower students, parents and career counselors with the key labor market information for over 800 recognized occupations in the greater Rochester economy. The site has netted over 171,000 visits since its launch in January 2012 and has been incorporated into various curricula including Junior Achievement, Academic Foundations and Career Technical Education exploration courses. As we move into the next phase of this project, we will begin promoting relevant MCC career pathway and program information based on the user’s indicated interest.
The need for a more sophisticated market trends analysis goes beyond what is offered through user-oriented web-based tools like MCC Career Coach. With so much attention being given at the national, state and local level to the so called “middle-skills” economy and the gaps that are purported to exist within it, MCC benefits from a more sophisticated approach to quantify skill gaps where they exist now and are likely to emerge in the future. To this end, over a year ago, MCC launched a second effort, an ambitious data project that seeks to quantify and estimate the likely skill gaps across five key middle-skilled occupational clusters within the Finger Lakes economy: advanced manufacturing, skilled trades, information and computer technology, health care, and hospitality and tourism. Dashboards have been developed that identify and measure educational attainment through certificate and degree completions against estimated annual openings for 21 middle-skills occupational groups. Some of the occupational groups also include a program-based economic impact analysis that provides an estimation of the value each completion is worth to the Finger Lakes regional economy. In the future, MCC will extend these program-based impact calculations to all of the 21 occupational groups being measured in the project. The 167-page interactive flip book equipped with MCC produced videos will be released in its web-based format in late September under the title Measuring the Middle-Skills Gaps in the Finger Lakes Regional Economy.
Ultimately, the data presented through these two projects are a demonstration of how serious MCC considers our economic and workforce development mission in our community. They are intended to point to more modern approaches for gaining a deeper and more data-driven understanding of our local workforce dynamics. It is my hope that this information will complement current and future discussions about regional workforce policy and demonstrate how vital it is for this region to make additional investments in newer models for competency-based and career-oriented education.
Developing a better understanding of relevant workforce data to guide and develop new investments in education and training will allow community colleges like MCC to invest more effectively in the education and training solutions that support our community’s workforce and ensure our businesses will be able to thrive in the future.
We would encourage you to read “Empowering Community Colleges to Build the Nation’s Future.” It can be accessed at <https://www.aacc21stcenturycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/EmpoweringCommunityColleges_final.pdf> .
In the following weeks, look for additional articles addressing other recommendations within the AACC guide.
I invite you to share your thoughts via the President’s Blog.
Todd M. Oldham
Vice President, EDIWS
09/17/2014 |