This project aims to help unlock the full potential of non-degree workforce training, especially at public community colleges where these programs are commonly found. In 2019, the Center on Education & Labor at New America (CELNA) launched the New Models for Career Preparation Project, a research and storytelling initiative to build a better understanding of non-degree workforce education and identify common characteristics of high-performing programs, including the design, financing, and strategy principles that go into creating high-quality non-degree workforce programs at community colleges. Many of these principles will also be relevant to universities, nonprofits, and even companies offering such programs. …Mott Community College uses a software system to track data related to employment for all non-credit workforce programs. Mott’s efforts-to-outcomes system allows the college to send a monthly follow-up to graduates for up to one year after employment. Information about program graduates’ employers and graduates’ job titles, start dates, pay rates, and benefits is collected.
Mott Community College (MCC) has a long-standing partnership with Vicinia Gardens of Fenton, Michigan, since its inception back in 2012. MCC has provided talent (resident assistants) for this privately-owned senior living community within their assisted living, memory care and intermediate care facilities…
Combining industry credentials with academic rigor, Mott's career training helps learners around Flint, MI reinvent themselves in a shaky job market.
…four key indicators of an effective, workforce-oriented community college. These indicators can guide a college to be a powerful economic development catalyst in its region while signaling to partners that the college is an effective workforce partner.
Mott Community College (MCC) in Michigan has successfully braided funding for students entering through their Workforce and Economic Development Center for years. Student eligibility for funding from different program streams is determined by a counselor at intake. The application provides all information necessary for tracking students and students are simply informed that they’re eligible for funding. One example of this is a certified nurse assistant (CNA) apprenticeship program in partnership with Vicinia Gardens, a senior care facility. Students work for Vicinia as resident assistants, while completing their classroom studies and clinical hours. The program is part of Expanding Community College Apprenticeships (ECCA), an American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Labor. The local Michigan Works provided Incumbent Worker Training (IWT) funds to reimburse 75% of training costs. Additional support through an AACC ECCA grant was used to support students to buy needed equipment and provide other support services.
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The Power of Pell Mott Community College’s Use of Federal Aid to Train Unemployed Workers and Dissolve Silos Between Credit and Noncredit. March 2016.
M-PaTH was a healthcare workforce development project, intended to meet the needs of both employers and dislocated workers by fostering an employer driven approach to teaching relevant healthcare career skills. M-PaTH was planned as a three year project modeled after the Greater Flint Health Coalition’s training program, called Flint Healthcare Employment Opportunities (FHEO). Baker College, Mott Community College, Career Alliance, Inc. and Thumb Area Michigan Works! (both Michigan Works! One-stop agencies) and Lansing Community College were all also strategic partners. The first phase of M-PaTH focused on adapting the FHEO program to target dislocated workers in Genesee County. The second phase then used a bidding process through a Request for Proposals to fund new partners in Michigan to adapt M-PaTH to their location. This open bidding resulted in expansion to two additional locations (the Lansing and Michigan “thumb” areas) to reach additional partners and more workers throughout the Mid-Michigan region. Ultimately, M-PaTH aimed to help drive Michigan’s economy by diversifying and enhancing the skills of workers from shrinking sectors to fill available healthcare jobs.
The experience of the top-tier grantees provides powerful and concrete examples of what it means to make accountability part of a workforce development strategy. … Mott Community College in Michigan hired staff who had experience in the temporary stang industry to manage a hiring list of their participants and used it to help employers find workers who had relevant skills and experience. Mott Community College had initially designed its energy efficiency curriculum in 12 week modules. As it proceeded, the college realized that that length did not align with the timing of local construction projects; as a result, trainees risked missing out on employment opportunities. The program shifted to a more flexible approach, including four-, six-, and seven-week modules, which provided trainees with the credentials they needed to find jobs in a weak overall market.
This issue of Update looks at the challenges adult learners face as they attempt to enter community college, persist to completing a certificate or degree, and successfully transition to employment. The reports shares detailed examples of these challenges including how some adult learners struggle with financial aid and registration processes, inadequate career counseling, insufficient support services and a lack of professional networks they need to get a job after college among others. The report also offers numerous examples of strategies nonprofit-community college partnerships use to help adult learners overcome hurdles such as these. The publication draws on findings from Courses to Employment, a three year demonstration project funded by the Charles Steward Mott Foundation that AspenWSI conducted to investigate how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to support the success of low-income adults. The Flint Healthcare Career Pathways Project in Flint, Michigan, is a partnership involving Mott Community College and Flint STRIVE. The project helps low-income residents of Genesee County advance from entry-level and certified nursing assistant jobs to nursing and allied health care positions. The partnership works with the public workforce system and other nonprofit organizations to provide students with financial assistance for tuition, emergency assistance funds, case management, motivational support and other services. The partnership works with students over a multi-year period as they pursue degrees in nursing and allied health care careers.
In 2007, Michigan undertook a bold mission: to retrain tens of thousands of adults to qualify for jobs in emerging and expanding sectors of the economy. The state's proposal to jobless, dislocated, and low-income residents was simple but appealing: enroll in up to two years of postsecondary education, and Michigan would cover up to $5,000 in tuition, fees, and books each year, along with related supports such as child care subsidies and transportation assistance. Michigan rolled out "No Worker Left Behind" in August 2007 and stuck with it in the face of budgetary crises and ongoing economic deterioration. The target population has responded in large numbers. More than 150,000 adults enrolled in NWLB-financed training by the end of 2010, and many more were steered to Pell Grants. To explore the role of NWLB in strengthening the student success infrastructure of Michigan community colleges, Jobs for the Future (JFF) studied five institutions with a strong track record of innovation to begin to answer these critical questions: (1) How have colleges organized their efforts to assist low-skilled adults in gaining marketable postsecondary credentials?; and (2) What role has No Worker Left Behind played in the ability of Michigan community colleges to develop innovative strategies for serving this population? JFF conducted detailed interviews with presidents, vice-presidents, and managerial staff of Grand Rapids Community College, Lake Michigan College, Mott Community College, Macomb Community College, and Northwestern Michigan College. The NWLB experiences of the case-study colleges provide valuable lessons for policymakers in Michigan and elsewhere about promoting innovation to increase student success, particularly for lower-skilled, dislocated workers: (1) Reward collaborative relationships between community colleges and Workforce Investment Boards; (2) Target benefits to adults with low basic skills; (3) Support a shift in the Adult Basic Education system to support postsecondary transitions; and (4) Develop a common understanding of college readiness among workforce and higher education systems. A final, critical lesson is the need to strengthen data systems and analysis. Because of data limitations in Michigan, it is impossible to say whether the NWLB strategy substantially increased college access or to compare the success of NWLB-financed students to other students. A uniform, effective system of data collection and analysis is critical to inform and drive better policymaking and institutional decisions. No Worker Left Behind Training Funds Allocations and Projections, FY 2007 to 2010 (Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth) is appended. (Contains 2 tables and 11 endnotes.
…Another good example of how a community college reaches out to a population of dislocated and low-skilled workers can be found at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan. Here Director of Workforce Development Robert Matthews works with a WFD staff of 60 people spread throughout the Flint geographic region at a variety of workforce centers, including the college’s Workforce Education Center headquarters, which is located off campus next door to a Michigan Works! Career Alliance Center. Matthews explains, as exemplified by all seven Mott Community College WFD and continuing education satellite locations, how the department he works for is known for extending their efforts and relationships “beyond the walls of the institution in nontraditional ways.”
CSW has been working with a network of Flint area stakeholders who are interested in making a difference in the enormous basic skills gaps that are present in their community. A planning group was commissioned by Mott Community College President Richard Shaink to examine the issue and come up with workable strategies. Robert Matthews, Mott’s Executive Dean for Workforce Development, led the group. CSW founder and senior fellow Larry Good facilitated the strategy development among network partners. Melodee Mabbitt, with research support from Tammy Coxen, produced a report on the scale of the needs, community assets available to address these needs, and possible strategies identified by the network partners. The planning resulted in the formation of network that has committed to collaborate on developing and executing basic skills strategies and services, led by the college. We look forward to seeing this network move into the action phase of making this work a reality with innovative service strategies.
This publication summarizes research from AspenWSI's Courses to Employment project, which studied how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to help low-income adults succeed in the classroom and the labor market. The report provides an overview of the approach and strategies these partnerships use, how these partnerships are structured in terms of institutional roles and responsibilities, what factors influence how these partnerships are structured, and describes the education and employment outcomes participating students achieved during the Courses to Employment project. This publication is geared towards policymakers and investors who are interested in supporting models that increase the success rates of adults in community college and to workforce development leaders who are interested in building or sustaining collaborative efforts to support workers in their labor markets as well as learning about innovative approaches to curricula, training and instruction, employer engagement strategies, and support services. This in-depth look at Courses to Employment (C2E) strategies will be useful to those already engaged in this work as well as to newcomers to this field of practice. In Flint, for example, Mott Community College has taken advantage of state workforce funding to support low-income students pursuing healthcare degrees. The Michigan Regional Skills Alliance initiative, designed to create community-based partnerships to address local workforce and economic development needs, provided funding for Genesee County’s Healthcare Professionals for Michigan’s Future (HPMF) program from 2005 to 2007. Participants enrolled in HPMF received supportive services through a local faith-based organization, as well as assistance in enrolling in college healthcare education programs. When funding for this program was exhausted, Mott Community College continued to support these students by enrolling them in another state program – No Worker Left Behind (NWLB). NWLB provides workers who are unemployed or under-employed with up to $10,000 in post-secondary assistance for education-related expenses (including tuition, books, materials, counseling and career advising). NWLB funds are flexible enough that the college can use them to support students and cover other expenses such as child care.
Mott Community College in Flint, part of the original round of Breaking Through colleges, was the first in Michigan. Before long, other Michigan colleges showed interest in the innovative ideas being brought back by people attending Breaking Through’s early peer learning meetings: Robert Matthews and colleagues from Mott Community College, as well as Jim Jacobs from Macomb Community College who, as president of the National Council for Workforce Education, was a keen promoter of Breaking Through goals. The career-pathways programs at Mott Community College provide road maps in four high-demand industries: business, engineering/manufacturing, human services, and health. Students can easily see how they progress from one stage of the pathway to the next, as well as the credentials associated with each of those stages. An example of Mott’s road maps can be seen on page 4.13.
Update (Workplace Strategies Initiative at the Aspen Institute), no. 2. Washington: Aspen Institute, 2011. Online. Internet. 30 Mar 2022. . Available: https://www.aspenwsi.org/resource/cteupdate2/. This issue looks at how community college-nonprofit partnerships fund supportive and career navigation services for students in training. Based on findings from the Courses to Employment (CTE) Demonstration Project, which is funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, this latest publication highlights how workforce programs and partnerships blend multiple funding streams to meet students’ individual needs and address their unique barriers in order to allow them to complete their educations and obtain a better job. The publication draws on data from CTE partnerships’ financial records, and interviews with program leaders about their funding and service strategies as well as focus groups with participants about the supports they received. The diversified funding strategy is illuminated through the stories of three students who persisted in school and completed training with the help of the supportive services they received from a CTE partnership. Using these three stories, the report tracks the source of each of these supports, discusses how the partnerships managed these resources, and discusses the different funding and policy environments that CTE partnerships experienced while leveraging these different funding streams. The publication also discusses the challenges and opportunities in developing such a diversified funding strategy and highlights the organizational capacities needed to manage and implement this funding structure. The Flint Healthcare Career Pathways Project in Flint, Michigan, is a partnership involving Mott Community College and Flint STRIVE. The project helps low-income residents of Genesee County to advance from entry-level and certified nursing assistant jobs into high-demand nursing and allied health positions. The partnership has worked with the public workforce system and other nonprofit organizations in the region to provide students with financial assistance for tuition, emergency assistance funds, case management and motivational support, and other services. The partnership works with students over a multiyear period as they pursue degrees in nursing and allied health.
Achieving Ambitious Goals: Case Studies of Scaling-Up Programs for Advancing Low-Skilled Adults. May 2011 Achieving Ambitious Goals highlights what five Breaking Through colleges are doing to advance adult learner's skills and career prospects, as well as scale up successful programs. Community colleges must fundamentally changing the way they deliver Adult Basic Education instruction in order to help all students earn credentials that hold value in today’s economy. Achieving Ambitious Goals highlights what five Breaking Through colleges are doing to not only advance adults’ skills and career prospects but also to scale up successful programs across campuses and state systems.
September 22, 2011 | Flint Journal, The (MI) | Page 20 "Mott Community College has been successful at fostering success for graduates in the labor market, even in the economically challenged area of Flint, Michigan," a White House news release said.
“The Breaking Through practice guide”. Boston: JFF, 2010. Online. Internet. 31 Mar 2022. . Available: http://www.jff.org/publications/breaking-through-practice-guide. At Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan, one major barrier to achieving the goal of connecting its noncredit students to the for-credit side of the college was a belief pervasive among many for-credit administrators and instructors that the noncredit students were simply not college material. In order to connect the noncredit students to the college, high-level leaders had to both present the vision that these students are college material and develop a mechanism for demonstrating their students’ abilities. [See the Mott Community College Scaling Up profile in Labor Market Payoffs.]
Mott Community College’s career-pathways programs provide comprehensive intake and skill assessments, career pathway road maps, and skill enhancement. This includes Operation Fast Break, an intensive, eight-week, thirty-hour-a-week program to prepare participants to enter career tracks or college. Fast Break helps participants build their math, reading, writing, computer, and employability skills. It uses WorkKeys to assess individual abilities and KeyTrain to help them improve their skills to WorkKeys Level 4, which is the skill level employers generally require for entry-level jobs. Fast Break also includes college and career exploration. Participants earn a certificate of completion, endorsed by the local workforce board.
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Remarks at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan September 21, 2000
