Northern Pennsylvania Regional College Vice President of Workforce Development, Adam Johnson, and Director of Workforce Development, Andrea Kessler, presented at a national conference earlier this month.
The duo traveled to the 2024 Rural Community College Alliance (RCCA) Annual Conference that was held Wednesday, September 18 through Friday, September 20 at SUNY-Adirondack Community College in Queensberry, New York. The RCCA is an alliance supporting its member institutions to serve the 89.3 million people who reside in rural America. RCCA promotes a more economically, culturally, and civically vibrant rural America through advocacy, convening, leveraging resources, and serving as a clearinghouse for innovative practice, policy, and research.
Johnson presented at the conference on two separate occasions, including an opportunity to share information about the Rural Design Academy (Education Design Lab) project that the institution is working on. The goal of the Rural Design Academy is to help bring a broad transformation of the postsecondary education-to-workforce landscape to ensure a strong educational ecosystem by designing for and prioritizing the needs of new majority rural learners. His role in this presentation was to present alongside members of the Rural Design Academy and share NPRC’s experience working alongside the organization and how it’s been of benefit so far. He also presented alongside Kessler to share about NPRC’s approach to programming in workforce development.
In his time as Vice President, Johnson has been crucial in developing and evolving program offerings; something that has helped the Workforce Development division grow enrollment. The system used in doing so is called the Community-Based Workforce Program Model, a sub-model that was created by Kessler based on the industry-recognized ADDIE Model. In the traditional ADDIE Model, programming is created in the steps of analysis, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating.
In NPRC’s modeling, the steps have been mirrored and are used to identify community champions, develop workforce programming, support the workforce program through funding, implement the workforce program, and assess the workforce program to improve it for the next customer. Johnson shared, “Our community-based workforce program model has allowed us to be more prescriptive-based on each community’s needs in the area,” he explained. “This model helps us to identify community champions, develop strong community partnerships, and identify businesses we can work with and help support. The method helps us to consider all factors and provide the best training we can. Doing so has helped our enrollment grow.”
Leaning more on customized training has helped the College go from no customized training offered in the 2020-21 fiscal year to 75 percent of workforce development offerings being customized in the 2023-24 fiscal year. Director of Workforce Development Andrea Kessler added, “This model was developed to ensure programming was being built in a way beneficial to employers and students.” She continued, “In the traditional ADDIE model, the community champions and drivers aren’t heavily considered until the middle of the process. In our model, we consider them first and the programming follows suit after we understand their needs. It allows NPRC to become economic drivers for the area and to ensure what courses and information is being taught will be most helpful for employers.”
This conference served as a great way for the College to share information about what methods and approaches have worked with professionals from around the country. However, it also serves as an opportunity to learn how the Workforce Development division can even better interact with local communities. “I’m excited about working with more employes and students,” Johnson noted. “To do so, I think this conference provided more insight on best practices on how to interact and serve our area. We wanted to hear from other intuitions about what has worked, what has not worked, and perhaps what have been some challenges and roadblocks in those successes and shortcomings.”
The opportunity to connect with liked-minded professionals is one Kessler was also ecstatic about. “NPRC and us as educators and education providers are in a position where we are setting people up for the rest of their lives. We have to make sure we are doing this right. It was exciting to share about the barriers we have overcome here at NPRC and how we’re empowering businesses and communities to ‘grow their own’” and support the talent they already have at their company or in their community, she said.
For more information about NPRC’s customized training capabilities, visit the institution’s website.
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