The document discusses employer engagement and career pathways at community colleges. For employer engagement, soft skills and work readiness are key issues raised by employers. Programs that are tailored to specific employers and industries are popular with students and lead to high employment rates. Effective advisory boards involve industry leadership and ensure education listens to employer needs. Career pathways are used for program objectives and grant applications, but could be better integrated into developmental education. Resources for career pathways discussed include career awareness websites and clearinghouses.

1. MetLife Project: Sector Communities of Practice Session #1
(Healthcare, IT, Manufacturing and Logistics)
Community of Practice Topics and Discussion
Topic: Employer Engagement
-Why are we making this connection and Who are we engaging?
-How do you have effective employer engagement?
Discussion: Employer Engagement: What the Colleges are Hearing….
Soft Skills and Work Readiness are BIG Issues. Most of the internship programs and programs involve
some component of work-place “culture” building to instill professional skills into the clinical
experience. The outcomes for these skills are built into the program goals and objectives (both for the
classroom and clinical aspects) and employers are critical to understanding what it actually means to be
“work ready”.
Particularly in Healthcare the “work readiness” conversation can be different from discipline to
discipline, there is specificity that needs to be reached, there are differences in readiness for the
therapeutic vs. process orientation that students need to achieve.
In Seattle they have done programs that tie into a specific industry, or a specific company/employer,
that are considered “popular” with students and tie direction to the job and various job opportunities.
For example they designed a program specific to the needs of Boeing and due to the recognition of the
employer in the community found that the classes filled up immediately and subsequently had huge
success rates in students being placed in employment at the end of the class. The idea here is that you
have the employer driven model, and community recognition of the employer by name, be the
marketing leg of your program.
Across the colleges, they typically have industry chair their academic advisory boards which creates
more buy in from industry and drives their participation. The key is to have this be an industry
conversation that education is listening to and not the other way around.
Additionally this group talked about a co-location model with local industry to have space at their
campus for various industry associations and the like. This ensures that the industry and the college are
heavily involved with each other and can keep each other updated, real-time, on issues with students,
skills needs and program development.
The make-up of efficient employer advisory boards:
-Have industry chair the board
-Industry leads the meeting
-Make people do some homework from meeting to meeting
-Develop Chair terms, similar to the business model of board structure
-Utilize by laws from group to group so that these are easy to conduct from subject to subject
-Develop an internal guide to share within the college on ways to run the employer groups

2. Employer and School Engagement Idea: Something discussed in one of the sessions was the possibility
of a counselor sitting in on a class for a teacher so that the teacher could meet with the employer
advisory group and get first hand feedback on their needs and skills gaps. Maybe this is something that
you could do on your campuses to bring the employer feedback loop full-circle so that teachers on the
front lines of skill development within your institutions have the real-time information to better prepare
the students.
Topic: Career Pathway
-How are you developing career pathways?
-How are you using career pathways?
Discussion:
Most of the colleges have career pathways for each of their programs, some of which link out to
program objectives. In some cases the colleges have organizations that come to them to help develop
programs and career pathways for specific demographics (like the mature worker).
It was noted that there could be a better connection within the colleges to use career pathway
documents in the developmental education planning stages so that students have the tools to be more
intentional in their education choices.
More and more colleges are using career pathways as part of grant submissions. As an example, RRCC
received a grant from Colorado trust to bring in people from rural areas to explore the Physician
Assistant pathway program
For some additional career pathway resources you can use the following:
College Café, clearing house of guidance information to help your students decide what they want to
focus on when they return to college - http://www.cafecollege.org/home
In Ohio, there is a new job posting clearing house – OhioMeansJobs.com
We encourage other states to advocate for similar portals of localized employer job posting information
to help advise your students.
Career Awareness Websites:
BioOhioWorkforce.org (bioscience industry)
Aarp.org
Mymajors.com
Wiscareers.com
Areyouready.org (energy industry)
VIVIDFuture.org
CollegeInColorado.org