Mapping Upward Webinar Audio 5.3.16€¦ · Web viewMany have families that they're taking care of, ... the work will really get underway this summer in July ... You'll have a dedicated

Mapping Upward Webinar Audio 5.3.16 Page 1 of 14

Jessie Oettinger: Hello to everybody who's joining us. I'm seeing more folks log in. This is the Mapping Upward Technical Assistance Overview webinar. We're gonna get started very shortly, but I just wanted to ask everybody to make sure that, if you can, to use your landline or your phone to dial into this conference. The audio should be a higher quality if you use that 1-888 number below, in the left-hand corner – bottom left-hand corner of your screen. That should work the best.

[Silence from 0:00:38 to 0:01:37]

Okay. Well it is 11:01 on the West Coast, which means it's 2:01 on the East Coast and a couple other time zones in between, so hello, everyone. This is the Mapping Upwards Technical Assistance Overview. My name is Jessie Oettinger, and I work for Social Policy Research Associates. We're based in Oakland, California, and we're delighted to be partnering with the Center for Occupational Research and Development, or CORD, to provide technical assistance on this project. I'm going to pass things over to Hope Cotner from CORD in just a second, but I wanted to go over a couple of quick housekeeping items to make sure that everything in the webinar runs smoothly.

First, this webinar is very full. We have lots of folks interested in this initiative. We're very excited. And to ensure the highest quality sound – I know I've been saying this a lot, but please use your phone to dial in for audio. The number, 1-888-850-4523, is in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen. I hope everybody is not having any technical issues, but if you are, feel free to chat them at us and just be patient. We'll try to help you out. Some more phone etiquette for webinars: please do not put us on hold if you walk away from your desk for a minute. For some reason, putting things on hold can have a really adverse effect on the sound quality. I don't really understand it, but it's true. If you have questions during this webinar, we welcome questions submitted via the chat box.

This webinar platform, as with most, has a chat feature to allow you to communicate with the presenters and others in the audience. Most of you have probably used the chat feature before with other webinars, but I'll just go over how to use this platform quickly. So type your question in the chat box, and then select who you want to send the message to. The system defaults for messages to be sent to everyone, which is fine, but you can also click on the drop-down arrow and send the message only to the specific person or to the presenters. And then when you're done with your questions, just click on the return arrow to send your message. It's pretty simple. So during the presentation, I'll be collecting questions that you have, and I'll pose them to Hope at the end of the presentation. So that is it for me. Okay. I'm seeing some technical questions. I'll respond to those in a minute. That's it for me on the webinar version, and then I'm gonna hand things

Page 1 of 14


over to CORD – or to Hope at the Center for Occupational Research and Development. So CORD, over to you.

Hope Cotner: Thanks, Jessie, and welcome, everyone. We're so glad to have such a large audience with us today. I think that's just evidence of the interest in this topic and its growth across the country. As Jessie mentioned, we'll have an opportunity to answer questions at the end of the webinar and we look forward to talking with you, even if it's virtually here. Let me give you just a snapshot of what we're going to cover this afternoon to kind of orient you to what we will be addressing, and you can be thinking about your questions then as we progress through the content.

Today we're going to focus specifically on the technical assistance activities planned by the Mapping Upward Project. We'll hit on the composition _____ network. You've probably been reading the – you've downloaded the project webpage –

[Crosstalk]

Are we get – okay, there we go. We were getting a little feedback there. We'll also talk about benefits to participating colleges if you're selected to participate, expectations of colleges who will participate, and what will be expected of you going forward, and then touch on some selection criteria and the details of the application. So be thinking about those questions, and at this point I'd like to turn it over to Mark Mitsui, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Colleges at the US Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, for just a few words of welcome.

Mark Mitsui: Thank you, Hope, and thank you to CORD, to SPR for all the great work you're doing helping to get this project up and running. I also wanna thank my colleagues in OTAE, the Office for Technical and Adult Education. Thank you, Erin Berg and Robin Utz, for all the work you have done as well to make this project a reality. And on behalf of the Department of Education, I wanna welcome all of our participants today in the Technical Assistance Webinar on Mapping Upward. In 2009 President Obama issued his clarion call for college completion at Macomb Community College in Michigan, acknowledging that we had a ways to go in order to create a higher percentage of our population with post-secondary credentials.

And in addition to that, a couple of years later he issued the job-driven training agenda, which culminated in a report called Ready to Work. When we take a look at stackable credentials, I think we're seeing an intersection of two major community college agendas from the administration, one being the college completion agenda and the other being the job-driven training agenda. And as you know, our community college students are yesterday's non-traditional student is today's new

Page 2 of 14


traditional student. Sixty percent of our students work part-time – excuse me, 60 percent of our students are attending part-time, and many of them are working, some a full-time or a couple of part-time jobs. Many have families that they're taking care of, homes they have to pay for.

They lead very busy lives, so we need programs that reflect the busy lives of our students and where they can come to college and earn a credential, go out and use their education, experience wage progression, go home and take of their families, and when they're ready come back to college where they can take the next step upward. It's important that we have systems that not only reflect the busy lives of our students, but also to have systems where students don't have to start all over again when they come back to us. And we've all heard of stackable credentials and how stackable credentials are intended to address these issues, but what does a stackable credentialing system really look like on the ground? What are some of the effective variants of this approach that community colleges have adapted to their particular context? And what are the commonalities among successful programs?

Well we're glad that you signed up for today's webinar, and we hope that you will sign up to participate in one of our networks in Mapping Upward. Again, on behalf of the department, thank you for joining today, and thank you for all that you do each and every day for our students. Hope, I'll turn it back to you now.

Hope Cotner: Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. Okay. As Mark mentioned, Mapping Upward is indeed a project of OTAE, specifically the Division of Academic and Technical Education, and this project is one of the Perkins National Activities currently underway. Let me just give you an overview of the key purposes behind the project, touching on some of those core tenants that Mark just mentioned. Mapping Upward is about building the capacity of colleges to improve specifically CTE, or career technical education, credential attainment rate by offering stackable credentials, a series of progressive, stackable certificates that build on each other, as Mark was mentioning, so the students can continue upward toward that associate degree completion, but doing so through a series of shorter pathways that stackable credentials can offer. But the goal obviously is helping students progress within a continuum and making sure when they leave at whatever exit point that they're earning a post-secondary credential with labor market value and can return and pick up where they left off to – when they choose to pursue the next credential or degree.

Another key thing that will be running throughout this project, which should be obvious, but certainly bears saying, and that is that we're gonna really focus on deepening employer engagement. Whether that's

Page 3 of 14


partnerships with individual companies in your local communities, whether that's partnering across a sector, in a region, we know that our partnership efforts with employers must be sustained. They must be continual. It's not a once-a-year dinner for an advisory board committee meeting. It truly is a partnership. And we'll talk more about what we see working as we go through the webinar and certainly in this project.

When we talk about stackable credentials, Mark had mentioned certainly commonalities that we see, but there are also lots of local and regional variants. Let's look a little bit at some characteristics about what we know stackable credentials are doing and the various ways in which they're being applied across the country. Certainly they are responsive to regional labor market needs, the talent development needs of our employers. They're linking educational certificates to industry credentials. Employers are very actively involved in a number of ways, from program design to work-based learning opportunities. By design, stackable credential programs really support diverse groups of learners.

Yesterday's non-traditional students are today's students that we find in every class, and the multiple entry and exit points that a stackable design offers are perfect to support their needs, offering flexibility in scheduling of courses to support their variety of work and learn models. But the big picture is making sure that there's those incremental milestones along that continuum that yield credentials that have labor market value on the path to a student's degree attainment.

So what are we doing in the project? Here is a bird's eye view of the deliverables around what's being produced over the course of this two-year initiative. The first activity that we began – and our project began late fall, and then this winter we began working on an environmental scan, which is producing a background paper. And part of that work involved interviewing nine colleges, fairly diverse regions of the country represented as well as diverse sectors, to see what's working, to see how – what kind of challenges colleges have encountered, what commonalities, but also what industry-specific differences there are between different approaches and different regions. So you'll be seeing more of that and more news about the background paper and how you can access that in the coming month.

Obviously the focus of our conversation this afternoon is about the next phase of the project, which is the technical assistance. We'll be selecting five sector-focused networks of two-year colleges to receive this technical assistance. It'll be customized to meet colleges where they are to help them advance their efforts in stackable credential design: so really based upon local and regional needs. And the project will also be creating for the entire field a toolkit tutorial to accompany it and resources that you'll be find – be able to find on the Perkins

Page 4 of 14


Collaborative Resource Network, where you found information about this webinar and the other materials about the project application. I did wanna point out at this point, this is a fabulous – at least we think – fabulous technical assistance opportunity. There is no cost to this technical assistance that selected networks will receive, but I just want to reiterate the point that this is not a grant. We've had a couple of questions about that, so I just wanted to point out that this is indeed a technical assistance opportunity.

Okay. Now let's get into the details of that. From a timeframe standpoint, the work will really get underway this summer in July and will continue for a little bit more than a year until the end of next summer, August of 2017, customized for the networks that will be participating, and really tailored to the issues that you're challenged with and what your employers' workforce needs are, looking at those very specifically. You'll have a dedicated technical assistance coach that will work with your network and the individual colleges on a monthly basis. And we'll also be able to leverage our broad network subject matter experts to help support targeted issues.

And we don't know today what those particular issues may be, but we'll hear from you and we'll work with you closely to determine what areas you may need additional support and be able to bring that to you as part of the technical assistance. We'll also have a technical assistance institute this summer for a couple of days, and then the TA coaches will be able to make site visits, at least one and potentially two, to the networks that they're working with.

The key goal obviously in this whole thing is to advance efforts in embedding stackable credentials and hopefully industry certifications and associate degree programs. But the neat thing that we think this project offers is the opportunity for you to propose the approach you'd like to take in order to accomplish that. So we know there's not one-size-fits-all and we're looking for interesting, innovative ways of tackling this work. Our coaches will come from both CORD, the Center for Occupational Research and Development, and our partners at SPR, Social Policy Research Associates. And our teams that will be serving in a coaching capacity have supported states and individual colleges in TA coaching in the past, so you'll be in good hands certainly if you're a participant in the TA services.

Now let's talk a little bit more about who can apply. I mentioned the networks, but let me give you a little bit more detail about what those look like. And these are not large networks, so hopefully you'll be able to develop a very close community of practice within your network that will be sector focused. So just two to four community or technical colleges with one designated as the lead. And the lead college in this instance for this project really is not an institution that will have to carry

Page 5 of 14


heavy lift or do more work than the rest of the colleges in the network. It's really to have a point of contact to help facilitate communication among the network colleges and across the project to the other networks as well, and just to have – make sure we've got someone within the network who knows who's on first and what's on second.

So the program area is up to you to propose. Obviously all of the colleges in the network should be focused on the same sector, but it's up to you to propose what that is. And they don't necessarily have to be at the top level, the 16 career clusters. They may be a subset of that, and that's fine as long as that's what – you're responsive to the needs of your community in terms of your workforce development needs. You can choose within your network whether or not all of the colleges are jointly developing components of that career pathway that you've selected to tackle, or you may be developing different pathways within the sector. The sector is the commonality there that will allow you to benefit from collaboration and through your peer network, obviously, the areas of focus that you have in common.

We're suggesting that the colleges be located within a reasonable distance of each other, just so when you would like to take advantage of face-to-face meetings, you can, and be able to host the site visit when your TA coach comes to visit you. You don't have to be in the same state. There are lots of parts of the country where you might have three states that are very close to each other, and so that's up to you to propose. And there's really a lot of flexibility we think within the framework here in terms of the network composition and what you're able to propose.

Let's look at a couple of examples of what your application might look like, and these are just a few. This list is not exhaustive, so we know we'll receive lots of other approaches besides just these, but this will give you an idea of what we're thinking. A couple of colleges within a state, for example, might propose to work together to create a new series of stackable credentials; or another group might choose to replicate a statewide program or a process for employer engagement, for instance, from one sector to another; or another group of colleges might choose to collaborate to convert what have been non-credit certificates to credit-bearing stackable credentials; or another group might work together to scale a successful single-institution approach across the entire network; or colleges within a region might take a sector-based approach to work with employers in that region and build a new series of stackable credentials, or enhance an existing one, or retool one that worked in the past but has kind of fallen by the wayside; and so on and so on.

So the approach is up to you to propose, but hopefully this will get your wheels turning and give you some ideas of some parameters maybe to

Page 6 of 14


think about as you're discussing with your partner colleges. Now let's talk a little bit more about the actual technical assistance activities. TA coaches will work directly with their network colleges, both the individual colleges and then all of them as a group, to really look at what they're proposing in terms of what does the program of studies look like now or will it look like, and what are the intended outcomes. What will those stackable credential components consist of? What's happening with employer engagement? What success have you had? What areas of opportunities for continued work are present and what do we need to tackle? Where are those across the project approach opportunities and challenges for each college as well as for the network as a whole?

And then the coach will help the team of colleges develop an action plan that you'll work on then over the course of the project, supporting both – thinking about both individual college needs as well as the network's goals, and then do that through coaching calls on a monthly basis, be available via e-mail whenever you should need them, and have some webinars to promote some collaboration certainly with subject matter experts as the topics arise that we need to have some additional support on, but also collaborate across the project as well.

We certainly will take advantage of virtual tools for coaching as much as possible, but we do acknowledge the fact that if we can get together face-to-face, sometimes you can just accomplish leaps and bounds [laughs] further when you have a little time together in the same space. So we're not relying upon that heavily, but we did wanna incorporate that face-to-face component where we could, 'cause we think it's very beneficial. In addition to those activities I mentioned, we'll have the subject matter experts bringing in practical solutions as needed, and we'll really be looking for crosscutting issues across the network. So where can we learn from one another regardless of what sector we're focused on? Maybe there's something that a manufacturing cluster-focused network has found in terms of community partnership development that has a lot of application for another group that's focused on information technology. So there will be plenty of opportunity to facilitate these collaborative efforts across the networks as well as within the specific sector-focused network.

So here's a snapshot of what we anticipate will be key benefits to colleges who participate. Certainly the customization of the technical assistance we think is unique and we're looking forward to being able to deliver that to help you advance your efforts in stackable credential design wherever you are in the process right now. The community of practice that we think is offered through this smaller peer-learning network of two to four colleges that you'll propose, but also then the networks across the project, we think has great value certainly in helping look at examples that are working, finding folks who have experienced challenges, but maybe exploring some of the ways that

Page 7 of 14


they have tackled them that may have been different from methods you've tried, and just being able to benefit from the varying perspectives that colleges from different parts of the country can contribute.

Having the support sessions from our subject matter experts on the specialized topics will help us to really pinpoint things as they come up to provide additional support on; and then certainly having access to resources across the project as well as being able to connect the dots with other federal projects even outside the Department of Education to other agencies who are doing interesting work with respect to stackable credential design and learn from those efforts as well.

Okay. Now we're getting into some nuts and bolts here in terms of what's expected of the colleges that will participate. First we're asking you to designate a team. Be thinking about those team members now. Who can consistently participate over the course of the next year in this technical assistance? Who can be on monthly calls, participate in webinars, and consistently work within the network to benefit from the coaching services throughout the life of the project? And certainly there will be the opportunities to bring more folks into the process and also for you to change some team members along the way as new topics arise, but we do want you to be able to think about who can participate, especially as you're forming your networks and thinking about what sector you'll choose based upon the team members that you have to participate.

The first activity that you'll participate in will be our TA Institute this summer, and it will be on July 21st and 22nd in Wisconsin. And so be thinking about that and planning for that if you're hoping to participate. The next thing that's expected, but this is here again – speaks to the flexibility of the project – and that is you'll have deliverables and you'll develop an action plan based upon a needs assessment. But this will be the deliverables you choose and the action plan based upon the goals you set, so this here again is where the customization of the TA comes into play. Now I mentioned earlier that this is not a grant and there's no cost for the technical assistance services.

Those are all provided by the project, but we do ask you to underwrite the travel to the institute this summer and then there may be some other travel expenses within the course of the project, depending upon how far away your colleges within your networks are from each other. There might be some mileage reimbursement and things like that, because we will wanna have at least site visit to one of the colleges within the network during the course of the project. So here again, that's up to you to select your partners, so just be thinking about that as you're doing your planning.

Page 8 of 14


Next steps? Many of you, if not all of you, have probably already downloaded both the overview and the application from the project webpage, so this is your opportunity to ask questions about components from – of the application or things that we may not have touched on yet in the overview that you'd like to talk about. But be thinking about certainly the formation of your network, designating those team members that you think can consistently participate. You don't have to actually list your team members on the application, but obviously you wanna have those folks in mind so that you're not proposing a sector of faculty members, for example, who may not be able to participate fully, because they've got other projects underway over the same timeframe. So think from a practical standpoint too.

The applications are due on May the 18th, so you still have a few weeks. And certainly if you're hoping to participate, please save the dates on your calendar for the Technical Assistance Institute, because that's not very far away. We hope to inform all the networks that are selected by June 1st, but you'll have to obviously plan your travel quickly. So make sure that you're aware of those dates and you save them on your calendar as you're doing your application. Now if you'd like to learn more, certainly we're gonna talk this afternoon yet before we adjourn the webinar, but certainly both myself and Erin, our liaison at OTAE, are available to answer your questions. Our e-mails are here. Our phone numbers are here. The project e-mail that you see at the bottom of this slide, [email protected], is our project e-mail, and that's what you'll use to submit your application form.

A couple of just housekeeping things related to the application itself: we do ask – and it says this at the top of the form, but I just wanna kind of put an asterisk by this – and that is please send in your application as a Microsoft Word file so that we can compile the information quickly and do a spreadsheet comparison of who all has applied. And it will also make sure that you can just fill in the information that you want to share with us right in that document. So you can add as many returns as you would like. There's no page limit obviously. There's no minimum either. So if you can say what you need to say very concisely, hats off to you too. So that gives you the opportunity to share the information that you think is most relevant based upon the questions that are asked. So at this time I'm gonna turn it over to Jessie. She was gonna be watching the chat to see what kind of questions may have arisen during our conversation – and let her give us some guidance as to topics we maybe should hit first. Jessie?

Jessie Oettinger: Thanks, Hope. I think you did a really good job explaining this, because we're pretty light on questions. But Steve wanted a little more follow up on the summer institute. Can you tell us who would be the appropriate folks to attend that, and then restate the funding part that – the travel

Page 9 of 14


to the conference and accommodations need to be borne by the colleges. Is that correct?

Hope Cotner: That's correct. And the good thing is Wisconsin is a fairly reasonably priced state to travel to. Gateway Technical College, the campus that we'll be using at their institution, is in Racine, Wisconsin, and the – in terms of distance to the airport, it's just about 20 miles from the Milwaukee Airport and less than an hour from Chicago O'Hare, so fairly easily to access if you're in driving distance, obviously. Good highways. We'll be staying at a – what we think is a fairly relatively inexpensive hotel, so we tried to think with community college budgets in mind as we were planning that. And certainly the – in terms of your travel expenses, your hotel, and your meals, that has to be born by the college.

We can't provide that as part of the project, but we're gonna do everything in our power to keep that as reasonably priced as possible, including the meal part of that. And you'll hear more about that as soon as the network selection has been made, but know that we are looking out for you and looking through that lens of what your slim budgets may be for travel. That's a two-day event, but the agenda will be shorter on the second day, so you should only have to plan for two hotel nights coming in the night before, a full day on day-one, the 21st, and about two-thirds of a day, if you will, on Friday the 22nd so folks can get home that day.

In terms of participants, think about those folks who will be on the team consistently participating over the course of the project. And you pick from – all of them may not be able to travel or attend on those dates and we certainly understand that, but make sure that the folks who do come are part of that group that will consistently be involved over the course of the year so that there's that continuity. You will build relationships then obviously with the other colleges from the other networks as well and have the opportunity to start collaborating with them right away. So I think that's important. Be thinking about – in terms of the ideal folks who should be engaged in this – Mark Mitsui and I have had this conversation over time.

It's great when college presidents say, "Wow, this is a great initiative. We'd love for our folks to be involved in this," but they're probably not the best person over the course of that year to stay involved [laughs] in the nuts and bolts of the technical assistance. So think about, whether it's specific faculty members from the sector that you're – that you've selected, department chairs, some deans; think about the approach that you'll be proposing and what other parts of the college, whether that's student services, whether that's – you name it – what other elements need to be coordinated and thinking about who should be on the team. And then be as practical as you can about those who you recommend be a part of the travel team for the institute.

Page 10 of 14


Jessie Oettinger: Great. And so Hope, we have a couple more questions regarding certain network partners. And we had one question about technical colleges and I know those are okay, but what about university partners that are in a community college mission network?

Hope Cotner: Okay. So let me – I know there will probably be questions that many folks have – this one is just one example – that may be specific to your institution. And so feel free to follow up with us individually via e-mail and we can get into more detail about your institution's specifics. But let me just say this: the targeted participants of this project are really two-year degree-granting institutions, whether that's a community college or a technical college. Now I know in some states a governance structure may be slightly different from that where you may have a system and there may be institutions that offer both two-year and four-year degrees, so let's just converse offline maybe for each individual situation and we can talk about the unique qualities of who those network partners may be that you want to bring to the table.

Jessie Oettinger: Great. So I hope that answer covered some of the other questions in the chat box, the sort of specific network questions. Yeah. It looks like Hope's e-mail is posted here, so you can just get in touch with her.

[Laughter]

Hope Cotner: I see my box filling up.

Jessie Oettinger: Yeah, we love to talk about those [laughs]. Are there any other questions?

Hope Cotner: I have a couple of things that I might just point out to folks if we don't have any urgent questions in the box at the moment. We didn't touch a lot on the selection criteria that are mentioned in the overview, and I would just say these are more – maybe we should call them considerations, because they're the kinds of things that we want you to think about as you're answering the questions in the application, and that is – tell us as much as you can about the existing work that you have been doing in the area of stackable credential design, or the completion of planning activities to begin that work. We wanna see that you've done a lot of thinking about this even if you haven't already done a lot of implementation so that we know that we have the groundwork in place. You have the foundational elements there so that we can really hit the ground running and you can truly benefit from the technical assistance.

We don't wanna be starting so much at scratch that in one year we can't help you really move the needle. So we wanna make sure those essential ingredients are in place, so tell us about your employer

Page 11 of 14


engagement, what efforts have been made so far, or what planning activities or partnership development activities have already occurred so that we know TA efforts will be able to build upon those. Really be as comprehensive as you can when you describe your proposed approach to attack stackable credential design that you'll tell us about in your application. Do you have one? That's the first thing we'll be looking for.

But is it sound? Is it practical? Is it realistic within the given timeframe? How much are you trying to tackle? And do you have an idea of where you can really go with that particular approach? Tell us about your partners. Who's already in place? Who are you hoping to reach out to? And what areas of support are you really looking for? Be as specific as you can. The more details you tell us – and it doesn't have to be voluminous, but just be specific, because the more we know about where you are, that will help us better determine how prepared you are to really fully benefit from the TA activities in which they will play out.

There's another section of the application that speaks to innovation, and I would say don't overlook that. All questions must be answered, and really take advantage of that particular box to talk about how you think your proposed approach is innovative. And think outside the box and put that answer in the box, and make sure that you really do give that some thought, because I think you really have the opportunity and the flexibility within this project to do something creative. But be specific so we can really know what you're thinking about there.

Jessie Oettinger: Great. And then following up on that, or maybe this is a different question, but can you talk a little bit more about what we mean by sticking in the same general industry sector? How much variation are we looking at? Are we looking at just occupational stackable credentials? Or what are – what's some guidance around the industry?

Hope Cotner: I would say – I don't wanna say that there's no framework that you can't work within, because I think really the best way to look at it is what are those sectors that are in demand? What areas of growth? What opportunities for partnerships with employers in your region? Where is your area of greatest need? What do you need to tackle? And if that's just a slice of a cluster or a sector, or it's – in your state you may – your governor may have seven sectors of importance down the line with the clusters, but are they – I'm sure we can find those occupations within the 16 career clusters. So I don't want to give so much guidance that someone says, "Oh, well then ours doesn't fall in that category." I think there's flexibility here.

The key thing, like Mark mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, is thinking about job-driven training, thinking about the needs of the – your regional economy, and propose what you think makes sense based upon the workforce development needs in your community.

Page 12 of 14


Jessie Oettinger: Great. And then just another question about the network. So if we have a college district, I'm assuming that what we'd look for in a district is that there were at least one college or multiple colleges within that district that had been identified. But the specific question is if a college district wants to participate, is it considered one college? Or would the college – each college in the district need to be considered separately?

Hope Cotner: [Laughs] I knew this question would come up, and the question is – the answer I think is it depends slightly, because not all districts operate the same way. But I would think certainly that independent – colleges within that district – if they are independent colleges and they are offering different programs, certainly then they could be considered participants in the network. But we would like to see the – an individual college participate and not just the district. Certainly it might make sense to have the district as a partner in that process, but it might be the best thing here again – I hate to say just e-mail me, but if you have a very specific question or you're not exactly a district but you're kind of, just e-mail us and we can look at that.

Either email me or Erin and we can take a look at that. But I think there's flexibility there, but the key thing is to help colleges move the needle on the programs that they offer in terms of stackable credentials. So think about that. If you [laughs] – if you're an entity that doesn't grant a degree and you can't affect that program change, then that may not be the best fit; but if you do, then obviously – then move forward.

Jessie Oettinger: Okay, cool. Well I am not seeing a lot of activity in the chat box, so I'm assuming that folks have had their questions answered or that they're all just planning to e-mail you individually, Hope.

Hope Cotner: Great.

Jessie Oettinger: Which I encourage you to do. So I just wanna say thanks again to everybody for participating, and Hope, I'll let you wrap it up.

Hope Cotner: Okay. Thank you so much, Jessie, and thanks for all the technical assistance on the SPR team's part. We appreciate that. I will just maybe have a shout-out to Erin. She may be thinking here questions or points that she wants to emphasize. Erin, do you have anything you'd like to add from the department's perspective before we wrap up this afternoon?

Erin Berg: Just that we're really excited to have you providing these services and looking forward to a lot of really great and interesting outcomes, and some models to hopefully help other schools down the line, bringing these credentials together for students' success.

Page 13 of 14


Hope Cotner: Great. Thank you, Erin. Well like Jessie mentioned, you know where to find us. Be sure and download those documents from the project webpage on PCRN. If you have questions that don't come up today but come up between now and when the application is due, feel free to reach out and we'll be happy to get right back with you. Don't forget to send your application in Word form [laughs] _____ I could say that one more time – and just thanks so much for joining us on the call today. We really appreciate – we're excited about your interest. We appreciate your taking the time out of your schedule to join us, and we look forward to your application.

Jessie Oettinger: Thanks, and bye, everybody.

Hope Cotner: Bye.

[End of Audio]

Page 14 of 14

Documents

Mapping Upward Webinar Audio 5.3.16€¦ · Web viewMany have families that they're taking care of, ... the work will really get underway this summer in July ... You'll have a dedicated