TAACCCT Grants Integrating Career Progression

In this next section, we describe three round four TAACCCT grants in the healthcare, biosciences, and manufacturing sectors. Table 1 provides a snapshot of each of the three grants, and additional information about these grants and third-party evaluation results can be downloaded from the SkillsCommons website.¹

Table 1. Industry Sectors and Cases on Career Progression

Possibly no state was as prepared for TAACCCT as Wisconsin. Along with Illinois and Minnesota, Wisconsin had already made good progress in implementing career pathways through the Joyce Foundation’s Shifting Gears initiative.² Beginning in 2007, the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) partnered with the Department of Workforce Development to develop Regional Industry Skills Education (RISE), a statewide model for integrating workforce training and postsecondary education to prepare for high-demand jobs.³

The Advancing Careers and Training for Healthcare (ACT for Healthcare) grant was the state’s third successful TAACCCT award. Earlier grants focusing on advanced manufacturing and information technology laid the foundation for the $15 million healthcare consortium grant that sought TAA-eligible workers, veterans, and others seeking employment.⁴

All 16 technical colleges that are part of WTCS signed on to the ACT for Healthcare grant, in partnership with employers across the state. Job projections at the time this grant was funded in September 2014 were larger than any other industry sector and expected to increase by 43 percent by the grant’s end in 2018. Although healthcare programs were already considered some of the most robust career-technical programs offered by WTCS, they could not meet the state’s demand for workers.

In this time of COVID-19, these programs are more essential than ever. Leaders of the Wisconsin Hospital Association describe the state as “under siege from an influx of COVID-19,” and urge the governor and state legislature to take immediate action to address the state’s healthcare workforce shortage or face more dire consequences.⁵

Drawing lessons from RISE and previous TAACCCT investments, Wisconsin’s technical colleges combined curricular and instructional innovations, comprehensive student services, and industry partnerships to prepare healthcare workers statewide. And results of a rigorous evaluation show these efforts paid off.⁶ The ACT for Healthcare consortium grant produced 14 new credentials in the form of certificates, diplomas, and degrees aligned with high-demand occupations, including emergency medical technicians, respiratory therapists, surgical technicians, and registered nurses. 

Central to the consortium’s plan were innovations to the nursing pathway, including advancements in online and hybrid instruction, accelerated programming, enhanced simulations, and program-to-program bridges that integrate credit for prior learning to accelerate credential attainment. These strategies bolstered college capacity to address the state’s healthcare workforce shortage following the Great Recession, and today, may offer insights into how to address workforce needs caused by COVID-19. 

The program-to-program bridges created for nursing are a good example of how career progression works in career pathways. Bridges created in the ACT for Healthcare grant help students who already have experience as VA medics or paramedics enroll in and complete nursing degree programs. These bridges offer a common four-course curriculum, with two courses in theory, one in a skills lab, and one in the clinical setting that enable students to enter the second year of the nursing program and continue alongside those enrolled in the traditional curriculum.⁷ By integrating credit for prior learning into the bridge, experienced learners avoid repeating courses that increase time and cost in pursuit of their nursing degree.

The third-party evaluation team with DVP-Praxis reported the nursing pathway had the largest enrollment of all TAACCCT-funded programs in the ACT for Healthcare grant, with 66 percent of nearly 4,000 participants.⁸ Several nursing-related programs of study (e.g., nursing assistant and professional nurse) align and stack to make the RN degree more accessible than curricula that treats these programs as separate and distinct from one another. A benefit of this nursing pathway approach is that it increases access for older students (TAACCCT participants averaged 28.5 years of age) and students of color (nearly 20 percent were identified with racial and ethnic groups), enhancing the diversity of the state’s workforce.

Results of the ACT for Healthcare grant are impressive. Based on a quasi-experimental design using propensity score matching (PSM), participants in the grant were significantly more likely to secure a postsecondary credential than a matched comparison group (74 percent vs. 51 percent, respectively), and positive outcomes extend to participants’ employment and earnings. Participants who received comprehensive support services demonstrated even higher outcomes than the comparison group of non-participants, due to increased retention.⁹ These results corroborate findings from related research showing comprehensive student services are positively associated with career progression and employment.¹⁰

Leaders of the ACT for Healthcare grant could have no idea that another crisis was awaiting, as no one could have anticipated the catastrophic impact of COVID-19. However, there is much to learn from the ways the ACT for Healthcare grant strengthened Wisconsin’s workforce after the Great Recession that could help to address the nation’s urgent healthcare needs today.

Most TAACCCT grants were led mostly by community colleges, but Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) was successful in securing a round four consortium award in partnership with Lewis and Clark Community College, Lincoln Land Community College, Carl Sandburg College, and Southeastern Illinois College. Arguing that SIUE had already begun forging strong connections to these colleges, the proposal promised to leverage these relationships with industry to grow Illinois’s bioeconomy workforce. Recognizing the merits of this strategy, DoL made the multi-million investment in the “Building Illinois’ Bioeconomy” (BIB) TAACCCT consortium from 2014 to 2018.

The third-party evaluation conducted by the New Growth Group details the consortium’s focus on career pathways in bioprocessing, biofuels technology, water management, restorative ecology, and agricultural watershed management. It reports that the grant enrolled 1,231 participants, representing 94 percent of the enrollment target. Of these, 815 (85 percent) participants completed a short-term certificate, and another 292 (24 percent) completed a degree. Though most participants completed non-degree certificates, the degree completion rate of BIB grant participants is impressive. Understanding strategies that contribute to this outcome suggest the consortium is implementing “new models” for “sequencing and stacking education and training credentials, including improving transferability of credentials.”¹¹

To create career pathways, the BIB consortium worked closely with industry partners to innovate a number of strategies supporting upward mobility in career paths. Three strategies implemented by SIUE and its partners are transfer and articulation, digital badges, and apprenticeship.

Associate of applied science (AAS) degrees are notoriously tricky to transfer, but institutions involved the BIB consortium worked together to overcome obstacles. Using 2+2 agreements to enable AAS graduates to transfer into integrative studies, pathways were created in horticulture, bioprocess chemistry and environmental science, and biofuels. Though these transfer pathways have not yet enrolled many students, they are seen as a breakthrough in helping AAS-degree students attain baccalaureate degrees.

In another strategy to enhance career progression, the BIB consortium created digital badges customized to the needs of Illinois’s bioeconomy industry. With major pharmaceutical companies near SIUE—such as Pfizer, which is leading COVID-19 vaccine development—the university and its partner colleges felt that these “evidence-based, portable credentials that demonstrate proficiency in specific competency areas,” according to Courtney Breckenridge, a specialist of alternative credentials and grant development at SIUE. Breckenridge argues badges enable employees to “thrive and adapt in a changing workplace,” ¹² and she points out badges are drawing more attention from the state. Recently SIUE was awarded a $1.5 million dislocated worker emergency re-employment grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity. Among its many goals, this grant will help advance a plan for SIUE to apply credit for prior learning from badges toward college degrees.¹³

The BIB consortium has also had success linking career progression strategies to apprenticeships with the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC). The refinery operator apprenticeship is an “earn-and-learn” accelerated program to prepare apprentices for a process operations career in biofuels, refining, brewing, or chemical production. It entails 18 months of on-the-job training, with wages increasing from $12 to $14 per hour, that culminates in a refinery operator journeyman credential, a Bioprocess Operations Certificate of Completion from Lewis and Clark College, Siemens SIMIT training, and safety trainings from NCERC. This apprenticeship program has the potential to help non-traditional learners establish career paths that also help grow Illinois’s bioeconomy.

Noting the importance of helping students achieve fulfilling careers, Breckenridge thinks that the TAACCCT grant benefited students in many ways. She said, “we are blurring the line between non-credit and credit toward a bachelor’s degree without loading students up with debt. We are finding ways to blend and braid funding to put ‘earn and learn’ models into place, and we are encouraging employer reimbursement to help students get the education and training they need to progress in their career paths.”¹⁴ Breckenridge’s perspective reinforces the idea that students benefit when career pathways facilitate progression all the way to the bachelor’s degree.

Manufacturing was a small part of instruction at Clark State Community College in fall 2014, but that changed with TAACCCT. Noting the work college personnel and employers put into the round four proposal, Clark State President Jo Blondin said she believes the federal investment is making a big difference to the region.¹⁵ Called the Advanced Manufacturing to Compete in a Global Economy (AMCGE) Training Program, this single-institution grant created new and improved programs to enhance advanced manufacturing career pathways. A third-party evaluation found positive outcomes, attributing student success to systemic organizational changes that other community colleges could implement.¹⁶

To understand this TAACCCT grant, it is helpful to know that Clark State Community College is located in Springfield, Ohio, a town that has faced economic challenges for many years. Exacerbated by the Great Recession, Springfield has a higher than average household poverty level compared to the rest of the state. In the 45 years between 1970 and 2015, Springfield has seen its population reduced by 27 percent, while the not-too-distant state capital, Columbus, has recorded population growth of nearly 60 percent.¹⁷

Clark State Community College’s round four TAACCCT grant sought to reverse the trends that are wreaking havoc on the community. Working with regional large and small manufacturing firms associated with the automotive, food, and aerospace sectors, the grant sought to enroll TAA-eligible workers impacted by the economic downturn caused by the Great Recession. Over 80 percent of residents of the region have a high school degree or some college, but only 15 percent hold a bachelor’s or higher degree. To address this credentials gap, the grant sought to create career pathways in advanced manufacturing that would provide workers with credentials to move up all the way to a bachelor’s degree.

To this end, Clark State established transfer and articulation agreements extending from sub-baccalaureate level credentials (certificates and degrees) to the bachelor’s degree. The grant built on existing programs in the manufacturing engineering technology (MET) department to add three new programs in welding, additive manufacturing, and supervisory control and data acquisition. New manufacturing and simulation equipment was added to lab spaces and technology-enabled learning was integrated into the curriculum. Employers played (and continue to play) a major role in program design, resource development, and job placement for Clark State graduates.

An innovation in this TAACCCT grant is the creation of a baccalaureate degree in manufacturing engineering technology (MET). Implementing a career pathway in advanced manufacturing that offers students career progression, the Baccalaureate of Applied Science (BAS) degree is endorsed by regional employers, who helped Clark State become one of the first community colleges in the state to confer bachelor’s degrees.¹⁸ Coordinating the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) accreditation process with the Ohio Department of Higher Education BAS approval process, this specialized degree will exist long past the TAACCCT grant’s end. So far two student cohorts have been admitted to the program, with seven students in fall 2019 and 24 students in fall 2020. Though not part of TAACCCT, success with the MET BAS degree has prompted a second BAS program in web development and design in engineering.

Modularized programming leading to stackable credentials is the foundation of Clark State’s advanced manufacturing curriculum, to enable students to progress at their own pace. For example, a short-term stackable manufacturing foundations certificate offers baseline skills for other specialized certificates and associate degrees embedded in the MET BAS degree. Students complete two certificates in their associate degree program and proceed to a third certificate, plus general education, to attain their bachelor’s degree. These certificates focus on specialized areas such as computer numerical control, computer aided design, industrial maintenance, and robotics.

Nearly 400 participants enrolled in TAACCCT-grant funded programs. Most of were male and about three-quarters identified as white, with 11 percent identified as Black. Slightly over half the participants were 25 and older, and 40 percent received financial aid. Retention and completion results were positive. About two-thirds of participants received a credential or were still enrolled two years later, though retention and credit attainment were higher in the first year than the second year. However, data challenges and low sample size may contribute to this finding. Comparing MET to a blossoming tree, the evaluators observe the manufacturing pathways are producing “shoots that may ultimately bloom into the long-term outcomes and impacts that the Clark State team is hoping to achieve.”¹⁹

Looking back on the TAACCCT grant, President Blondin expressed gratitude for the opportunity to garner federal funding. She attributed the grant with “allowing us to accelerate our workforce alignment efforts and build trust among our employers and regional manufacturing association so that we could make further investment to increase our workforce capacity.” She sees the advanced manufacturing pathways created by TAACCCT as a springboard to even more growth and success, positioning the region favorably to survive new challenges brought on by COVID-19.