Welcome, welcome everybody. Feel free to jump in the chat and tell us where you're from and we could do a little, I don't know a little check in if you want to give us a word for how you're feeling today are you happy, proud of something that's going on at your school, a little anxious about all the changes in the world and America. Yeah, so feel free to jump in the chat and tell us where you're from, and how you're feeling today one word will do it some kind of adjective to describe you today. Thanks for joining us. Here we go Christie's Christie's chiming in. All right, thank you for joining us again, feel free to jump in that chat tell us where you're from. And if you feel like it will give you a group hug if you're having a bad day. Tell us if you're cold, we're going to warm you up here. And if you're stressed, let us know if you're proud of something going at your school we'd love to, to see that you're having a good day and if you're having a bad day. Well hey case is here to hopefully cheer you up. And yeah, there's a lot of anxiety out there Michelle I hear you so thank you for joining us today maybe we can be a little bit of an escape, or maybe we can give you some ideas today that will help you through these somewhat anxious times for for a lot of us. My name is Meg Natter I'm the director of Community Colleges and Foundations here at case. Yeah, this is our second workshop webinar focused on workforce development. And I am so happy and proud and excited that Dr Chandler LaBeouf is speaking today he's a member of our community college leadership committee and he's just doing some I'm going to say magical things, Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges, just some, he's going to go through everything he's learned, and I told him that we are his students and he is our professor and just to tell us more about these public private partnerships and how maybe some of you can embrace this idea at your school so Chandler, take it Oh you know one more thing. If you do have questions sorry I forgot about this. If you have questions at the bottom of your screen, there's a q amp a box. So why don't you go in the q amp a box put your questions in there you can do them throughout the webinar you can wait a little bit later, and the chats mostly just for chatting for saying hi to each other tell us where you're from that sort of thing. But if you have a question for Dr LaBeouf, just put that in the q amp a box and I'm going to help him monitor that. All right Chandler it's all you now thank you very much. Great, thank you so much Meg I appreciate the comments and the time to be here today. Just to really reiterate a few things before we dive into the presentation. This was a goal of the case community college committee to really develop these webinars and as we began to think about webinars with institutional advancement leaders and fundraisers and workforce development. I told Meg that I'd be happy to share the Louisiana story based off of one of the webinars and so today that's what we're going to do is specifically focus on Louisiana and what we've done, especially as we as well continue to navigate waters in terms of funding and budgets, and how we can collectively collaborate, not only with our private partners but our public partners and more importantly, our institutions and our departments amongst the institutions in which we see fit. But before we get started, I would just encourage everybody to think through a few things for today one to share the Louisiana story I don't want to forget. We are excited about case the community college conference being in New Orleans this fall. So if you haven't been to Louisiana or New Orleans. While I won't give you the New Orleans culture and hospitality and flair today. I hope that you're able to add that to your option for professional development. This fall, so please consider that, but a little bit about my background and story before I dive in. I've been with the Louisiana Community Technical College system for about 10 years, three of those years, I've spent at our actual system office. And then prior to that I spent with three of our colleges across the state. I started out actually in enrollment management and student affairs, and then spent time in workforce development and advancement fundraising. And today I serve as the Vice President of Education, which oversees our enrollment workforce, academic student affairs and all of our public affairs fundraising advancement and governmental affairs work amongst the system office. So I'll dive in a little bit about who the Louisiana Community Technical College system is to really set the stage before I dive into some of the work that we're doing to really solve what I would call the workforce lens for Louisiana through both the advancement office as well as working across the lens with our academic workforce enrollment and student affairs as holistically and with our 12 colleges. So to navigate really the presentation I just wanted to share the perspective that our system is about 26 years old in Louisiana, but we've had institutions before we were formed as a system that are over 100 years old and on the left you can see sort of the footprint we had in Louisiana in the last sort of 15 or so years and then we began to create some alignment where we were looking at how can we streamline our processes and our procedures and as a state become stronger in solving the workforce challenges but also being able to provide the service delivery and focused on growing our middle class. So today we stand collectively as 12 comprehensive community and technical colleges across the state in Louisiana and so those of you who may attend our conference in New Orleans, Delgado Community College would be the closest institution in Louisiana and if you have an interest in visiting or touring that institution while in town definitely let me know. But just wanted to give you that perspective that we had a massive footprint across the state historically and then today we stand as 12 institutions and my role is really supporting all 12 of our colleges advancement leaders as well as the academic workforce, all 12 of our college chancellors, we call them chancellors in Louisiana and not presidents necessarily but it's the same thing in terms of concept as we navigate today. But the system collectively just so the group is aware we like to say we focus and many of our community colleges across the nation are doing the same. We focus on the three pipelines which is our traditional credit academic learners, our non-credit short-term workforce training programs and students and then our adult education those who are seeking a high school diploma and or industry certifications within that alignment. So we serve around 150,000 students annually in Louisiana with multiple pathways and providers and so as we continue to grow and meet the needs the funding and the resources continue to be a challenge and so that's where we've learned to figure out how to solve our own challenges internally with multiple different resources that we've been able to pull to bear. So with that in mind I just want to give a snapshot from the other slide to this slide. You can kind of see across the board our academic learners are about this is from two to last academic year so this is sort of post-COVID. It doesn't necessarily reflect the most recent academic year but we use this as just a visual to say we serve currently over 85,000 academic students across the state, about 20,000 in workforce and about 30,000 in adult basic education. So that just gives you a snapshot of who we serve and why we do the work that we're doing across Louisiana and many of you probably have similar statistics and data at your institution but really the core mission of the Louisiana Community Technical College system we are a state in Louisiana that's focused heavily on workforce development and our mission relies in that space and so as our advancement team members are focused on their own annual fundraising plans and resources the workforce development lens is definitely a part of that conversation and that work very heavily as that is the the space in which our colleges are seeing the growth as well. But just a few things to really talk about the challenge that we are responding to we're responding to a few of those items here so the expansion of our programs that are really targeted in alignment to some of the federal and state funding opportunities focused on our workforce regional ecosystems and strategic planning alignment so making sure that our colleges are aligned with their regional workforce needs and the funding opportunities that are available or could be available in that framework that's both from state to federal as well as to private companies or individuals and giving the economic impact that our colleges are having on the individuals and communities but really where we're going to spend a bulk of our time today is focused on where we began to develop performance based funding models which were us as which was Louisiana Community Technical College system saying we're going to deliver results and not promises and so as we began to see a funding challenge from state funding and other federal resources this is where we came together as a system and as a collective as advancement officers and workforce officers and academic leaders and said if we can't necessarily receive the funding and the sustainability for our students who are most vulnerable to be able to enter into these programs and if scholarship dollars aren't covering everything that we need or the expense of the program or the faculty or expense of operational budget to expand program or resources for the classroom then how can we begin to look at developing models that would be performance based and as an institution performs the dollars that are raised and are come from both public private partnerships are able to be reinvested at that institution in multiple ways and so this is Louisiana saying we're going to solve our challenge and respond to the need and so that is us developing that more specifically as we look to begin to think about the solutions our goals are pretty clear we have a strategic plan for 2030 but ultimately our goal is we strongly feel and I think many of our institutions across the nation that are in the community college framework many of my colleagues that are probably on the webinar today that we all know the more people educated skills strengthens economies that's what Louisiana believes in as well that's a major focus we believe that the middle skills is what's going to help define individuals to help them get to the workforce and so ultimately making sure that the skills that we know require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor's degree that we're focused on getting those individuals credentialed and educated and so what resources need to come to do that is really where we from an advancement standpoint are part of those conversations with our workforce leaders and our academic leaders so from a financial aid standpoint or scholarship standpoint or expansion of program we can help support those efforts again in Louisiana specifically we have over 250,000 more adults who we know will earn credentials beyond high school and to fill the jobs available by 2026 we know as well that there's 48.7 percent of Louisiana's working age population who may have a certification or degree we know that's below the national average and so we know there's a lot of work to do in Louisiana but in order to do it the resources need to be there and so how do we get there with the resources that we do have and what are goals to be able to close those gaps for resources and so it takes a village it takes all 12 of our institutions and advancements officers to come together collectively to talk about these components and making sure that their departments are also collaborating and not working in a siloed effort to really solve some of that and we believe in Louisiana that if we can put previously unemployed workers and people to work at a good wage we're going to be able to create that tax revenue that will ultimately generate the revenue in which we need from the state to be sustainable as a community college system to be able to do the work and to be able to move our people from the middle class but we're not there yet and we're advocating every day to get there from a sustainable model but until then this is the importance of our work every day to be able to make sure that we can provide that support and why the advancement arms of our institutions are so critical and important I mentioned my time in Louisiana for with the system for about 10 plus years or so I can honestly say that the the advancement departments within our colleges over the last 10 years have grown tremendously and what I don't necessarily mean by head count per se I just mean by the resources in which our college leaders and community and donors and our system offices providing the support so that those team members have the resources to be sustainable identifying the importance that in order for us to get to where we need to be it's not going to come without the advancement team members and those who are engaging in stakeholders and those who are having conversations on behalf of workforce development that wasn't always the case in Louisiana for us and so we've been able to do that because we know we can't get there alone just by educating individuals and not having the additional support so we know Louisiana's economy depends on the community college system we are lock in step with our economic development partners we're lock in step with our workforce commission but we're more importantly lock in step with our business and industry partners who we're trying to solve their needs and so it's a collaborative effort when I talk about the public private partnership that's where the collaborative effort really comes into play and so this cycle is something that we look at quarterly to understand where we stand as a system and economy what industry partners are at the table where are our students and how are we making the investments that we're receiving to be impactful to our students our classroom our programs and so on and so forth in the gaps where our funding does not exist today so publicly and the reason why I'm sharing all of this is because as a system um we have uh like many others a governing higher education institute or board in Louisiana ours is the Louisiana Board of Regents who publicly has said amongst our four public institutions uh the community college system being one and we have three other four-year public institutions uh LSU being our flagship we have the regional universities and then we have our HBCU system in Louisiana and ultimately collectively by 2030 the four systems have said we're going to get to 85,000 completers credentials attainment degree earned for individuals in Louisiana and we as the community college system have said we'll pledge 50,000 of the 85,000 that is how important we believe our mission is that's how important we believe our work is and so that's a tall order knowing that we have minimal resources coming from the state minimal from coming from the federal level as well as we know the ongoing climate currently that many of us have seen in the past month and a half that continues to bring question for us but our momentum isn't stopping and so the work that we're doing is saying if we're going to get to this point what do we need to do to do that I would say as of 2024 which was our highest credential attainment to date which is 35,000 uh individuals in the state of Louisiana our goal again is to get to 50 you do see some ebbs and flows of there some of that is COVID some of that is responsiveness to other uh disasters that we've had in Louisiana with hurricanes and whatnot but ultimately um we would have never gotten to our 35,000 without the public-private partnership sort of framework that we have in today in place and the support that we get uh from that to be able to offset the expenses for our students and our programs and resources and so we believe that the models that we have built are sustainable and we're going to continue to make tweaks at them over time but when I talk about um the funding um this is something that we continue to say to our communities our industry partners we share this at the state level we share this at the federal level and this is part of our advocacy towards uh the investment in which we continue to ask our supporters to invest in and this is that when you look at the 649 million dollar funding formula in Louisiana for higher education institutions our four-year partners receive 75 percent of that the community college receives 25 percent of that and 25 percent is even lower than our southern regional average which is about 40 percent so what we're saying is we believe that and we know that we're not receiving equitable funding in terms of the funding formula at the same time we have produced of last year of the 59,000 awards and degrees earned in 23-24 academic year across the state of Louisiana amongst all four systems we produce 59 percent of that so we're saying we're producing in the market we're answering the calling we're listening to the response of Louisiana and our funding and sort of where we stand is still not on the mark and the targets that it needs to be so we've preached this for a few years and this is where our college leaders decided that it was time for us internally to figure out other resources and other ways to develop the private public partnerships to focus on the lens of workforce development and an opportunity for our advancement teams to really focus strategically on taking their large master fundraising plans and starting to hone in on maybe goals that were directly related to the strategic plan to help us get there and move that mark. So I know many of us probably share the same sort of conversation and category around the fundraising that is maybe specifically to scholarships, specifically to events, specifically to galas. I mean, our colleges had a mixture of all of those across the board within their plan. Some doing more, some doing less, but ultimately whether it's been sort of a good thing or a bad thing, they began to streamline their focus and their resources collectively as we as one system move towards that goal. So I mentioned this a little bit about whether we received and to note that of the $649 million in the higher education funding formula, that is all funded on traditional credit students. So we received $0 for workforce training. And so as we began to say, let's build a sustainable model that defines outcomes, alignment to industry, alignment to our partners, alignment to the high wage, high demand career fields, we began to look at a model that was responsive, that was outcome focused, that really was focused on programs that were in high demand in career fields that we know our individuals could get sustainable jobs and ultimately streamline those resources so that we weren't necessarily having the lack of resources to continue to offer the broad part, the broad portion of our goal and our mission. So what I would say here is many of our institutions had what we would call sort of the traditional programs that were focused across all levels. And we began to look at how do we build a model that's sustainable, that scholarship dollars would flow through, that dollars, again, as I mentioned, have the reinvestment into the institution for programmatic expansion and resources in a way that's strategic without necessarily having ongoing individual ask to individual donors, industry partners and alike, but asking them to make these investments strategically into a broader perspective that was going to solve the workforce lens of the state of Louisiana. And so there's some examples that I'll go through whether it was healthcare, whether it was reboot, specifically, but I wanna take some time definitely to walk through some of those. And as Meg mentioned, feel free to put anything in the chat. She will stop me if there are questions to talk about. So our first run at really creating what I would call a robust private-public partnership in Louisiana, aside from our colleges who had already had some specific and strategic partnerships that they had developed, this was our system office coming and saying during COVID, especially in our largest city in Louisiana, which is New Orleans, and many individuals working in the hospitality and tourism industry, we were asked by the governor's office and by industry partners to solve the workforce shortage that the industry around manufacturing and construction was seeing in terms of the shortage of workers to be able to say, there are individuals now who are unemployed. How do we upskill and reskill them through a program that we need to reboot Louisiana's economy? And so $24 million was invested into this program specifically. And I would say 10 million came from the state and the other 14 came between the industry partners who were in the construction and manufacturing component that said, we're gonna invest in these dollars as well. And the energy sector to be able to help us do this work to equip the individuals so that they could enter back into the workforce with a credential that was impactful. And what we did is build parameters around the program that said, we know that these are individuals who are unemployed or underemployed, probably do not have dollars available to enter into these programs. At the same time, we know from the national landscape, workforce Pell continues to be a conversation which is not available today. And maybe there were lack of real dollars available within our local one-stop shop offices. And so we said to the colleges, we're gonna build a model that if you graduate and credential individuals in these five industry sectors, which was healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, construction, et cetera, then there is a dollar value that you'll receive per every completer. So you can invest back into your institution and at the same time cover that individual's tuition. And so ultimately those are the frameworks that we put in place in the model for Reboot Louisiana. And I'll show some of the outcomes shortly, but this was us saying, we're gonna solve the workforce challenge on behalf of the heels of COVID. We're gonna build a sustainable formats-based model. And we know that 10 million invested from the governor's office is not enough to be able to do this work over the next four years. And so how do we begin to develop the advancement arm of going out and seeking individual and or industry partnership investments as we're gonna continue to grow their workforce through this training opportunity. And so that's one of the models. The other is expanding into the lens of broadband and workforce development. Louisiana is the first state to receive the initial investment of broadband B dollars from the federal government. But in order to be able to do that, we were asked by the state of Louisiana to make sure that we had industry partners at the table. So think of industry partners like AT&T and Verizon and a few others that are specifically to Louisiana to be a part of this collaboration effort so that we can begin to lay fiber where fiber doesn't exist and get people the access, especially when COVID happened and there were individuals who did not have access to broadband resources and pathways. And so their homes didn't have access to it and such. So this was the community college system saying, we will train that workforce. We know it's more than just needing CDL drivers or individuals trained in line worker, but we'll train that workforce for fiber optic technicians and trenching and splicing and heavy equipment operators, et cetera. But we can't do it without the support. And at the same time, we started to begin to share the model that we had in place from Reboot. And so we said, let's take the investment of, we received the 20 million investment from the state and then we closed the gap with the additional 20 in terms of the private-public partnership. And really at this point, we spent an original 10 million and there's some results I'll show, but we have $30 million today that we will be launching our next round of this performance-based model expanding specifically our broadband workforce opportunities in Louisiana for answering not only the workforce, but providing individuals in our communities with the resources. And so it also provides individuals in those communities the job opportunities within their own home and in their backyard. The third is in 2020, 2021, while all of these efforts were happening, we began to look at not just the opportunity to maybe have one-time investments to do the strategic, what I call rebooting individuals and rebooting Louisiana for our economy and maybe the specific initiative around broadband, but how do we begin to develop a needs-based promise program? Many of our states in the U.S. have began developing these and have already began implementing them. Some of them may be state-supported, some of them may be a mixture. Ours is a mixture of state and industry support. When we decided we have a very strong merit-based program in Louisiana, that's called Taylor Opportunity for Students, so TOPS program, but there wasn't necessarily a needs-based program. We went to the legislature and said we wanna develop a promise program, promising adults who are 21 years or older in Louisiana, an opportunity to enter back into the workforce. So if they were a traditional high school student who specifically had received maybe their merit-based need and life happened, how do we begin to develop this promise program, powering individuals to enter back into that workforce and into the economy? And so ultimately the legislature said, we will entertain this, but you have to bring initial investment to the table so that we can begin to be able to leverage the opportunity in saying that there is public and private dollars being supported into this program, and then how will you begin to market and begin to expand the resources so that individuals in the state are aware that this is a new program that is exist? So we brought a million dollars forward from private entity, specifically in the energy sector, because they were looking at us to be able to expand in CDO and line worker right out the gate. So the company initially stood up and said, we have 1 million that we wanna make an investment to, and to helping develop a promise program and making sure that adults in our state have the opportunity to enter back into the workforce and enter into in-demand fields. We know that many of them do not have time to spend working on a program that's two semesters. So we need to look at things that are 12 weeks or less and really provide that support. Today, that program stands as a $25 million goal for the program with an annual investment from the legislature. And then another, I would say 10% or so being invested from the industry sector across the board. So this program may eventually move away from the whole private-public partnership, but it was developed on the emphasis of private-public partnership and showing that there was industry support behind it to put pressure on the legislature to create the promise program. As mentioned here, I just kind of talk through some of that, but you can see it was 21 years or older. There was a portion of the state-funded financial aid program for Louisiana residents, as well as the industry sectors, healthcare, construction, IT, manufacturing, transportation, and providing pathways and removing financial barriers. So back to the notion that these are individuals who may not have dollars to support these efforts. At the same time, I feel like from the last four years, our system kept getting, I would call it opportunities versus called upon, but to really continue the work in terms of educating and training and upskilling individuals in the state of Louisiana. And at the same time, they had the partners, the industry partners who had made initial investments into Reboot Louisiana began to see the outcome. And so when we talk about COVID and in Louisiana, the hospitals, as many of you probably experienced, were saying beds were full. In Louisiana publicly, we were saying beds were full, but that really wasn't the case. It was there weren't enough workers to be attentive to the patients. And so that was part of the continued effort from the Reboot, but our largest healthcare system partner in Louisiana to date has made an investment of 25 million and in partnership with the legislature to be able to say, we need to be able to focus specifically on the critical healthcare shortage of Louisiana, continue developing us a model that is performance-based, that works specifically to help solve the healthcare shortage, but at the same time provides opportunities for individuals and pathways. And so the way that this model is sort of in place is a little different than maybe the original model where it was forever credential in, earned in electrician or automotive. You may get, the institution may get $2,000 or $2,500 as sort of that performance-based model, which covers maybe the tuition for an individual who got a level one certification, plus any of the sort of built-in costs where this program is, we built a base and saying that for every institution who's graduating and training LPNs or RNs, if you exceed your base number, so this was also a goal to encourage them to increase their expansion of programs. So if an institution took in annually 25 registered nurses, but the next year said we're gonna expand to 30 or 35 and did all the protocols, procedures, approvals that needed to happen, anything above their base, they were receiving $25,000 investment from the industry partner investment pool of the 25 million over time to be able to say, this is your reinvestment back into the institution to continue the healthcare expansion and work through sort of a performance-based model as well. And so what I would say is, those are all sort of a few examples of what we've done in private-public partnership in the last four years to be able to say, we know the funding formula is not working for Louisiana Community Technical College systems. We know the state is gonna continue to have challenges and resource challenges. We know the federal level's gonna continue to have challenges. So how do we begin to work with our industry partners and make investments strategically into the focus of our mission and our work? So specifically here in partnership with the 25 million invested from Ochsner and a portion of that from the legislature of the second 25 million, we've been able to credential over 8,000 healthcare workers in 2024. 1,200 of those have been in practical nurses. So we know that we're answering the calling of the workforce challenge in that space and we'll continue to do so. I talked about Reboot Louisiana, the initial investment of the 10 million and today additional investment of the 24 million specifically in partnership with the legislature and the initial investment from private-public partners to over 12,000 individuals. We've been able to credential and ultimately get them an opportunity to get back into the workforce or upskill, reskill 1,100 of those being in CDL specifically. And then broadband, as I mentioned, the initial 10 million from the legislature now additional 30 million coming in mixture of federal, state and industry partner dollars. Our first run at this in building the performance-based funds over 850 individuals who are now fiber optic technicians or doing some form of heavy equipment and also some form of telecommunication infrastructure work in that work across Louisiana. So those are three things that are specifically focused on the alignment of the performance-based model but it's even further. And as I talk about facilities, so one of the things that came up across conversation in terms of the last sort of five years in reference to facility improvement and facility needs, we like many other states have capital outlay. Capital outlay has not also worked for what I would call our framework in Louisiana. And so we've asked the legislature to develop a facilities improvement program. And we said, each of our 12 colleges will get one project out of this sort of framework. So maybe it is Delgado that said, you asked us to expand and answer the calling to healthcare. And so we were gonna do that by doubling our graduates but in order to do that, we need a larger facility. And so from a private standpoint, the advancement officers, if Delgado was gonna receive maybe 25 million in funds for its new nursing allied health building, the institution had to raise 12% of that to be a match in partnership. And most of that match came from their industry partners or individual giving. And so that's just another way that we said, we're here to solve that challenge. There's a lot of conversation around just the energy sector and historically in the last administration with hydrogen and wind, et cetera. And so we went after a $50 million federal grant in partnership with a few partners in our state. We asked the state to match half of that. And then today, I think we have about 3.5 million of private industry partners that have also come forward with developing this. And this is developing the future workers in oil and gas and energy and hydrogen and wind and all of the conversations around the energy sector. And so we continue to solve that. This is a specific example of an institution Baton Rouge Community College that specifically got an investment of it's 12 million in its new nursing and allied health building that said, we need to do this. Their healthcare partner in their backyard came forward with the 12 million. And so then they went to the legislature and asked for additional dollars, but ultimately it's more than just the building. It is the programs, the resources, the supplies for the classroom, the faculty support, the scholarship dollars available or built into all of that as well. And so those are just examples. I mentioned the Delgado example earlier, but ultimately this is another partnership that came out of healthcare where it was, how did they leverage private dollars from industry partners, economic development and the state to expand their footprint on the heels of the healthcare expansion. Here's another institution here that was doing work around manufacturing IT, infrastructure expansion. And I mentioned the broadband, specifically fiber optic technician. This institution here took it a step further and asked for additional $40,000 investment in scholarships for the fiber technician in the broadband training space. And so our colleges are not only looking at the leveraging opportunities of what the system is doing, but they're also building leveraging opportunities around our framework at the institutional level and in the community level specifically. Again, congressional earmarks have been sort of new for our system, but it's something that we brought forward, but we haven't brought these far without private matches. And so that's been a goal of ours as we're asking for those requests, we're bringing part a 5% match in terms of the request just to show the congressional delegation that we have partners here to match that. And so in Louisiana, as we like to say our best, one of our best mills is gumbo. And part of the conversation that we had as a leadership team with our executive, not only at the system office, but with our colleges and our chancellors in around solving this sort of challenge for Louisiana and the lack of funding, but also saying we are smart enough, we're nimble enough, we have enough framework, we have enough industry partners here. Let's really do something creative that we can model out. There's probably models already there across the state, your colleges, your state, your institutions may already have some of these models. So again, not saying that Louisiana is the best model, this is truly the Louisiana story, but we said, how do we make our perfect gumbo? What do we do here to make our perfect gumbo to not only show our legislature that we have figured this out and whether they're with us or without us, we're gonna continue this effort. And the same thing, Louisiana has been one of the strongest advocates for Workforce Pell. And so with the promise program that we built, the health committee at the Senate, health committee is continuing to study the promise program of Louisiana and our performance-based models to continue to have conversation around Workforce Pell in those efforts. And so we're just trying to share our story, share our data and resources to help others who may find themselves in the same place. But ultimately, I often tell people, what is that recipe for success and building that perfect gumbo? It by no means has been one individual or one specific siloed department. This is where collectively you have to think about how do you work as an advancement team with all of the different areas to be able to solve that sort of success. And I am not a chef, I am not a cook, I tell people that all the time. So much so that I actually often joke and say that I actually burned butter in the microwave by leaving the wrapper on the butter. So I often tell people, that was an assessment moment for us to say, we've all made sort of opportunities and we all have had challenges, but how do we get this done? And so it took the leadership of our system to say, this is going to be our culture moving forward of our goals. Who are the people that we need and how do we build that collaboration across all entities? So where are the private partners? Who are our partners that are gonna be with us that are gonna be our champions? Where are our alumni and our graduates who are gonna be able to tell the success of their stories and whatnot? And so those are some of the key ingredients, but as you look through and I share this, this is just a sample fundraising plan, but as our colleges began to reevaluate their fundraising plans, and this is a sample that by no means is this particularly one of our colleges, but they began to look at it with the framework of maybe some of these things are key and maybe some of them are to be redirected towards the goal as a system. And some of our goals as an institution and as a community. And so the advancement team members reevaluated their fundraising plans and began to look at key initiatives, so one of those, and part of building these opportunities was truly having the advancement leaders spend time with the enrollment management team. So what strategies does the enrollment management team need in terms of targeting? How can we talk about the scholarships that are available through these performance-based programs that we've built? How do we engage our alumni to share the story? What data do we have to share to recruit individuals into these four and five star career fields that are in high wage, high demand, that are valued at the level by the Louisiana Workforce Commission? And how do we begin to say to our individuals in our communities, these programs exist at all 12 of our institutions, and we've worked with our advancement team members to make sure that scholarship dollars are available through the private partnerships. Same thing with student affairs. It really came down to how do we begin to make sure that our student affairs team members have the resources, not only to develop a well-robust opportunity while these individuals may be with us 12 weeks, while they may be with us two years. Things like childcare, transportation have been a big part of the conversation in solving that, but doing that, it has been understanding what needs do the student affairs team members need, and when I say the need, meaning that the students that they are serving on the front lines, what are their needs? And how do we support that through some of these private-public partnerships that we've developed through these sort of performance-based models? Same thing with academic team. So if faculty is a barrier for the classroom, what need is there? What infrastructure do you have in place? What grant applications can we co-collaborate on? What leadership is available today? What support do your faculty need? Is it program expansion? Is it equipment resources? And so we model all of that out by being able to understand if tomorrow the industry partner that invested into the Reboot Louisiana program calls and says, we really have a need or to expand in X, Y, Z, then what resources can we look at the master plan and say, we can do that tomorrow, or we're gonna need a little bit of a runway because this is new and we don't have the resources available. Or what sister institution has that program today that then we can tap into for that support. Chandler, we've got a couple of questions. I'm actually gonna go backwards because I think the most recent one ties in with where you are right now. So the question is, did each college create their own campaign around specific initiatives or was a statewide collaborative effort? That's a great question. So what I would say is we provided the framework and the colleges in Louisiana know how I feel about the marketing and outreach efforts. I often say we will provide you the support and framework but we don't necessarily develop the statewide campaign in full because we can't tell the story better than the institution and the people at the institution can tell their individual story. And so I'm very big on that. I'm not gonna tell the Delgado story or I'm not gonna tell the South Louisiana Community College story or the Baton Rouge Community College story. What we're gonna do is say, we have this program, it's statewide. There may be this scholarship investment or these dollars available or these targets. Now go and use your branding and develop out of that framework so that they can tell that story best and really reach the people in their communities. Right, and just as a reminder, Chandler's the Vice President of Education for the whole system. So that makes a lot of sense, Chandler, thank you. Therese has been really patient. She has a question. As you were going through the examples, you kind of answered it, but let's just make sure her question is answered. It's, are the private partners providing grants to colleges or providing direct scholarships to individuals? And does an apprenticeship have any part of your models? Great question. So they are providing it directly to either the system and or the college based off of the partnership. Most of the investments, what I would say, from the performance-based models are being provided to our system foundation. And then we are taking that collectively with the other braided funding, as I'll call it, that we may have. And then we're using the master plan of the model and then dividing that up by the institution based off of their performance. And so what comes to play is some of that is specifically scholarship dollars, then which we will get over to the institution and allow them to scholarship the specific students that may be going in the program, or they're putting the student into the program and working with them on the emphasis of the student must complete in order to receive that, or they still owe that as a tuition and fee. So the model's changed over time, but it's not going directly to the student. It's going to the student's account. Gotcha. Great, thank you. That's all the questions for now. We've got about five, 10 minutes to go. So if you want to keep going, Chandler. So they were just sitting there in the Q&A. I want to make sure. Well, I appreciate that. I would say, again, just in trying to share a little about the key ingredients and what's really been impactful for us in making these models sustainable. Same thing with working with our workforce development. While most of this conversation has been heavily involved with our workforce and economic development arm, it's still involved with our academic and student affairs and enrollment. Many of our institutions are, I would say we're probably about 50-50 where the enrollment and the academic workforce development teams are one, and they're collaboratively working together where some of our institutions are still, I wouldn't say siloed, but the enrollment teams are sort of separate or divided and not collectively triaged into one, as well as same thing with academic and workforce. But what opportunities are existing in that lens to make sure that this work can happen? And fundraising, the fundraising arm has played a big role in this to really understand the needs and how can we go out, whether it's through the partnership, grant opportunities, campaigns, resources, engaging the industry partners. And again, I say that while most of the funds for these performance-based funds have been driven to the system, we're asking and reaching and working with all 12 of our advancement leaders as well at the colleges to be a part of this conversation. And if dollars flow to the institution specifically in their foundation, they're also adding that as part of a leverage for additional funding that they may receive as part of their level. But then if they have additional dollars coming towards that program, then that's additional resources for prospective students to intern to that program or to run their funding model. And the governmental affairs arm has played a major role in this. We couldn't get the state and federal funds without the impact of the industry partners in developing the private-public partnerships. And so what models are out there, really the policy and funding and the government lens is really a big place that our board office spends most of its time and then working with our colleges who are actually educating and training individuals at each of the institutions. And so really it became, how do we build that gumbo, that gumbo with the final flavor? So we know that for us, it took the key ingredients, it took all the players, all the partners, all the buy-in. This is not something that happened overnight. And ultimately we've merged data. We had three different enrollment databases. We merged into one. I mean, it's been an evolving effort to get to the success and results that we see for Louisiana. And it didn't happen without the support of our board and our system president to identify that. And so without a great gumbo, you can't make one without the perfect group. We say that often. And we don't necessarily in Louisiana love the store-bought Joy Brew off the shelf. So we said, we're gonna have to make our own brew and it's gonna look different than other states, but it's gonna look different than other resources, but we're gonna do what we need to do that makes Louisiana's economy and the workforce be adaptable, flexible, and sort of collaborative. And so that's what we've done. And so to wrap- I've got another question or you can wrap, up to you. We can do a question and then I'll wrap this. Okay, and you just started, you were there. What are the long-term tracking methodologies to show economic mobility for the individual and to address specific workforce needs? You started talking about tracking and reporting. Yeah, so that is part of, and I'm gonna go back to the other part too, because it just reminded me, address the apprenticeship piece. We have sort of three phases and we'll probably end up building out more phases, but phase one and phase two of our original plan, I feel like we've accomplished pretty well. Phase three is part of this conversation or the question that was just brought up and the apprenticeship piece. We know that the apprenticeship and workspace learning models are something that we're gonna be expanding to in our phase three, starting this upcoming academic year. And the question that has been asked, sort of two points. One is we are working closely with Louisiana Economic Development and Louisiana Workforce Commission, which is our Department of Labor in Louisiana, to understand the workforce needs across time and where we need to understand the labor and the gap. We're focused and as bullet item three says here, our labor force participation rate in Louisiana is 58%. So what we know is there's over 40 something percent of individuals who are on the sidelines and not participating in our economy. And so that's in partnership with our Department of Labor understanding. We know that there are some reasons that individuals aren't participating in the economy, which rightfully so, they may have the reasons. And there are some who are just not. And so what are those barriers? What are those gaps? How do we get them credentialed to enter into that workforce? And the data piece is really becoming a strong conversation currently about, we have our data but our data systems aren't talking. And so this past legislation, there was a bill that was drafted and filed and approved that is forcing four state entities to have a common shared data resource. And so it would help solve the question that's asked here about how do we track? How do we know that our progress is being made? How do we really know that it's turning the economy to the right effort? How do we know that the individuals are actually staying in these sustainable wages long-term? And so there is what we call Louisiana First Initiative, which is gonna be doing exactly that over time now that we've been able to gain some traction. But aside from that, we're gonna continue to advocate for expanding the Pell Grants, improving the WIOA, focus on our students and not the specific systems. We're gonna continue to leverage our partnerships. We're gonna continue to expand our Promise Program. And we have 1.7 million age working adults with high school diplomas in Louisiana. And so we know that that's it, that's all they have. And so there's opportunity to credential those individuals further. And a lot of it is just lack of resources and barriers for those individuals that we have to solve. And so there are success stories here with our students that we are showcasing every day based off of our healthcare workers and the individuals that are in those fields. Same thing with electrical program, et cetera. And I don't know, we didn't test this. So you probably can't hear the video, but ultimately I'm happy when the PowerPoint is uploaded for you to go back and watch the video. And then our third, just showcasing our work from non-traditional students who are second chances. So those who found themselves without opportunity and the Promise Program and or the performance-based models that we've built have been sustainable for individuals to take the opportunity to earn a credential or educational attainment that maybe they haven't been able to do so before because not only did the state not provide the resource where there was lack of resources but maybe they already did not have the resource in their own personal lives. So that's really the Louisiana story. And I know that we're getting close to the end of the webinar. I just appreciate everybody joining today. I hope that at the end of the day maybe you can take away one thing that you will be able to leave with your work in terms of advancement space. And for me, I say the one thing is maybe performance-based models isn't what you're entertaining at your system. Maybe it's private-public partnerships that you have that you're looking to expand. But the key thing that I wanna leave here with is oftentimes we are doing a lot of great work as advancement leaders and it is very important but sometimes it does feel like we go unnoticed because in the academic setting, we're focused on our students and our academics and getting people in the classroom and out into the workforce. But know that you can't do it without the collaborative effort amongst all of the departments within your institution. So I encourage you to continue to build those relationships, making that impactful and at the same time being able to showcase your work and what you do every day. So I just thank you again for your efforts. I don't spend my day as much as I would love to in the advancement fundraising world anymore but I definitely say I sort of air traffic control all of it at this point and I find it to be very rewarding. So again, thank you, Meg, and I'll turn it to you. Oh my gosh, thank you Chandler, you have a lot going on and that was a great presentation. There's just one outstanding question you did touch on at the beginning but again, the overall funding for this effort, what are the percentages, federal funding, state funding, private? Sound like most was state. So it varies in terms of each of the programs but yes, I would say most of the performance-based model programs that we've built is state funded, a little bit of federal and then some of those are private. Each one varies on percentage. So some might be 60, 40, some might be 80, 20, some might be 70, 30, some might be 70, 20 and 10. Ultimately happy to further dialogue specifically about those but not all of them started with state funding. I think over time as we were able to show the legislature the value, then they started to kick in additional state dollars towards these programs but we started some of them specifically with maybe 60% in private and 40% or 80, 20 until we start to show that we are producing that churn into the economy of those graduates. Right, well, thank you so much everyone for joining us. Dr. Chandler LaBeouf, you have got a lot of great things going on down there in Louisiana and congratulations on all that you've been able to accomplish and it's a workforce, it's also it's advancement, it's government relations, it's the whole gumbo as you said. So lots ahead of us for us to learn. So thank you for leading the way. Everybody have a great day, stay warm and safe out there and thanks again for joining us, bye.

workforce development

public-private partnerships

performance-based funding

Reboot Louisiana

broadband access

Louisiana Promise Program

healthcare workforce initiative

LCTCS

credentialed completions

economic landscape