All right, well, I'm going to get started since we're just about a minute into it, but please keep saying hi in the chat. That's great. My name is Meg Natter, and I'm the Director of Community Colleges and Foundations here at CASE. Thank you for joining us today and keep on joining us. But I'm going to get us started with our first webinar focused on leveraging workforce development partnerships. Today we're shining a very bright spotlight on the Maine Community Colleges System's success with the Harold Alphon Foundation. But before I get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. We love the chat. We love you chatting in the chat. But please, if you have a question, put that in the Q&A box, which is at the bottom of your screen. You see a little Q&A with a little question mark. That's where we'd like your questions to go. We're going to have a discussion. So as we go along through the discussion, if you have questions, just put them in there and we're probably going to save most of them till the end of the webinar. But we love to see your questions. So just use that Q&A box instead of the chat for your questions. All right, let's get started. You may be relieved to hear that we're not using any PowerPoints today. Yay, no PowerPoints. We're just going to have a chat with three wonderful panelists from Maine who are just so kind and generous that we're grateful that they're here today. I'm going to introduce them. We have Dr. David Daigler, who's president of the Maine Community College System, Dr. John Fitzsimmons, president of the Foundation for Maine's Community Colleges, and Dan Bellier, who is the chief workforce development officer for the Maine Community College System, as well as the Harold Alphon Center for the Advancement of Maine's Workforce. I hope I got it all there, Dan. Leading the discussion will be Dr. Chandler LaBeouf. He's vice president of education at Louisiana Community and Technical College System, and he's also a member of CASE's Community College Leadership Committee, and I'm very grateful to him for leading the discussion because he's doing some great workforce development work at his system. So Chandler, I think it's time to unmute and I'm just going to hand it off to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Meg, and we really appreciate all of those attending and joining us this afternoon. As mentioned, we're just excited about conversations and chat around workforce development and know all of the work that each of us do in the advancement space. We couldn't do it without our partners in workforce development. And so I think it's important that we spend some time and having that conversation today and really appreciative that we have our guests with us from the Maine Community College System, as Meg has done a wonderful job introducing each one of those with us. But as Meg mentioned, and as we'll focus on today, the Maine Community College System is doing a lot of great things in leveraging that workforce development partnership space and received a nice gift that really creates an opportunity in terms of their work and ultimately the legacy that they're leaving for the people of their community and then their colleges. And so with that, we'll dive in, but I'll open it up for the team to give us a little introduction into the Maine Community College System before we dive into some of the specific questions around the chat. And if you have questions, we encourage you to enter those in the chat as well. So we will start with President Daigler. Okay, I will lead into that. Thank you very much. First of all, appreciate the opportunity to be here and to talk about this partnership and it's actually a series of partnerships, we'll drill into that a bit. But give you a little bit of an overview because a lot of folks from a national perspective might not fully understand what the Maine Community College System is. So it is a system. It is a network of seven colleges. We have one board of trustees for each of those seven colleges, but each of the seven colleges are separately accredited. We come from what is the oldest state in the country. Now we have not supplanted Delaware as the first to join the Union, but by average age we have the oldest populace in the country. And therefore, by conversion, the oldest workforce in the country. And that's driven a lot of our thinking and a lot of our, a lot of how we're approaching these workforce development efforts and the partnerships that we seek. On the traditional degree bound side, we actually had record enrollments last year so we're enrolling a little over 21,000 students. Our tuition is about the national average, lowest in New England, just below $4,200 a year. But what we're really here to talk about is a relationship that we've built up with the Harold Alfond Foundation in the development of a partnership and a unique effort in approaching this workforce development effort. Now, of course, everything we do is workforce development, but we have worked with the Harold Alfond Foundation for several years and evolved through a series of gifts and grants, this program that they really wanted to embark on something that was transformational, something that was different and was going to impact our state, which was dealing with both these demographic challenges. And then the, you know, the forces of change that are coming about for all of us, the advancement of artificial intelligence and technology in the workplace, increasing demands in our healthcare system, increasing demands in the green economy, increasing demands in the defense economy. And so how did we go about approaching that? I'm going to let actually President Fitzsimmons talk a little bit about the development of the grant and what the relationship with the foundation looks like. I think the person you're really going to want to hear from in terms of what we're doing and how we're doing it is Dan Belyea. But I do want to lead with the notion that this is truly a partnership. We work very closely with the Harold Alfond Foundation. There was a base grant, and then they have continued to increase their programming, but they've also indicated that they're not a lifelong partner. They're trying to help us build something that is sustainable, that can be self-perpetuated based on its own demand and its own sort of economic system. So as we moved into that, we actually approached the workforce development problem very differently than the traditional higher education model. In traditional higher education, we're going to look out, we're going to see changing demands, we're going to try and build programs, we're going to try and recruit students, we're going to deliver the education and then help them find jobs. With the workforce development program that we have with the Harold Alfond Foundation, we have places, ladders, where students can get on and off at any particular stage, but we're actually starting that conversation directly with employers or groups of employers who have vacancies that need to be filled and or an existing workforce within their organization who needs to be upskilled, who needs additional training and talent, sometimes communication analytics skills, sometimes advanced technology skills. And we're working directly with those workforce partners, actually signed something called a compact with those workforce partners to initiate that relationship. I think Dan will probably tell you, and I'll steal a little bit of his thunder, that we have about over 1,700 compacts that represent more than 50% of Maine's workforce. So these have been embedded in our economy. The growth factor has been incredible. And the businesses have identified this as a core solution to meeting their needs so they can build the workforce and they can then deliver the products and services that their business is designed to deliver on. So it's been a fascinating journey and it's been really exciting and it really is very unique. I think it's portable so that others in other parts of the country can sort of use this, but it does take the effort and the plan to sort of redesign how we're approaching workforce development. So, Dan, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about how we've, how we really built this foundation with our, what was really our second Harold L. Fahn grant, and then the success factors that we've enjoyed there, and the work that's going into the third Harold L. Fahn grant. Yeah, absolutely, President Diggler. I think one of the pieces that we keep talking about is intentional collaboration and responding to the workforce needs of our employers. And back in January of 22, we had 90 compact members. As of last Friday, we have 1,760 members. And it's really demand driven. We have a workforce development compact and agreement between the main community college system and our employers, and we're able to help upskill their incumbent workforce. And it's designed as a one-to-one match. We're able to provide $1,200 or 50% of a training cost for incumbent frontline worker, and it's a one-to-one match. For every dollar we match up to $1,200, the employer matches. We, in our current grant, have leveraged almost $10 million. In our new grant, and that starts in January of 25, we'll put in $30 million in incumbent worker training money, and our employers will match that. And what's really cool about the compact is 73% of our compact members are 100 employees or less. 58% are 50 or less, and about a third are 10 employees or less. So we're meeting the needs of those small and medium businesses across the state and helping them upskill their workforce. And as many of you know, we have a lot of folks, because we have an aging population that are retiring, and we've got to upskill the current workforce to help fill those needs. And the compact has been a wonderful way to work with employers, deepen relationships with these partnerships and collaboration to help them skill those folks in their workplace. And what's really neat is an employer can use an existing vendor for the training, or they can tap into over 1,600 third party training vendors we have. Matter of fact, only about 20% of the training is provided by one of our community colleges. So it's really broadened our ability to help employers meet their skill needs for their employees and really put it at scale. And we're going to walk into our new grant by training 70,505 Mainers, and that's 10%, 10% of Maine's workforce. And it's really interesting to think that through. And our current training grant that we're in with the Harold Alfvén Foundation, our goal was a goal in three years was actually four years, and we moved one year forward. Our goal is to train 24,000 Mainers. We've achieved over 27,000 Mainers, and by the end of December, we'll hit 30,000. So we've overachieved our goals. We've helped meet employer needs. We've done it at the speed of business and be happy to jump into that conversation on some very specific examples. But it's flexible, and it's employer informed and employer driven. And we're really pleased with the support from the foundation and the team that we have here in Maine and our employers, and it's been really successful. So Dan, if I can just sort of step backwards and we talk about this aging population. The aging population thing is not a unique thing in Maine. It's actually hitting the entire country and the entire developed world. Birth rates have been down for 20 years. And we're now beginning to feel that pinch. And we're feeling that pinch because we're seeing a lot of the older half of the workforce begin to retire and move on. So if we talk specifically about one of our partners, Bath Ironworks, it's a company that was formed in 1884. They've had stable employment for forever. I mean, it's just been, it is a large employer. But as we stand here today, 60% of their workforce has less than five years worth of experience. And so when Dan talks about coming in and working with these partners and helping them skill up their existing workforce, that's a part of that critical need is that we actually have a relatively young workforce coming into the pipeline, and we have a very experienced workforce that's retiring out of the pipeline. So that's specifically the need we see ourselves filling. Yeah, absolutely. And if you take the example of a program we run with Bath Ironworks, which is general dynamics, we run a three-week manufacturing technician program. That program helps an entry-level employee come in, get some very basic skills, cutting, grinding, measurements, blueprint reading, and some hot work with some welding, and it guides them to a position at Bath Ironworks. We're able in that model to help provide some of the training costs, but Bath Ironworks is providing the stipend for those employees to be in the training program. So initially, when we were running the program, we'd enroll 12 folks. We'd finish with about seven, and Bath Ironworks would pick up five. But we had a conversation with Bath Ironworks and really talked about, what are your needs over the next three to five years? What occupations, what positions do you need? So we worked together, signed an NDA, talked about those needs, and built a cohort size that helped them fit their employment needs. And then Bath Ironworks came in again with a stipend. So we'd start with 20 individuals. We'd pay them $500 at the end of the week, as long as they accomplished their goals and they attended. And we would finish out with 19, they would hire 17 or 16, and they would be successful. And what was really neat about the partnership with Bath Ironworks is they knew they weren't going to get everyone. So some of those folks ended up in the supply chain that supports the shipyard. So that was really good in that perspective for them to think differently, knowing that the supply chain behind them has thousands of products that are coming to them. And then those groups in Bath Ironworks aren't poaching off each other. So it's been a really great partnership. We had another great partnership that we worked with a manufacturer who was providing the swabs for COVID-19. Over 90% of those swabs worldwide. They came to us in May, May 1st. They said, we're going to open a factory, and we need 1,200 folks. From May 1st to July 1st, during the pandemic, we instituted a training program with a partner, and we were able to train over 1,200 folks to help fit that need. And it came quick, it came fast, it was at the speed of business, it was flexible, and really helped them ramp up to meet the nation's need. Many examples like that where we sit down with the employer and really talk about what are the skill sets you need? And how can we customize what we're doing and produce the workforce the employer needs? So Dan, I'm going to get you to tell one more example, because our responsiveness is demonstrated in the ability to train up 1,200 people in a program that didn't exist at the beginning of the summer, and have them in training and ready to go by the end of the summer. But a lot of times when I'm sort of talking with employers, they say, well, that's cool if you need 1,200 people, or if you're working with a company the size of Bath Ironworks. But most of our businesses are small businesses. And the work that we do with the professional loggers is an amalgamation, it's an aggregation of a series of small businesses. And those training classrooms are actually in the forest, they're not on our college campus. So if you'd just tell folks a little bit about that, I think that's another example of how we partner and how we work through a trade association to build out a program that meets a very profound need. Yeah, and that's another great example, David. Our mechanized logging program that is operated each summer was really responding to the needs of the association and employers who need to have trained folks who are going to remove wood product from the forest. And it's not what you think, it's not through skitters and chainsaws, it's through very sophisticated equipment that's going to extract trees from the woods. So we worked with the association, built a training program, helped fund that, and then was able to take that program and have really honest dialogue about what are the needs. The equipment needs for the program were over a million dollars. These pieces of equipment are $500,000 or $600,000. We couldn't afford to buy those. So the association worked with the equipment dealers, they donated the equipment, we recruited the students. And those students who came to our program were students who said they don't want to do traditional classroom learning. They don't want to be in a classroom. They want to be working with their hands. And their experiences in the past maybe weren't as positive as it could be, but when you go out in the field and you see the students, there's a whiteboard nailed up against a tree. They're actually doing mathematical computations, they're measuring tree size, they're working as a team, and then they're out practicing on the equipment. And it was really a remarkable program, and that brought a whole bunch of small forest harvesters together and really produced a highly trained workforce. Those students were hired before the program ended. And then this year, we added the commercial driver's license. So not only will the student be able to operate the equipment, but they'll be able to drive those vehicles in and out from sites and will be a more valued employee to those smaller contractors. Great. Well, I appreciate Dan, the feedback and President Diggler, the introduction and the dialogue. As a reminder to the group, continue to enter your questions that you may have in the chat and we'll address those. But I did have a few questions that I wanted to open up for further discussion and dialogue that really sets up the continued conversation. But as we understand, the $75 million gift was not the first contribution by the Alphond Foundation to the community college system. And of course, that means that the relationship with the organization has been developed over many years and remains strong. And at a point when you began to seek out this particular gift of 75 million, who were the key players within the system? And how did that start to identify who needed to be a part of the working group among the system within partnership to make the ask? And I say that because oftentimes, I think it's important that our advancement officers are equally at the table with the workforce development officers who are in partnership with industry. And so just expand a little bit on that. Fitz, that sounds like a perfect question for you. Okay, I'd be glad to address it. Well, let me talk a little bit about the history with the Alphonds and some of their other major gifts. So you get to see how the relationship was built over time. I was actually the president of the community college system for 25 years. And then five years ago, Dave asked me to come back to run the foundation. The Alphonds Foundation The chairman of the board of the Harold Alphonds Foundation was creating a new program called the Alphonds Scholarship. And it's one in which they award $500 for every child born or adopted in Maine. And he met with me and wanted me to come on the board. I actually was a little hesitant about the endeavor, but he won me over and I agreed to be on it. And I served on it for 13 years. And President Diggler is now currently on the board. It's a phenomenal effort underway by the Alphonds. And just one quick point that you'll be very pleased to hear that the investment by both the Alphond Foundation, parents and others today for the first class that started almost 18 years ago is $548 million sitting in the bank for them to go off to any college that they wish, as long as they were born or adopted in Maine. The, when the Alphond Foundation was working with a nonprofit that they cared deeply about in central Maine, they approached at the time I was the president and they approached me about some facilities they had that this nonprofit had that they would be interested in see if we would be, see any value in it and also 300 acres of land to go with it, which was really adjacent to, or I should say a couple of miles away from one of the campuses that we had. We agreed, they gave us a $10 million gift that acquired the property, put up a new academic building and refurbished some of the other existing buildings. And then two other major gifts was one was the Alphond, what we call Alphond 2, which is 15.5 million. And now of course, we're talking about $75.5 million. But let me distill it down to one other very important point. And it's this, the Harold Alphond initiative that we have going is about to serve the frontline workers in Maine. Now here's the stat that really drove us to why this is so critical. The frontline workers represent 80% of the workforce in our state. And yet only 25% of the investment in workforce development or in professional development goes to the frontline workers. It's all upper management. So the very people they need to learn new skills to stay current were not being invested in. And just like any other state, people would try to steal them from one company to the other by offering another dollar per hour. That was never gonna be the solution. And then when Maine ended up with this glorious time of being sometimes sub 3% unemployment to now maybe around 3.5%, the need for workers became so great that the employers had to look at it a very different way, enter the new program that we have. So that's a little bit of the history and the connection, but there is a big why behind this. And it's about getting to Maine's frontline workers. I appreciate you sharing that. And we'll go to a few questions that we have in the chat. First is, how would you describe the role that the community college system plays when training is offered by another entity to an employer? Dan, that sounds right up your alley. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we've fought through and have changed our delivery model, and our traditional training programs that we've had in the past and with money from the state of Maine to support those programs, the college was required to do all the training. And as we entered the pandemic and the governor of the state of Maine, Governor Janet Mills moved $35 million to us for short-term training. And then we were gifted at the same time, a gift of 15.5 million. We knew we couldn't deploy all of that training from the colleges. So we had our colleges focus in on that 35 million from the American Rescue Plan, which is called the Maine Jobs and Recovery Program here in Maine, and then offered the colleges to help us with the incumbent worker training. So the training for incumbent workers is designed and asked for by the employer. So they submit an application. They ask to train a certain number of employees. They tell us exactly what they're looking for training. So if our colleges can provide it, then great, that's awesome. But we also developed that third-party training vendor list so that if we didn't have it, we had a resource for the employer to grab it from another source. And some of those sources are the third-party training list, or it could be a vendor that they had internally. So it was a beautiful way to really bring this to scale. And in some cases, some of those folks that were doing the training would be considered competitors. But there's so much work to be done, and there's so many folks that need upskilling. We didn't think it that way. We really thought about how do we get those skills to the employers who incumbent workers really need the training. And one of the questions that was in the Q&A is in the incumbent worker training, are those employees members of that, are they in employment? And yes, they are. They're current employees who received that training. So we had to think differently about the deployment. And what happened was the tremendous amount of growth we saw from our requests. And that's where we had an initial four-year grant and our current grant, and we pulled the fourth year forward because of the volume. So it's really been employer-driven. It's given the employers exactly what they need, when they need it, and in real time. So if an employer comes forward and says, geez, we need to have funding for this program, it's not three or four months down the road. It's three or four weeks down the road, and we've been able to respond in real time. Dan, if I add one other quick point to this, because you're right, it is employer-driven, but when you work with these trainers, just think about what Dan has done. He has employed the training companies that we work with. They're our sales force. Every time they have a new company come to them and say, we wanna do this training, they're coming back to us. Well, you should join to be a compact member because we can get the price reduced and get you the training you're needing. So it's a very clever approach to expand our service. Second of all, Maine does not have an official workforce development system. You're looking at the main community college system. We are filling that void now because we're serving all those employers, all those workers, bringing in different training agencies, including universities and other colleges. And so we're at the focal point of getting at the heart of all the issues, but the courage it takes to say, wait a minute, we're gonna use money to give to other organizations because they have the quality training the company needs to be delivered was an easy decision for us. Dan, could you take one second though? We skipped over the three stages of the continuum. I think that really will help the audience understand that there's an end goal for us for this. Yeah, absolutely. David, do you wanna cover that? Nope, you got it. No, absolutely. The first stage is entry-level training. So providing those resources to get someone into a phlebotomy certification or a certified nursing or medical assistant or a welder or a manufacturing technician. So that's what we call stage one. Stage two is the incumbent worker program that we described through the compact. And that what's really cool beyond the compact is the employees who received incumbent worker training can receive up to six community college courses at half the cost. So not only the incumbent worker can build some additional skills, but then they can build college credit and college pathways into additional credentials. So it's been a really beautiful way to take entry-level incumbent and then scholarships and bring that whole package together. And it's a great recruitment tool. So employers can say, hey, listen, we're gonna provide you some incumbent worker training, but then you get some free community, half off community college courses and the employer can pick up the other half while the employer can pick that up. It's a really beautiful mix of having a whole set of resources to help fill Maine's employer needs. And as John mentioned, it's the void that was there. And we were able to take some public and private funds and really fill that. So Chandler, there are also, as you've heard John and Dan talk, there are a couple of big picture dynamics that we need to think about and focus on here. The first is that we are building relationships with our business partners. These are not transactions. These are relationships where we're going in, we're understanding what their needs are and then providing value to them. Now that value may be the training that we deliver whether it's to fill a vacancy or to upskill a current employee or to bring an employee back and help them earn a college degree. But what the employer is beginning to recognize is that this workforce, this frontline workforce that John talked so eloquently about is a valuable workforce. They're now investing in their workforce. So the age of hire when we need and lay off when we don't is going away. And they're investing in people and now we become the resource that they can turn to to say, how can you help me upskill my employees? Dan talked about moving at the pace of business in real time. So we have to be able to deploy resources that already exist and marry them up. And our role in that, our value added is that we have this portfolio. So we can deliver what the community college has built or we may be delivering what a third party vendor has built but we've provided value. Now, when we begin to build that relationship we start talking about advancing the education of their employees. We can be talking with them also about building a schedule so that the employer is managing the schedule with the educational institution and the employee isn't trained to buck that challenge of do I have to go to class or do I have to go to work? I gotta go to work so I can't go to class. Those schedules get built together and with some of our employers, we have an employer partner where on Friday afternoon there's an entire cohort who's on that work site in a class in leadership development. We can also then work with the employer on building the career ladder and associate that with the education and training that's being delivered. So if you wanna go from being a widget maker one to a widget maker two, take advanced widget making with your community college or a program that they've connected to. We will have the record of all of those trainings and all of that skill development. We may be able to apply credit for some of it. We may be able to look at prior learning experiences and help accelerate degree completion. So we're providing value at every step of the way and it creates a very deep and embedded relationship. I appreciate you sharing the importance of the relationship and really understanding the need of the industry and how the community college system can deliver on those needs. And I think that segues pretty well into our next question, which is when referencing training programs, assuming that these are anchored in micro credentials, short-term training, upskilling versus the diploma and or more traditional post-secondary credentials, how do you see workforce development programs and employer academia compacts expanding into certificate degree and diploma programs? What are the opportunities and the challenges? So I'll lead, but I appreciate Dan and John sort of chiming in. The opportunities here are to build a more customized training and human development program for the employer or the consortium of employers. Now, we then can turn around and take what we know from the academic world and parse that out and say, okay, some of that is worthy of credit and what kind of credit does it deserve? And how can we begin to stack those credits, those micro credentials and those certificates and begin to add value so that a person can begin to work towards a degree. But I'd tell you Chandler that one of the real values is that a lot of times with this entry-level workforce who is looking for skill development and trade orientated areas, a manufacturing technician, a welder, some of the disciplines that we're working with in healthcare. They've, Dan talked about the folks in the logger training program, really not wanting to sit in classrooms and learn. They wanna work with their hands. They're actually very bright, very affable, but they've not necessarily had great experiences in the academic arena. When they start to feel some success and they get a certificate, they get a micro badge, they get something that says, I did this. They develop a new form of confidence. And what Dan's not talked about is Dan will hold graduation ceremonies for a 12 week welding program or a 12 week manufacturing program and celebrate that success. That builds in that person, a belief that they may be able to succeed in this environment. And then they begin to develop the energy and the ambition and the fortitude to go back to class and to give a class a try. I'm just gonna try a class, just one. That one went okay, how about another? And then begin to build themselves towards a degree. So yes, we do look at stackable credentials. We do look at how this works in synchrony with a business's career ladder and how a person might be able to build themselves. But we also look at the human being and talk about how they're developing and how they're maturing and the confidence that they're gaining with a learning base that is an area where they've oftentimes not had a lot of success. Dan, you can talk about some of the successes and the appreciation that some of our partner employees have experienced. Yeah, and it really, at the end of the day, every training program has to connect to an employer. It has to be employer-informed. We don't provide any training programs that don't leave to a job. So every training program, we develop a development plan. We look at real-time labor market data. We look at the number of job openings and we'll approve and produce a training program that meets those needs. The other piece that's really important too is we look at the return on investment. So we know that someone will enter a training program, they'll get increased wages, those taxes that they pay will increase and that payback will happen in many times less than a year. Our standard is three years, but many of our programs pay back much sooner than that. But if you listen to some of the student stories that we hear, and I'll just cover a couple. We ran a CDL, Commercial Driver's License program where you can get your either Class A or Class B certification. We had a young lady who was 37 years old. She took the program in under 12 weeks. She still was working part-time, but took the program. And when she stood up and talked at the graduation, which her parents, grandparents, and children were at, she said, for the first time in my life, I have health care, I have dental care, I have a 401k, and I'm making a real wage driving a dump truck. And those are the success stories that drive everything we do. We had a homeless veteran that came to us and took that manufacturing technician program. We were able to house that individual in some of our campus housing where the training took place. He took the program, hired by the employer, and was able to get an apartment, and now has a car, and is hugely successful making over $60,000 a year, probably making more by this point. But those are the real stories of the folks that we're assisting. And it's not just those stories. This is generational change. This is going to change hundreds and thousands of folks down the line. And the other piece that I'll mention, and when we see the kids at these graduations, they're looking up to their parent and saying, they can do it, I can do it. And it's really remarkable. I mean, I tear up in many cases when we go to these, because sometimes people can think for granted that, geez, I've got a health insurance, or I've got a real living wage. But we have a whole group of folks who just don't have the right skills for today's economy. And these programs are really fitting in and helping them meet their own economic need. And we'll see more of those students as we go ahead and train upskill 70,505 folks. And the other piece that we do in our program is we do our student story cards, we do our videos, we share that. And part of the mystery that we've kind of gotten out of the way is telling that story, having communications to the public and to our employers and to others across the state, our funder, sharing these beautiful stories about lives that are being changed by the thousands. It's just remarkable. I'll tell you one of those stories, because Dan talked about intergenerational change. But I went to one of the graduations that Dan hosts. And sitting behind me is a young woman and a child, I'll guess three years old. But as the ceremony gets started, she props the young boy up on her knee and she says, Daddy's about to graduate, you can do that too someday. And this was a 12 week manufacturing technician program at one of our partners. But it instilled that mindset of you can do it, of completing something that has a training and an education, a human development base to it is important. And that's the intergenerational change that Dan is talking about. Really great story. I have to share it. David mentioned that piece. But we've got a variety of programs, healthcare trades, construction, IT, education programs. But one of our really cool programs is a dental assistant. We had this single mom of we had two kids, was working overnight in the convenience store, really wasn't working for her, the job was difficult. And she had to make arrangements for family to come over and be at her house while she was working overnight. She took the program in less than 10 weeks. She scored a job that doubled her wages, and she was home at the end of the day when her kids got off the bus. It's those types of stories and filling those employment needs that the employer needs and matching those together is the beauty of what we've been doing. Well, I appreciate that. We do have a few more questions to get through and about 15 minutes to go. So one of those is, can you talk a little bit more about the relationship with the state of Maine that the community college system has maybe with Department of Labor, and or your workforce development boards? Dan, that's right in your sweet spot. Yeah, absolutely. So I serve on the state workforce board and have great relationships. I think one of the really cool things that's happened in Maine over the past six years is state government and higher ed have come together. And not only have we come together and have commissioners and presidents and folks like me talk with each other, but we actually get our staff together and actually do the hard work. We have been as close with state government than we've ever been. And the collaboration of how we can help each other, how we can braid funds, how we can work with the Department of Labor with their apprenticeship programs and participate in their grants and braid those funds together, how we can use a competitive skills scholarship program that provides really wraparound services for our trainees, and really having those transparent conversations about what are the struggles, what are the barriers, how do we actually make this work in real time. And it's been a really beautiful experience. Matter of fact, President Daigler and I sit on what the governor put together. It's not called this workforce cabinet anymore, but it's the commissioners, it's higher ed. We get together every other month and make sure that we're working together, that we're collaborating, and that we're working on initiatives that are helping main folks be able to advance their skills. And it's been a great collaboration, and it's really the hard work that takes place after those meetings and talking through how you can reduce the barriers, get folks signed up in real time quickly. Many of our students don't have three or four months to wait. They need training now that leads to a job of high wage and instant employment. And we know once they get through that short-term program and we can provide some really cool credentials, they'll come back to us to get additional skills. So the collaboration with state government has never been as high as it's been right now. It's really remarkable. Great. I appreciate that. Another question is, how are you identifying, engaging, and matching up employers that hire short-term training completers? Yeah, I'll take that real quick. Every training program has to have an employer. It has to have a job. So as we put our programs together, we get employers together and make sure that they're participating, they're informing us, and that they're actually interviewing those students as they're going through the program. And one of the requirements, if you engage in one of our programs, is you actually interview the completers and do that ahead of time, come in and meet with them, bring some pizza in, meet with them at lunchtime, get to know them, and then really match them up with the employers. So that's a critical component for this to be successful. We cannot train people with stranded skills that can't advance them. Our students cannot waste that time. They just can't. Chandler, I'll portray this in another way. We could have gone to a data bank like Jobs EQ or just looked at the WAN ads in the current area and said, what are the skills that are in demand? And then go, wow, we need a lot of welders, or we need a lot of pipefitters, or we need a lot of licensed practical nurses. And then said, okay, we're going to try and recruit people into these prospective jobs because there's a lot of need out there. I can almost promise you that our recruitment would have been much lower because a lot of the people who are coming can't afford to take a risk. They need to know that there's a job at the other line, that that job is going to improve their lives. And in fact, they probably need a stipend just to be able to stay in the classroom long enough to get through the training program. Now, when we say the automotive dealers of Maine are hiring auto technicians, or Bath Ironworks are hiring manufacturing technicians or welders, or Maine Health is hiring licensed practical nurses, or I'm filling the example. Now, all of a sudden people realize there's a job opportunity, but they don't have the skill and they connect us to the skill and they come and they fill the opportunity. But as Dan said, the conversation actually starts with the job. It starts with the employer. So we've made that connection on the front end and not on the back end. Great. Yep. That is actually a great segue into a next question, which is, you mentioned you have multiple campuses and some are more at a certain, you know, they're equipped with certain training programs and others. And so if you're working with an employer in the southern part of the state and they have a certain need, but that campus near them doesn't necessarily have the training program, how are you facilitating that? Are they traveling to maybe an institution or campus in the northern part of the state? Are you coming to them? How are you recruiting participants in those training programs? Well, I'm going to say yes, but I'll let Dan actually answer the particulars there. Yeah. The best programs that we operate are at the employers. And if a campus doesn't have the capacity and another campus does, we'll make those adjustments. But one of the things that we've done with our colleges is share the curriculum so that if a college in northern Maine has a certain training, they can operate the program. But it's really that sort of collaboration where we want to meet the employer's needs. We want to meet those students where they are. And we can't afford to put folks on the road. You know, transportation, childcare, and housing is a number one concern across the nation and here in Maine. So we've got to have the training program that meets those folks' needs. Now, can we modify the program so it's a hybrid model and then coordinate that? Absolutely. But it's really identifying the training program and then finding a way to have it happen as close to the learner as possible. And we've been successful with that. And again, it's all about collaborating not only with our employers and third-party training programs, but with each other, with the seven campuses. And some have sweet spots. So Commercial Driver, we've moved that program around the state. So northern Maine has moved that to extreme southern Maine. We've also propped up additional programs in other areas in central Maine and with new programming to provide new seats. So we're doing all of that to help those learners receive the training in the location they're at. Great. Appreciate that. And so the next question, if you can expand a little bit on, is you have the foundation, the Alfon Foundation, who's been a strong partner of the system, who's continued to make investments with the most recent investment of $75 million. While the Maine Community College system is answering the calling to its mission of developing the time, talent, and treasure in training and developing that workforce for employers, how are you seeing employers providing back the time, talent, and treasure into the community college system that you're providing that skilled workforce for? Uh-huh. So a little bit of a, Dan or John, you want to take that? Well, one of the things that is important when you look at this initiative is that the employers are coming back with financial obligations to participate in the program. So when Dave has been talking about us winning the 75.5, the whole program, which will talk about us winning the 75.5, the whole program, which will serve 70,000 trainees over the next five years, is $164 million that will go through this initiative. So it's a significant commitment by the private sector to invest in their own workforce. I have to tell you, though, um, we're hoping, and I use the word hoping, that we have a cultural change, that this initiative is, is really, um, opened up the eyes of the employers about the invest, the importance in investing the people who are working for you instead of just recruiting from another state or trying to find that that's the solution. Some of your best employees are the ones you grow in your, in your own company and who want to live in Maine, who want to be part of this community. And so every time we can get more employees involved, we're changing their, the culture in Maine about employers investing in their own workforce. It may sound simple, but it's not. It gets lost. It's too easy not to be, well, I only have a hundred employees and why do I want to put up a training program? Because you can't find the workers. And now we can get the workers to you who are going to be loyal to your company. It's, it's, it's pretty simple formula. No, and, and I think that speaks the volume of the partnership that you've all built, um, with, uh, the employers in Maine. And ultimately you're delivering, the system is delivering on the calling of developing that talent workforce and they're delivering on the partnership by making those financial contributions as you see fit. Um, as we have about five minutes left, I do have a final question and then we can go into the closing comments, but for our listeners today, as they understand, um, more about the Maine community college system system and the, uh, innovative workforce and partnerships that the system has continued to, uh, develop and has evolved over time. Uh, what would you say is the most important advice that you would give to community college advancement professionals about pursuing and developing partnerships, such as the one that you have in Maine? John, that's in your sweet spot. Okay. I'd be, I'd be glad to. I think it's critical that one is you, you look at your own organization and let's assume that the vast majority of people on this webinar are from community colleges or standing universities. But let me say this, how does it fit within your organization? We have, when you say the community college, everybody thinks about the degree programs, your associate degrees, maybe some one year programs, but now you're talking about workforce development. So my advice is to, is to make the connection. What we have built is a continuum. Pre-hire training, get the basic skills, upgrade your skills, take college courses. What signal are we sending to our faculty? We are one of your great new recruiters. We're bringing people into your classrooms who want to get degrees. So never forget the culture in which you have to operate. I understand, rightly so, we spend a lot of time talking outside about partners on the outside. You have an inside constituent. Dave is the, is the head of all of it. He has to understand and does the importance of the faculty signing off and saying, okay, there is a benefit to us. And let me say one other very important thing. Dan and the efforts he has and grants we've won has brought in more classroom equipment into the college, permanently into those colleges, than they've had in probably a decade. So you can see they're seeing the direct benefit of this. So never forget the culture in which it's, you're operating this endeavor or you'll miscue and have the faculty up in arms or others up in arms that you're not focused on what our mission is. Our mission is Maine workers, Maine workers all the way through to get a degree. The person with a degree has a far greater chance to be the supervisor, earn more money and have a brighter future, build a continuum and help people find their path through the continuum. I think John's spot on. I think if I were to add or shape any of that, I would say, you know, and you talk about building a continuum. Another way of saying that is think long-term and when you're working with a foundation or a philanthropic organization, you need to build a relationship. You need to build trust. And from that perspective, you need to also then, you know, build some successes, but also be honest about, you know, opportunities and challenges. When we talked to the Alphons, we talked about having to make a culture change with Maine businesses, where they learned the need to invest in their frontline workforce. So it's been a very long-term relationship. But as we look at that long-term, if you go from the period that begins about 2021 and project that through the period, that's about 2020, 2030, we will have used the Herald Alphons Foundation as a base investment, leveraged that up, and we will have committed about $200 million into the Maine workforce. We will have trained about a hundred thousand people over that one decade period. And that's in a workforce of about 700,000 people, just to put that at scale. So think long-term, build relationships through trust, and then build from the beginning. Our first grant with the Herald Alphons Foundation was a little more than a million dollars. Then we had a second relationship. And now this is a $75 million relationship, and a $75 million relationship that by design leverages another $90 million of funding from our business partners, from the federal government, from other philanthropists, and then builds for the future. Wow, I appreciate you sharing that, President Daigler. And at this point, we've reached the end of our webinar. And so I'll turn it over to Meg to close us out. Yeah, thank you. I was just going to say, gentlemen, you've done a fantastic job. Chandler, you were handling the Q&A, and I was trying to help, but you were getting it all done. So thank you so much. Great questions from the group, incredible answers. I think we're just so impressed by everything you're doing. Dan, especially, cheers to you. You're kind of doing the frontline work. John and David, excuse me for not using the doctors, but they are your team, and it's so clear that they're supportive of everything you're doing. It's just inspirational to see the team like this. So thank you for sharing your experience with us. For everyone in the chat, there is going to be another webinar focused on leveraging workforce development partnerships in February, and that will focus a bit more on private-public partnerships. So we hope you'll join us then. Thank you again, everyone, and go Maine. I think everybody wants to move to Maine now, at least in the summertime. Thank you, everybody. Have a great day.

Maine Community College System

Harold Alfond Foundation

workforce development

strategic alliances

skill development

upskill workforce

technical skills

employer-informed training

economic benefits