 Welcome, everyone. And thank you so much for taking the time to join us this afternoon for insight into this important topic. I'm Iris Palmer, Deputy Director of Community Colleges here in New America. Over the last four years, our team has been researching bachelor's degrees offered at community colleges. And since then we have published a lot of research, but more importantly, there's a growing number of states that have authorized CCB programs, and the number of programs have continued to grow. And with that growth, we've seen an increased interest in the topic, which we found incredibly gratifying. Currently, half of states authorize at least one predominantly, predominantly associates degree granting college to offer bachelor's degrees. As of this year, 142 community colleges had at least one bachelor's degree program with 565 CCB programs nationwide. Early on in our research in the CCB programs, we started different reasons for creating these programs in different parts of the country. This makes sense because community college baccalaureate degree programs are usually applied in nature and they're closely connected to the local economic needs. And those economic needs are really different in urban communities and in rural communities. We heard stories about how in rural areas, CCB programs created access to education at the bachelor's degree level for people with connections to the community and allowed those people to become business leaders or teachers or healthcare providers and without leaving home. And we heard about how in urban areas, CCB has created an affordable pathway and fast growing, well paying jobs with so much employer demand that more programs were desperately needed. Since we've always thought about CCBs as an equity and access strategy, we wanted to further investigate the role that these programs play in these different community contexts. We know that community colleges are centered on the needs of their communities. And given the differences in communities across the country, it's hardly surprising that the reasons they give for creating CCB programs and the types of programs they choose are very different. This new research puts those differences and some of the similarities into stark contrast. There are more than twice as many rural CCB programs in engineering technology and nursing. And in urban community colleges, they offer three times as many IT programs. The discussion with the practitioners this afternoon will continue to eliminate differences and similarities of how CCB degrees fit into community colleges mission. And I for one, I'm really looking forward to hearing more and getting deeper into that context. First, I want to thank the Joyce Foundation and Ascendium Education Group for supporting this work. And I'm also thrilled to introduce Sue Chui, Senior Program Officer at Ascendium. She co-leads strategic grant making in support of Ascendium's removing structural barriers to success focus area, which seeks to transform colleges and universities to foster seamless academic pathways for learners from low income background. We're excited to hear more and take it away. Thank you Iris. We're proud to support this body of work at the Center on Education and Labor at New America. Ascendium Education Group is a 501C3 nonprofit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, where the nation's largest federal student loan guarantor and a provider of student loan services. With our capacity as a post-secondary education and workforce training philanthropy, we partner with organizations like New America to reach our goal of helping more students from low income backgrounds, especially first generation students, rural community members, veterans, students of color and incarcerated adults to reap the benefits of post-secondary access and increased social mobility. Because community colleges enroll over half of Pell Grant recipients nationwide and serve as important starting points for a significant proportion of older and racially minoritized learners, they are critical actors and audiences in our work. Ascendium has partnered with New America since late 2020 to better understand the role that community college baccalaureates play in meeting employer demand for degrees, as well as demand for affordable bachelor's degrees for low income and rural communities. We're interested in elevating practices and policies that enable community colleges to develop or adapt degree programs well and quickly, particularly in response to a changing workforce and economy. With an increasing number of states allowing CCB, it's important that we pursue high quality evidence and equitable outcomes in the implementation of this curricular innovation. I look forward to learning more from New America and its network of institutional partners like those you'll hear from shortly for advancing the field's understanding of CCB as a lever for access and success. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Ivy Love and I'm a senior policy analyst in the Center on Education and Labor at New America. I'm really grateful to have you all here with us this afternoon. I hope if you're somewhere where it's cooling off a little bit, you've got your afternoon tea or coffee with you. While we have this conversation about community college bachelor's degrees and how these programs live and breathe in rural communities and urban communities. So I'll invite any of you who are listening to share your questions while we're talking with the panel this afternoon, use the chat function and let us know what you're curious about or would like to learn more about. So, looking around the room from my angle, we have Lael Noonan from Central Wyoming College, Helen Reed from Trinity Valley Community College in Texas, and Connie Renda from San Diego Mesa College. I appreciate you all three being here and I'm glad we get to talk about this. We had our own little preparatory call for the webinar last week, but now you all get to enjoy a conversation with us as well. So what I would love to do is start off with a sort of broad question, just briefly to each one of you. So if I could start with a few things. So what is the bachelor's program that you're involved in bachelor or bachelor's programs that you're involved in. What's your role as pertains to the bachelor's degree program and can you tell us a little bit about your college and your community. Could I start with Dr. Noonan would you like to go first. I am at Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyoming, and we have two bachelors of applied science degrees. One of them is an early childhood education with a specialized emphasis. The other one is a bachelors of organizational management and leadership with several emphasis areas, try to leadership, business entrepreneurship, outdoor leadership, and we have law enforcement emphasis that's about ready to launch and several others in the works. I'm the director of both degrees and I also teach all the leadership classes in the in the organizational leadership and our management and leadership option or degree, excuse me. Thanks so much. Yes, you're wearing a lot of hats. That was something I took away from early conversations. Appreciate that. Dr. Reid, would you like to introduce yourself Trinity Valley and what's happening in Carol. Sure. So I'm Helen Ray from Trinity Valley Community College. It's a community college in East Texas, just about east of the Dallas, Fort Worth area, a little bit southeast, serving about five counties. Some of us are very rural and then some are suburban, since we do serve the kind of east Dallas, Fort Worth area. And so I'm representing the baccalaureate degree is the RN to BSN, the nursing degree. And we just finished our first year with that last year had our first graduating class in May, and I was the provost of the health occupations division, the health science center, and for just retired my full time position after 39 years but I'm still going to teach in the RN to BSN program. Thank you so much. Congratulations on your retirement. This is very. Yeah, just this summer. Professor Rhonda, could you, would you be willing to go next. Sure. Thanks. So I'm Connie Rhonda, I am the program director and then full time contract faculty for San Diego Mesa College, we're in San Diego or one of four colleges in our district called San Diego Community College District, and very urban setting in the middle of a very large metropolitan area with a lot of health care, which is why we have a health information management bachelor's degree we were the first in the state to launch a bachelor's degree in 2015. When we have pilot allowance, the legislation allowed for pilot degrees and we were the first to obtain that in San Diego. So, I'm sorry for sharing a little bit more. So, you all have gotten started on these bachelor's programs within the last 10 years, I think the one at San Diego Mesa College is the oldest of the three institutions here that are represented. Wyoming only passing their authorizing legislation in 2019 so this is very new to Wyoming. For Texas they started with a pilot about 20 years ago and a few colleges, but really it was just 2017 when it got opened up a lot more other institutions so my next question that I want to pose to all of you is what had to change or adapt at the college when you introduced a bachelor's program that could be in terms of faculty accreditation process whatever's coming up for you about what that process is like to start this new level of a program. Let's go backwards around the order and Professor Renda could I kick that to you first. Sure. So, like I said for us, we had a pilot program so we had to very much explain why we needed this bachelor's degree in our community specifically. And that was probably the biggest I think for anyone starting a bachelor's degree program the first thing you should do is find another program either in the same profession or similar to tie into the work that they've done. And there's no reason to reinvent the wheel none of us are competing against each other in any way. I'm personally more than happy to, I would expect my colleagues here to feel the same, but personally more than happy to share my email and have any, any of the work I've done I'm happy to send out. There's no reason for anybody to do that again. And then so just in general what we had to do because we were very groundbreaking. There were no other bachelor's degree programs in the state of California. In public institutions for my field, and then of course nobody else had done a bachelor's degree program so it was very much understanding what we needed to do again buying in from industry that was our primary goal and that's what we relied on constantly to have them support the legislation to have them support our curriculum. And then of course we had to develop the curriculum, according to the, our external accreditation standards, as well as the ACC JC, who still governs our colleges even though we're offering higher level degrees. We had an external association of colleges, schools and colleges last accreditation so there were multiple things that we had to consider, but all of them. In the end of course work together but it was very much making sure that we checked all the boxes for all of the different requirements. So I would say that would be the primary thing. Yeah, it's a lot of ducks to get in a row to get something off the ground and thinking about the accreditation piece of this that's making me think of Trinity Valley, because we talked about sort of what that looks like. Dr read could you share a little bit more about even that process and anything else at Trinity Valley that we got adapted to bring this program online. Sure, we were very interested in academic progression. I've been working in input APN and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we had a grant way back in 2011 so I was really interested in that. So it was really great and it was really great. And so that's the industry was trying to focus on getting 80% of our ends to get their bachelor's degree by 2020 so that was, there was a real impetus in our college to, to do that. And he was all in he wanted to do that. Our first obstacle though was space. We had no space. So we did have to wait until we moved so we renovated an old hospital in Carol, and move there so once we had space. We were able to get started on that process of course you have to do the first, the all the internal process is first going through your curriculum instruction and getting the board of trustees to prove everything. And of course we had to do the board of nursing and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the board of nursing kind of really focused more on curriculum that, you know, perspectives you have to send to them I think that was about 500 pages so definitely very involved. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board needed to make sure that we had the physical and financial resources in order to be able to start this and that there was a need. And, you know, we East Texas region was one of the lowest regions in terms of the percentage of baccalaureate nurses. So that was that really helped us for that. And then so once you get those approvals then you work on their regional accreditation. So the southern week because Trinity Valley this was the first bachelor's degree at Trinity Valley. So that was needed to change from being a level one degree granting institution to a level two. So that involves a whole prospectus to get to for us it's the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. SAC COC. And so we started that process. And, and then they had to come for a site visit so we had our site visit in February of 21. They came after they had to approve it sorry sex had to approve it first that so they finally approved in July, right beginning of July of 21. And we wanted to start of course in the fall of 21. We then had to do the application to the Department of Education so we could get financial aid. So that was kind of a really tight timeframe there. We only had about 23 students that we admitted we wanted to go to 30. We were able to then the next year get to 30 because we had, we knew we had financial aid. And so then after we get the sex they came for their site visit when we had the program going that went well. And then we got going on our ASIN which is our nursing accreditation so we became a candidate for for accreditation. In the next couple years, we're going to do it by think fall of 23 we have to have a site visit for that. And because we became a candidate before our first graduating class. Once we get accreditation hopefully we will, then it will be retroactive and then the first graduating students will get their accreditation so it's definitely a step by step process, kind of lengthy. I think that we started probably in the January, February of 2020 and then had our first class in in August of 21, so about a year and a half. Yeah, congratulations first of all on your first graduates. That's really wonderful to have and I think going through all of those steps so quickly which you know you're a School of Health Sciences during the global pandemic it's not like you were busy with other things during that time. So managing to pull that off during that time I think speaks to a really strong commitment to the program and you know just something else that came up while we were initially talking earlier this year was faculty, because you're talking about faculty so can you tell folks a little bit about that. Yes, because I think that was one of the main obstacles for Texas to approve getting the bachelor's of nursing at community colleges because the universities were afraid that we would steal their faculty, you have to have 25% of the faculty to have you know the terminal degree. So I think in 2017 when it was approved we did have several faculty that started their doctor of nursing practice pathway. And I think since that time we've had I think I counted six faculty that have gotten their DNP so we were able to take everything care of everything in house didn't have to go outside and poach from anybody so I think that's good. That's wonderful. That's really wonderful and congratulations to all of your faculty doing a DNP while you're working is, it's no joke. They worked very hard yes. That's great that's great to hear and to hear that, you know, while nurses in the community are getting up to the bachelor's level your faculty are also growing in their own professional development I think that's, that's really wonderful. And Dr Newton we had some conversations about the many things that Central Wyoming both like tangible and sort of cultural that you feel like changed in the institution so I would just love to you to give me broad base what changed when the law passed in Wyoming in 2019 and you, you all got to work very quickly what sort of shifts happened. Very quickly, and our, our VP of academic affairs was astounding we wrote curriculum in six weeks and it was amazing how that was maneuvered but the big thing was the buy in that was important for us. We were very rural. So what was important for us was that we had buy in from everybody on the campus, every area and also from the community. So there's a lot of like work that went about just communicating and networking with the community and getting everybody's like what do you want this is something that I mean, we knew it was a demand that was a need, because our university is so far away from the other side of the state. So this has been huge. We expected 10 or 15 people to come in that first semester and they're in the 40s. And during a pandemic, the numbers increase, even though that was, you know, a challenge for everybody. So the need is definitely there. We are on one river right next to the river and the reservation and have a lot of different communities that we serve where they can't go get extended education. So this I think has changed the dynamic of our community in the sense that there are options, if you want them, and there have that has not existed before I grew up here raised here. And with elsewhere to get my education and and this this opportunity is very huge for everyone but our faculty we we kept everything in house. Our college is kind of unique to some colleges in the sense that we have far more full time faculty than we do adjuncts. So we had people who were qualified and able and we made adjustments. I happen to have a doctorate in the field that in the area of the degree so that was kind of a very helpful getting getting that moved through especially those upper level classes and so that just worked out very well but I would say that we are accountable to our community. And so it's, if it's, if there are things the community wants them that's our obligation to make sure to fulfill that so that's kind of right business for, for how we function in general for this college. Thank you for sharing that and I think the bringing up options and like creating options for folks and honoring their roots in the community while they're doing that is something that came out in conversations both with the rural schools that I talked to rural slash suburban folks like Trinity and highly urbanized areas like San Diego as well so I would love to hear your takes Dr read and Professor Renda on how this creates a different option for folks like what need in the community is a bachelor's degree meeting. We talked about what these programs are what changed at the institution but what what benefit our students accruing for this that they wouldn't have had without this bachelor's program at your institution. Dr read do you want to can I ask you that first and then I'll go to Professor Renda. So that's, that's an important thing for us that we have to to market what the value added is because our ADN graduates are already aren't so there's often not any difference in pay, or the you know are the jobs that type so we have to say why you know why is it so important to that they should go on. So, especially when we got started a lot of there was not a shortage in nursing at that time. And so a lot of the employers were saying okay you need to get your, your bachelor's degree win and a certain amount of years. So that's one reason why they're going on so they could keep a job, or they want to go on and get masters or higher degree when become nurse practitioners that type of thing so the bachelor's is the next step. But it's very important that we that we do market and and focus on what the value added is. And so, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I love to say you know we really focus on things that they haven't learned so much in the, in the associate degree program so we're focusing on research we're focusing on taking care of populations and groups rather than just patients and their families, and we're focusing on leadership. So we have to really pay attention to that. So, and it's important that there's nothing that they know that there's nothing wrong with the care that they give to their patients as associate degree nurses I would much want an associate degree nurse taking care of me in the hospital, but the baccalaureate degree graduate is now looking at the bigger picture. And they're not only concerned about their patient, they're looking at for future patients and how can I improve the processes where I'm working to make things better for future patients. Yeah, thanks for sharing and I think like having that available at a familiar institution with a low cost is huge. But that's, yeah, because that's our mission is to provide affordable and accessible education. And we have we cannot, because of the state rules we cannot have any higher tuition for these graduates so it's definitely cheaper than all the universities in the state. But I think that the, the, the relationship that they have with their faculties in the 80 and program is one of the major things because I think our first class all but one of the students were our graduates so they just want to continue with what's familiar there, some I think intimidated by the universities, and some do not, you know, they don't want to travel outside of their community. Yeah, thank you for sharing that and Professor Rinda, what, what about at San Diego Mesa like what, what need is this meeting in the community and what benefit is it bringing to folks who have rigs in San Diego. Yeah, so I think similar to Dr. Reed's story is the people who are working in the field already because those are a lot of our graduates seem to have the associated degree they're already working in the field they're making decent degrees. What they don't realize is that next level of that higher level rigor that you get from a bachelor's degree is going to be needed at some point if they're going to continue in the career and they're going to continue. And even the work that Dr. Newton's doing it at some point you can work in a job at a certain level. And then you're going to need that next level of education to move on, whether it's nursing or organizational leadership management, some kind of, and even if you don't go into management, just being able to manage yourself as an employee of a large organization or even a small organization. So it's, it's really critical I think for us specifically it was the, the very drastic difference between a paper medical record and electronic medical record, and the associate's degree just wasn't enough information to get them to a certain level with the electronic record and the field for us is also giant. There's, they can work as health information management professionals they can work in insurance companies doing data analytics on their populations and how they get sicker or how they can work at Medicare they can work at county epidemiology offices looking at public health measures and crunching those numbers so there's lots of different areas they can go into with this higher level degree. And they're more limited with the associate's degree. Yeah thanks for sharing that. So my next question is that in most states where Community College bachelor's degrees are allowed schools are required either in a proposal or in some form or fashion to present evidence of labor market need there's some labor market need for this. Well, you're in three very different economies, where your colleges are located your communities are different sizes or proximity to large metro areas so what does labor market need for a bachelor's degree look like where you are. Thank you so much for coming in and could I ask you to answer that first was tell us about Riverton. Well, we're written is kind of as I said the center of Wyoming so my whole life, it's been a boom or bust kind of town because of the oil rates. So, the ability to offer other options for individuals who are maybe not able to work on those, depending on the demand is huge that the need for other skills, or extended skills, those kinds of things and the ability to be competitive. I always tell my students that it's not. It's about when you're in a stack of applications, how close to the top are you. And a lot of times, it's going to be your level of education. Yes, experience is absolutely valuable, very, very important, but also that educational fees because it sells so much about you before you're ever met play the potential employer. And I really feel that, you know, my investment in this community is very versatile and I have generations of family so who have been here so I love the idea that we give diversity to the skill sets that we are we are allowing other things to come in, developing other opportunities and ideas and not sort of staying. I guess the educational piece to me is introducing another mindset, a different mindset in every area and we have lots of these degrees coming in through our community colleges now in Wyoming so all of these locations have this opportunity now to introduce a different mindset that doesn't mean what's existing is bad. It's that people who want to diversify or change things up or want a different kind of dream, maybe have that opportunity so I'm not sort of a philosophical answer to your question but I feel that it's the most valuable in terms of the human beings who live here. Yeah, Professor Linda, did you want to talk about it. Yeah, you know it's interesting hearing Dr noon and talk about that. One thing she said, that's important for us is that we're community colleges. And that's a very different. We're coming from a very different perspective than a university that is having people from all over the world come in and they're very, not that we don't have global awareness but we're very focused on the fact that we want our community to be better and stronger. And that's a strong asset that the community college baccalaureate degree has have that the other universities that non community college baccalaureates don't have. And the other thing she mentioned was, yes we're training them on skills but the, we're really training them on becoming a more educated person. So there's soft skills professional skills 21st century skills changes, you know the name of that changes changes every week. But that's what I did my sabbatical research on was, we're not just teaching these people how to be good at that job, we're giving them a bachelor's degree that's a well rounded there's general education, upper division general education in my program, not just teaching them how to be a health information professional teaching them management skills, probably a lot of the courses are very similar to what Dr noon's program has, and even Dr reads their, the skills that you need at that level are not just the skills of the job a bachelor's degree is a bachelor's degree. My first bachelor's degree is in psychology I'm doing nothing with it, so to speak. But yet I have that education fall back on that technically all of that is is part of your experience in life and part of being just a better part of our community and our society. And that's, so we're really teaching again back to the philosophical. We are really teaching a whole person. That's great I love a philosophical turn of the conversation I think that's that's very welcome. So as I mentioned before we kicked off the webinar, we do have lots of folks here from other community colleges across the country who either they might not have a bachelor's program and haven't done this before, or they want to try a new one, but they might reach out in some way so we've all been through this process do you have any advice for your peers that other institutions who are thinking about taking the leap and starting a bachelor's program and I'll let I'll let you all. I'll just open it up and let you jump in. Well, I would say that it's very very important to have everybody throw their hat in the ring, everybody who's going to be affected. And we looked at, do we have enough housing, can student affairs handle more students over a long period of time. What does this look like. And how much does it disrupt the flow of our community college because we are a community college to your institution yes we are adding in bachelor's degrees, but we are not a university so what does that impact look like. And is everybody on board with it is everybody okay with it. And that's that is the most important thing in my mind is getting everybody involved because when they are it moves very quickly. And everybody kind of says what can I do how can I help us build this. And in my opinion, that's, that's the most important thing for the institution certainly. I would say find a mentor over the mountain somebody who's been there before and talk. Don't ask them just to give you everything but as you as you go through the process and what you don't understand just ask those specific questions. Sorry, I was trying to and I would also recommend there's an organization called the CCBA. It's the Community College Baccalaureate Association. They have a convention every year and then just tons of resources. And that's where you can find a lot of us who have either been through it or are planning to do it. It's a great networking organization as well. Yes, and I believe their conference is over by Connie this coming year so if you want to see Connie. It is coming on the way. Yes, thank you so much for that yeah I think finding finding folks who understand or who have connected and have done this before is important and I think that's sort of like the external community as well as like the internal to the college community that you were talking about Dr. Newton it's the connection is necessary kind of both directions to build something. I wanted to pose another question here and I'll I'll let you all sort of jump in as you'd like to but you've been doing this for a couple years now and I wondered if there's a student that comes to mind who has their story has stuck with you or you know that being able to have this bachelor's program available at your local community college really made a big difference for them. So I wondered if you could kind of take like we'll move from the institutional perspective to what this is meant for you and your interaction with students. What this is meant for them. Well, I don't since we just had our first graduating class I really don't have any stories yet but I do have a student story from another college that I like to share with the students. So it was a school nurse. So as a, you know, as an associate degree prepared school nurse she's taken care of her patients, you know doing wonderfully, but then when she gets through with her R&B SN program. She realizes that a lot of her her patients, the student the children have asthma. And so she does some does some research and she creates something so that they have a flag outside and it's, it's raised whatever white or something or other when it's bad the bad air days. So that she does a lot of education then not only for her, her children, but for the children's families. And then she noticed that the school buses were idling and that was creating bad air so she had to get the stakeholders together. And in the school district they got the policy changed so they would not they would turn the buses off and wouldn't have them idling for so long and then she went even further and got a grant so the whole school district got electric school buses. So she I mean she looked at the she went from taking care of her patients to the the community type thing and so hopefully we'll have some students of our graduates will have something similar to that soon. So and that's a global thinking that you have all three talked about. Yes, the systems thinking that they've got to look at the system and create that make that better. Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. There's student connections coming to mind. Thank you. My favorite student story is the student because we have the associates program. He fell into my program I'm not really sure how he came in, but our, our profession by the way is primarily dominated by women. It's about 75 25 women, probably not for many reasons but that's how it is and so we've always been trying to recruit men from an early, early stage to say this is a great profession and even out the playing field and also to get men educated and in higher education, especially men of color. So, this one particular man, African American young man said, you know I just sort of fell into this I really like to play video games I don't know why I'm here I'll just kind of see how this goes and sort of sat in the back of the classroom hoodie on his hair and sort of was half engaged and then, as noticed the hoodie came off he started engaging a little bit more asking some questions, very introverted so the questions were slow to come and finished his associates degree and in his last semester they do internship, and he was hired at his internship a very large hospital system here in San Diego. It was a per diem job it was like $19 an hour he thought wow that's that's a lot of money this is great, but it's per diem. Well, today he for so then he was part of our first bachelor's degree cohort. I'm going to move on with encouragement from the organization which is another thing I would recommend is to get your local partners places that your employees will work on board with your program, whether it's internships guest speakers, anything you can engage them in asking them for advice on curriculum. They were so engaged in him and in our program that as a team and as a community and as a village so to speak we put our arms around him and he continued to grow at that organization, finish the bachelor's degree program while he was working. That's the thing that we make sure that they because we know they have the associates and they're working our classes are at night, so that they can account we can accommodate working professionals and not be an economic impact to them. And then he was very successful and just got promoted to supervisor of the department, probably making at least as much if not more than myself which I'm happy about in a bittersweet kind of way. I'm thrilled about and he's just such a role model for us we of course call him like the poster child because we've used him in a lot of our marketing materials. But that's just a story of somebody who never ever thought he would get a bachelor's degree his parents came when his mom is a janitor his mom, his dad is janitor excuse me his mom is. I don't remember but neither one of them had an education and said, I never thought I would see our son having a bachelor's degree, and it is just touching. I mean it affects everybody it affects his whole family and affects that his next generation. So it's, those are, and that's one of 40 stories I could tell you out of the hundred graduates that are are just absolutely changing their lives. So congratulations to him for rocketing up the ladder that quickly and I think having a local program that can like have that close connection where you do you, I mean, you know him, like you know your students and have time to get to know them. It's important to work to provide an environment that is as inclusive as possible. I know you mentioned to me when we were talking earlier in the year that providing pathways for students of color was a high priority for San Diego Mesa and creating this program. I know across a variety of health professions, black folks and brown folks are underrepresented and so creating those pathways was really important to you and. Yeah, I'm excited to hear that folks like that extremely talented young man enjoyed their time and you know how to successful time in the program and afterwards. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, let's what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to talk while I'm doing this. I am going to look at our question sheet and see if we are getting anything from the audience yes we are. What I will say first before I start reading questions is that we released a brief today in America did that covers for college profiles three of which you've heard about today and includes Austin Community College and their software development program. Which is very interesting to learn about as well as some graphs and charts just looking at a group of 25 rural mostly rural institutions, 25 urban institutions that offer community colleges to offer at least one bachelor's program, sort of what areas of study or most common, how many programs for institution or most common just to give a sort of global look at what that's like. A group of institutions that are rural or urban is a little bit of an oversimplification, but I wanted to explore that with you and just share what we're learning about how these programs operate in different contexts. So I will give a plug for that. And I see a couple of questions. Let me choose one for us. So this one is there a current comprehensive list of community colleges that offer bachelor's degrees. I am going to kick you over to the Community College baccalaureate association. They have the results from a 2021 study that's that I did along with Deborah Brad who's affiliated with the Community College baccalaureate association and work closely with us in Tim Harman who also work closely with us on that project that's been updated and now lives on CCBA's website so if you tweet I will tweet that link later to show you but if you if you are not a Twitter I do not blame you and you can find their website at accbd.org. You can look that up and see the inventory of programs. Let's see. Here's a question for Professor Renda. What did your work with industry during program development look like. So how did industry input lead into curriculum changes, and I think actually multiple of you might have thoughts about that what your relationships with employers for when you were developing a program Yeah, since we were the first to have this it was integral to our to get to the employee employers excuse me, and I met with like the CMI of our largest hospital across the street from our college, and I said if you had the perfect employee sitting in this chair. What would it look like what do you need what exactly are you looking for what skills do your current employees not have that you would like to send them back to school to obtain after hours and this this was the other piece they dictated a little bit about having a night class we've never had any classes at night. And that made sense for both the employers and employees, people who are already working in the field. And also to, while I was writing curriculum of course I don't know every single thing about the entire industry, but yet I was the one kind of like Dr. Newman and who had to write all the curriculum in a very short time. And some of the classes, I thought I don't know, like I know the concept of this but I don't know what they're going to be doing in a hospital, while they're doing this function. I asked them to sit in their offices with people who were doing those jobs, and just shadow them and see what skills they needed and then interviewed and spoke with the employees and just said, What do you need what other skills, should I teach them. Of course I'm using textbooks as a primary outline guide but for the most part, I was relying on them and still do to be guest speakers and to be experts in the field. And for career tech, especially, it's not just theoretical knowledge so I have to stay as part of being in the field as well say consulting and doing other work in my spare time and in the summers when I'm off, so that I can bring that back to the classroom, because it's not helpful to the students if I just read a textbook about it that's five years old. So either I need to know about it or I need to bring in guest speakers that are experts in it so that they're learning the best knowledge right away and then telling the students what skills they need and both soft skills and hard skills to be successful to get jobs in the field. Thank you so much. Yeah. For us with nursing, it's important that we use our standards and essential so the Texas Board of Nursing has put out the differentiated central competencies for nurses for graduates of a vocational associate and baccalaureate degree so we had to really rely on those. And then the American Association of Colleges and Nursing put out the baccalaureate essentials. So again we relied on those. Of course we did use our advisory committee as well but the I think it's the standards and guidelines in the industry are very important to use as well. And who, who makes up your advisory committee do you have sort of like a range of different healthcare settings or who do you turn to for your advice. So we use our clinical sites. So the, the, the hospitals, the long term care centers, you know, anywhere where we, we go to clinical we include them in our advisory committee. That makes good sense. Dr Newton what, what was developing curriculum like, I'm thinking especially for the organizational management and leadership program. What did that look like to build. We actually focused on what we had already. We, there was already a lot for the tribal leadership portion. And so that was adapted. There was already a lot in play for the business area so there was a, you know, an increase in the rigor and and looking at what fit where in terms of the degree but we didn't try to go reinvent the wheel because we knew we had a very short time to turn it around. So the, the, the main points were to make sure we had most of the curriculum in associate degrees that we could modify and adjust, and then we have the faculty who are already qualified to teach so that we didn't have to bring in adjuncts. I mean I, as far as our core and I love having adjuncts I have nothing against that then they're wonderful. But I like having the faculty teach the core of the degree and that is really important, certainly those upper levels so that's one of the things that we really focused on and make sure and that's why it was, it was, it wasn't like we had to start from scratch I don't know if we could have done that in six weeks but we did do, you know, the majority of it in that period of time and just modified. And then beyond the curriculum development what was your interaction like and what is your interaction like with businesses or employers or Chamber of Commerce or who are you engaging with in like an advisory capacity and what does that look like. We had an advisory committee, a large group that we brought in the community I wasn't as involved in that our Vice President was more involved on in that portion of it. But we had surveys that went out we had a big huge meeting where the community could attend and be involved in and ask questions. It was really about what do you have what are your concerns what are your questions. And then all over town, we also found out where are you interested. Are you interested in this degree and do you have employees would you send your employees to get this degree. That was very very important to us to find out and and what areas are you interested in and if this what we have available isn't what you're looking for what are you looking for so there was a lot of that just data finding, you know, originally we do have advisory committees because we have a large CTE program. So the technical studies and that we have a lot of advisory committee so those happen all the time anyway so just adding that those groups together and then extending to the community. At large, was a lot of what occurred when we did this. Thanks for sharing that. So we got another question that I want to adapt a little bit and pose to you all. So, if we had to pick for the future should we lean more towards in person hybrid or remote learning for CCB students so let me take a step back from that because the should is the hard part of that to answer I think. Could you talk briefly about how you deliver your program. Is there an online option is it flex hybrid, and that may have shifted over the course of the pandemic but could you just paint us a picture of how folks access the programs. Yeah, great. We are recruitment brought in a lot of data, about, oh halfway through the first year and said, we have got to start offering online there's a demand. So, we have three modalities. We do in person, we do online and we do zoom as well or remote. We offer, offer all of those not always in the same semester but our goal is to be able to finish the degree completely 100% online. Probably, not quite half of our students are online learners. So, because we have a lot of non traditional students so they can't meet a designated times. So that works out very well for them. So, we are committed to offering now our outdoor leadership program obviously cannot do the online learning situation that would be interesting but most of our emphasis areas for these degrees and it's certainly our education degree can be done 100% online and then the students Yeah, so for the early end program most things are online and then for tribal leadership and this entrepreneurship. And then the so the the outdoor leadership that you're talking about is sort of like for the outdoor tourism economy across like central Wyoming just, yeah. Yes, there's a lot of different facets to that options abilities to modify that particular emphasis and we actually had an area in land or Wyoming where they can go and stay and they function out of that. Okay, there's cabins and they live up there so that piece is a little bit more in person, a lot more in person. The tribal leadership component is adjusting to do being 100% online it is not at this time but it's working that direction to offer that for those individuals who might be on other reservations So, but the business entrepreneurship piece is 100% online, and the law enforcement or can be 100% online, and the law enforcement option will or emphasis area will also be able to be done 100% online as well. Thanks for sharing. So the rules that came out when we were first approved by the state said we could not be all online, because the universities have plenty of space so they limited us to hybrid so we did start with a hybrid program. Basically, this we do eight week sessions and the students come the beginning of the eight weeks and the end of the eight weeks. So they, and the middle one we do then the end of the first eight weeks and the beginning the orientation for the second eight weeks so basically they come three times a semester. And that seems to work well but I have heard that some other colleges in Texas have gone to all online community community colleges so maybe that rule was relaxed maybe because of the pandemic I'm not sure. So I can see us going, you know, was with working nurses that summer working days and working nights on all you know, all throughout the week so trying to find a time when they could all come would be very difficult if it was. If it was, if they had to come weekly, I can see it's probably going to more online in the future. Thanks for sharing that I have another question about like a piece of the BSN program where, you know, they're already registered nurses so they don't do clinicals like you would in like a technical part of an associate degree but they still have these practical experiences where they have to do a public health project or leadership. Are there. Can you do that online or is there's usually an in person component to that I'm sure it varies by. Yeah, that would be in person but they could do it in their own communities they can do it on their own time so, and then with the leadership they work with a leader mentor so again they can schedule that on their own. Okay, okay. Yeah, thanks. What about Sandy and Lisa. So we were lucky enough to have both two of the programs in California, our health information management bachelors programs. And what we agreed upon our advisory board was very strong to say that there needed to be an in person component to teach the soft skills like I was talking about the other program Shasta college has it has a very similar curriculum, and they're offered fully online. So, in that way we felt like we could cover, you know, still satisfy the community here, and then also have the rest of the state or anyone else, even if people live in San Diego that wanted fully online could could use that option. So we can out exactly the way we wanted to. I think it's going to be important for for those of you listening who are developing master's degree programs, really get a sense of what your community needs, and what's best for the industry for the students. It's very hard to balance because, you know, like my colleagues have mentioned. Yes, it's nice for the students to be able to do things fully online, but is it really capturing their complete attention. And are they really developing into the person that you're goal that you're trying to develop them into. So that's very hard to do online. There's so much technology and so many great ways to do it many more than we had even five years ago. And it's just keeping in touch with that and being cognizant of ensuring those other skills are still being captured in an online environment. Using tech to create access and making the yeah. Yeah, yeah, well thank you all for sharing that. I have a couple minutes left so I just want to ask real quick, is there any last thing that any of you would like to briefly share that we haven't touched on that's important to you about, you know, the community that you serve the institution that you work in or the bachelor's programs that you that you lead or lead. I didn't have one other thing that I wanted to say I think this is helpful for diversity. We've got our class that that started this year is our second class and we have 50% minorities so I thought that was definitely a good amount. You know that's great and in nursing, and like the racial diversity is less at the bachelor's level than at the associate level so increasing the share bachelors degrees who are folks of color it's really huge so thank you for sharing that Dr read. Any other final words from anybody else. I think it's just really rely on your other support from other faculty if you're not sure what if you think you might want to bachelor's degree your college and you're not even sure what area. Definitely do your research find out from your community what areas there's some really innovative bachelor's degree programs because in our state at least they can't be duplicated with the UC and CSU systems. So there's programs like innovative or interaction design, like the way that we interact with like phones and then there's equine studies because there's an area of California that focuses on ranch management. And so really be be creative and open and just try to serve your community as best you can. That's what we always but we've all done in our programs. Just share that communication, establishing very solid communication channels and keeping them open is absolutely vital. When you are bringing in an extended degree into a two year institution. It looks different than with the two year piece and people have to make transitions and they get a little bit intimidated by that and you have to make sure that, you know, if you're the director or the person in charge of that, that you establish those things very concretely in the beginning and that I mean I think most of the time my role as an air traffic controller. I'm, I'm, I know everybody who is the best fit for whether it's the students whether it's faculty or student affairs support. I know where to send people and who to get a hold of and how to make sure I always always make it my priority to keep certain channels open all the time and not allow them to be kind of convoluted. So I think that's really, really important. And that also translates to the community but when the community comes into your college they need to be able to feel like they are heard, and that you know what you're doing from top to bottom and left right. So I think that's really, really important. Thank you all so so much. We are coming up on three Eastern we're all four in different time zones so we're coming up to the hour, which is different for each one of us, I appreciate you free so much sharing your stories being here and telling us more about your programs and thank you to all of you for joining the webinar. If you have additional questions. My email address is very easy to remember I'm love at new america.org you can send me questions. If we didn't get to cover something be happy to reach out and connect with you. So I wish you a great rest of the day and thank you so much for spending part of your day with us.