 As many of you know, since the fall of 2019 and the onset of the pandemic, enrollment at community colleges has continued to slide declining almost 15%. We know that Black, Latino, Latina and low-income first-generation students have been overrepresented among those choosing to forego college, a trend that could easily exacerbate what we see as long-standing racial disparities and degree attainment and wealth accumulation. I would say one reason for this decline is the strong labor market convincing people to go to work rather than enroll in post-secondary education. Unfortunately, many of the jobs they're getting right now are low quality with little room for advancement, so bringing people back, particularly young people, to community colleges is key for their economic security and I would say for the good of the country. One way that we can provide an incentive to enroll or re-enroll at college is for students to give them jobs to make their lives simpler because we know that students, particularly those that enroll in community colleges, have very complicated caregiving lives and lives in general. So we know right now that community colleges need income while they're in school or community college students need income while they're in school. Most community college students work and nearly 40% work full-time and without this income, we know that they can't afford to stay enrolled and they have a more likely to stop out disrupting their educational attainment and economic mobility. So this is for students who actually do enroll and we know that students that work that much that their evidence shows that they're less likely to complete their programs, particularly those that work more than 40 hours a week. One exception to this is for students who participate in paid work-based learning who are actually more likely to graduate based on some evaluations of the federal work-study program. Community college students deserve work opportunities that support them, connect their learning, and fit their lives and schedules. Unfortunately, they tend to be less accessible for community colleges for these types of programs even though they're the ones that need it most. Designing and offering programs that are accessible to these students is an important way of getting them re-engaged in their education and then also helping them attain the credentials they seek. So we're hoping that this can help reconnect students to their college education or connect them for the first time to a college education and support them through completion. That's why we were so excited to explore paid work-based learning opportunities at community colleges. And even though there's many forms that these opportunities take including internships, apprenticeships, and all sorts of other ways, we think that these opportunities are incredibly important. Dr. Michi, my colleague here today, has researched that hopefully will provide recommendations that help colleges design programs for these populations, advocate for more money to finance the programs, which is always such a challenge at community colleges, and structure policy to make sure these programs are more common. Lastly, I just want to thank NKC Foundation on behalf of our team for supporting the exploration into this important topic and this educational strategy. And with that, I want to go ahead and turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Michi, who's conducted this research to share some of his findings on the topic. Thank you, Dr. Michi. So today, I'm going to share presentation related to upcoming policy brief that I'm producing titled Emerging Paid Work-Based Learning Opportunities in Higher Education, a Cross-Case Study Analysis. This work began as part of a larger body of research conducted by my colleague Iris Palmer here at New America. And my contribution to this work has really sought to understand the characteristics and features of paid work-based learning opportunities to offer greater insights to the field on how to create more high-impact program models that can be replicated across higher education. Emerging paid work-based learning opportunities are very, very broad today, almost 3.5 million college students complete a paid work-based learning opportunity, paid or unpaid. And a lot of academic programs are now requiring students complete internships or practicums as part of their degree programs. The benefits of paid work-based learning opportunities have been documented. For example, one study found that approximately individuals that complete a paid work-based learning opportunity receive 6% higher wages. And we also know that students that complete these paid work-based learning opportunities also accrue higher academic grades, 3.4% higher in terms of those who complete a paid work-based learning opportunity. However, when we look at participation rates amongst students, there's growing evidence that suggests that there are differences by race. There are differences by first-generation status. So the following chart that I'm showing here highlights some of the results from the very first national survey of college internships, which is facilitated through the Center for Research on College Workforce Training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And one of the things about sharing statistics that we know is that percentages can be very deceiving. And so I'm going to kind of expand on some of these some of these findings here today. For example, Native American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students had a participation percentage of 3.3%. However, if we look at the actual number, we would see that only one of the respondents from this survey that included approximately 12,000 participants, only one of the respondents had an internship from a Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander background. We saw a similar trend amongst Black African American students, despite representing 13% of students completing an internship. That percentage translates to less than 100 students, specifically 90 participants. And then similarly for American Indian and Alaska Native respondents to the survey, we also saw only 13 participants complete a report completing an internship. And so that is contrasted with the 23% of white students that completed an internship. But that number, but that percentage translates to over 1,750 students. And so what this suggests is that there's an opportunity for colleges and specifically community colleges, in this case to be more thoughtful about ensuring that all students have access to these opportunities and especially those that are less likely to participate. So what are the more recent findings from the Center for Research or College Workforce Training was that around 1 million students except unpaid internships each year. They found, researchers from the Center found that most of these internships are concentrated within the nonprofit space as well as the government space. And so what we've most recently have learned is that for the very first time this upcoming year, young people in college that complete congressional internships will be paid for the very first time, which is a big advancement to work-based learning opportunities that college students can leverage. However, even with greater expansion to pay work-based learning opportunities at the congressional level, there's evidence that suggests that community college students still face greater barriers to participation than their four-year peers. And so this suggests that there's some bias or perpetuation of privilege that four-year students are benefiting from that disadvantages and creates an unlevel playing field for their two-year college peers. And so we know that there are many types of work-based learning opportunities from internships, co-ops, apprenticeships, and practicums. However, there's very little research on the diverse characteristics of these programs. And so this background was the foundation that inspired my research today. And so I conducted case studies of five paid work-based learning opportunities using a convenient sampling approach, which essentially means I found the most accessible information-rich cases. I conducted in-depth semi-structure interviews with program staff only, all based via Zoom, and the interviews were about 60 minutes on average. And my interviews explored several topics, including the poor program origins, the intended goals and outcomes, the funding sources, the types of institutional resources, as well as the type of career development support that students benefited from. And so I asked three broad questions. What are the features and characteristics of paid work-based learning programs at community colleges? What was the catalyst for these programs? And who participates in paid work-based learning opportunities? So those were some of my guiding questions for my study. And so the five case studies included Middlesex Community College, which we have some representatives from that program here today, Kaya Huga Community College, which is in Ohio, San Antonio Community College, which is in Texas, Salt Lake Community College, which is in Utah, and Bunker Hill Community College, which is also in Massachusetts. And so most of these programs operated as internships specifically, but Middlesex had more of a co-op apprenticeship model. Most of these programs provided, you know, paid opportunities for all of these programs, I should say, provided paid opportunities for their students, and most of the programs provided other sources of support, such as career development, whether it's helping students craft their personal statements or their cover letters and resumes. A lot of these programs also provided support with transportation to off-campus sites. And a few of the locations provided support for student parents that have families in terms of providing child support. In general, these programs were internally funded through various ways from federal Pell Grant Aid. However, one of the sites Middlesex Community College was able to create a very unique funding model, which they're going to talk about a little bit today. So I'm going to hold off on discussing that in further detail. In terms of my overall key findings, I found that these programs, as I just mentioned, rely on various funding streams from institutional general funds to her funding, donors and foundations. And one of the other interesting findings from my interviews was that a lot of these programs were designed not just to address workforce concerns, but also to think about ways to better support the retention of students. Several of the sites talked about how first year retention was a major challenge for them. We know that more broadly for incoming students from historically underrepresented backgrounds, the first year of college can be a major barrier to their success and lead to higher rates of dropout. And so a lot of these programs talked about implementing paid work-based opportunities so that these students can have another reason to stay connected to campus and to also to keep them engaged over the summer. We've heard about Summer Melt for undergraduate students who stop out before starting college. Well, some of the programs thought that offering, for example, Cuyahuga Community College staff talked about how offering a paid work-based opportunity over the summer was a way for them to keep students on track to go to college. And they noted significant outcomes in terms of increased enrollment and persistence in college among students that were engaged in their paid work-based programs as opposed to those who were not. Beyond providing valuable work experience, students benefited in various ways from having subsidized course credit provided through their program to having, as I mentioned earlier, transportation support as well as support with books and also the opportunity to be paired with lifelong mentors through some of the employers that they partner with, the programs partner with. And then most of the internship opportunities were on campus. Some of the departments included student retention offices, opportunities to serve as peer mentors to incoming first year students, and etc. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of these programs provided career development services from resume to cover letter reviews, mock interviews, and career coaching. In terms of thinking more broadly about how to improve work-based learning opportunities for all students, one of the key takeaways from my interviews was the need to broaden participation among students from historic underrepresented and underserved backgrounds, specifically thinking about first generation, low income students of color, student parents as well as students with foster care experience. These institutions, specifically community colleges serve an increasingly diverse student population and what that means is that we have to be very intentional about serving all students and not those that come from privileged backgrounds and by privileged backgrounds in this case, thinking about unpaid internship opportunities that tend to advantage those who come from financially resourced families that can forego income for the summer, or for the paid work-based learning opportunity. That is something that we have to really think critically about, you know, ensuring that these students have the opportunity to be involved. The need for more robust comprehensive data on student outcomes and program evaluation. A lot of these programs were run by one staff member, one key staff member, and so the opportunity for that staff member to be involved with not only serving the student needs, but also capturing some of the program outcomes was difficult. And so a lot of these staff members were limited to whatever data was collected by their institutional offices for research. And so in terms of thinking about how to expand the success of these programs and show impact, having more robust and comprehensive data will be key to that. And so thinking about ways to maybe increase staff support would also be important, which leads to my next point, the need to expand institutional funding to promote sustainability and address capacity issues. And then a lot of these programs, as I mentioned, were not able to, because they were not able to capture student outcomes, there was no way for them to really document, you know, the long-term impacts of these experiences. And so one of the ways that colleges can address this capacity issue is by working with researchers from the Center for Research on College Workforce Training, which is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They recently launched the National Survey of Paid Internships. As noted earlier, some of the data that I shared was from the survey and they're interested in expanding this survey to include more institutions. As mentioned earlier, there is a need to address some of the capacity issues with program staff, and so increased state funding will be key to achieving that outcome. And then finally, there needs to be more opportunities for students to participate in paid work-based learning opportunities. As mentioned earlier, students from less economically privileged backgrounds are unable to forgo summer employment that doesn't include pay. And so how can we be more intentional and thoughtful about ensuring that students from all backgrounds have this opportunity if they're interested in seeking it? And so one of my recommendations is for us to provide a base salary of $15 per hour to individuals who participate in these opportunities across the board and ensure a minimal number of work hours so that these individuals that participate in these opportunities are able to meet their basic needs. We know that a lot of these paid work-based or some of these paid work-based opportunities require individuals to relocate to different areas sometimes. And so that's especially important when we think about internships and cities that have a higher cost of living like Washington, D.C. And so providing a base salary, $15 will help provide more access to those who are not able to self-fund their internships. And so that concludes my remarks from my upcoming policy brief that will be released next month. And now I would like to engage three panelists that I've invited, two staff members from Middlesex Community College and one scholar from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to participate in a panel. And so I'm going to allow them to introduce themselves. And then I'll start with my questions. I can start. Take a seat. Sure. I'm Kate Sweeney. I'm the Dean of STEM at Middlesex Community College, Bedford and Lowell, Massachusetts. I'm Stefana Soytos. And I'm the director of the Career Integrated Learning Office at Middlesex. One of our programs is the Biotech Learn and Earn Experience, which I'm going to talk about in more depth. And I'm Matthew Hora. I'm the co-director of the Center for Research on College to Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thank you all for introducing yourselves. Kathleen, I want to start with you. Kate, can you share a brief backstory on what inspired the creation of the Work-Based Learning Program on your campus? Certainly. I'll try to give you some broad strokes. In July 2019, the college was introduced to a private foundation through our partners at Northeastern University, who we have a great partnership for our Biotech program. We had a brief meeting with them, tour facilities, had follow-up discussions, and followed by a data request. It was a new experience for us, because usually you apply for grants. In mid-August, we had multiple conversations with the grantor who conducted research on all of the biotech programs in the state, as well as ours, to look at graduation rates and disaggregated data from all of the programs. They also had conducted research in the life science industry throughout the state, looking at the needs and what their workforce needs were, where the pain points were. They found that our programs at Middlesex and Northeastern graduated more biotech students than any program in the state, particularly graduated more underrepresented minorities than the other programs in the state. And in fact, the programs graduated more underrepresented minorities than the rest of the programs at the college. Through August, we had multiple brainstorming opportunities about how we could bring our programs to the next level in terms of meeting industry needs. One of the things they found was, although we had a large group of graduates, the students took a very long time to graduate. And just as Mario was saying, students needed to work. What they were doing was working in non-occupation related fields. So they might be at the local CVS or a local restaurant, but not necessarily in the biotech industry. And it was interfering with how long it took them to finish. They finished, but it might be six years before they finished. Excuse me. In the brainstorms regarding industry needs found that the industries where there was a great degree of degree inflation, they really were using baccalaureate graduates more than they were utilizing the community college graduates. And the foundation found that ours in Northeastern's program could be a powerful trajectory for low income students. And in addition to helping the life science industry increase its hiring needs of underrepresented minority students. In fall of 19, the research continued. There were multiple focus groups of faculty, students, industries. And what was really interesting about the process was they shopped us around. So we did not, at Middlesex, have to go to the industry and sell ourselves and our students. The foundation did it for us. And we went with them to multiple industry partners to try to get partners in this learn and earn experience. They held faculty retreats. We developed a skeleton of a learn and earn program, of a possible program, working with industry, with faculty, talking to students, fleshed out the program and the budget. And then in January of 2020, Provost Zissen, who's now our president, and the Department Chair of Biotech, Mary Lucie Blaber, presented to the grantors a possible learn and earn program, which resulted in about $850,000 of funding to begin the program. It funded Stefan's position. It defended, it funded students if they needed assistance as they were going through the program and in multiple other things as well, some online course development too. We began with a consultant and hired Stefana as the director of learn and earn in the middle of the pandemic in June 2020. She commenced to pull all of our partners together, get letters of intent, watch our, we redesigned our schedules to match the students who are going to be working. And in fall, we launched the program. We tied the program, the experience to our credit class in internship that was already part of the program. And I think that's it for the start of it. I can answer any specifics as we go forward. I tried to just give you broad strokes of how we got here. Without the foundation, I don't think we would have. Awesome. Thank you so much for that overview. Secure and adequate funding was commonly identified as a major barrier to the program extension and sustainability. As you just mentioned, the funding that you received from the foundation was really critical to the launch of your program. However, in speaking with you and Stefana, I was really impressed by one of the sources of funding that you were able to create to self-fund the program. So Stefana, can you share some insights on the unique funding sources for your program? Sure, I'm happy to. So our work-based learning program looks like more of a co-op or an apprenticeship and that our students in biotechnology are working full-time in biotech technician roles at partner biotech companies in the industry while going to school part-time to get their associate's degree in biotech. And what we learned in working with the biotech industry is that many biotech companies use recruiters to hire for these entry-level technician or quality control roles. And we're paying a significant amount of money to these third-party recruiting companies. And so with the help of the foundation and our own research, we positioned ourselves as a community college as really the center of recruiting students for these positions, vetting students, training students with our expertise faculty instruction, and preparing students with professional development for these roles. And so with all the services that Middlesex as a community college is providing to the biotech companies that we work with, we began asking companies to pay a 5% recruitment fee for each student that they initially hire and then a 10% placement fee for each student that they convert from a temporary to a permanent position, which then includes full benefits. And this has been a very creative revenue source for us that we're very excited about in the first year of doing this. We generated up close to $60,000. And this money has been used to pay faculty salaries, buy equipment for biotech courses, and then, I think, most importantly, provide scholarships and emergency grants for our students to ensure that they're successful in their academics and as well as at work. So that's just a bit of information, and I'm happy to go into more detail about it. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. I want to bring Dr. Matthew Horan to the conversation. A few months ago, I interviewed a college student about her past internship experiences, and she argued that unpaid internships should be illegal. So starting with Dr. Horan, do you believe unpaid internships should be illegal? Why or why not? That's a great and frequently asked question, and I would answer not yet. I think the first step is to make them frowned upon, rare, maybe unethical, from the institutional perspective where a campus leadership decides that we don't want to offer unpaid positions because we recognize the equity implications and that we're going to be introducing yet another gate keeping mechanism to keep lower income under resource students out of this really important experience. And so, and then on the other hand, for employers at some point to recognize, and this includes government nonprofits, which is where the bulk of the unpaid internships are located, you know, at some point, hopefully employers will recognize it's not very ethical for us to ask students to work for free. But the reason I say not yet is we don't yet have the funding in place to guarantee that all students and all disciplines have access to a paid position. And this is especially true in some disciplines, again, where the students are being placed in government, such as social work and in a lot of nursing and allied health professions. You think of some of the ancillary types of work-based learning like pre-service teaching. There's a whole lot of sectors where students are often required to take internships of work-based learning and there's not yet funding in place to support them. And so if we made them illegal, you'd have a whole cohort of students that would not have access to an experience that are required to graduate. So it's a tricky question at some point. I'm not sure personally if the Department of Labor should get involved in saying these are illegal outright. I think it's gonna be more on the hands, again, of employers and institutions to recognize it's not ethical to offer these, but only after we as a community of higher education professionals and funders can find funding to support them. And I really like the solution that y'all came up with at Middlesex. I've never heard that. And that's very creative and cool. Thank you for that. I also would like to invite Stefana and Kate to respond to that question. I lean towards saying that any organization of a certain size should be absolutely paying their interns. And so how that's done regulation-wise is a much larger question, but I come at it from a perspective of if these experiences are unpaid, it's disproportionately negatively impacting underserved students and it's just not equitable. And so it's gonna be harder for underserved students to get on a career track that pays well and allows them to grow their careers if they're not able to take on these types of experiences earlier on in their career. Because of financial reasons. I really can't add too much more to Stefana's answer. I totally see the inequitable issue here. And I think that the key is to really establish better and more close partnerships with the industry's partners so that they can see the benefits of using the students. As I said, we were lucky that someone shocked us around and we didn't have to sell ourselves. But we are entering into an area that we would like to expand it. And so we're trying to figure out in other areas how we can establish better partnerships to do more of this. And we aren't looking at unpaid at all. Thank you all for those remarks. One of the issues that I noted in the literature was ongoing conversation about whether students should be required to complete a paid work-based or a work-based learning opportunity in general, I should say, as part of their degree completion. What are your thoughts? Let's start with Dr. Hora. So the requirement question is tricky because some professions, their accrediting bodies require some sort of experiential education program. And so it's not really up to the department or the college. Again, I'll take social work or teaching for an example. And again, that's just a situation where the institution, the employers will need to decide whether or not compensation is involved. Unfortunately in those two examples, they're rarely involved. In other areas where it's more of an elective decision, whether or not to require, I think again, until we can as a community and especially as institutions of higher education to figure out the funding question, they shouldn't be required because the data are very clear. The benefits of these experiences are vast, not just on wages and employment, but on the so-called 21st century or soft skills and entry into the profession as like a socialization process. And that's huge, it's really important. And again, the students who are not taking those and getting those benefits because of the compensation question, it's significant. And so I don't think that there should be a requirement until and unless funding is secured for all those students who would then be required to pursue an internship or a co-op or an apprenticeship. I think too, we can't lose sight of the fact that we're talking about educational programs. There has to be a faculty voice included in these. They're the masters of the curriculum. We had a program that I think the strength of it was the internship and kind of built on that. We didn't change it. What we found when we're starting to enter to try to do the same thing in IT is we did have an internship that was required and we weren't getting the placements we needed. So we switched and offered a capstone course. Now, as we're developing learn and earn in IT, we created an alternative. Students can do an internship class or a capstone and we created an internal IT work-based experience that meets the needs of our students and also meets the needs of the college who are having difficulty finding students or staff that would work. So they're paying a good wage, they're still in class and we're customizing the schedules for them. But I think it's really needs to be a dialogue between the faculty and industry, the college and industry in order to get something that's successful or likely to be successful. Thank you all for those remarks. Turning to my next question, what advice would you give to other community college leaders that hope to start similar work-based learning programs on their campuses? I come back to the idea of community and creating a sense of community with faculty, staff who are bought into this idea of doing work-based learning. So I think that's a great suggestion or recommendation for community college leaders. I also think that hiring is really important to build in work-based learning and understanding of it in terms of hiring for faculty and staff at the community college. So if that's the direction the college wants to go in, incorporating that into the personnel that are working there, I think would be an important suggestion. So I think one of the broader issues to recognize, and I'm curious to hear from my colleagues from middle sex about their experiences, but some of the community colleges in our survey, we documented pretty precipitous declines and internship participation due to the pandemic. In some cases from 30% to seven. And so I think figuring out how to engage students and create more placements will be, we're kind of in a crisis mode, at least in some campuses that we're studying and figuring this out quickly, but also well, I think is one of our most pressing tasks. And in thinking about placements, I know during the pandemic, online internships became a big topic and we did a little bit of research on their prevalence, access and quality and it's decidedly mixed, especially in some fields such as some STEM disciplines and online internship is very challenging, if not impossible. And so one of the things that I'm glad, Kate, you mentioned this, a capstone or what some people call work integrated learning, WIL, is probably the biggest piece of advice I have for community college leaders is to recognize, yes, WBL is very important, but not all students are gonna be able to pursue these for a variety of reasons. And so the more we could bring authentic real world projects into the classroom, employer field visits where they come and give talks about what their professions like, what the future labor market looks like in their sector, the more we could bring things into the classroom where students are already sitting, I think the better. And this is something that's really being pushed in countries like Australia and New Zealand where they're having a big supply and demand imbalance between the number of students that they wanna have access to these positions and the number of experiences. A few things, if you're considering a similar program, we've really seen a lot of benefits. And so as I said, it started in the beginning of the pandemic. In biotech, we experienced a huge 40% increase in enrollment that we attribute to very much this program for a number of reasons. One is that it's a strong program has been, it's got a very charismatic leader, but also having Stefana and her staff who are dedicated to it and working at recruiting students, maybe from majors that they were either unsuccessful at getting in, a health major, or they were undecided and didn't know and just giving them this option. We saw an increase from 130 to 187 over the course of a year in this program. So embarking on this may help your enrollments. Our current president, Phil Sisson, who was the provost when we started this, really sees this as a mechanism for equity and mechanism for enrollment to help students and is starting to invest in this in a big way. One of the things I don't know if any of you have noticed is Stefana has a different title than originally. She is now the director of career integrated learning. We're trying to look to see how we can do this in multiple programs, what kind of staff we need to have, but realizing there needs to be a linchpin who everyone can go to, to really keep everybody connected. So again, ready to answer any questions specific that you have, but I think it's a wonderful mechanism to help students. Thank you all for sharing those suggestions. I hope our audience find them helpful. This discussion has been really insightful and illuminating ways to create more equitable and high impact work-based learning programs. I now would like to field a few questions from our audience today in the remaining minutes. The first question that we have from audience members is, is there ever a time we would recommend students quit their full-time or even part-time job for a college-based paid work-based learning opportunity? That's a great question. So I work with many students who are deciding to pursue biotech from an undecided major or perhaps they have a STEM inclination and are working full-time at CVS or Dunkin' Donuts or some other position, maybe cobbling together a couple of different jobs to have full-time work, but it's not aligned with what they want to study and the pay rate is significantly lower. Our biotech positions are starting now at least at 25 an hour and like I said, full benefits and tuition benefits is a significant part of it. So I think it would be an analysis of what does an existing position consist of and is this offering going to set the student up on a path of economic mobility? And if yes, then perhaps it would make sense to make that change. That's a great question. And I echo Stefana's answer. I think in situations where it's the inverse where a student has a living wage position and the opportunity is to take an unpaid or low-wage internship, I think in some cases it would be impossible or not advisable, but it seems to be very situation-specific. And Dr. Menchie, if I could just piggyback on something Kate said earlier, I'm super excited as a researcher to see Stefana's position and its title. One thing that is a researcher of internships across institutions I see is too often it's individual faculty who are running the show and for an internship program. And this is very common at large research universities I should add. And hiring somebody who's dedicated to partnering with employers and working with students to make decisions like this like should I quit my job is really important. But in many cases it's individual faculty who are shouldering the load of those tasks. Awesome. One of our next questions from an attendee is what are some proven practices that other states or colleges have used or are using to engage business and industry and these partnerships? My role as director in growing biotech learn and earn has involved the student recruitment piece but also a significant portion of business development and employee engagement. And so I can talk a little to what's been successful in our model. One of which it's a simple logistical thing but having standing meetings with the employers that we work with the biotech employers we work with weekly every other week monthly to just check in and see how the program is running and create feedback loops between the industry and the college and the faculty has been a significant success I'd say for our employee engagement. Kate, I'm not sure if you wanna add anything else to that question from your perspective. Yes, I think that for me the close connections to business were what we had in terms of advisory boards but our experience with this foundation and the learn and earn has shown me that we had a loose connection it wasn't quite tight enough and a lot of that is because I'm the dean of STEM I'm not the dean of biotech so I can't spend a lot of time in all of my programs but having a dedicated person that can do this and I can come when needed I can provide input and I work very closely with Stefana and in her new role my sense is that she will work as closely with the other academic deans as she does with me and I think that's key and as we're building up this new office of career integrated learning part of the conversation is how can we make this a hub what communication do we need what policies so we're really in the midst of it right now if anyone, Matthew if you have any advice please send it our way I'll mold that over and to answer this question I think probably the tightest coupling with industry on a campus is the faculty I know especially in community colleges many faculty are hired with industry experience in some cases it's required and it's their relationships with previous employers or current colleagues which often is the conduit for internship opportunities and so having them at the table is really important at the same time though we found in our research that because of this faculty sometimes are very cautious about who they recommend for internships only the best and brightest and so it's not exactly dealing with the equity and accessibility question in some cases what we found in a recent symposium we did on unpaid internships and we have a report on our website at CCWT was one example I believe it was in Pennsylvania of a community college working with the local chamber of commerce who was willing to not only raise funds to fund internships but they obviously have a strong network with the local employer community and so engaging chambers I think you just need to find that one interested person you open the door and that could be a goldmine of contacts and partnership building the other example I mentioned from the state of Maryland where University of Maryland Baltimore County was able to lobby the state to secure funding from the state for internships and the IT sector and they were able to provide some infrastructure and partnership building and so that's a pretty big lift but some state legislatures may be open to funding and coordinating some of these efforts. Thank you for sharing those responses. The next question is specifically for middle sex community college staff what was the foundation that helped you create the work-based learning program and was it your colleges foundation or industry association? It's a private foundation that likes to stay in the background so I don't want to share who it is but they really work behind the scenes to help and really their work is inequity and that's why it was such a good fit for us and the community colleges but it's external. All right I'm not gonna probe you further on that question. Thank you for what you shared. Do you all have any observations thoughts about integrating apprenticeships with college colleges such as in biotech? I'm not sure I quite understand the question. The question is are we interested in pursuing apprenticeships in biotech? Is that what they're asking, Maria? I'm trying to grab, what? As far as an apprentice like, there currently isn't a registered apprenticeship in Massachusetts in biotech. I think that they, one of the things we first started looking, we hope this could be we're just not at that place right now to do that. Also and so I'm going to thank you all so much for those contributions. I'm going to wrap it up with some closing remarks I want to close by extending a special thank you to our panelists today for their excellent remarks and contributions. I also would like to say thank you to our virtual attendees for this event. I hope the information shared during today's session will encourage and help inform your efforts to address unexamined and unexplored inequality within your work-based learning program and promote more equity, diversity and inclusion. Please, for those of you who have not yet, please subscribe to New Americas at Central Newsletter to stay informed about the upcoming brief that I will be releasing by the end of next month as well as to learn more about other exciting events and work being done by myself and colleagues about work-based learning opportunities. So thank you all so much for attending and I hope you enjoy the rest of your days.