 Good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for joining or bringing adults back to community college webinar. My name is Chris Geary. I'm a senior policy analyst at new America and I'm the author of the bringing adults back to community college playbook that we published yesterday. I'm going to get us started today. My going over a presentation on our bringing it up bringing adults back to community college project, as well as our major research findings and recommendations. I'll then hand it over to Iris Palmer is the deputy director for community colleges at new America will be monitoring a panel with experts in the fields. At the end of that panel discussion there will be time for q amp a so again please do think of questions as they arise and submit them. Great. So to get us started I really want to contextualize this conversation in terms of the broader changes in higher education enrollment that we've seen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This slide shows changes in college enrollment across all sectors of higher education from fall 2019. That's right before the pandemic to fall 2021. And what we see that is really clear is while enrollment declined across the board, we see particularly pronounced enrollment declines in community colleges. But when we looked at enrollment of first time adult students that is students that are over the age of 25 that are enrolling in higher education for the first time. We actually see a more nuanced and I would argue a more troubling reality. So we saw a decline across all sectors, but that decline of an first time adult students was particularly large at community colleges and actually corresponded with an increase of enrollment of first time adults at for profit institutions. I would argue this is a troubling trend, given that for profit institutions tend to have worse educational and economic outcomes and do community colleges. So, given this, as well as the fact that community colleges serve more than half of all undergraduate students from low income backgrounds, community college enrollment declines threatened to worse and educational and equity. So we found education and labor at New America wanted to offset these declines. So to do so, we partnered with six colleges in three states over the course of 18 months. And based on that work, we published a playbook that contains recommendations for colleges nationwide on how to increase adult enrollment. This slide shows the bringing adults back to community college cohort so over this period, we worked with two colleges in Oregon, that's Mount Hood Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College. And then two colleges in Illinois, that's Harry S. Truman College, which is one of the city colleges of Chicago, as well as Prairie State College. And then two colleges in Louisiana, that's Fletcher Technical Community College and Delgado Community College. So based on this work, we came up with five themes and recommendations that we believe community colleges nationwide should implement in order to increase adult enrollment. Based on this field research and our learnings from this cohort, we believe that community colleges should one, improve their communications with adult students. To revise their satisfactory academic progress or SAP policies, three, increase course flexibility for established case management systems for enrollment and advising. And five, help students afford their basic needs. So I'm going to go over each of these themes and recommendations in more detail throughout this PowerPoint, but I do want to say that we go into much more detail in the playbook itself. So for some questions, if you're thinking about how do I make this change on my college campus or, you know, how can I get more specific, please do look at the playbook. There are a lot of really helpful resources there to get you started. So to jump in with theme one, improve communication. So as part of this work, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with current and stopped out adult students at each college in our cohort. And I think that this student quote from an adult student at a college in our cohort really summarizes a broader finding that we saw at community colleges in different parts of the country. So this adult student shared with us, with enrollment, advisors need to communicate better. I sat around in 2020. I was waiting on an advisor to let me know what classes I was supposed to register in. It was weeks I was waiting until they finally got back to me. I didn't know that I was supposed to enroll at the city park campus, and I started out another campus. Because of this, I took classes that first year that I didn't need to take. Nobody's trying to take extra classes. That's like money that could have gone to something that you actually needed. So again, while this represents one adult students experience, we saw that there's a lot of truth in this statement that applies to community colleges more broadly. So to offset this, we recommend four action items for community colleges nationwide. The first is to create a messaging campaign on the specific financial benefits of career and technical education programs or CTE on your campus. Given that so many adults attend community college to increase their economic security and are attracted to career and technical education programs as a result. We think it's really vital that community colleges market and message the specific financial benefits of their CTE programs as a way to increase adult enrollment. Second, we recommend creating a central place on your website for returning adults with step-by-step reenrollment instructions. Third, we recommend hiring enrollment navigators and communicating their availability directly to students, and I'll come back to that enrollment navigator piece subsequently in this presentation. And fourth, we recommend creating a set of incentives to entice students to reenroll. So I want to lift up a success story from one of the colleges in this cohort, and that's Mount Hood, which is in the Metro Portland area. So throughout this project, Mount Hood decided to incentivize students to return and reenroll at campus to reduce outstanding student balances owed to the college in a way that would remove registration holds for hundreds of students on campus. So in doing this, they assisted 685 students, which led to a 285 student enrollment increase, and the college spent about $107,000 on reducing these outstanding student balances. But because it led to this big increase in enrollment, it actually netted a $400,000 return on investment. So this just shows that incentivizing students to reenroll on campus can actually be a financially beneficial strategy for community colleges in the short, medium and long run. Now, our second theme has to deal with SAP, or again, satisfactory academic progress. And before I jump into this quote and recommendation, I just want to provide a little bit of background on what SAP is to make sure everyone on the line is sort of aware of this issue. So to be eligible for federal financial aid authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, college students need to make satisfactory academic progress for SAP. And colleges must have a policy to define and monitor that progress. So in terms of specifics of what constitutes making SAP at colleges varies, generally, this means that lots of institutions, this means that students need to achieve a GPA of at least 2.0, and they must pass at least two thirds of the classes they are enrolled in. So this quote comes from an administrator at a college in our cohort that really lifts up the issues with SAP. So this is one of those hot button issues. Last semester alone, we've seen more SAP requests than ever before. Students are having other challenges, but it is affecting the SAP process. We saw in a student survey, when you get into trouble with SAP and you start getting these emails that are using words like probation and threatening dismissal, that can compound issues. So while colleges are required to have a defined SAP policy and students must make SAP in order to be eligible for federal financial aid, there are things colleges can do to help students in this process. So we have three recommendations relating to revising SAP that we think colleges, community colleges nationwide, should employ. So first, we recommend improving communications with students before and after they fail to make SAP. Second, we recommend creating a fair, well documented and simplified appeals process. And third, we recommend all colleges analyze SAP patterns by race, gender and PEL status to see if there are inequities on campus in terms of which students are failing to make SAP in any given term. I also want to lift up another success story from a college in this cohort, and this deals with Delgado in New Orleans and their ability to revise SAP. In this project, Delgado reexamined their SAP appeals data, and they noticed that they had hundreds of students with incomplete SAP appeals. And the reason for all of these students was they had failed to submit third party documentation to back up their appeals, their appeal and the SAP process. And so this was an institutional choice Delgado realized they as a college had required students to have this documentation requirement as a way to kind of bolster and back up their SAP appeal. Delgado changed that institutional policy, and as a result, they no longer have a single student with an incomplete SAP appeal. And so what this does, it allows hundreds of students to become eligible for federal financial aid, which opens up the doors for them to reenroll at Delgado. Our third theme is on increasing course flexibility and has everything to do with the very many demands that adult students tend to face. Not only are they students but they're often balancing caregiving and work responsibilities. And I think that this quote from an adult student at a college in our cohort really speaks to why it's so critical for colleges to increase course flexibility. Taking virtual courses was awesome. She was born right before the pandemic. So I went back in the fall of 2020, and it was all online. So I didn't have to do any shifting or anything. And I loved it. I wouldn't have gone to the class at all if it hadn't been online. So based on this we offer three recommendations for colleges to increase course flexibility. The first is to offer more night and weekend courses, and we understand the staffing constraints to this and we go into that in more detail in the playbook. The second is to offer more high flex courses or courses that can be taken virtually or in person. And the third is to increase flexibility for entire programs rather than just one course at a time. And so taking a step back, this was really about crafting course schedules to meet adult students get adult students demands, so that adult students can take courses that work with all the things that they're trying to balance. Our fourth theme is about establishing case management for enrollment and advising and integrating enrollment and advising as a continuum of services. I'll kind of come to what we mean by case management on the next slide, but first I think this quote from a stopped out adult student in a college in our cohort really illuminates this problem. There were too many emails that got me confused. I just want to talk to one person, like one person to ask all of my questions. I don't want to go through different offices. They say go to this one for financial aid, this one for health insurance. The pandemic made it hard and virtual made it not attractive. So to offset this problem, we recommend that colleges hire enrollment navigators to integrate enrollment and advising and establish a case management system to do so. Now this figure directly from our playbook I think really illustrates what we mean. So enrollment navigators are trained professionals whose job is to work with students throughout the application and enrollment process to help answer any questions they may have. After enrollment navigators established one-on-one relationships with students, they're in a really great position to introduce those students to a college navigator or more traditionally a college advisor once they actually start classes and re-enroll in campus. Now those college navigators and those advisors in a case management system would work with the same students throughout their entire academic experience so that students have one person, one point person to go to with all of their questions. This works or allows college navigators to learn a lot of a lot of things about their students so that when applicable, they can refer those students to benefits coordinators, which brings me right to our next recommendation. So our final theme is on the need to help students afford basic needs and the need for community colleges to help address basic needs in security on their campuses. I think this quote from a stocked out student at a college or a cohort really illuminates the extent of the problem in terms of basic needs in security on community college campuses. Everything costs so much and I'm at the point where now I can barely afford groceries and I can get public assistance and still can't afford groceries. I don't plan on living like that. It's not a goal of mine. My goal is to be financially stable where I can take care of my children without public assistance. So given the extent of basic needs in security on college campuses, we recommend four action items for community colleges nationwide. The first is to hire benefits navigators who are trained professionals who coordinate basic needs support on campus and help students access available resources, both in terms of community resources, as well as public benefits programs that the students might be eligible for. The second is to require student basic needs training for all faculty and staff to help build a campus wide culture around the need to address basic needs and security. The third is to review institutional policies relating to basic needs and financial aid to see if there are any specific pain points that colleges can address to help not exacerbate this issue. Finally, offer students free resources. There are so many great examples of colleges stepping up and finding ways to offer students free food, free transportation vouchers and free technology throughout this pandemic. And we think that for colleges to increase adult enrollment moving forward, it's critical that they maintain these efforts. So with that, I will pass it over to Iris Palmer who will be moderating our panel discussion. Thank you so much, Chris. Really appreciate your outline of all the things we learned in this project. And I also wanted to add a couple of thank yous to other people who are involved in this project. So I want to thank ECMC who helped fund the work and really provided a lot of the thought leadership in helping us design the project. And I also want to thank student ready strategies for their help in providing some of the direct technical assistance to the six colleges that we worked with. And I also want to thank our advisory committee. So we have some wonderful members of our advisory committee joining us for this panel here today and there are a few who are not on this panel. But I want to thank all of them for providing thought leadership and help and support, not only in designing the research, but also helping connect it to the field. So thank you everybody. It's just been an amazing project and we're really excited for the results and what has come out of it. And with that I'm going to introduce our wonderful panel. So we're joined today by Tess Henthorne, Senior Program Manager for the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute. Julia Lawton, Director of Program Administration and Achieving the Dream, and Michelle Wilson, Director of Evaluation and Learning at the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. So welcome everyone. We really appreciate you joining us here today. So to kick us off, I'd love to hear from each of you about why you think this work matters, why it's important for community colleges to focus on adult students, and why should community colleges nationwide be prioritizing enrollment services and student outreach. We'll go ahead and start with Julia. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. We don't have a choice, I think is is the answer. The average age of community college students is 27, 28. But the way that community colleges were designed, our structures, our processes, our culture, our policies were typically designed for the traditional 18 to 21 year old student who, you know, was a full time student was able to be there on campus. That's the way we were, we were designed as institutions, and this has resulted in us not being the best place for adult learners. And so adult learners take longer to complete their credentials, they stop out more frequently, they drop out more frequently. And then they're more frequently less likely to get connected to their college at all. So it's something that we have to work on. And it's something that we absolutely need to at the same time, the K 12 pipeline of students is starting to decline and most if not all communities across the country. And so it's really both an imperative not only for our mission as institutions as community colleges, but it's also a financial reality for most of our institutions for many of our institutions. And part of that is why achieving the dream partnered with Illumina Foundation and other national partners. And a couple of years ago to support 20 community colleges to focus on expanding access for adult learners to community colleges. And we have learned so much from that effort so thank you so much for helping us cross pollinate the learning from your colleges to our colleges and to help inform our playbook as well. Michelle, I'd love to hear from you and your perspective about why this work is so important. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for inviting me to the table it's been wonderful to see you guys move this work forward. From our perspective at the National Fund, it's important because it really taps into an underutilized talent pipeline right so one of the key things from our work and the advancing workforce equity. That initiative was about how much money was actually left on the table and communities as a result of inequitable practices and equitable practices right and so a large part of that has to do with looking at the workforce ecosystem of which community colleges play a role. So the points that I want to make in that is that finding ways to support adult learners returning learners is critical to our work so looking at equitable practices and access to community colleges and I love what the playbook does in terms of like in terms of improving communications like you have some really targeted strategies that really work to address the talent pipeline like increasing that talent pipeline so it's good to see that that work get launched into the field. I really appreciate that perspective the sort of workforce equity perspective is one that is missing too often I think in these conversations so thank you so much for bringing it here today in this in this particular panel. So Tess, I'd love to hear from you and your perspective on why this is such an important topic. Absolutely. Well to echo Michelle and Julia. Thank you for the invitation to joining today. And it's been so exciting to see kind of this playbook come to fruition that's doing a lot of really important work. And I think the thing I would add to Julian Michelle's answers is just that this is kind of all happening in in context and in conversation with enrollment declines and retention declines that are we're seeing across the country. So being able to get adults back on campus and enrolled as well as through college and you know achieving high and equitable rates of post graduation success is going to help combat enrollment declines but it's also helping to deliver on the promise that the college is based around, which is to get folks jobs that are going to be sustaining themselves and their families and their communities. So I think that this is all happening in a very timely moment as well. So the workforce pipeline connected to actually helping people have fulfilling lives and fulfilling careers so drawing that line all the way through so we sort of have a college perspective. Workforce pipeline perspective and then like connecting it to the individual and what the individual wants from their education. All really important points and I think it is very well said and then also I think we agree with all of you and why this is so important. So if we could jump back to you. We regularly hear from community colleges that they, they'd like to know who's doing this work well and how, particularly how they fund it I think is a big question we get a lot. So they can bring those strategies to their campuses. Share some successful examples that you've seen in your work of community colleges that have effectively and equitably managed this enrollment, particularly for adult learners. Sure. I'm going to apologize in advance. I think the simplest thing is painfully obvious. The audience might grow no, but it's asked them. And adults in your community not necessarily the people who are already enrolled in your college, but the adults that don't get connected to your institution. If you don't ask them why they're not getting connected what they want what their goals are what their challenges are. You're not, you're going to run the risk of leaning on assumptions. And this is something we found out in the pace grant, the grant that's focused on adult community college enrollment. Colleges that started by asking their adult learn their adult learners and their adults in their communities that aren't currently enrolled in any kind of program. They're the colleges that really were able to to move quickly and swiftly to address some of those issues. So, as painfully obvious as that is. I'm going to say it and say it clearly that ask adults in your community what they need what their goals are. Another thing that is being proven by some of the grantees in this effort is that a strong community presence is essential to the successful adult learner enrollment strategy. In some colleges this has meant hiring adult enrollment outreach coordinators, we have a wonderful event next month where we're going to hear from three of those individuals who do this work about what that looks like for them. For others this is also meant that they're just they're physically located in the communities that they're serving so they've identified neighborhoods where perhaps they have had less interaction with historically, and they're really trying to be more intentional about how they're showing up for those communities. So there's there's different ways of doing that. One of the colleges in Alabama or rural college in Alabama has got a partnership with a local judge. And they go to the court. Frequently, and there's a back room that they go into where the college has kind of an enrollment process set up. And they the judge in shares information about the college with with individuals who are in the courtroom and encourages them to go and meet with the college personnel in the private room to learn more about their programs and their different opportunities. So there's a lot of creativity in our colleges. There's a lot of these things happening that, you know, we need to be elevating, and we need to be sharing because I think there's, there's a lot of innovation happening, and a lot of really good mental energy being spent on this problem. And I think that we can continue to share more examples of what this looks like. And the more of you who are listening also who have examples of what you're doing that you can also share and connect with each other on this as well. Absolutely. We're always looking for good examples to share and particularly just going to put a pin in and reemphasize regularly speaking to your students and also the adults in your community that you want to enroll is so important. And not just the people that you see a lot or that are very engaged in your community, but the people who maybe are less connected to your community. I think people that we have found are very surprised when they start to have those conversations about how they're actually interacting with the community and how the community proceeds them. So really important points, Julia, thank you so much for making them them. They're really important. So, Michelle, in your experience, what role does Community College data play in this work, and how should colleges be using it to reenroll and support adults. Michelle, I think your internet connection is a little bit unstable so I'm going to come back to you, and hopefully we can get that sorted out. So I'm going to just go ahead and skip to you, Tess. So what are some of the largest challenges you've seen Community College's face when it comes to equitably serving and rolling adult learners. So I think two challenges come to mind where the first is getting students onto campus so thinking about messaging and recruitment, as well as enrolling students in credentials of value on their college campuses. So the first challenge with recruitment and messaging to prospective students. We've seen a challenge being able to have colleges and have reached the individuals that are in their communities in a way that's honest and informative and kind of speaks to their experience and their needs. So in the last one we've done some substantive research on how to effectively reach underrepresented populations in particular, and a lot of times from colleges we've seen kind of language that is speaking to, you know, an 18 year old that has just graduated from high school. They're looking to enroll in a two or four year institution, and it's not really speaking to a single mom who's balancing childcare and needs to enroll in night classes, but is excited to kind of pursue further education. So we see the adults are kind of coming with unique needs and motivations. So we see childcare someone that needs a flexible course schedule because they have to maintain their job and enroll in school. Someone that even might have like a mistrust in higher education. There's someone that had enrolled before and dropped out, or had folks kind of in their personal network that have had negative experiences, and that now kind of have, you know, colored how they view community as if that's not the institution that they had been enrolled in within their own community. And so it's really kind of a question of communicating the value proposition around community college programs to these adult learners. And I guess the last piece to kind of pull the thread from what you were asking Michelle about data and enrollment is that the data in messaging is Chris was sharing earlier is so important. When we did focus groups with prospective community college students, everyone was really, really savvy. And we had folks, you know, looking at a message from their regional community college and saying like, this is great, but I'm sure they're not telling me, you know, how much books are going to cost or how much transportation is going to cost. You know, this isn't telling me what my actual odds are of getting in a job after graduation, kind of all these different components that go into enrollment but also to kind of doing folks all the way through college into a good job. And then just the second piece that I've seen a challenge around is kind of shifting enrollment from enrollment in any credential colleges to enrollment and graduation in credentials of value. Because we know that students are enrolling in college to get a good job and advance their career whether that's directly after community college or through transfer and then into a job. So focusing solely on increasing enrollment numbers doesn't actually help students complete or have strong rates of post graduation success. So so the enrollment number only does so much. And I'd be happy to speak about that a little bit more but we know that being able to deliver on value is helping colleges to make good on their promise to students. It's helping students in their community that they can help secure future enrollments, and it's helping to improve equitable outcomes. Really important points about the data piece and welcome back Michelle I actually want to think that's actually a really good way to pivot to you to hear a little bit more about that about how data should be used to do this well and equitably. Yes, and thank you technology for doing what you do. In my opinion I think it's really important. When we talk about data there are four things that we know to be true is that data helps us identify barriers and it also and what's preventing adult learners from enrolling and I think that's what test was speaking to. And also, is critical in using that data to be able to better respond to the needs of adult learners this is what tests mentioned as well to, and attract progress, and so I'm going to state the obvious. And it helps us to understand and measure impact, and all of that also in the, in addition to looking at the challenges it also helps us to lift up what's working which is what you guys did so beautifully in your examples. So I think it's a great book, right, but what I really want to point to when we start talking about community colleges and data is just even we know that community colleges have access to a wide array of an amazing amount of data. So it goes beyond having the data but how to use the data right so it's also so in my experience and working with community colleges across the country it's about gathering the right kinds of data to answer the right kinds of questions about what we need to know. Right. And so, and it also speaks is critical and helping us determine who needs to be at the table right so we're talking about the work, the workforce ecosystem of which community colleges play a role similarly in community college systems who needs to be at the table right and so one of the things that we've identified here when talk to students talk to a dirt one adult learners is right like so we haven't been having employers at the table, having students learners at the table as well too right so we can ask the big questions where everybody can give their input is really critical. And what I love about the playbook is that it pairs so nicely with the work that we're doing at the National Fund with community colleges right in our community college labs right looking at the social determinants of work, looking at how to use data to improve industry partnerships. So looking at how to bring race equity or race equity lens to gradient credentialing programs, all of these things are really important and just like again, we talk about the tools and resources that are available. Being able to draw from all of these spaces the work that's happening and achieving the dream it's just really critical but they all have a data component so again just to wrap that up it goes beyond. Having the data but knowing how to use the data in a way that it can help student learners. Using the data is the hardest part. Having the analysis and the decision making structures to be able to actually act on the data is definitely the most difficult piece I think of this. I'm going to pause and just say to the audience, please put in any questions you have for the panel or for me about the work more generally. We're happy to answer those as we go along. I have a few more questions but I'm really excited to entertain the questions from the audience as well. So, we've talked about a lot of different things that colleges should do to address adult learners and address their enrollment shortfalls and to make their structures work better. There's a lot here. Who would like to talk about how colleges should make the decision around where to start and how to start this conversation on campus or actually making policy and practice changes on their campus. I'm going to go ahead. Well, I mean obviously I'm going to lean into the data piece right because that's what tells the story right and so I think understanding also this I think there are two parts of us like understanding. What does the data tell us about the challenge, the size and the scale of the challenge. What are the drivers of that right so I mean I love Chris is in his PowerPoint up top he talks about the decline in enrollments and offered a couple of points of why that was critical and what was important look at like that's an important data point that we should do right and so being able to tell your story with data from to me as a starting point for how you begin to address the problem right and I think that is both the quantitative data and qualitative data like what does the scale and the size, and then the impact it has on the people in your community. That's where I would start. I agree full heartedly with Michelle, and I guess I would just expand that to say so. Looking at the data for your institution but it also feels like within your community and the partners in your community. And when you ask the question I was thinking even about employer partners. So, to be able to look at the data to say like, are our students that we think are going on to get jobs at x employer in our region, or transferring, are they actually doing that and then going new on the path that we've set forth from them but to expand the scope of the data to look beyond your college to is key. Is there anything to add to that. I 100% cosine on everything they just said, I have nothing more valuables add to start with your data. Start with your data in your community qualitative and quantitative data I think that's really important point it's not just about your student reference system or about a general BLS survey of your area you really need to talk to people. And that is a really important part of the data. I just like drill in a little bit more on the enrollment piece because I think that a lot of colleges 10, or a lot of community colleges tend to just sort of receive who comes and not necessarily have the most directed enrollment approach. Anybody has recommendations with the colleges that might be on here or other policy organizations around like where colleges can work on the sort of enrollment funnel for a back of a better term like where do you think them, like they should be focused on in increasing their capacities around it. So I think that's a great question made I think the work that we're doing with Lumina around advancing industry partnerships with and with community colleges is looking at ways to increase enrollment around women of color. Right, and one of the strategies around that is like how do we even like how do what pockets of our work, can we dig into that can help build that pipeline right and so. So how do we use our industry partnerships are employer engagements how do we have conversations at that level that help shift policies and practices around certain sectors that make enrollment or women particularly women of color people of color, are accessible, right and so I think this is to test this point about looking at the community and engaging employers in the conversation, I think it's one of the ways so really excited about the work that's happening now but I think that is just that I think that's one way of looking at it I mean I think that's what we're tackling right now. I will definitely try to include a link to that work with the recording of the webinar because I think that is a really important point. And I want to open it up to Julia and test and say like are there any resources that you've been working on that you'd like to highlight for people in this conversation as well. Yeah I think marketing is one of the major things we're not good at shouting about what we're good at. I think community colleges can do a better job there. I know funding is an issue. I'm not going to try and pretend it isn't that is that is a major issue. But there is also a return on investment for for colleges that really do this well, and can actually attract adult learners back. It's a significant potential return on investment, and if they can keep them and support them through their credential learning. So it's, it's both a challenge upfront and something that can that can bring some rewards later and improve our websites. We're not to navigate. They're, they're, they're challenging again this goes back to finances I know. But, but we could absolutely do a better job at funding with our websites on marketing what we do what we can offer and how we can fit into adult learners lives. The other piece is the partnerships are so critical, particularly for underserved communities communities that we've neglected before. If we are not physically present there, we are not building the relationships that we need to be building that are going to lead to enrollment enrollment for adult learners particularly is very relational. And if we are not going in and intentionally making those connections and ensuring the communities that we really care about them and that we have what they want and what they need to better their lives and better their families lives then we're not doing the work that we need to do for our adult learners. I really appreciate that Julia because I think this goes back to creating equitable practices like equitable and accessible practices right it's it's understanding the needs of your community me and responsive to it. I just appreciate that point. I'd love to hear you jump in here. I just wanted to speak to Julia's point about funding. The realities that kind of come with that as part of as part of making reforms the institutions and just to acknowledge that like that's a reality that everyone is working with them, but it often requires making some really difficult decisions in order to be able to make different resources to other areas of the college that really are going to be able to help with enrollment and the other thing on my mind is advising which feels like it kind of is coming hand in hand. So, recently I know that we just had our big Aspen Prize ceremony, and we're sharing kind of about all the finalists for the award and I was really struck by Broward College implemented this program called greater impact budgeting. But part of that involves cutting their entire athletics department so that they could divert some of those financial resources to advising and marketing so that they could hire more advisors and they did a lot of really intentional work to kind of help with the enrollment onboarding and advising structures at their college. And, but that was really difficult decision that I think also had other impacts in the community so I don't know if there's a neat takeaway except for to take knowledge that it is difficult but we're starting to see folks in the field take strides towards towards those goals. And then to your question, though about kind of other work or resources I know that Aspen is recently done some research about thinking around enrollment and completion, particularly for STEM fields. So what does excellent and equitable outcomes for STEM fields of community colleges look like. And so that's an area that I think we would also be happy to share some additional resources to after today. Thank you so much for that helpful test. Thank you. And the priority samples a great one. They also, I believe got rid of their on campus childcare center, which is like a really hard decision to make obviously we talk about how important that is a lot for adult students but also it was very expensive and not serving very many students and they had to make really tough choices about transferring some of those resources to additional and more intensive advising and how that would affect more students they believe so one of those things you got to have the data and you have to make really tough choices sometimes because you do have limited resources so I think it's an important example to sort of pulled out there. So nice. So limited resources but I also think it's important to be real about what it takes to support students right I mean I. What one of the colleges that comes to mind to me is central Pmont Community College and Charlotte right there opportunity scholarship programs like we recognize the realities of the students with the students face right so we know that some of them may have to support their families we know it's like transportation like the realities of what it takes and so taking that into consideration when you design programs is really critical. As well to right. Yeah, we talk about like continuing a lot of the basic needs supports that students that colleges provided during the pandemic which is just so important and we're incredibly impactful during that time period but of course they were meant to be funded by the federal government through higher education emergency funding and so it's like how do you continue to do that when you have to make these tough choices because yeah transportation and the basic needs supports are so important and so it's like it's a definitely a tough choice and I want to just acknowledge that it's not easy because I think. As like policy people tend to be like do all the things for people then that'll just fix everything but of course it's much more much more challenging than that. And I just also want to acknowledge that capacity of staff at community colleges is limited. Many of these people are doing three or four jobs, and to me able to do like institutional reform is just like another job on top of that top of their three existing job so it can be really challenging to do. And hopefully the resources that we provided make it slightly easier because we're going with that. So, our playbook looks at enrolling and reenrolling adult students, but it focuses on enrollment strategies and how to serve students once they're on campus which is a little bit what we've been talking about now, but I was hoping that you all could talk a little bit about the importance of focusing on serving students needs from an enrollment perspective like we can sort of focus on that outreach piece and like guiding people through the enrollment process but why is it also important to make sure that people are well served once they enroll in the community college so they actually complete their credential. Yeah, so I think so it goes beyond if you build it they will come right it's just like so once they come and how do you get them to stay. And again, for me it's still about access in terms of making services readily available right. There's been a lot of colleges like when you come into certain student services it's like, if I have to go way across campus and you mentioned this in terms of someone who was waiting for an advisor to respond or just having accessible if I have to go way across campus to get to something that might lessen my you know I might be less inclined to do that if I don't know where it is if I don't move around, if I can't move around campus if I'm unfamiliar with campus or whatever but it making students available so if you go into a building, you're like I can go here for this type of service I can go here for that type of services right so I think just thinking about the proximity of services is critical and developing and getting people to feel comfortable enough to to. That's one step and getting people comfortable and saying okay. I can, in terms of getting them to stay I think is what I'm trying to say here. I think it's an important point to think about the design and the structure and where they're situated and whether or not they're available virtually and at night weekend like all the other things. All the things right. Julia did you want to jump in. I fully cosine on everything Michelle just said I. The way the way we talk about this work is that we aren't designed for adult learners is because we don't have those options, because we assume that. Whether we're aware of it or not, we assume that students can be on campus from nine to five and physically they're physically present and that's just not the way adults. It's not going to fit adult learner lives. And so if we're not thinking about evening hours, virtual hours weekend programs, those kind of things, which is, we're just not designed for adult learners. I also, I think, I'm going to stop there. Fair enough. I have thoughts. But I'm going to like to speak. Okay, go ahead. So I think for me it also comes back to what Michelle was speaking about a few moments ago where it's really being able to make data informed changes that are meeting students where they are. What also comes to mind for me is Amarillo College where they kind of saw real challenges with course scheduling, and they looked at college data that showing up most of their students who failed to complete course, usually struggled around the halfway point of the semester and so they ended up shifting to eight week terms and they improved their completion rates by like 12%. They looked really hard at the data and the students they were serving and the students they wanted to serve. And did a lot of difficult work to kind of meet those challenges head on and make changes that have now had a large impact on students staying and students going all the way through. Julia, did you want to jump back in and add your last point or not so much. I, I've got new, new thoughts. Okay, go for it. Given given what Ted said, I, the eight week approach has has been really popular with a lot of our colleges since I think Trident Technical College is one of the first colleges that started doing this back in 2013 ish. And there's resources that achieving the dream has put out there that my colleague who worked at Trident put together about how to do this well. One of the things I love about Amarillo is they are willing to say what went wrong. And I really wish more of us could be honest about what we haven't done well and what we learned from that. And that's part that is one tangent that my brain has gone down right now. And after hearing tests talk about Amarillo, one of the things they learned was going to that they piloted that. And they, they, it wasn't the right strategy. They should have gone to scale immediately because it was so challenging for them to pilot it and then figure out how to scale it and I just love that they share that and how open they are about talking about that kind of thing. But no, that was not my original point. But as a researcher, I too would really like people to be more open about what does not work. It's really, really challenging to get people to share things that they feel failed. And I think that that does a disservice to the rest of the community because we don't know what challenges to be looking for and what they fall into the same traps right. Right, exactly. Go ahead. This is a weird, this is a important policy indicator our leadership indicate point where we can make a shift right in terms of not penalizing folks for being transparent about their work, but using it as a data point to improve what's working right what's working right like because failures are data points and lessons like how do we improve unless we know what's going wrong so I just wanted to make that point so I joined you Julia and the aim and fire on that 100%. Yeah, so to bring back up the funding piece again I think people who provide funds for these initiatives in different ways either be that the federal government be that state government be that colleges themselves be that fund philanthropy like thinking about how to structure your funding, your funding so that if the work does not work, actually figuring out why I'm being able to disseminate that in and of itself and not necessarily punishing the people who have the idea tried to implement it in the first maybe it's a good idea. I don't know. Um, so with our last few minutes here I'd love to hear some final thoughts from each of you, particularly about your work and how it and how it intersects with this and any last things you want to make sure you leave colleges with around and rolling adults and supporting them through to completing their particular programs. So we'll go ahead and start with test this time. Thanks Iris. I think I shared a little bit about this at the top of the call but the thing that intersects the most in Aspen's current work is that we're really thinking about post graduation success and equity. But really thinking about kind of credentials of value as it factors into enrollment. And just because we know that you know many students are coming in lacking clarity of purpose about their programs of study, they're graduating with credentials maybe that are aligned to low wage work. And they are not, you know, sustaining themselves and their families. And also we know that this is impacting students of color and low income students. I don't want to say the most but they're a large kind of portion of this and that they're less likely than others to even graduate, much less being able to think about kind of graduating into what type of job. So that's something that's been on our minds is thinking about kind of success and equity in terms of enrollment, but very excited to hear kind of other thoughts from folks on the panel today. So maybe I'll turn it over to one of them but thank you again. Thanks for being here to us we really appreciate it. Michelle you want to go next. Sure. So I work at the National Fund really is around centering race equity and all of our work right and so we work across the board obviously we work with employers. We look at how we activate employers for improved outcomes we talk about who invest solutions and also equipping workers for success and systems change so all those, all of those threads are really critical to creating space for people to live the kind of lives that they want right so it's really important that when and that we lift up what's working around jobs and opportunities that create space for people to make little wages like a little wage and have meaningful lives and not being tracked into one particular job because that's what's there but it's because what people want to do and so the difference between being in a job because you wanted to and what you have to do is like, really huge when you start thinking about having the kind of life that you want right and so creating equitable access to that is just important and so when again looking at the playbook. The community colleges make those shifts small shifts sometimes they're small I think I remember when you first talked about what happened at the college with the SAP policy I think I said to you like oh I've got chills because it's just like little tiny things can make big improvements and shift the trajectory for a whole squad of people and so looking for that are the ways that we move equity forward right and so it's not always like the big sexy things that people like think of but sometimes the tiny shifts and so looking for those tiny shifts and we can all we can all work for and adjust those kinds of things in our work so that's what I have to share. Here here Michelle I particularly like the idea that you don't need a giant investment to do a lot of this work a lot of it is simply fixing the way you communicate with your students like just making that more clear and concise and understanding how to re-engage with federal financial aid like those are things that anyone can do you don't need a lot of money. You need time so I will say that but you don't necessarily need to. So Julia go ahead. When we brief I know we're coming up to the hour. I think the one thing I have to plug an event that we have coming up focused on adult learners that I'd love you all to participate in, and I'll share that in the chat. I think the last the thing that I would love to leave you with is having an open door to all learners does not automatically translate into access for everyone in your community. When we talk about access it is even the dream we're not just talking about access to your institution we're talking about access to opportunity to social mobility to community vibrancy to things you want in your life not necessarily need as you say you distinguish between shell. And so I want to make sure that as we think through how we do this work for adult learners that we're making sure that we're not just assuming that an open door leads to access. I think that is a great note and an open door doesn't necessarily mean access it doesn't mean access to something that's valuable. And so that's up to us to make sure that it does equal access to economic mobility a good life and what people want their lives to look like so with that I want to thank you all once again for joining us I want to thank everyone who participated here today I want to thank ECMC for funding the project and I want to thank student ready strategies for helping us implement it. And with that, thank you all and have a wonderful rest of your day.