Economic & Workforce Development Center: Impact Report 2017-19

MCCRecognized by the Aspen Institute as aNational Model forWorkforceDevelopment. THE ECONOMIC AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT CENTER CONTINUES TO MAKE LABOR MARKET DATA ACTIONABLE. When the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program wanted to do a deep dive into workforce development programs at community colleges, their researchers selected six colleges from across the United States to visit, MCC being one of them. Their research is captured in The Workforce Playbook, a Community College Guide to Delivering Excellent Career and Technical Education , released in June 2019. The publication cites MCC and five other community colleges as national models for best practices in workforce development. It is a practical guide with the goal of improving community colleges’ effectiveness in delivering talent for communities and enabling social mobility for students. The Playbook uses concrete examples from the six identified high-performing community colleges to offer specific guidance about what colleges can do to build more effective workforce programs. That MCC was identified among the most effective community colleges in terms of preparing the workforce is a testament to our data- and partnership-driven approach. Aspen researchers chose to highlight our work in: • identifying regional talent gaps and using that information to develop and market programs; • helping employers understand the market for the kind of employees they seek; • partnership with the Rochester City School District that resulted in a P-TECH program and made it possible for students to graduate with a high school diploma and an associates degree in information technology; • leveraging of technology to support and manage its relationships with employers in a business-friendly way; • approach to meet workforce needs that changed when the local economy shifted from the “Big Three” to many small and mid-sized companies, specifically citing the Monroe County-MCC LadderzUP partnership and the College’s role as an industry convener; and • strategic labor market informed data usage to better understand where to make program investments that result in a larger pool of skilled workers that are most needed by industry.

Impact: Sharing of our labor market informed approach to workforce development with thousands of community college peers across the country which enables duplication of best practice and innovative thinking.

To read the full report, visit https://highered.aspeninstitute.org/labor-market/ .

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