All In: Student Pathways Forward
This podcast focuses on elevating community college student voices to shape inclusive higher education and workforce development policies, practice and partnerships that create economic mobility.
All In: Student Pathways Forward
Tillamook Bay Community College graduate and employee Jude Schlotzhauer, college President Dr. Ross Tomlin & COWS Associate Director Laura Dresser
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In this episode, host Marc Goldberg interviews Tillamook Bay Community College graduate and current college Success Coach and adjunct welding faculty Jude Schlotzhauer, college President Dr. Ross Tomlin and Laura Dresser, associate diirector at COWS, a research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jude discusses how transformative her college experience was as a student and how she is now able to reciprocate the same culture of care with other students in her roles as a success coach and faculty member. She describes how her work at the college is the best quality job she’s had before and offers really interesting ideas on how employers and colleges can listen to students and workers in authentic ways.
President Tomlin elaborates further on how the college supports job quality for its employees with different strategies connecting it all back to student success. He also shares the importance of external partnerships for the college with employers and economic development organizations to support economic equity and vitality in their region of the state.
Laura offers insights on the COWS definition of high road employers with good job quality and how colleges can collaborate with employers to promote job quality and employee retention through benchmarking effective strategies from these high road employers. She emphasizes the critical role community and technical college career pathways programs play in creating access and support for students and workers towards careers with economic mobility.
The All In: Student Pathways Forward podcast is a part of Oregon’s participation in the National Skills Coalition SkillSPAN network.
Welcome to the Hall and Student Pathways Forward Podcast, in which we center Oregon Community College student and graduate voices to shape inclusive policies, practice, and partnerships. This is the host, Mark Goldberg, and I'm excited to focus on the important topic of job quality for season two of the podcast. This episode features interviews with Tilma Bay Community College graduate and now faculty and staff member Jude Latower, the college president, Dr. Ross Connell, and Dr. Laura Dresser, the Associate Director of Cal, a think-and-do tank based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jude offers insights from her student experience on how committed college faculty and staff work to supporting student success, and how she's brought that same passion and dedication to her role on campus as a success coach and adjunct building faculty member. President Kamlin describes ways that college supports job quality with employees, as well as strong partnerships in the community to promote economic equity and vitality in the region of the state. Laura speaks to how the current tight labor market has created new opportunities for college and workforce development organizations to engage more deeply with employers on job quality, promoting and supporting high-road employers. Thanks for listening in. Welcome, Jude, to the All-In Student Pathways Forward podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I appreciate you joining me and wanted to start by asking if you could describe what brought you to Tillamook Bay Community College to enroll as a student and what did you study there?
SPEAKER_02Okay, yes, my partner and I had encouraged my nephew to attend TBCC about a year or so before I did. So when I found myself in a time of transition, it became a viable option. I started out with the intention to become a museum tech. I just wanted to be alone in a museum working with some artifacts. But within about three terms of prerequisite courses, I discovered the Associate of Applied Science and Welding Technology. And because of my background in ceramics and art, I knew I could study it from an industry perspective and apply it towards creating metal art.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's awesome. And what a fantastic program, too, and career.
SPEAKER_02Truly. It's a pretty exciting area of study.
SPEAKER_03So what was the biggest highlight from your experience as a student at TBCC?
SPEAKER_02So many things. The discovery that I loved learning was probably the biggest for me. It was the fact that I hadn't learned in high school ever. It was the confirmation that I was capable of learning whatever I chose to study that was really, really big for me. Very eye-opening. But even more than that, I discovered a community of people who wanted me to succeed. And every single school day, every single school day, a different faculty or staff member would go out of their way to ask me how everything was going. And the level of genuine caring at the school was extensive. And it made me feel valued, important, and seen. And they still do the same today.
SPEAKER_03That's fantastic. And what a great example and testament of the quality education and supports at TBCC and a bit of foreshadowing. And we'll get into that in a bit. But just staying with your experiences as student, what do you feel was most important from that experience in preparing you for your career and the realities of the workplace?
SPEAKER_02Great question. Making my way through college as an adult learner gave me the understanding of this system. It was it's a scary moment to decide to go back to school. You know, you just don't know if it's just all going to be youngsters and you're going to feel totally out of place. But it truly is so great to take that step because within about a week, you know, yes, this is what I expected, or this is shockingly different. And my first week was rough at school. It was just a lot of stress, the newness of it all. But I settled in pretty quickly. I recognized early as a student that the employees at TBCC were a very special group of humans and that the TBCC workplace was populated with passionate people.
SPEAKER_03What a great reflection on your experience as a student, as a returning adult student. Thank you for sharing that. I wanted to talk about the theme of this season's All-in Podcast, and that's job quality. What characteristics do you think make a quality job?
SPEAKER_02Okay. A quality job, I find to be one where the employee feels empowered and unafraid to speak up. They feel valued and honored for the experiences that they bring to the table. A quality job must include trust and leads to the betterment of both the organization and the employee. A quality job is cultivated in an environment where opportunities for growth exist and where mutual respect is the baseline or the expectation.
SPEAKER_03Appreciate you sharing that. And then I want to take that definition and put it in your current context and ask what characteristics make your current job a quality job. And in that, could you talk about how it compares to other jobs you've had before in terms of job quality?
SPEAKER_02It's just such an interesting area because job quality is what we all seek in life. So it's very important. I'm glad you're doing this podcast. The amount of times that I brought forth an issue or a suggestion at work and then to watch them be implemented like one by one has been just shockingly empowering. I have kind of a two-part job in both faculty and staff, and lucky to have found my place at TBCC. So I teach welding classes, I teach intro to welding, and then I do a welding lab and I teach bois, which is beginning welding for the artisan, which it's my happy place. I love that class so much. But then my day job or the quality job we're actually discussing here is very much more the success coach position, which I'm the success coach for the apprentices, for the CTE programs, for business degrees, for my GED students. In that position, I'm student-facing my entire job is to help them through the system. So it's pretty exciting to make a plan with a student and to watch them go through and graduate. I would say that my experience as a student shaped my understanding of what a TBCC employee will do for their students, which is to meet them where they are and to assist them to be successful as students and as people. And it's a different road for every student, but when you're able to help and you are able to see the glow of like empowerment take over that person, it's like a really satisfying moment.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02There's no comparison with my previous jobs. This is the highest quality job I've ever held. So I was a makeup artist for 10 years or so. It was just such a frustrating job. There was very little mutual respect. You were always working for somebody else's vision, never your own. There was no real upward growth other than getting better jobs, better paying jobs. And then when I turned to retail, there's no more thankless job than retail. Your bosses don't really care how you want to improve things. It's not really the purpose. Your purpose is to stand there and sell the items that you're pushing. It's a hard job. I'm just happy to be working in a different area. Just no comparison. This has been my favorite.
SPEAKER_03Sounds like when you were a makeup artist and then moved into retail, those jobs lacked the ability, like you described at TVCC in your current role, to provide input and that that was valued and there was trust and respect and openness to employees bringing solutions and ideas to the workplace.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I think coming back to listening to employees, what ways has the college sought out and listened to the input of workers, in this case at the college faculty and staff like yourself, to shape organizational policies? And could you share any specific examples?
SPEAKER_02Sure. So every time we have a faculty and staff meeting, we are specifically asked for our feedback. And we have those every term, sometimes twice a term. We have an anonymous suggestion box, virtual and physical, which is kind of nice because you don't feel watched. You know, you can really be honest if you don't want to take ownership of that idea. A specific example would be our two-hour bi-monthly meeting called Team, where the entire student services department gathers to streamline and lean the new student orientation process. I have so many others as well, but that's one of my favorite because it's near and dear to my heart. I feel like that's really our first opportunity to show that student what to expect from the college process. So for me, it's a huge example of how committed TBCC is to the process of listening to its employees, because taking an entire department and having them take two hours twice a month out of their schedule is a huge undertaking. And it's a huge amount of time for that particular department, you know, the student-facing department, to be gone. So I think it exemplifies their commitment to that.
SPEAKER_03Totally. And to continuous improvement.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03And tying your role as a success coach to job quality as you support career technical ed apprenticeship and GED programs, how have you integrated the topic of job quality into your discussion with students for them in terms of thinking about their career goals?
SPEAKER_02So I would say that I meet students where they are, recognizing their inherent skills and interests that they possess. I talk to them about what comes after school and I encourage skill building in areas which could make them most desirable as employees. And I would do a lot of research into careers that'll give students the highest financial gain in the area that they want to work and benefit with the best job record of satisfaction regionally and nationally. That's usually how I break it down. And then I will locate ideal companies that would be good for them to work with, safety records. Basically, I do the download, give the student the download, and we make a plan going forward. I also try to make a connection at the next school for them. And we're trying to recruit people in the industry to do Zoom lectures with our students so that they can really get a feel for what it would be like ideally a day in the life of job shadowing. I also want to say meeting students where they are, one of the important aspects of that is taking into account what their family life is. You know, do they have small children? Is this a viable option? Do they have parents who are aging and maybe that's going to be a concern? Like, do they need to stay somewhere specific? Because that can be a huge impact on what they can expect to find.
SPEAKER_03That's a really good point. Another thing you said that I feel is so valuable, particularly in an area like welding, is the importance when we consider job quality of a safe working condition, because there are some that are not safe and carry a lot of risk. And analyzing that and helping students understand that it is an element of job quality as well.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Safety will always be a factor when you're dealing with high voltage electricity and other things. I'm grateful for OSHA every day.
SPEAKER_03So having the unique experience that you've had, Jude, as a student, as a faculty, and as a staff member, all at TBCC, what advice would you give to other faculty and staff to best support students in achieving their academic and career goals?
SPEAKER_02It's really funny because they all already do this. So it feels a little redundant. But I would encourage every faculty and staff member to get involved with the success of each individual student. And that success can look very different depending on where they are at, but you never know what kind of an impact you may have on them. There's no such thing as wasted energy. If there's a way that we can help a student, if there's any way that you can help a student do so. And you know, everybody struggles, every single person. And choosing to enroll in school means you want more, you want more for your life. So it's something to be honored and it's something to be celebrated at.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that question. And we hear from students all the time that funding college can be a real source of stress. What resources and supports within the college or even outside have been most helpful to students you work with in addressing the cost of college?
SPEAKER_02Okay, this is a big one. There are so many opportunities to get assistance with paying for school. If you don't qualify for financial aid, even just through the act of applying, you are eligible for in-house scholarships. And ours are robust. Our community has come together and just offers basically the equivalent of full ride scholarships that can just change people's lives. So we do have an incredible grant, step grant, and an amazing person who runs that grant, Jenny Case. Basically, if you are helped through the Department of Human Services, there is a program for you and there is support for you. So for instance, my welding students that have SNAP, which is supplemental nutrition program, they're given welding boots, welding gear. Having your own personal gear, it is a huge step and it is a huge expense. So it's such a benefit. And that's just one program. Yes, there are many, many supports.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. Since you do work with not just welding students, but apprenticeship students. And then you mentioned GED students, in some cases, just the test fees themselves for the GED can be a barrier for some students to move forward in that very monumental milestone for them.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And with our program, once per term, it's a $15 fee to join the GED program that gets you everything you need, including your first series of tests. And you have so much support. There's so many instructors who are brilliant and ready to help you. And you know, the same goes with our ESOL program, English is a second language program. That has been hugely successful. And our instructor, he's just incredible. We've also created a program with one of the big employers in our area where their students can come and take ESOL and continue their education, which I just love because that will only benefit them in their future work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. So you shared advice you would give faculty and staff. What advice would you give to students at the college and even at different community colleges from your own experience?
SPEAKER_02So my big one that I never forget to tell my new students is community college is what you make it. This is an opportunity for you to get involved and to change the environment to suit what you want to see. Everybody will listen, and those changes will be implemented to help everybody for the betterment of all. So I just encourage them, make it so great for the next group. Make it great for yourself. But it is absolutely what you make it.
SPEAKER_03I think it does lead in nicely then to the next question. I wanted to ask Do you have any other ideas on how colleges or even employers can listen to students and workers better to develop policies and programs that put them in the best position to thrive?
SPEAKER_02Yes, way too many. While there's no one size fits all method because each campus and every work environment, they're all unique. But generally speaking, I find incentivizing students and worker engagement is the best way to get everyone to the table repeatedly. And ideally, this includes some sort of monetary benefit in order to keep everyone on task and in a sharing space. It's really important to make it creative and clever and smart and mutually beneficial. And feeding participants should definitely be a requirement. So basically make the environment that you're asking for feedback on as comfortable as possible and students and workers will want to be part of that change.
SPEAKER_03That's spot on. And I think you've touched on this already. As that happens and building the environment where workers and students are comfortable, it makes a difference when the organization then does take that input and implement it because it demonstrates to students and workers that they're being heard and their ideas are truly valued. And it's not just talk, it's action.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I find if you can't create a system that allows the person to want to take part in it, they're never going to be fully invested in the outcome.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I wanted to ask a big question now, and that is how has your experience at TBCC as a student been impactful in your life? And then similarly, how about your current employment as a faculty and success coach at the college as well?
SPEAKER_02Great question. My experiences at TBCC allowed me to take the time to develop and perceive and honor my passions. And that impact echoes through my entire life and has affected even those who know me and have watched my journey. My mom is still shocked. She's like, I can't believe you're a college graduate. I never saw this. But as both a faculty and a staff member, I feel blessed to work next to and under some of the most inspiring people who constantly amaze me with their thoughtfulness and grace. I've learned so much about mutual respect and working towards an ambitious goal of making higher education a possibility for everyone. In our little corner of paradise in Tillamook, I'm so impressed with each and every one of them for what they bring to the table.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. And I would say small but mighty in the community there, and just appreciate your reflections on the impact of your experience as a student at the college to develop and honor your passion and then your considerations as an employee now and to get the chance to support other students. With that, I just wanted to ask you, Jude, if there's anything else you would like to share.
SPEAKER_02I'd just like to share that I think it's awesome that we live in a place where you would have this podcast and you know it would be discussing these things that are near and dear to my heart. And I feel very grateful to have done this. So thank you.
SPEAKER_03It's my pleasure and honor to get the chance to know you and to hear your experience at TBCC as a student as well as an employee, and have gained a lot from this conversation and I'm super inspired by the work that you do, the commitment that you have to students, to your colleagues, and to the community. You do have a really unique role and perspective, having been a student who's come back to school at TBCC and developed further skills and now get to engage with other students in a similar capacity to help them fulfill their passion and career and education goals.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, I'm very lucky. I love it.
SPEAKER_03I'd like to welcome my next guest to the podcast today, Dr. Ross Tomlin, the president of Tillamook Bay Community College. Welcome, Dr. Tomlin, to the All In Student Pathways Forward podcast. Thank you, Mark. I'm really thrilled to be here today. Yeah, I appreciate you joining me and wanted to start as I always do and ask college leaders to describe, in this case, a bit more about Tillamook Bay Community College for listeners that may not be familiar with the institution.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Well, we have what I think is a very special place up here on the North Oregon coast. TBCC has served Tillamook County here since 1984. We're a comprehensive college that offers both career technical and GED, and of course, all the transfer courses. We serve all of Tillamook County, which is about 25,000 residents. And imagine we're a very rural part of Oregon, a very strong agriculture based economy. Obviously, its focuses a lot on dairy farming, and logging is also a strong emphasis here. So just natural resources in general. Of course, we're known worldwide for our cheese and our ice cream from the Tillamount Creamery, which is one of our strong partners here in Tillamook County. We also have a lot, of course, tourism in our county. We are one of four community colleges on the coast, and we are one of the smallest, but we are not the smallest. We kind of bounce back and forth between us and Oregon Coast, but right now we are a little bit ahead of them. So I love when I talk to people in groups, mention that we are the 16th largest community college in Oregon. So we offer 55 career pathways, both transfer and career technical, along with a strong GED program, including a Spanish GED component. And then, of course, the full array of community education courses. Our career technical programs include manufacturing, one of our strong programs, along with welding. And we're really starting to build our health care programs. In fact, are now working to develop a new nursing program. We're excited about that and excited to build even more healthcare programs over the coming years. And we even have some non-credit workforce type programs like truck driving, and that's been very successful for us. We just passed a bond last year, and so we're going to be building a new facility next door to our main campus. It'll focus on healthcare education and will include our new nursing program and EMT. That building will be critical for us to have the space and the resources to offer the top technology and opportunities for our students in those programs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's outstanding and will be quite a resource for the community. So I wanted to ask you, having listened to my conversation with Jude Schlauthauer, who's a graduate of the college and now works there as an employee, as a faculty member, and a staff person, what were your overall reactions to the discussion I had with Jude?
SPEAKER_00Oh, it was fabulous. I really enjoyed listening to her. We have amazing staff here. We in the last year have hired three student success coaches, Jude being one of them. The fabulous thing is Jude was, of course, one of our students. She has the passion for career technical, especially, and she loves helping students find their path as she did. Yeah, I was very proud to hear her responses to your questions. She exemplifies, in my mind, the best of what our faculty and staff bring to TBCC. And that is certainly the passion to learn, to improve, and help students to be successful in achieving their goals. We, as all the community colleges do, truly change lives for the better. And all of our faculty and staff have a critical role in whatever their position is in making that happen for our students every day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you could just hear the passion that she has helping students navigate through systems and even getting into career exploration and employer research. With all that, I wanted to ask you too. What did you hear in the conversation with Jude that highlighted work that the college is doing well to prepare and support students towards achieving those academic and career goals?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think Jude did a great job of highlighting what I already know, and that is that it is a team effort by all of our faculty and staff to get students across that finish line. And everybody has their own specific job, and part of that to make that happen. Our faculty, for instance, of which Jude is one, are fabulous working with our students, giving them the skills they need. And our faculty are really good at what they do. And then you've got the student services staff like Jude that provide the students with all the academic planning and helping them figure out what classes they need to take. They talk to them about their career goals. Do they want to transfer on to a university? And if so, which one? They work with that university to make sure that all of our credits will transfer over as seamlessly as possible and just do that whole navigation process.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think from what Jude was saying, too, that's the culture at the college. And she described it through the lens of her own experience as a student and then as a very committed faculty and staff person.
SPEAKER_00It was great hearing her perspective as a student and the great experiences she had with faculty and with staff. No, we know our students. Our associate vice president of student services, Rhoda Hansen, virtually knows every single student at this college. She knows her name, she knows her background. And research, of course, shows that the more engaged faculty and staff are with students, it just helps in making sure they're more successful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's amazing. And it makes a difference. I was thinking too with Jude because she described coming back to college a little bit more mature in her career, or and how I think as many returning students questioning do I fit in here, and then right away the reassurance that she got from faculty and staff that she was in the right place and they were there to support her. And I think that says a lot too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have a scholarship here that we call Career at Career. And we are one of the only colleges I'm aware of that has this, and it is for our non-traditional students. So you have to be out of school for at least five years to apply for it, and it provides all the tuition costs, covers all of that, so that you can go to school and not worry about paying for it. And we have about 40 students a year that go through that program, and it's just amazing because I get to meet with those students every term, and it's just fabulous hearing their stories. And most of them are working full-time, many are single parents, but one thing they all have in common is they want a better life, and they have come to the realization that education is what's going to give them that. So they're truly motivated and dedicated to do that. And that's one of the highlights of my term going in and meeting with those students and hearing their stories.
SPEAKER_03That's a really interesting scholarship and program. And in particular, because it's designed for returning students and many of them being working parenting students.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we feel like that's a real unique part of TVCC, and we're very proud of being able to offer those scholarships.
SPEAKER_03For sure. Well, I wanted to shift a little bit and talk about the theme of this season's podcast, and that's the topic of job quality. What do you think makes a quality job for employees at the college itself? And how does that relate to Jude's own perspective on why she considers her work as a success coach and a faculty member at TBCC as a quality job as well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, we truly believe here, as I've mentioned a little bit before, that every employee impacts the student experience and has just as important a job in making the students successful and helping them achieve their goals. So I think if you ask any of them what they are there to accomplish, it is to help students succeed, whether it's our facilities maintenance person or any of our faculty. So that is the lens that we use for all of our decisions and our efforts here at the college. We listen to staff when they have concerns or issues. We have an electronic suggestion box, which I believe even Jude mentioned, where staff can send anonymous suggestions or concerns. We address every single one of those and then communicate those back to all of the staff. We have an employee engagement committee that works to let the administration know what can be done to improve the employee experience. In fact, they came forth with a request this year for a health and wellness stipend that they could use to improve their health, and we approve that at the leadership level, and that'll be implemented this coming year. So those are the kind of things we do, and our leadership team really works hard to make sure that we're listening to staff and we're constantly trying to see how we can make the experience of working here better. I was thrilled to hear Jude mention some of the same things that are so important to managers here at the college, empowering staff to speak up, sharing their thoughts and concerns, building trust and respect between and among the staff. Those are all things that are really important to the managers and the leaders, and providing opportunities for growth. We try to do that. You know, we think these things all translate into making the student experience even more positive and successful. And it obviously helps to keep the staff more motivated and engaged as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would imagine that's a retention strategy in supporting staff and opportunities for growth and advancement. And as Jude talked about, that the leadership is listening to faculty and staff and acting upon that. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, this episode for me is unique because the graduate of Tillamook Bay Community College, being spotlighted, is actually working at the college. So wanted to see more generally if you could speak to the important role colleges play as a large employer, particularly in a smaller rural community like Tillamook Bay, in supporting regional workforce and economic development efforts.
SPEAKER_00We are certainly an important part of the economic engine in Tillamook County, both because we are a fairly large employer and we add to the economy, but also as the college educational institution, we see as a role for us is to work with other groups in the community to advance workforce and economic development. That's something that's, of course, crucial in a small rural county, and it certainly is here in Tillamook. For instance, I'm on the county and the regional economic development councils that meet regularly. And our CTE dean, for instance, is out in the community meeting with industry leaders constantly and small companies to learn their needs for skilled workers. And what kind of programs can we start here that will provide good paying jobs? We've got, as almost every community college does, an SBDC, Small Business Development Center. That staff works very hard to provide classes and free counseling to small businesses throughout the county. And uh, you know, small businesses success is hugely important to the economic development of a county, a rural county. We're also an integral part of the Tillamook County communities and feel that we all work really well together. I think that helped us to pass the bond last year. Passing bonds in small rural communities is very hard in Oregon. And we did it on the first try. And that will allow us to construct that new healthcare education building on our campus so we can have not only our healthcare programs, but we're gonna have a large community event center in there that will serve the county community organizations. It'll hold up to 500 people and so lots of different events that we'll be able to have here. And that's just another way that we're able to serve the community.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it sounds like the college is viewed very positively from the communities in the county that you serve. And I wanted to ask you if you wanted to share any specific examples of how the college is partnering with regional employers to build career pathways to quality jobs and careers with economic mobility in the community.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have some great partnerships here in Tillamont County. Probably one of our top ones historically has been with the Creamery. They work with us so well. They send employees over here to the college every year to go through our manufacturing program and our welding program. And then they not only pay for their employees to take the classes, but they also then, of course, give them pay increases and promote them once they finish the program. So it's just a great career opportunity for their staff. We have apprenticeship programs in electrical and millwright and other areas that work with Hampton Lumber, for instance, a great partner with us. Probably one of our really strong partners coming up will be Adventist Health Tillamook, the hospital here in Tillamook. They are a great supporter of all of our healthcare programs, but they are exceptionally excited about our new nursing program because they are struggling to have nurses stay in this area. So to be able to grow our own nurses by having Tillamook County residents go through our nursing program is going to be hugely advantageous to them. We also provide a lot of their EMTs and medical assistance and phlebotomists, those all go through our programs. And Adventist Health typically hires almost all of those. So it's just that mutual partnership to make sure that we're providing what they need to get strong, well-trained employees. Most of our students, of course, come from Tillamount County, probably 98% of our students. And so most of them want to stay here. So they want to be able to get a job, raise a family, and be successful staying close to family. We have great partners.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and those are fantastic examples. What I just realized in listening in is they cut across multiple industry sectors, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. We're very flexible to work with them in however they want to help us and however we can help them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. On a similar note, I wanted to ask how is the college advancing economic and racial equity in your region of the state? And how has the Future Ready Oregon funding aligned with that work?
SPEAKER_00When we talk about equity and inclusion, that is something that's really important to Tillamook Bay Community College. We have actually built that into our new strategic plan, which we implemented this year. This is work that we've been working with for many years. We have a strong DEI committee and it promotes trainings, messages in the community to promote diversity and equity. So it's not something we just focus on internally as an organization. So we see ourselves as a leader in trying to promote that in the community. We developed an equity lens last year that is used in evaluating our policies and procedures as well as practices on campus and making sure that we're considering DEI and what we do every day. Looking at Future Ready Oregon, then, that's really provided incredibly important funding for our career technical programs. We're also, because of this money, able to infuse and create more partnerships with our high schools. We're starting a pre-apprenticeship program in construction with Nestucca Valley High School, and we're going to be expanding those programs to the other two high schools in our county. We're also able to put money into credit for prior learning. That is where we can develop ways for students to earn credit based on the job training that they've received in the past for military training. That is all due to Future Ready Oregon money. And then we also have some for our STEP coordinator that works with the SNAP program and students that are eligible for SNAP, finding resources for students.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for sharing so much and all the work the college is doing towards DEI in the strategic plan out in the community and having an equity lens that has been established and that is used in decision making, policy making at the college. So I just wanted to ask one last question and see if there's anything else that you'd like to share. That's part of our conversation here.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate the opportunity, Mark, to share what is happening at TBCC and a lot of good work being done here for our students. TBCC, as I mentioned, is a really special place. We are really proud here to provide that higher quality education opportunities that really does make a huge difference. It's been enormously rewarding for me to serve as president of this college for the past almost seven years and work with the faculty and staff, as well as so many different people throughout Tillamook County and the state to grow our programs, continue to offer more, and improve our services to students and the community to be the really best college we possibly can be. So thank you for that opportunity.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for spending the time. And I learned a lot more up close of Tillamook Bay Community College from this conversation and with Jude and just inspired to hear the approach and truly being student-centered and the commitment of faculty and staff to support all students in achieving their academic and career goals, as well as the connections out in the community and the relationships that you all have with employers, large and small, and then with the regional economic development and the cities and the opportunity then for the college to be part of that economic engine and to support student success further. So thank you, Dr. Tonlin, for taking the time. I really enjoyed this conversation and appreciate getting the chance to speak with you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, me too. Thank you for asking me.
SPEAKER_03I'd like to welcome my next guest to the podcast, Laura Dresser from COWS, which is a research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome, Laura, to the All in Student Pathways Forward Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me, Mark. I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, appreciate you joining me and wanted to start by asking you if you could share a bit more about CAWS and the work you do focused on job quality, workforce development, and post-secondary education.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Cows is a research center that's devoted to the idea of building the high road. And that might just sound like nice things to people, but we mean it to be a theory about how we can operate even under competitive capitalist conditions. Could we make this community, this world better? Yes. There's basically two ways to make money. And one is much more indifferent to the long-term environmental impact or the community impact. And another way that we call that the low road, and another way really tends to the question of job quality and environmental sustainability and democratic production, and the way that the voices of workers and communities are actually assets to be built upon rather than simply expendable cogs, that we call the high road. And in every way, we're trying to pursue a public policy framework that supports the high road, infrastructure in workforce development and training systems that supports the high road. And so if a listener came to the cows.org website, they'd see a broad array of projects. It wouldn't look like a workforce development shop, really. We've got work with mayors, we've got work with secretaries of transportation all over the country. But there is a lot of work we do on workforce development. That's the work I do at Cows. And that really focuses inside the question of what firms are doing, what job quality structures look like, what unions are doing, and how training systems and education systems can relate to that in ways that help build the high road. So that's a quick overview of CAWS and what I do.
SPEAKER_03That's really helpful and appreciate the description and the various elements of that high road work that you described, including workforce development. And wanted to ask you what role specifically do you see community colleges playing in shaping and supporting job quality and equity in their regions? And how have you seen this work done effectively in other parts of the country?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have worked all over the country and I've gotten to learn about other places, including Oregon, which I've really loved. I really know the Wisconsin system in some ways the best because it's where I've done the most hands-on project work. And here, our two-year system is technical colleges, although there are some transfer degrees. It's really focused on occupational training. But what I see in Wisconsin's technical college system, like community colleges, is that students can get skills in these institutions, they can get into the labor market and in and out of that labor market and back into those skills. These are the institutions that are local and rooted and they know both students, this really matters for students, but also that they're local infrastructure that employers know and really rely on for building the skills of the workers they need that live in their community. And so for me, often I think we get distracted in workforce development conversations. Well, the very broad ones with four-year college degrees, or sometimes we get obsessed with very narrow programs. And for me, the real engine of what's going on is the community college system at the state level. Generally, that's where it's accessible, it's employer relevant, and it's the location that really gets workers above the median wages up into more decent jobs.
SPEAKER_03I'd love to dig a little bit deeper in the topic of job quality. How can colleges be players? In that space, in addition to just having the connections with employers.
SPEAKER_01From my perspective, this is one of the places where this high road, low road distinction really matters, is really useful. I know it's a kind of rough shorthand. Nothing really fits perfectly into one or the other. But I think it's really important because in workforce development and education and training institutions, we have tended to wear what I think of as sort of pro-employer indifferent goggles. That is to say, any employer is willing to talk to me, I'm willing to make a deal, I'm here for them, I'm gonna make this work for my students. It's important to see the employer that way as an important resource for students, important resource for information. But it's also important to remember that not all employers are the same. And you cannot approach every single employer with the exact same understanding of what they're doing in the labor market. So the high road, low road is a way to start getting an institution to think about who are the employers that are really doing the best things in this community in terms of job quality. How am I supporting them? How am I getting access for people who have been excluded from those jobs into those best jobs instead of running a churn game? I think a lot of times it's easiest to get the call or easiest to get the responsiveness from the employer that has a lot more churn. And that is often an employer with a lot lower job quality. And so there's a tension in this, right? Obviously, if you have super good job quality, you can't get access to the jobs because nobody ever leaves them. But if you're only going with the person who's most desperate, you're probably looking at a lot of churn, which is just lost training money in a way, right? And so if you're thinking, even inside a specific sector, and I've looked really hard at nursing homes, for example, which are often partners on certified nursing assistant and sometimes other nursing and healthcare careers, nutritional and building services, too, nursing homes, they all have higher turnover than they want. So if you put in one a room, they'll talk about turnover as if they all have the same level because it's higher than they want. But some have twice what others have. And institutionally thinking about how do I serve and work with the one with the lower turnover and help the other ones learn about the systems of supervision, scheduling, pay that are making those jobs more sustainable. You know, that's how you get towards being more selective and using this resources and assets that the community colleges have to help elevate the best in the community and try and bring people up to that to build the high road and pull people along it instead of just responsively feed everyone, which means you're going to feed the low road.
SPEAKER_03Right. That's really helpful. And I appreciate the way you've described it in that helping those who may not have the high quality jobs and pursuing low road strategies now to point to other examples. Because that's not a college or a workforce entity coming in saying you need to do X, Y, and Z. It's like, here are some examples from the industry, from your sector, of strategies that have been effective in the high road.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think for everyone, this is true for people who are in the colleges, and this is true for workers, and this is true for employers. I think it's very hard to see what turnover actually really is at other places, right? We don't always know how fast entry-level position is turning over. And just beginning to look at that helps everybody benchmark themselves, right? Like you can see, oh, I'm dealing with twice the level of turnover in my entry-level position as that firm is, or I have an insufferable level of turnover, but it's actually pretty low compared to my peers, right? That's news to employers, but I think it's also important as a signal to training providers or people looking to connect workers coming out of programs with jobs. How do we get a consistent way of thinking about turnover there and really begin to look for the lowest possible turnover in that sector?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's so fitting that that's where you were describing those efforts and thinking about turnover and the guidance to students and workers. Jude, who is a graduate of Tillamook Bay Community College, is now a success coach at her campus after graduating, described a little bit more about helping students identify employers that have high-quality jobs and look at wages and look at schedules and all these elements to help them understand how to do that research. And so it's exactly what you were saying for workers and students.
SPEAKER_01That's great. It's a really critical position to be in to help people interpret this because I think the labor market can be so opaque. You know, it's easy to see a wage, sort of. But it's not easy to see how many hours you're gonna get paid for that wage, right? Even when the employer says, I'm hiring you full-time. Sometimes that's 40 hours. Sometimes that's like, I'm gonna schedule you every chance I can, and we'll see how that works out. And health insurance is the same way to understand how the health insurance works really hard without someone helping interpret that or being able to talk to another worker is one of the best ways to understand how scheduling systems work. So it's great that Jude is in that position to use her knowledge and help students try and see more synthetically across these aspects of job quality.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. Well, just staying in Oregon for a moment, I know that you're very familiar with Oregon's established career pathways initiative and in fact have presented in the past to our Oregon Career Pathways Alliance group on, to me, very pertinent topics such as case making for adult populations in thinking about a talent pool for the future and current workforce and job quality that have helped move all of our collective work forward. How do you see the career pathways framework helping advance racial, gender, and economic equity?
SPEAKER_01I think privilege in the labor market, when things are confusing, privilege tends to run along routes that it has run along. And so people with access to relatives who have held specific jobs understand how those jobs work. And people who have been excluded because of racism and sexism and economic isolation have been excluded from those avenues of opportunity, don't have the inside information on how those jobs work. So one of the things that I think career pathways are really part of doing is trying to make what is implicit more clear to more people. And by doing so, opening opportunity. And the job you're describing that Jude's doing is part of that and essential to Career Pathways work, the clarity about which skills and which classes get you into which jobs. And then obviously the work that you've done in Oregon has also been about the integration of basic and occupational skills, right? And that matters, I think, a lot because we want people to succeed in building their skills and opportunities in labor markets who have a wide range of experience. And we can build a program that can do that. From what I know, a last second check of the career pathways program has all these elements. And I just think that's a package about trying to make the pathways transparent and walkable, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So as a national workforce development and post-secondary education expert and leader who I know has challenged us to consider important elements to equitable student success, as mentioned earlier in job quality and beyond. What do you think college career pathways leaders should be thinking about now and in the next few years to continue moving this work forward?
SPEAKER_01One thing that's clear to me, the tight labor markets are an opportunity to think harder in the aging of the baby boom. This is more stark in Wisconsin, where we're actually shrinking in the labor force than it is in a state like Oregon, that's probably still got a growing labor force, but all across the country, the employers were used to more and more workers coming in every year. And that's slowing down. And that labor market tightness, which is longer term and underlying, sits underneath this cyclical thing that we've got, this super tight labor market right now. But thinking about that and how that opens a conversation about job quality and job structures and different aspects of job quality, and how it allows you as a community college, a technical college, to reach higher in the labor force, in the job quality spectrum with your employer partners to advocate for hire and to work with higher. That really matters, I think. Right now, this is a moment to try and make those relationships, get in those doors, build those partnerships, build the programs. Obviously, we're not going to always have a labor market this tight, but those relationships are available to you now and they will carry even when things get a little looser. So that's one thing I would say is really important. And a second thing I would say is it is very clear that the federal investments, the infrastructure and the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, will have real impact on jobs, the electrification of everything, which is part of the IRA, which is going to get carried through private channels and subsidies. So it's not exactly clear what that will look like or who you need to make the deals with, but you need to have your eye on that, right? What that transformation means for Oregon is really going to matter to jobs. The infrastructure stuff also, it's overdue and necessary. And whatever happens with the cyclical unemployment, there are going to be opportunities in infrastructure, which is a set of jobs that have been pretty high quality, but also often pretty exclusive or have cut out women, people of color. And so the work to change who's in those jobs, to support new people getting into those jobs, to change how people last in those industries really becomes more and more important because of those giant federal investments. So those are the few things I think in this moment in time, this is what I'd be thinking about.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate you sharing those. And I mean, some of it is follow the money, but also where's the innovation happening? And it feels like with the electrification of so much, and then these investments in infrastructure, recognizing the historical demographics and who hasn't had access to these careers and the ways to disrupt that. And then I think where you started in just leveraging this moment in time with a tight labor market to really build those long-lasting relationships with employers. And while there's so many different elements of high-road jobs that colleges can engage these employers with, there's also a multitude of connection points, right? Of that is hiring graduates and participating or sponsoring a career fair. Is it work-based learning opportunities? Is it exploring apprenticeships? A whole different array of strategies really that colleges can engage with these employers to solidify that relationship, as you're saying, level by level, depending on what the needs are, what the opportunities are, so that when the labor market isn't the same, that's not going to be lost because of how connected they are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the right way to think about it. And especially if you can figure out some incumbent worker game, that's a place where whatever's going on with hiring new hires, when you've got a program that's really delivering skills that the employer knows it needs, it's really paying off for workers, that's a solid thing through slightly less tight labor markets, too. That one can be really built to last.
SPEAKER_03Because that's also then a retention strategy.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I wanted to come back to a topic you started with as you were describing high-road jobs and careers, and that is the importance of listening to workers and in education students. Really, that's the focus of this podcast series. What role can workers and students play in advancing job quality and equity and really shifting the narrative to focus on systemic inequities versus individual barriers? And wanted to ask if you could share examples of how workforce development or post-secondary education institutions have effectively centered worker and student voice in these efforts that you're aware of.
SPEAKER_01I really do love this question. And I love this question in this moment because I think one of the things we're witnessing right now is not only a tight labor market, but a tight labor market that workers are making something of. I think listeners might be familiar with the unionization of Starbucks or Amazon, and listeners may even be familiar that unions are positively viewed by Americans at a rate that we haven't seen since the 1960s. But I think that's also a set of things that are indicating something else that is going on. And there was a moment in time about a year ago, year and a half ago, where we got the story wrong. We called it the great resignation, right? And everybody was like, oh, the pandemic relief is so generous. Everybody's living van life and doing a go fund me. And they've all quit working, and that's why we can't find workers. This was sort of the great resignation language of two years ago. But I think the evidence is really clear. It wasn't a great resignation. It was a great upgrading, it was a great renegotiation. Workers had been called essential. Many of the lowest paid workers in this economy, so service workers, hotels and restaurants and bars and grocery stores, these workers had been called essential, many of them working through the pandemic, or others of them shut down, like out of work to zero hours during the pandemic. And they came back to jobs, you know, healthcare jobs that don't provide health insurance, food service jobs where you can't afford food at the end of the month. They came back to the contradiction of these jobs and they began to move. They stayed in the same sectors and moved for higher wages. They moved out of those sectors into other sectors to find other opportunities. And what has happened over the last two years is the bottom 10 or 20% of the workforce has closed the gap with the median wage. That's what workers are individually and collectively in formal and informal ways, demanding more of work, especially at the bottom of the labor force. And that is closing the gap in work, the quality of jobs between the median and the worst jobs in this economy. So this is to say that workers do a lot through how they stay in jobs or move jobs. And whether they do that collectively or individually, they have been doing a lot of that in the last two years and they have changed, sort of moved the bottom on the labor market. Something we haven't really seen, arguably, since the late 1990s, but certainly not in this century yet. I think that's important to see and support. It's important for students and workers to see right, part of the answer to making these jobs better is me trying to make these jobs better. And that's with other people and on my own. Obviously, a tight labor maker makes this safer, makes it easier, makes it easier to ask for more. And I know every time it's done, it's brave and it's not always easy and it's not always wise. But a lot of times workers are saying, I need a different supervisor. You can't harass me anymore. I need a schedule that works for me. I need pay time off, or I need to be able to go take care of my kid at school today. So I guess that's what workers can do with voice. And I think colleges can help workers see that, what their rights are. Workers have a right to collective action even outside of a union contract. They can write a letter and say they want more from a place of work that's protected by the National Labor Relations Act. And I don't think colleges have always thought about helping workers see their rights or see what's fair as part of their job. And I think maybe they should.
SPEAKER_03So yeah. And it does seem like more and more employers with this type labor market are recognizing and shifting strategies and wanting to become a more diverse workforce. And so those are words, and there's a lot that comes behind that policies culture. And it does feel like that worker voice is a really authentic way of if you're wanting to build an inclusive, diverse workforce, you have to listen to your employees.
SPEAKER_01You have to find ways to listen to your employees, absolutely. And you have to find ways to listen to your new employees, not just your old ones, right? That so often our employment systems create voices out of the people who've been around the longest. And that can strengthen exclusions. So if you're trying to get out of that game, you need to get into thinking about your newer workers as voices you need to connect to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, with fresh eyes on all of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. True.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for sharing that. That's a really good point. So just wanted to wrap up and ask if there's anything else you'd like to share in our conversation here.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm always happy to talk to folks in Oregon, partly because my parents and sister live there, but also because I've gotten to learn about the work through you and your colleagues about the groupways work you have going. So I'm just delighted to be here and to get to hear a little bit more about what you've been doing.
SPEAKER_03Well, thanks for taking the time, Laura, at a busy time of year and looking back over many years with our Career Pathways group and having the opportunity to hear you present and bring your expertise and insights to our small and mighty career pathways group in Oregon. We've all benefited and continue to learn and just uh appreciate getting the chance to chat with you as part of this podcast. Thanks. Well, that'll do it for this episode of the All In Student Pathways Board Podcast. This is the host, Mark Goldberg. Wanted to say we'll be back next month for the last episode of the season. Thank you for listening in.