On Nov. 7, the president of Austin Community College District, Stephen Kinslow, met with Pat Stanley, U.S. Department of Education deputy assistant secretary for community colleges, in Washington, D.C. regarding a seminar on adult career pathways, where various community college presidents came together to discuss successes and complications in workforce education.
The seminar was one of four meetings on "Issues that Matter to Community Colleges," initiated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Kinslow was one of 20 community college presidents who were selected nationwide to participate in this seminar.
"They invited presidents from schools that had innovative approaches to workforce education," Kinslow said.
He said his job was to profile ACC via a guided presentation, and talk about some of the more innovative workforce programs hosted at the college, such as nursing partnerships with the health industry in Austin, the Gateway Construction Program and the Central Texas Workforce Intermediary Initiative.
A lot of students who are transitioning, in some cases, from workforce assistants to the construction trade, for example, go to ACC to complete the change.
According to Kinslow, the objective of the seminar was to get the presidents to share their respective ideas of how partnerships came together through local needs of the workforce, and eventually found ways to distill the best practices among those presented.
One community college in Oregon, Kinslow noted, used the harnessing of wind energy on their campus as a way to develop a workforce program.
Workforce education will continue to be a key program at ACC, as the college copes with a rapidly expanding population and the push to annex Round Rock into the taxing district.
According to Kinslow and members of the Board of Trustees, community colleges are the primary engine of economic development. Much of the area's workforce jobs, such as nurses or auto mechanics, are trained at community colleges.
Faced with the growing competitiveness of the world, federal policymakers are paying attention. U.S. Under Secretary of Education Sara Martinez Tucker visited ACC in October regarding students' access to information on higher education.
And with the criticism directed at Gov. Perry over his unexpected cut of $150 million in state appropriations for faculty health benefits at community colleges (the state later restored the funds), people from around the state are starting to view community colleges as increasingly important.
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