Inclusivity Doesn’t Take a Village; It Takes a Community! How Johnson College Overcame “3P1."
Guest Blogger: Dr. Kellyn Williams
BLOG EDITOR: CLAUDIA MORRELL
It takes a village to raise a child. This phrase is thought to have originated in Africa centuries ago, but it is still well understood in the U.S. today. Raising children requires adult caregivers, extended family, and community members, including teachers. Additionally, we know that raising a child goes beyond just getting them to adulthood. It also requires they achieve academic and social goals so that they can live, work, and thrive in the communities (or villages) that raised them.
Institutions of higher education have traditionally looked at the idea of the village as meaning to create a community of academic and social support leading to a sense of inclusion among the student community. Efforts to support low-income or first-generation college students with financial aid and other resources are well known and appreciated.
However, not all colleges are the same. Most people are familiar with community colleges and universities, but fewer individuals are aware of the value and opportunities offered at Career and Technical higher education institutions, or the career and technical education (CTE) opportunities offered at the community colleges and four-year institutions. The problem is that lacking knowledge of these important institutions and programs creates a barrier to access not only to the child, but also to the village’s opportunities for health and growth.
The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) passed in 2018 (updating previous Perkins Acts) requires every secondary and post-secondary institution receiving Perkins V funding to provide awareness of and opportunities for all students in CTE, including those who may be “non-traditional” to the occupation. Perkins V defines non-traditional as individuals from one gender comprising less than 25 percent of the individuals employed in that field or occupation. For instance, automotive technology and engineering are considered non-traditional for females. Nursing and dental hygienists are non-traditional for males. All of these careers are in high demand, require a high level of skill, and provide higher earnings. These opportunities may be overlooked because of a lack of awareness, entrenched gender bias, or a student’s low self-efficacy and belief in their ability to be successful in these programs. 3P1 is the indicator in the Perkins V Act that refers to college’s requirement to enroll students at a certain percentage by gender in these programs. The requirement is the same for high schools that have CTE programs, but their indicator to meet is 4S1. The goal is to ensure secondary and post-secondary institutions are making every effort to ensure all students are making informed decisions about their career options.
What we know today is that change is possible if the entire village, or in this case the entire campus community, works collaboratively to engage students in these fields. This case study, which took place between 2018 and 2020, demonstrates how the community approach can create an environment where students and families have full access, knowledge, and opportunity to enroll in any high wage, high demand technical job, no matter their gender.
In 2017, Johnson College, a private two-year technical college, made access and inclusion a part of its strategic plan. This meant that by 2018 every department had to build departmental goals to create an environment that welcomed and supported every student into its CTE programs. From the President and CEO to the marketing department, faculty and support staff, the custodial workers and food service workers, and even the students, everyone was tasked to create the environment where everyone felt valued and included. This kept the discussion at the forefront of each department’s yearly progress toward engaging all students in the various technical majors. The institutional approach was (and still is) a campus collaboration and shared responsibility by the educational stakeholders to achieve measurable indicators of expanded access and inclusion.
Johnson College, working with CEO of the STEM Equity Initiative, adopted the four indicators of the NEIR© Model (Normalize, Empower, Inclusive, and Relevant) effortlessly through departmental endeavors, along with faculty training, and campus-wide discussions.
The STEM Equity NEIR Model outlines a process of focusing the community culture to ensure inclusion is a component of the learning environment. Johnson College’s approach to integrating inclusion into the institutional strategic plan meant the institution was taking multiple perspectives, values, experiences, and beliefs of their students seriously. Johnson College’s professional development around micro-messaging, LGBTQ, along with other training, provided students a safe and positive learning environment to speak up when they needed to be heard. Campus-wide discussions fostered an environment to identify areas where students may be marginalized on campus. These discussions allowed staff and faculty to identify their own bias toward the student population and how to address them to build a student-focused campus.
Johnson College also worked hard to “normalize” the broad array of opportunities in CTE as both a college-option and a career choice. Educating parents and students from middle school through high school is incredibly important to begin their thought process and pathway preparation for the high skill jobs of tomorrow. While students learn English, math and all the other courses required for a college degree at Johnson College, they also know that they are choosing a courses and a career path that lead to a high wage job upon graduation.
Ensuring course content is “relevant” is relatively easy to achieve in CTE as students are learning real world, hands-on skills, but Johnson College took the concept a step further. The President and CEO and the Program Director met and talked with industry professionals and the Occupational Advisory Committee for each program about what they were doing to build an inclusive working environment. Building awareness among the community of the importance of workers’ access and inclusion in high demand fields meant reaching beyond the campus to the businesses. Johnson College reached out to businesses with the knowledge needed to support their efforts to better recruit and retain employees, including those underrepresented in non-traditional programs. Thus, Johnson College became a resource to employers, not just for hiring graduates, but also for creating a workspace that will attract and retain the growing diversity of workers they need.
Johnson College embraced the NEIR Model to include all community stakeholders in the conversation of access and inclusion in CTE programs. The institution’s marketing firm was tasked to make sure underrepresented students from non-traditional programs were represented in all marketing materials. The Chief Academic Officer engaged with various secondary institutions to ensure all genders were provided full access to and information about technical occupations offered at Johnson College. The Chief Academic Officer used various grant opportunities, such as the Pennsylvania Teacher in the Workplace Grant, to provide secondary teachers professional development on building an inclusive learning environment to ensure all students experience a career path free of historical gender biases.
The campus community hard work has led to some powerful results. Johnson College is no longer on the state’s “sanction’s list” because of an increase in the percentage of underrepresented students by gender. In addition, our efforts have supported a significant increase in enrollment. One non-traditional program that had not had an underrepresented students enrolled in over five years, now has multiple male and female students.
The College will continue to integrate this model into their next strategic plan. The College will also strive to develop new initiatives to promote underrepresented populations to consider technical colleges as an option for their careers. One area in development is the Women in Industry Initiative, which will provide networking opportunities, expand collaborations on industry projects, and provide mutual support to ensure full access and inclusion of a future generation of women in a diversity of industries that have always been non-traditional for their gender. Men in health care is another area of great focus and promise. Johnson College and its community are working hard to ensure that the term non-traditional becomes obsolete.
MARCH 28, 2022