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Anatomy of an Opportunity

Workforce Pathway

Re-envisioning the college-to-workforce pathway

 

Albert Baker

IN LATE AUGUST, we at UA Little Rock’s Department of Computer Science, in partnership with Apprenticely, held an early morning event to publicize a relatively new program, Support Pathways for Students. We invited employers and students for breakfast, presentations, and networking, and we had a very good turnout—there must’ve been 65 or 70 people in the auditorium for the presentations and even more for the breakfast. I thought that was very encouraging, both for our students as well as for participating employers.

The idea for this innovative program dates to pre-pandemic days. I think it started as a conversation that I had with Bill Yoder, Executive Director of ACDS (now Apprenticely)—we were talking about the apprenticeships program that they had going at the time, and how that would be a good thing for our students, how we could get that started, and so on. Then came COVID, so it took us a while. But we continued talking, and at one point I became aware that ACDS also had some money to support internships for work-based learning. That had apparently been in place a year before I heard about it.

“Wait a minute,” I said—”Internships and then apprenticeships…. What if, with the limited number of scholarships that our computer science department controls, we focus those on freshmen?” From there, I worked with the ACDS/Apprenticely team, led by Bill Yoder and National Apprenticeship Director Lonnie Emard, to hatch a plan that followed a natural progression: At the end of sophomore year, we in the Department of Computer Science encourage our students to apply for internships. And in the first semester of their senior year, we suggest they apply for an apprenticeship program.

We all thought it was a great plan, especially for our particular student body. At UA Little Rock, we have a number of students who work full time, but not necessarily either in the profession or in a job that they want. In this case, suppose a student has one 12-hour semester left. Well, if he/she does an apprenticeship, it may take two or three semesters to actually finish the degree, but in the meantime, they’re working full time, in a job and profession they do want, with benefits.

As for internships, the old traditional model in academics is that a student would take off and do the internship in the summer semester, but I’ve kept reminding Bill and Lonnie that many of our students don’t go through their programs in eight semesters. It’s an urban campus. I think something like 27 percent of our students are first-time college students, and we can’t gear things on a very traditional academic calendar. Our students are flexible enough to be interns in any semester, which could also be good for the employers offering the internships.

So Support Pathways for Students is a tremendous opportunity for both students and employers. Apprenticely has already brought some 150 employers into the mix. “The paint on this program is not dry yet,” says Bill Yoder. “We have combined a very traditional career degreed pathway with a nontraditional apprenticeship pathway.  We envision internships with college credit, apprenticeships with college credit, and senior year computer science curriculum as apprenticeship Related Training Instruction.  There is added value for everyone.”

We at UA Little Rock and Apprenticely each built web pages for the program, and they were up by February of this year. This summer, we had three interns and one apprentice, which I thought was pretty darn good placement, given that we only had a couple months to get it done.

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ONE OF THE educational trends that we’re starting to see take off is this notion of competency-based education. In simple terms, that means a student could get actual credit for competencies that they can demonstrate. So, for our purposes, a student could earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science by demonstrating that he/she has competencies that are required for a software developer. Internships and apprenticeships fit right in there, don’t they? So rather than more hours of butts in the seats, the new focus is on building those competencies.

In part, I think this trend is a response to both the perception and the reality of how expensive higher ed has become for the students. When I was young, students went to school and if they switched majors a couple of times, so what? It was just the accepted norm. In fact, I started out as a Philosophy major! Well, you can’t afford to do that anymore.

Which is why we’re so eager to get the word out about Support Pathways for Students. By the time people are reading this article, I hope we will have created a piece that we can distribute to high school counselors so they’re aware of what our Department of Computer Science and Apprenticely are doing. We want high school juniors all over Arkansas to know about this and come into our program with an understanding that this is a great opportunity that is absolutely available to them. I should also point out that on our Department’s website, we have links to Apprenticely’s page for partner companies. And they, of course, are supporting our students.

I want to close by saying, explicitly, that I can’t show enough appreciation for Apprenticely’s willingness to work with me and this Department on this program. It’s a win, win, win situation that we’ve created here. I say that because, for an apprentice, some of our senior courses could count for part of their required 141 hours of training. So they’re doing the apprenticeship, they have training requirements, and I’m working with Bill and Lonnie on which of our courses could be counted toward that training. It’ll vary with the particular apprenticeship position, of course, but it’s kind of a two-birds-with-one-stone situation. And, secondly, many employers will provide tuition reimbursement. I mean, this whole thing just fits together so nicely. It really is a re-envisioning of the college-to-workforce pathway..

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Dr. Albert Baker is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science, University of Arkansas Little Rock