The Changing Perception of “Community College” Part 1

The actions of community and technical colleges across the nation are changing the perception of what a community college is, or perhaps what a community college does.?This is true in a variety of fields, but I’m best able to focus on my field of biotechnology.?

???????????Community college biotechnology programs have taken the spotlight in many of the discussions of building a workforce for the upcoming $30 trillion annual global bioeconomy.?Many discussions and papers highlighted their importance in this critical undertaking: during a Bioeconomy Summit at the White House, during a meeting of the Presidents Advisory Council on Science and Technology, during a recent meeting on the Bioeconomy at the National Academy of Sciences, during discussions by several of the Manufacturing USA Institutes (especially the National Institute for Innovation in the Manufacture of Biologics (NIIMBL) that focuses on pharmaceutical biotechnology, and the Bioindustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE), that focuses on non-pharmaceutical biotechnology), at meetings of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, at the meetings of other professional and non-profit organizations, in discussion by staffing agencies that provide workers, and in regional and local economic development efforts.

The public-private partnerships NIIMBL and BioMADE have set aside spots on their Workforce Development Committees for community college representation.?Solano’s own Jim DeKloe serves on both committees.?During the time that both were applying for federal funding, NIIMBL with the Department of Commerce and BioMADE with the Department of Defense, Solano College took the lead in gathering letters of support from community and technical colleges from across the United States for the government to award funding to these proposals. Each CEO, in each speech that they give, always say “our university and community college partners…”. ?One is never mentioned without the other.?

???????????As an example, during a webinar of the Plant Based Product Council last week, Doug Friedman, the CEO of the $250 million public-private partnership BioMADE gave our college an explicit shout-out.?

[Moderator] Jessica Bowman:?Doug let me give you an opportunity to weigh in [on workforce development] as well.?

Doug Friedman, CEO of BioMADE.?www.biomade.org

“At BioMADE we’re focused more on the manufacturing jobs that will come out of this.?And so we spend a lot of our time working with the community colleges.?We have a large community college network that we see as really an opportunity to pull students that otherwise might not be going into biomanufacturing into that field.?There are some really good examples outside of the industrial space in the pharma space of local pipelines where you have local community college working with local, large manufacturing facilities that provide direct pipelines.?In going to pick on one example that I know of well.?In Vacaville California, Solano Community College is?co-located, literally across-the-street, from the largest biomanufacturing facility in the world, which is a Genentech biopharma facility.?And they have at Solano Community College a remarkable program where they train up technicians that have essentially a direct pipeline to literally walk across the street and have a job at this very large facility.?Now BioMADE is not focused on the pharma industry, but we’re not interested in re-inventing the wheel.?So we look at this and say, OK, if you imagine a community college located in, say outside of Ames Iowa and there’s a Cargill or ADM facility nearby, how can we replicate that??How can we pilot something like that??And draw pipelines in the industrial space.?Do that.?Start to develop it so that it can be distributed across the country.?Because we have community colleges all across the country.?And it’s often the resource available to students in their local communities.”???

???????????Solano College isn’t the only community college getting shout-outs.?My buddies in North Carolina got a shout out at the White House Summit that accompanied President Biden’s Executive Order on the Bioeconomy last month:?

Rep. Deborah Ross of NC, after giving a well-deserved boost for her region, showed a deep understanding of what it will take:?“North Carolina and the Research Triangle with all the wonderful companies and research institutions is leading on innovation.?But the thing that we’re going to need to do to realize President Biden’s vision and all of our vision is to train up the people who are going to do that manufacturing.?And that is the job of our community colleges.?That is the job of some of our undergraduate programs.?And that is why I am so excited that the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act is devoted to giving NSF the money to give grants to all of these institutions of higher education.?I am an Ivy League grad and I love the Ivy League and the MITs of the world and the Stanfords of the world.?But let me tell you Wake Tech Community College has gotten three NSF grants that I have gone to the – you know with the big check and everything – including first generation community college students from the Latino community who didn’t graduate from high school.?Go getting, you know, apprenticeships and going directly to be able to work in manufacturing.?And I will close with this.?It is doing all that.”

???????????There is a recognition in these shout-outs that the culture of community colleges gives that component of higher education some advantages over universities in training personnel for many sectors of the biotechnology industry.?Community colleges are in a prime position to train technicians for biomanufacturing.?

???????????The community college advantage starts with some university aversion to the word “biotechnology.”?The ‘technology’ part of the word makes it seem too trade school.?Of the campuses in the University of California system, only the ag school UC Davis has an undergraduate biotechnology major.?And a friend of mine shepherded that program through the academic senate curriculum approval process, and even at the practical ag school encountered quite a bit of opposition.?It comes from the self concept of elite universities, and from the same place that I encountered at UCLA.?When I was at UCLA the academic senate rejected an undergraduate degree in journalism.?You can have literature, but not journalism.?They rejected an undergraduate business degree; you can have economics, but not business.?Emphasize medicine, but not nursing.?And likewise you can have molecular biology, but not biotechnology.?Career oriented degrees were just not part of the culture.?

???????????When I was a lecturer in the University of California system, I must have heard this phrase a hundred times, “we are not a trade school.”?The faculty member saying it most often followed with “we teach students to think.”?Another faculty member smiles and said, “students ask me about jobs.?I don’t know anything about jobs.?I have a job.”?It just isn’t what they do.?I love the lofty goals, but in the end graduates are going to want to eat.?And buy a house.?And provide for their family.?And send their children to college.?And for many, for those not on the assistant professor track that R1 universities are set up to produce as their primary design, the students are paying those big bucks in tuition to secure a fulfilling career.?Community colleges have a cultural advantage because they ARE a trade school.???

At Solano College, the biotechnology program started in the old metal shop which was next to welding, auto body repair, electronics, and drafting.?The MiraCosta College program is in the old automotive building.?Many biotech programs have gone through the paperwork to formally be designated a career technical education (CTE) program, what used to be called Vocational Education.?This designation carries many advantages including access to funding sources that are not available to a biology program, even to pre-nursing.?These programs embrace the word manufacturing, and its specific application to this field biomanufacturing.?They train technicians for production.?All of these terms likely would be received like fingernails scraping a chalkboard at a university.?

???????????Again, a CTE program has access to federal monies like Perkins funds not available to an academic program.?In California the state devotes $250 million per year to community college CTE programs; for my college this has been equal to over $ 2 million additional budget per year and we have used these monies for biotechnology equipment, along with our colleagues in welding, electronics (and mechatronics), robotics and automation, computer sciences, automotive, and drafting. We work closely with staffing agencies like Kelly Scientific, Harvest Technical Services, and Actalent (formerly Aerotek) to have them council and ultimately place our students. ??

???????????There are other unique funding opportunities as well.?

???????????The National Science Foundation has specific grant categories specifically devoted to community and technical colleges.?The most prominent of these is the Advance Technology Education grant (NSF-ATE).??????

According to the NSF:

“With a focus [of NSF ATE] on two-year Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program supports the education of technicians for the high-technology fields that drive our nation's economy. The program involves partnerships between academic institutions (grades 7-12, IHEs), industry, and economic development agencies to promote improvement in the education of science and engineering technicians at the undergraduate and secondary institution school levels. The ATE program supports curriculum development; professional development of college faculty and secondary school teachers; career pathways; and other activities. The program invites applied research proposals that advance the knowledge base related to technician education. It is required that projects be faculty driven and that courses and programs are credit bearing, although materials developed may also be used for incumbent worker education.”

???????????Since its introduction in 1994 the NSF ATE program has awarded 45 to 80 ATE grants per year and will give out about $70 million in the next funding round.?I have written many letters of support for colleges that applied for an award this month (the deadlines are usually in October.) ?October is also the month for the NSF-ATE Principal Investigator conference in Washington DC and many of my friends are texting me “let’s meet for dinner.”?I’ll reply, “yeah, my last ATE grant ended in June.”?Grants are awarded to geographically diverse community colleges from Florida to Seattle, from San Diego to Maine, and in Hawaii and Alaska.

The grants are often on the order of $200,000, although they can be several times that.?A glance at the current awardees indicates that the latest grants covered programs that trained technicians in advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, nanotechnology, automation, electromechanical technology, electric vehicles, data analytics, aviation technology, space materials design and fabrication, and of course, biotechnology.?Many of the grants strive to bring more inclusion into the workforce with titles like, “Recruitment and Training Support for Diverse Populations in Mechanical and Architectural Manufacturing Technologies (RTS-MT)” and “Expanding Pathways and Support for Transportation Technology Education and Careers at an Urban Minority Serving Institution”.?There are grants with the titles of “Providing Opportunities for Women in Next Generation Electric Vehicle Technologies” and “Increasing the Inclusion of Women in the Information Technology and Cybersecurity Skilled Technical Workforce”.?And there are grants striving to increase geographical diversity with titles like “Engaging Rural Students in Advancement Opportunities through the Field of Data Analytics.”?The intent is for the program to engage everyone and everywhere in the United States.???

???????????The NSF-ATE provided major grant funding for a national network that linked community college biotechnology faculty starting in 1998.?This organization was originally called Bio-Link and at the time it was hosted by the City College of San Francisco.?After over twenty years this national network was renamed InnovATEBio and it became headquartered in Austin, TX.?Because of this organization (these organizations) that were funded with an investment of about a million dollars per year, biotechnology faculty from every state are linked together to exchange teaching ideas and to share curriculum.?

???????????The real funding opportunities came for community colleges in 2011 – 2016 with the $2 billion Department of Labor TAACCCT grant program, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grants.?This program was THE major jobs effort of the Obama Administration.?The Department of Labor awarded these grants to community colleges in every state, and the grants ranged from a million dollars for a single college to $30 million for a consortium of colleges.?This $2 billion in funding was only open to community colleges.

???????????Many community colleges have recently built new facilities.?At least in California, community colleges have a mechanism to fund capital investments that are not open to their university brethren.?The community college district can opt to go to their local voters and ask to pass bonds to raise money.?In the last decade both Solano College and MiraCosta College raise a half a billion dollars to build.?Solano College has new science buildings on its Vacaville campus and on its main campus near Fairfield.?MiraCosta College broke ground on their new biotech/science building last week.?This ability to pass bonds is unique.?Many universities have biology departments in buildings that were built in 1958. Many community colleges have brand new science buildings that have been built or are being built:?College of Marin, Contra Costa College, Glendale College, San Diego Miramar College, Ohlone College and Ohlone Colleges all have new buildings filled with new equipment.?

???????????Community colleges also work closely with economic development organizations.? All companies shopping for a location to site their biotechnology facility will tour Solano College’s $34.5 million biotechnology/ science building with its four biotechnology training suites.?And we’ve had some recent successes and hope for a few more announcements by the end of the year.?

???????????All of these changes, or really new recognition of things that were always there, are changing the perception of what a community college does or can be.?This recognition will allow the nation’s community and technical colleges to continue to do what they have always done – but now in full view of government, industry, and their communities.?Community colleges always do put the community in community college.?