December 5-9, 2011
Courses to Employment Online Discussion
The Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS) will host AspenWSI on their Workforce Competitiveness Discussion List. We will lead a discussion about nonprofit-community college partnerships, and we hope you will join us! We invite you to join the conversation. Please register at http://lincs.ed.gov/mailman/listinfo/workforce. http://lincs.ed.gov/mailman/listinfo/workforce.

Fall 2011
The AspenWSI team presented at a variety of venues in October 2011 with a specific focus on communicating findings from the Courses to Employment project. Maureen Conway, WSI Director, was the keynote speaker at the Philanthropy Roundtable’s convening of workforce funders in Cincinnati. Ms. Conway also [resented at the Cooperstown Workforce Conference, the National Council for Workforce Education’s Annual Conference in St. Louis, and Association for Public Policy and Management Conference in Washington D.C. Matt Helmer, Research Associate, presented at the Colorado SECTORS Academy, the National Council of La Raza’s Workforce Development Forum in Chicago, and the National Council for Workforce Education’s Annual Conference in St. Louis, while Amy Blair, WSI Senior Consultant presented at the National College Transition Network’s Annual Conference in Providence.

AspenWSI, along with P/PV, hosted the first meeting of the seventh class of Sector Skills Academy (SSA) Fellows in Maryland in September and subsequently hosted a SSA alumni meeting for Marano Fellows from 2005 to 2011 Academies in St. Louis in October. For more information on the Academy, please visit www.sectorskillsacademy.org.

July 2011-September 2011
Over the summer, AspenWSI conducted three webinars highlighting research from Courses to Employment, a three-year project investigating nonprofit-community college partnerships that serve low-income adults. Recordings and slides for the webinars can be found below.

Overcoming Common College Traps: Strategies to Help Struggling Students Navigate the College System
The webinar highlighted some common “traps” adult learners encounter when attempting to navigate community college systems, as well as some of the approaches designed to address these barriers observed as part of the Courses to Employment demonstration project. For a recording of this webinar, please click here.Also available are the full presentation slides from the webinar.

Price of Persistence: A Conversation on Financing Student Success Strategies
The webinar highlighted AspenWSI’s recent publication, Price of Persistence: How Nonprofit Community College Partnerships Manage and Blend Diverse Funding Streams and how nonprofit-community college partnerships fund student support services. For a recording of this webinar, please click here. Also available are the full presentation slides from the webinar.

Who Has the Data and What Does It Say? Participant Outcomes and Data Challenges in Nonprofit-Community College Partnerships
In this webinar, presenters discussed the education and employment outcomes of students served by nonprofit-community college partnerships participating in the Courses to Employment project. The discussion also include the challenges and opportunities workforce programs and their partners face in collecting, managing, and using outcomes data. For a recording of this webinar, please click here. Also available are the full presentation slides from the webinar.