Learnmore summary notes: Community meeting on August 18, 2005

The Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) held a meeting on August 18, 2005 to reconvene a group of community leaders and education providers with a shared interest in the challenge posed by the recent research report of The Minnesota Private College Research Foundation (MPCRF), High School Graduation Projections and Workforce Production, originally presented at a Community Meeting on June 23, 2004. The report shows that too few Minnesota high school students complete high school and immediately progress to and graduate from a four-college in state to meet the projected workforce needs in the future. Now that a year has gone by, it was time to once again gather and continue to discuss the challenge, while also sharing some success stories of those in the greater community working to solve it.

Seventy community, state and corporate representatives joined MPCC staff for a status report on August 18, 2005 at Hamline University. The agenda featured a presentation of similar research conducted by the Mayo Clinic; a report recapping progress of the past year, introducing a framework for higher education success and reviewing some programs in place today that are working; an introduction of the concept of “The Village Well” — a Web site tool to be used to continue the conversation as part of MPCC's Public Engagement Campaign; and a small group session in which the framework for the education enterprise was discussed. Many success stories and fresh ideas were shared along with a renewed enthusiasm to continue a collaborative effort to reverse the projections put forth by MPCRF.

This document provides a brief summary of key themes followed by more detailed notes and strategies that emerged for action in key areas. See The Challenge: Key Statistics for summary data. For additional information contact Phillip W. Miner, director of community initiative, MPCC, at 651-293-6809 or pminer@mnprivatecolleges.org.

What follows is a summary of the meeting and key themes that emerged from the discussions that took place.

Key themes

• Major employers, such as the Mayo Clinic, are beginning to realize these projections in their own workforces and are recognizing the need to take action;
• There are programs in place today that are showing success in preparing students for college; and
• There are tools, such as the access and attainment framework currently being shaped by multiple community stakeholders and “The Village Well” Web site, coming in the near future that will help continue the conversation begun in 2004 and serve as a resource for all public, community, corporate and academic stakeholders to communicate, learn and participate.

The Challenge is Real — and it’s Now

• Aging baby-boomer generation (born 1946 – 1964) begins retiring 2008
• Aging population will also cause significant increase in demand for healthcare
• At the current rate, new entrants into the workforce will not keep pace with retirements
• Lack of qualified applicants to new and existing positions at Mayo will cause loss of effectiveness and competitive edge over other healthcare providers.

In addition to presenting Mayo’s challenge, Mr. Mullen spoke of several steps the human resources department is taking to help encourage students from a young age to aspire to a college education in a technical field. He highlighted a few programs that involved local K-12 and other youth-serving organizations of the Rochester area.

Strategies they have developed internally to promote retention among employees include creation of the Recruitment Strategies Team, departmental recruitment planning, new employee orientation, work/life programs, Internet/advertising strategy, career awareness programs and employee recognition.

In general, Mayo’s research parallels that of the MPCRF in that too few Minnesota high school students are projected to complete high school and immediately progress to and graduate from a four-year college to meet the workforce needs in the future. This is why Mayo has implemented its recruitment and retention strategies and why the MPCC is facilitating the public’s engagement in reversing these predictions.

The corporate audience was particularly engaged with this portion of the presentation because the demographic data will impact how they source employees and deploy volunteers into the community.

Progress Report

Phillip Miner, MPCC director of community initiative, gave a re-cap of what’s happened since the original presentation of the MPCRF statistics. He spoke about several programs that have contributed to the progress of preparing students for college. He highlighted in particular the Network for the Development of Children of African Descent (NdCAD), the Girl Scout Council of St. Croix Valley and the Capital City Education Initiative, sharing stories of the programs they each have implemented to encourage youth of color to successfully graduate from high school and aspire to a college degree.

In addition to sharing the success of these programs, Mr. Miner reviewed a summary of statistics that support the predictions made by the MPCRF data. Most notably, he spoke of how from 1991 to 2001, the United States has fallen from second to fifteenth in the world in college participation. In addition, he pointed out the projected percent in change of high school graduates by race, noting that by 2013 the number of students of color will increase to 51.9 percent and the number of white students will fall by 18.7 percent.

Finally, in introducing the framework for higher education success, Mr. Miner referred to the “Straight A’s For College Success” – Awareness, Aspiration, Academic Achievement, Access and Attainment — and how if the community groups, corporate community and academic community continue to promote and use them as a guide for corporate community engagement, more students will graduate from high school and aspire to attain a college degree.

The Village Well — A Web Tool for All

Greg Barron, MPCC director of communications and marketing, and Melissa Mathei of Hunt Adkins introduced the concept of implementing a Web site to serve as a one-stop place for all stakeholders to come and learn, communicate, share ideas and participate in this public engagement campaign. They discussed the process of developing a Web site and all of the components that could possibly exist there to facilitate the further discussion of this challenge, including blogs, RSS feed, Pod casts, Webinars and results tracking to name a few.

In addition to laying out the basic logistics of what it takes to build and maintain the site, Mr. Barron and Ms. Mathei invited the audience to make suggestions on what the site could offer — since it will be a community site for the public’s use, input from the potential users is critical to the site’s success. Many individuals from the group felt the site would serve as a valuable resource to anyone who wants to get involved or who simply wants to learn more about the challenge. Additional comments have been solicited via e-mail and are being used to guide implementation.

Small Group Discussions

After the presentation of the concept of the Village Well Web site, the audience was asked to break up into small groups to discuss the framework for higher education success introduced by Mr. Miner. Participants were asked to sit at tables where they would be among a cross-section of individuals representing several different areas of interest and workforce sectors. Many were impressed at the breadth of organizations, corporations and people in attendance and felt it contributed to an engaging discussion where many ideas were shared and subsequent partnerships could take hold.

More than anything, people enjoyed the small group dialogs as a chance to meet, greet and network with old and new contacts around a common purpose and set of action options. Participants felt that the information shared and the data presented by the speakers was important, pertinent and timely.

Next steps

To broaden state-wide participation in these community dialogs, MPCC anticipates hosting more alliance meetings in greater Minnesota in the early part of 2006.

Sincerely,
David B. Laird, Jr.
Phillip W. Miner

• Learnmore Public Engagement Campaign
• The Challenge: Key Statistics
• Vision Remembered (PDF)
• June 23, 2004 meeting notes