Building a Meaningful Microcredential Program

Kristen Vanselow, Assistant Vice President for Innovative Education & Partnerships at Florida Gulf Coast University joins us to share how FGCU has developed a robust microcredential program that provides flexible, competency-based opportunities that signal readiness for careers beyond traditional degrees. Kristen shares how FGCU develops programs in partnership with leading employers to address skill gaps in the workforce, contributing to the success of the regional economy.

For additional resources about FGCU’s microcredentialing program, see here – https://www.instructure.com/resources/videos/fgcu-power-micro-credentials

To learn more about UPCEA, visit https://upcea.edu/

Transcript

Matt Sterenberg (00:01.142)

All right, Kristen, welcome to the podcast.

Kristen Vanselow (00:04.114)

Thank you so much, Matt. It’s a great pleasure to connect with you.

Matt Sterenberg (00:08.045)

So we are talking about creating a meaningful microcredential program. You’re doing some incredible work at FGCU. Can you tell us how this started and why? Like, why did you take on this work at FGCU?

Kristen Vanselow (00:24.606)

Well, I think that is such a great starting question. And what I can share with you is that we have been blessed to have extremely innovative and talented leaders at our institution who have for many, many years known that we really need to do a great job at connecting with our employers all in the frame of reference for student success. And we know that within higher education, there’s always been a great debate of whether or not it’s offered for the purpose of a job or a career that comes at the end. We know it’s much deeper than that, but we know that ultimately the great majority of students that are entering our institutions are truly doing that because they want that professional opportunity. They want that economic stability. They want that mobility in life, right? And so we know how critically important it is to provide them with the most relevant and meaningful experiences along the way. So to that end, it’s listening to employers.

As a regional comprehensive institution in Southwest Florida, we’ve been blessed with growth. We continue to grow and we continue to see more and more businesses relocating or starting up here. And… The finger has been on the pulse of what can we do to really create that talent pipeline between our university and our regional employers. And in some cases, those employers are actually global employers, multinational employers. And so it’s been all about how can we close those skills gaps that are perceived between the employers and higher education, and how can we implement some nimble and flexible ways of doing that. So that’s really what what helped us to create the model that we’ve put into place at FGCU.

Matt Sterenberg (02:13.428)

One word that I picked up on was perceived skills gap. And I think that’s one of the big questions, which is, do we just need to have better ways to describe what students have learned, their skills and competencies, what they know? And we just need to credential them better so that it’s easy to communicate that information. Or you could look at it the other way and say, how does these efforts towards micro-credentialing actually impact

Kristen Vanselow (02:16.658)

Yes. Yes.

Matt Sterenberg (02:43.778)

The skills that we’re giving students that they’re learning. Like, how does this change the actual programs that we have, the actual learning that happens at the institution? So I want to just, all that to say is, what do you think it was? did you fundamentally change the programs or was it a different way to communicate what you were already doing?

Kristen Vanselow (03:05.462)

That’s another great question. And you what I can share is that I use the word perceived intentionally, because we know that institutions just like FGCU are certainly introducing students to the most important employability and professional and transferable skills. We know that along the way to a bachelor’s degree, students are absolutely taking time to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, better communicators, better writers, more confident in their ability to get up and give a presentation, capable of working in teams, taking on leadership roles. The challenge is in how that gets translated to the employers and within their language.

So that really led us, you we have three different types of microcredentials that we’ve implemented at FGCU to solve three different elements of that question. And the one that we really are excited to see the fruits of the labor come forward is with our transferable skills digital badges. We’ve been dialed in to NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers for a great number of years. We are 27 years young, but in that time we’ve done our best to really be aware of what employers are saying and what employers are looking for from students coming out of higher education. So our team of talented faculty and administrators identified transferable skills as one of those critical areas that we needed to help remove that barrier of communication between a student and what they truly have learned, practiced, mastered, and how they can better share that with employers in a transparent way.

And so we took the eight standard competencies that NACE has established that have been tweaked just with minor changes along the last, I’ll say five years. And we adapted that to 10, but essentially what we’re doing is really helping in two different ways. Well, I’ll say three. One is that we are specifically engaging our faculty and understanding that skills language so that they can help the student understand, yes, this is what critical thinking means. This is the assignment that you’re doing in this class and why it’s important for you to develop your critical thinking skills. And then we take it a step further.

To help that student then know how to describe why that was relevant when they’re addressing a question about problem solving and critical thinking in that interview that they’re going to have in the future. So one of the populations that we’re really working with is to break down those silos between the conversation of employers and higher education and academics would be. How can we be more transparent with students to understand these skills are truly part of their curriculum and that they’re going to have it throughout their entire degree program and they’re going to build upon it as they progress in their degree programs. So that’s one element.

The second is bringing that transparency to the students, helping them understand why employers are looking for them to be able to answer these questions. our president likes to tell a story of when she was, I think she was watching a YouTube video a few years back and they were talking about that skills gap and the perceived skills gap where students are being interviewed for jobs and the employer says, tell me about a time that you learned about critical thinking or you applied critical thinking. The student said, I never took a class in that. So it was like pivotal to say, my gosh, what are we doing wrong? Because we know that we’re creating this culture of critical thinking, if not the most important. know, attribute that we reinforce throughout a higher education.

And so it’s all about how can we get students to understand it and articulate it. So the way that we’ve formulated these transferable skills digital badges is that students are collecting artifacts throughout their entire time at the campus. That could be co-curricular, that could be extracurricular, and that could certainly be within their courses that they’re taking for their degree program. And so we work with them to identify three to five of the best artifacts that they really would put into a portfolio for the purposes of sharing those examples in an interview with a future employer. And so we have a two-part process where students are, they’re picking their very best examples and then they’re reflecting on it. There’s a rubric that guides them, lets them know what that criteria should look like, for it to be a good example of what they’ve done to demonstrate something like critical thinking.

So the student creates a portfolio and then they reflect upon it. And our faculty are engaged in looking at that reflective piece. They’re not regrading work. This is all work that the student has already done, but they’re really evaluating whether or not these are good examples or they could be strengthened in some ways so that the student is looking at the best way to position themselves. And then part two of that process is that the student practices interview. So they either do that like this because we want them to be ready for what the real world looks like today with your first interview potentially being in that distance format. We want them to practice in a mock interview setting. So we will bring employers to our campus to conduct face-to-face speed interviews with our students. And we’ll even do somewhere they could record themselves responding to some prompts so that they can at least get feedback, especially for those distance learners.

And so essentially what we do is have those open-ended questions to say, tell me about a time that. You used critical thinking or that you know you learned about it and you had an example that you could share. And that way our students are able to build that confidence, know that they really do speak the same language as the interviewer. And we’re looking forward to really monitoring that success. That was selected by our faculty as our quality enhancement plan for our reaffirmation for SACCOC accreditation. So it’s something that we just went through that visit. With SACS and we had zero recommendations on this quality enhancement plan. And so we’re really excited about the next four to five years as we roll it out to see how effective it has been. But then there’s that third population that I mentioned, and that’s the employers. And so we really take such, it’s intentional, but it’s meaningful. And it’s because we genuinely want to build those relationships with our employers within the region.

So we are very dialed into the economic development work in our region. We have five counties that we serve here in Southwest Florida. So we make sure that we have representatives that are part of each of those five counties efforts for economic growth and development and sustainability. And then we’re also very connected to our chambers of commerce. And so we really want to be sure that we’re serving the business community well, that we’re aware of what their needs are, that we’re communicating with them about what we’re doing to really strengthen that talent pipeline of our students soon to be graduates that will become their future employees. And so we’ve done such a good job of letting the employers know about this work that they’re hungry to see these badges on students’ records. And they’re hungry to see it on LinkedIn or on their applications. And they keep saying, where are the badges? And it’s really because we’ve been intentional at how we’ve rolled this out to scale it up properly and make sure that we’re getting that feedback, both from the employers and the students along the way. So that’s where I’ll say,

Matt Sterenberg (10:21.198)

Thank

Kristen Vanselow (10:39.474)

I think I addressed part of your question, which is, is it really just not good communication between our different sectors in order to help the student show and demonstrate that they truly do have these transferable skills? And yes, we believe that, and that’s why we put such an emphasis on that initiative.

Matt Sterenberg (11:00.78)

You hit on so many good things there. mean, number one, the amount of times on this podcast that I’ve highlighted how expensive college can be, how much time we spend there, an incredible formative experience for so many people. But then you graduate and you’re like, I know I’ve changed. I know I’ve grown. I actually have a hard time communicating what the difference is, what I really know. And we often don’t have that language and we don’t have a lot of work experience. We don’t know how to apply it. We don’t know how to communicate it. And so the fact that you have these kind of, would call it like wraparound services related to these programs. I think that’s a huge takeaway because it’s kind of a cop out to just be like, we, badge it, you know, and we, don’t really communicate what it actually means for the student and their next educational or professional opportunity. The fact that you’re making sure that they know how to communicate and describe it themselves rather than just saying, oh, we gave you a badge. The metadata is in there. The skills are described in there. It’s like, what do I do with this? When I’m in an interview, I can’t just say, tell us when you worked with a team. Yeah, actually, let me just share my screen. I’ll show you my badge. And then the work that you’re doing with employers.

Kristen Vanselow (12:11.327)

Didn’t you look at my badge? Did you look at my badge?

Matt Sterenberg (12:21.442)

That’s the big question with micro credentials or these alternative credentials. Like no one’s asking for these, but the fact that you are like, that’s the big challenge, right? Is, you know, when I applied online, no one asked for my badge or micro credential, but the work that you’re doing with your regional employers, now they do expect it. And for FGCU, this is becoming a differentiator for you, right? In terms of your brand, let’s just be honest. Like they, they think of you a little bit differently. They expect to see this and now they want it. And it’s going to be a better feedback loop because you’re communicating with the employers. They’re seeing the graduates and the quality of their work when they’re employed. And that’s critical because most employment is regional. And the value of that is you actually can get a better understanding of what the results are of these initiatives that you’ve put in place.

Kristen Vanselow (13:14.076)

Yeah, and I think that’s a really great point. you know, one of the things, you know, one of the other categories of micro credentials that we’ve launched, I really, it’s so fun. It’s fun, it’s innovative, and it’s really a direct response to what the employers have been saying for years. Can you help us? Can you partner with us? Can you help build that volume of alumni that will come work for us, that want to work for us, that want to learn more about our industry, our company. And so, you know, we, one of the first, the first badges that we started, you know, the micro credential is the actual program, right? It’s the curriculum, it’s the learning that we introduced to the student and that we assess. But it’s also then that digital badge is what they get to show at the end to your point. And the metadata is in there because it’ll describe exactly what they had to go through in order to get it. We have never wanted it to just be badging something because they’re already doing it. It is more about the and.

And so we’ve actually even trademarked the phrase, the power of and, micro-credentials and digital badges at FGCU, because it lives outside of our curriculum and it lives outside of our curriculum intentionally. Because number one, faculty do need to own the curriculum. That’s higher education. They are highly qualified and credentialed to teach the areas that they do. They conduct research. They are very dialed in to their networks and their organizations. And so they do bring that broad perspective of learning into the classroom. But the employers hope to have a voice in that too. And so all institutions that I’ve ever been a part of absolutely host advisory boards. They want to hear from employers along the way to ensure that their programs are meeting their needs. But there’s always, you’ve got multiple stakeholders in that room and multiple voices in that room. And so what one employer may say is most important may not be the most important to the employer sitting next to them, even though it may still be important. And so, I think employers are hungry for institutions to help them make sure that students are walking out aware of all of those opportunities. So that we created industry specific micro credentials and those are curriculum aligned.

So remember I said it all lives outside of the curriculum because the micro credential itself comes after students have actually completed a course or series of courses for credit here at the institution. But it’s really the way that we’ve been able to introduce new industry and new curriculum in some cases. And in some cases, it’s an add on so that the student is able to demonstrate that what they learned in the courses they’re taking at FGCU. In terms of those technical skills and specific skills, they’re able to apply in a real world situation that the employer helps define. And you can’t do that in your credit bearing courses. don’t develop curriculum around an employer or an external entity. We develop it around competencies. We develop it around student learning outcomes. And so this has been our way of finding that sweet spot in the middle. And faculty who have been engaged in this have really really enjoyed it. I mean, it’s allowed us to even look at where else can we do this? What other employers can we connect with? What other employers can we bring into the same content area that we’ve already started working on? So if I have time, I’d love to share just two quick examples of this with you. And the first started with the global employer, Arthrex, Incorporated. And Arthrex is a leading medical device industry that happens to have their headquarters here in Collier County in Naples, Florida. And about five, six years ago, they approached our president and approached our vice president, who is now our president, to say, okay, we’ve had this conversation every few years with you.

What can we do to strengthen the talent pipeline between FGCU and our company? We project that we’re going to grow by 100 % in the next five years. And then again, 100 % the five years following that. We are on that trajectory. And the typical response by our institution, and I think this could be typical across others, but I don’t know, maybe some of your guests would agree. They came to us and said, you know, we’re a medical device industry. We create parts to help surgeons treat their patients better. It’s all about reducing recovery time, you know, using innovation to do that. We have all these patents and all these amazing products that we promote throughout the world, but we only employ about 50 alumni from FGCU out of the 2,000, 3,000 employees that we have. They recruit from outside the state of Florida, traditionally, with other institutions where they might have manufacturing plants or facilities and other relationships they’ve been able to build, but not right here in their backyard where their global headquarters are located and where they’ve created this expansive campus where they have everything. They have their own boutique hotel. They have a daycare center. They have a robust cafeteria. They host surgeons from all over the world on a daily basis to come and do education and training on their products. They have innovation where they’re creating these products and they’re designing these products. We kept saying as an institution, well, we have bioengineering. We have… medical technology. We have some of these other degree programs. Should we create a minor? Should we create a medical device industry degree? But that’s not what Arthrex was asking us for. They were saying, we employ across our entire organization. We are looking to employ individuals in video technology. We’re looking to HR, accounting, to work in hospitality.

Matt Sterenberg (19:11.215)

Wherever. Yeah.

Kristen Vanselow (19:17.066)

Everything, right? And so it’s this assumption when you look at an employer in a specific sector that you’re just building that pipeline between like a health program and a hospital system instead of the hospital system hires everyone for everything. You can dub that out. So the response at that time became, well, what can we do outside of the curriculum? What can we do to help introduce your industry to the entire campus?

Matt Sterenberg (19:31.798)

It happens all the time, Kristen. No apologies necessary.

Kristen Vanselow (19:46.63)

And so we started by inviting them to come and meet with our campus, meet with our students, meet with our faculty. And then we said, what about this microcredential idea? And so we actually within our College of Health and Human Services offer a great number of general topics courses related to the medical industry. And there was room to create a new elective course at the undergraduate level that would focus more on the industry. What is it all about? You what are they doing? And so we created an undergraduate three credit hour course, and it’s open to every single student at FGCU who’s looking for this experience. And they take that course, and upon completion of that course, they get the option of pursuing the microcredential. So one component that’s really important about our model is that it’s not a participation trophy. It is something that students have to work very hard for, and they have to put in that additional work. And it’s something that our faculty have to be very vested in because it’s additional assessment beyond the end of the course that they taught.

And so we really, this is so fun, I get excited and I start talking about it too quickly, but we started this course back in 2020 and we had about 20 students enroll in the course. And throughout that class, they actually get some guest speakers that come in from Arthrex to talk about their different divisions and all that they do across the organization. And then, at the end of the semester, any student who qualifies for the microcredential opportunity is invited to participate. So the students actually have to earn a grade of B or better in that course in order to even be able to pursue the microcredential. And there’s a really important reason for this that I’ll tell you about in a second. So students have the opportunity and they’re invited to participate. And in the beginning, we maybe had 12 students out of the 25. OK, I don’t want to say the wrong statistics, but out of the 25, maybe 15 or 18 were eligible, had the grade of B or better. And then maybe about 10 decided, okay, I want this opportunity. I’m gonna go ahead and enroll in the microcredential.

So in the microcredential experience, they have a three-part assessment. The first is that they have to do a very quick recall of critical information they learned in the course related to the industry that is in the form of a multiple choice test. And they’ve got a little bit of time, it’s timed, they do it successfully and they earned a grade of beer better on that assessment, then they move on to part two. And part two is very rigorous, They have to write a 10 to 15 page research paper where they’ve done a full on literature review of the state of patient care. They have to pick one of the products that’s come to market or coming to market with Arthrex and they have to research, you know, what historically… was used in this field in order to treat patients. And why is this innovation going to improve and be a better result? And they have to conduct that research paper. Why? Well, Arthrex told us it’s really important to us that our professional staff understand the value of research. They are able to articulate it. They’re able to understand the why we do what we do and the culture, why we will always be striving for continuous improvement and helping doctors treat their patients better. That’s actually their mission statement. And I think I’ve said it three times now. And then they want them to be able to organize their thoughts in a very academic way, quite honestly. And so after that assessment is graded by faculty, and they do have a rubric that’s been adjusted over the iterations of the course, the students who are in the B are better on the paper are then invited for the third part. And that is to come and give an oral presentation to a group of leaders from the Arthrex Corporation, division heads, vice presidents, sometimes the CEO and president himself will pop in to listen to the presentations. And then we also have administrators and faculty from FGCU that attend those presentations.

And over the years, as we’ve done this since 2020, more and more of their peers that they might work with in the future come in and listen to the presentations. So it can be a pretty grueling process because you come in and there’s this room full of professionals that is going to listen to your presentation. And so the students give their presentation. Everyone in the room has the opportunity to provide feedback on a rubric. And the students who come out on top will earn that digital badge. So why would a student want to do this? Why would a student take the time to write a research paper after their class is done and the grade has already been received? Because Arthrex will guarantee them an interview. And especially in this day and age where so many individuals are, for lack of a better term, weeded out of that process because of AI and other advancements in the human resources world, our students are earning that golden ticket. They’re earning that opportunity for the interview even if… they wouldn’t have been selected if they had just gone ahead and applied straight out of the university. And that could be for an internship, and that could be for a future position that they meet the criteria for. So they’re not guaranteed a job, but they are absolutely guaranteed an interview. And the students see the ROI. The employer sees the ROI.

The amount of time that they invest in this relationship with our university. It’s hard for other employers to make that same type of a commitment. When you have your leadership team participating in conversations with faculty for months and months and months, and then reviewing and improving every semester, that’s a lot of time. But they absolutely are dedicated to that. And we even have some additional microcredentials that have stemmed off from that, that are focused in on some of their more unique roles, like professional sales and some others that are coming down the line in the future. Because they see how successful this has been. And what I will tell you, Matt, as I think the most impactful outcome of this work, remember how many students I said were alumni were working for them about five years ago? 50. There are over 600 FGCU alumni working for them now five years later. Now, those 600 students not earn the microcredential or the digital badge. You know, that has been a much smaller number.

Matt Sterenberg (25:57.442)

Was it 50?

Kristen Vanselow (26:12.762)

But we’ve built that trusted relationship with our threats. They know the quality of the students that are coming through our university because we gave them a stronger and more transparent glimpse into that. And we would do that for any of our regional employers, you know, to build that trust and that opportunity for our students. So I know I was going to share two examples. That was a really long example. And I don’t need to share a second one, but we have gone down this same pathway with Hertz global. We’ve done this with Gartner and we’ve been starting to work with some other employers for some new exciting opportunities.

Matt Sterenberg (26:48.93)

Well, the thing that stuck out to me is, two things. Number one, that it’s not just a participation trophy. And I think that is the challenge with badging. We have to have trust in it. Employers have to have trust in it. has to mean something. And the fact that it is, has quality and rigor. That’s, that’s the value, right? When you receive this, I trust that you know, the things that I need you to know.

Kristen Vanselow (27:04.765)

Yes.

Matt Sterenberg (27:18.86)

Like so often we’re like badge everything and there’s number one, no economy of information because it’s like, I’ve got 63 badges. Which one do you want to see? They become stickers. What you’re doing is you’re actually building trust between the regional employers. You’re getting feedback and it’s the students understand that too, that they have to work for it. And then also the process of getting the badge is its own value, right? So when it is rigorous, it’s like the badge is just, you know, the ceremonial aspect of this. I did so much work along the way and I know what to expect when I go through this program. And I know it’s going to be a challenge. Like that to me is a huge value and something that I think we all need to think about with these micro credentials and badges. The other thing that I wanted to highlight is you know, think there’s probably people out there that are, let’s call them purists, like higher ed purists that are like, you know, working with these employers, like we don’t work for them. We’re an institution. We want to do our own thing. It’s not our job to prepare students for their specific industry. You know what I mean? And I think there’s a challenge out there that people think these short term or shorter form credentials.

Kristen Vanselow (28:35.826)

Right.

Matt Sterenberg (28:44.052)

Are going to replace the degree or something like that, or that there’s maybe just a theory out there that they don’t, they want to push against it, if that makes sense. How have you dealt with that with faculty of like, how do we make sure that what we’re doing is not completely specific to an industry, even though we want our students to be employed there? I think that is kind of, if you polled a number of faculty members, they’d be like, I don’t want to change my whole curriculum for

Kristen Vanselow (28:55.058)

It does.

Matt Sterenberg (29:13.87)

For one industry, if that makes sense.

Kristen Vanselow (29:15.152)

Exactly. No, and that’s, mean, it’s absolutely relevant and an important part of the conversation because we certainly have had those conversations with and amongst our faculty. And it’s meeting in the middle. This has been our way of meeting in the middle. So I’ll give you an example. And it took us time to get here and we’re still refining it. But we created this same model with professional sales.

And so we have a great professional sales minor and concentration within our marketing degree here at the undergraduate level and amazing, highly qualified and successful faculty who teach that curriculum. They absolutely teach to the point that students are ready to walk in and give that elevator pitch and be tremendous sales professionals when they graduate from our program. But we know that every student would benefit from learning the sales aspect. I every one of us at some point in our lives is using skills and attributes related to sales, whether that’s for our professional opportunities, whether that’s as a representative of a university or representative of a company. And so it’s very important to be able to have that convincing argument and back it up with research and statistics. So our faculty, it took us probably close to a year for our faculty to be confident and comfortable that they could continue teaching the classes exactly how they wanted to. But our partner, Gartner, who’s a leader in this space, said, you know, we have specific acumen. We have, you know, we have specific strategies that we want our future employers to know. And we would love for your students to be exposed to that. And so it was all about it’s not, doesn’t have to be done that way in the curriculum at all. It’s the microcredential where we’re going to do that.

So you continue to teach the theory. You continue to teach across the entire area of your discipline. But then that micro-credential becomes the way that you can make it employer-specific. Hold on one second. OK, stop.

I had to tell Google to stop. So that’s where the microcredential comes in. And again, that’s why we are like, this is the power of and. This is outside of our curriculum. And it’s the way that our employer can see that we value what they’re asking for. We value that they want to see students apply it in this way. And we value that they want the student to learn more about their organization. They want the student to understand that, you’ve learned it a certain way. And now we know how you’ve learned it.

But we want you to apply it in this way. And we want to give you the case study. And we want to give you the product that we want you to sell. And we want you to research that product for us. And then we want you to do it using the acumen and using the strategies that we would expect of you if you were in this role working for our company. And so that’s where we’re giving students that safe place to practice. And we’re giving that employer a safe place to give us that feedback so that we can continue to tweak that and make that experience more meaningful for our students.

And I really do believe that the overarching outcome is that faculty are becoming more aware because they’re involved in these conversations directly with employers and not just in those advisory committee meetings where, yes, they have many voices around the table saying some similar things, but this is an opportunity to do that where you’re really hearing specifically how students are going to use the skill once they’re employed. And I can’t imagine a faculty member who doesn’t want their students to be successful.

I can’t imagine a faculty member who wouldn’t say, I’m learning something here too. And so there is a way for me to maybe make some tweaks to what I’m doing in the classroom. Or maybe it just reinforces, we’re doing a really good job in this program and now we have another way of validating that as well. So it helps us as we help our students.

Matt Sterenberg (33:10.446)

Kristen, this has been an awesome conversation and just learning about your program. I think a lot of people are going to resonate with some of the challenges that you’ve had, the conversations you’ve had and be motivated to really think about what they’re doing in their programs. I think my takeaway is also just start small. know, like who is that regional employer that you want to connect with? Have the conversations with them. This is a lot of hard work.

Kristen Vanselow (33:33.16)

Yes.

Kristen Vanselow (33:36.638)

20%.

Matt Sterenberg (33:40.07)

And I don’t think there are easy solutions and it’s going to be unique to each institution. But is there anything that you want to highlight? Anything I should have asked you before we wrap?

Kristen Vanselow (33:43.262)

Right.

Kristen Vanselow (33:53.48)

Well, the only thing I’ll share with you is that we’re employing the same model when it comes to continuing education and workforce and professional development. So we are not taking the approach of, we know exactly how to teach customer service skills. We know exactly how to teach some of these professional skills. Let us create a program and bring it out to you, employer X, so that we can help fulfill your workforce needs. So we employ that very same model where we don’t develop a program unless the employer is specifically asking for it.

We don’t want programming that may meet 80 % of the needs of an employer. We want it to meet 100 % of the needs of an employer. And what we’re seeing happen because of this model that we’ve created is that synergy across all three types of micro-credentials. Because once we’ve created something with an employer that’s really to help upskill or reskill their current staff, they want FGCU students to start getting that while they’re still here at FGCU. And so they see value in opening it up, not just…

For what that first purpose was, but encouraging students to then take a version of that. And it’s even gone further where we can open this up to aspiring high school graduates who might wanna enter the workforce right away. And in some of these more introductory level continuing ed micro credentials that we’ve created.

That’s a talent pipeline that can really be created between the employer and our entire K through 12 system as well. And so that’s some of the exciting work is just seeing where we can take those competencies and skills and really see how they can apply to a variety of audiences and really help with regional workforce needs. The other thing I’ll mention to you is that there are really great resources that many of our colleagues across the country and the globe have been working feverishly to put together because this is a rapidly growing movement.

And the conversation around quality and consistency is certainly a hot topic. And we’ve had the pleasure of engaging in a number of those conversations with different organizations. So one in particular is credential as you go. And that has been just so meaningful to see how other institutions are doing this, because it will never be one size fits all. It’s going to be hard for employers to understand the differences in what we’re all doing. And then there’s even others outside of higher education, of course, that are badging things and badging those opportunities. So it’s important to share what your definitions are and to share what your model is and why it’s unique and why it’s really going to fulfill those workforce needs. The other resources right now, the UPSIA Organization for Professional and Continuing Education and Online Learning, they’ve created a peer network of U2B, so University to Business Leaders, to talk about the way that these things are being done. So one of the conversations I was able to join them for recently had to do with finding your anchor tenant. And that speaks exactly to what you just said. If you find that one employer that is well respected and recognized within your region or your community, and you start small with that one employer, the other employers see the value of how you’re responding and they have that anchor tenant. We all know that if you don’t have a really great grocery store and a strip mall, people might not stop there. And so figure out and then make every storefront available to your partners, big and small. We really take time to engage with our small business community as well. And how can you network with small business development centers in your region in order to get that work out there?

And then it’s also the collaborative components. We are so fortunate in Southwest Florida. We have an amazing community collective called The Collaboratory, and they’ve created the Future Makers Coalition, which has grown to be more than 250 individuals representing more than 150 organizations, both in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. And we come together and have been for over a decade to talk about the systemic needs and changes within our region.

So we’re all part of those conversations. where you may or may not have access to that kind of a collective conversation, it’s time to break down those silos and really have those conversations and bring your partners, bring all your educational partners, all of your employer partners together, and then identify where does it best fit as we look at these workforce solutions across the spectrum and within every sector that’s important. So those are the things that I think are really important and that have been so impactful for us.

Matt Sterenberg (38:28.398)

Kristen, I learned a lot and here at Instructure, we’re very happy to partner with you in some of this work and you’ve just put in so much time and effort and I think there’s a lot to learn. So really appreciate you joining me. I’ll put some links in the description of this episode to some of the organizations and links to a little bit more of your story so that people can check it out. But really appreciate you joining me and sharing a little bit more about what you’re doing in the space.

Kristen Vanselow (38:44.7)

Okay, great.

There’s always more to learn.