Albert Lewis, Jr.: A Learner-Centered Approach to Higher Ed

Work Forces

Dr. Albert Lewis, Jr. is the Chief of Staff and Executive Vice President at Northwest State Community College. Al shares his unique journey into the field and his innovative approach to aligning institutional strategies with student, community, and workforce needs. He discusses the challenges community colleges face in a post-COVID world, including maintaining relevance amidst industry certifications and the abrupt shift to online learning. Al also delves into his efforts at expanding apprenticeship programs, opening a new campus, and leveraging data analytics to better support student success. Throughout the conversation, his customer-centric mindset shines through, emphasizing the importance of understanding and serving the diverse needs of all stakeholders in the education-to-career pipeline.

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Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine. And we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Let's dive in.

Julian Alssid: On today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Albert Lewis, Jr., an educational leader with extensive contributions to the fields of higher education and workforce development. Al currently serves as chief of staff and executive vice president at Northwest State Community College in Ohio. Throughout his career, he spearheaded transformative initiatives at several institutions, including expanding customized training programs, developing innovative career pathways, securing substantial institutional funding, and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Al's been instrumental in leading multiple institutions in the development of innovative workforce development divisions, programs, and industry partnerships. It goes without saying that he has left a lasting impact on the institutions he's served and the students he's mentored. Al holds advanced degrees, including a doctorate in education, specializing in teaching and learning, an MS in industrial and organizational psychology, and an M.Ed in education administration. Welcome to the podcast today, Al.

Albert Lewis: Thank you. Good to be here.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thanks so much for joining us today, Al. It's such a pleasure to have the chance to speak with you. So as we get going, can you please share a bit about your background and how you approach your work?

Albert: Sure. You know, I came into higher education in a nonconventional way, but it's probably more conventional now than ever. I started a career in broadcasting. That was my initial career. I spent about seven years in the broadcast industry to make a change and I became an entrepreneur. I published a drug education newspaper for about seven, eight years that went into about 150 school systems in two states. As I closed my business down, because I saw trends changing, I started looking for a job and I answered a job ad for Cuyahoga Community College in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and just looked at it as a job. It was for a sales rep. I said, well, I can sell. Feel like I can sell anything. So I applied and got the job. And I came to Cuyahoga Community College, which is also known as TriI-C, basically looking for a job, but ended up finding my calling as a higher education professional. And what really, I think, cemented my reason for being in community colleges is I had a chance to work with students who were SNAP recipients and also formerly incarcerated people, helping them to learn the skills that would enable them to get a job. So, get off SNAP benefits, not go back into jail. And to me, that was like so powerful to me. It was like, it's like the, you know, the epitome of the American dream. You know, community colleges meeting you where are and then taking you to where you want to go. And so from that perspective, I was hooked. So in terms of how I approach my work, it's really interesting. I was a very successful sales rep and I had a very successful business, and what made both of those successful for me was I took the approach of how do I best serve my customer? And so I really kind of clued in on what the customer needs were, and provided the solutions that made sense. And so that's really the approach I've taken in the higher ed field is, you know, what are the needs of the community? What are the needs of students? What are the needs of the workforce? And simply pull people together to address those needs in a way that helps students move forward in their careers, for organizations to get the talent that they're looking for, and for the community to be better off by having employed folks ready and able for work. So that's kind of how I operate.

Julian: It's funny that talking about sort of serving customer is, it really stands out to me at least, you're leading with that. And I think that, you know, for so many of us, a lot of this work has kind of come more the kind of like, you know, we're the experts, we're the academics, we're imparting knowledge. And it's interesting to me that you come at it from this very sort of end user perspective.

Albert: Well, I think there has to be a balance, right? I mean, when you think about a student, a student comes to us looking for an opportunity to grow educationally. You know, our job is to, as an institution, is to have the pathway…first of all, identify what they're interested in doing and then align their interests with the pathways that we have at the college that will afford them the opportunity to move into a career that they want. But it all begins with what that student is looking for. I mean every school you go to has a plethora of academic options but they're not, they don't fit for everybody and I think the key to success for the institution as well as the student is to identify that best fit and allow them to then pursue that course of action.

Julian: So when did you first take that job with Tri-C by the way?

Albert: Tri-C is an interesting story. I was there on three different occasions. So I started in ‘97, stayed for two years, and then I left. Came back after I was downsized from another company and came back for another year stint under a grants department and when the money ran out I left again, and I was gone for probably about three years and I came back the last time and I stuck and I stuck for six years. So I stayed from, my longest stint was from 2006 to 2012 where I was the executive director of community and workforce training and director of business development.

Julian: So your time in the community college world dates pretty far back now. So given your years of experience, what have you seen as the challenges for community colleges historically, and particularly now in the post-COVID environment.

Albert: I think from an educational perspective, I would say relevance. The COVID situation really challenged the relevance of community colleges in a number of different ways. When I was at Bellevue College, which was on the West Coast, Pacific Northwest, I was in the backyard of all the IT giants, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and they were starting to come out with their own certifications and ways of qualifying people. And it was getting to a point where people, they were, they actually got to the point where they were saying you don't need a bachelor, baccalaureate degree. We will look at your certifications and if you've got this specific set of certifications that identify or validate a skill set, you know, we will be looking to hire you. And so that was a really huge change for, I think, for community colleges and colleges in general. When companies started going away from the need to having the baccalaureate degree and then even the associate degree but looking more toward certifications. I think another challenge that happened with the COVID-19 was we switched to online learning, and for many community colleges we weren't ready for that. Now you had people who were teaching and they were you know die-hard. I got to be face-to-face, no interest in working online. And then within a matter of a week or two you're now totally online, but also totally in many ways totally unprepared to facilitate an online course along with the learning artifacts and learning I guess protocols that go along with online learning. So that created quite a challenge, I think, for many schools. And I think as a result of that, you had many students who felt the same way. They were signing up for a on-the-ground class and did not feel comfortable taking an online class. And so I think from both sides, you had a little strain going on to the point where there were some schools that lost enrollment as a result of it. Now, one of the benefits, I think, for K-12, at least in our area, was that since a lot of the K-12 were going remote, well that allowed them in some cases to be able to take college courses because if I'm going to go remote, I may as well go ahead and take the college course and get credit for the college course and the high school courses at the same time because we're going to be remote so why not do that. So I think there were some ancillary benefits for some of the K-12 depending on what area of the country you were in.

Kaitlin: It's really interesting to think about the impacts on that time period for K-12, higher ed, and schools that were already perhaps more focused on online learning and those that had never experienced that shift before and trying to do that kind of on the fly and very rapidly, there's just myriad complexities that emerge there. I'm curious, you mentioned relevance being a key piece of your work and how you think about remaining relevant. What are your current efforts at Northwest State Community College that are focused on remaining current both with the changing needs of industry but also just you know the changing world of education and work?

Albert: I think one of the things that we're doing is we're opening a new campus, which is about roughly an hour from where we're located now. We are in what's considered a rural area of Ohio. So our nearest major city is Toledo, Ohio, which is about 45 to 50 minutes to the northeast of us. And so literally our school is located right next to a cornfield. And so one of the things that we've been challenged with is increasing our traditional and non-traditional enrollment. And so we had an area of the county that we received about 6% of our students from, but that part of the county represented 25% of the population. And so we were not serving that community very well. So a decision was made that we need to acquire a building or build a building in that area and have a branch campus there. So that's I think our number one goal right now in terms of increasing enrollment is to get that campus up and running. Obviously, with that being said, there have been challenges around construction and construction costs because of what happened with COVID. There have been several delays in being able to get equipment that we need to have, but we're continuing to work through those. We actually have a temporary location right now that we're working through in terms of being able to offer some classes down there. In addition to that, we've actually solidified our reputation in the apprenticeship area. We have several apprenticeships with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers throughout the entire state of Ohio. And we've done very, very well with that. And also we've actually been able to replicate that with several businesses locally, creating apprenticeship opportunities with some of our neighboring businesses and industry partners here locally. So it's been a real commitment to connecting our students to the workforce in different ways. And the other thing we're doing too, is we're actually looking at ways to identify, looking at auto credentialing. We have students that will complete a degree or certificate but never apply for graduation. Well when that happens we don't get credit for it and nor does a student get credit for it. So we're looking at ways to credential students who’ve earned the credential in ways so that they can have something on their resume and in their portfolio. This way they can say I completed a certificate or I completed an associate degree. So we are looking to create those opportunities as well as reverse transfer. In other words, you leave us and go to your four-year school, well some of the courses that you complete there would meet the requirements for you to have an associate degree. And I think that anytime you can demonstrate on your resume and on your portfolio that you've completed something, that says a lot about who you are as an individual, the educational path you've taken. It also gives an employer another reason to kind of look at your resume because you've taken a number of steps to get to where you are.

Kaitlin: Absolutely. I'm curious to know, I have many, I guess, questions based on that response, but one of them that sticks out to me is your work around apprenticeships. It seems like there's so much movement in that direction right now nationally. And I'm curious to know, what does it look like to build, kind of from the ground up, those apprenticeships with different companies, businesses, and what are some of the successes and challenges you face?

Albert: We've been very fortunate in that we actually are able to create apprenticeships. We are actually designated by the state of Ohio as an entity that can create apprenticeship programs. And so with that being said, we can actually customize apprenticeship programs for companies. Now there are certain rules that have to be in place. For instance, it has to be wage escalation after a certain period of time. There has to be documentation of mentoring. There has to be documentation of training. So there's a number of requirements that we have to meet, but what we do is we make it easy for the employer. Instead of the employer having to keep track of all that, we keep track of all that, we keep track of all that for them. So we make it easy for them to have the student or their employees be part of the apprenticeship program because we're going to handle all the paperwork. That's the part they don't care about. They don't want to deal with. However, they do recognize the value of having a well-trained employee. And for that, they benefit and we benefit as well making it happen. But we are well positioned to handle that paperwork. We've got a team that's expert at handling apprenticeship programs and the nuances that go with that.

Julian: And AL, just sticking on the topic of apprenticeships for a moment. You mentioned that you're developing apprenticeships and offering apprenticeships statewide. How are you able to do that?

Albert: Well typically what's happened is we will have an organization contact us and ask us if we would be open to working with them in an apprenticeship program. Typically we've done a really really good job from a customer service standpoint in terms of paying attention to the organization, having a conversation with the organization. What we do is we build what we call great relationships with these entities. You know, these students are earning college credit, you know, as they're going through their apprenticeship program. So it's not a non-credit situation. It's a, they're, they're receiving roughly about 36 credits, and we've had instances where students have actually achieved an associate degree along with their journeyman certification at the same time. You know, which we encourage them to do because you might get tired of climbing poles at some point in time and want to move into supervision. Well that degree allows you to that gives you a leg up on the person that's also climbing those poles as well. And so once again we encourage them to to move forward with getting their degree and some have done that. We've also been in talks with some of the apprenticeship programs who actually are looking potentially making it part of their program the associate degree part of their program. So we're still exploring how that might look as we move forward. But primarily the reason we have so many apprentices is because we make it easy for them to serve their constituents and we provide the appropriate credit for what they do.

Kaitlin: Well, I feel like such a key piece of it, it's funny we're circling back to the concept of how to best serve a customer, right? So much it sounds like of what you're doing is really making the lift easier on employers and really taking a lot off their plates.

Albert: We think about what we do and I think that this is part of, you know, I think the re-imaging of higher ed is we, you know, people, it's almost sacrilegious to think of students as customers, right? But the reality is they are our customers. I would love for us to take the same approach that Amazon and some of the higher end IT companies approach their customers. In other words, you know, they do a lot of data mining. They understand the nuances of their customers. They know how to bring products to them that they potentially might like. They use predictive analytics. You know, I would love to see more of that coming into higher ed because we certainly have the data about all our students. And so certainly if we leverage machine learning, we probably can figure out ways to help retain more students, but also graduate more students, right? Hypothetically, if we had a persona for a student and every student is outfitted in a cohort kind of model for lack of a better way, and if a student starts to deviate from what is prescribed as the optimal pathway, there's a warning flag that goes up somewhere in our system. I say, hey, this person, they're taking the courses outside of the prescribed thing, which could elongate their time at the institution. That's kind of how I think about the opportunity to predict their analytics, because now they're getting a call from their advisor, saying, hey, we saw you signed up for this class. This is not part of your prescribed program, and it is going to cause you to maybe stay an extra semester or something like that. You know, then we can have the conversation and understand why the student is making that choice. We're not certainly not going to deny it. They may have a legitimate reason for taking that for something that we may not know about, but at least we'd have an opportunity to counsel a student and say, hey, listen, this is going to take you off track and it could lend you to being here a little longer than you might want to. You know? So once again, in my head we need to kind of look at those tools, right, that are used in private sector and see how we can basically help better support our students.

Kaitlin: Absolutely. And to that point, I guess I'm wondering, there's so much potential for use with of those private sector tools. And I think there is more and more movement in the higher ed space around how do we think about learners as customers or clients in the education we're providing. What are the barriers that you feel like you're facing as you're looking to accomplish your goals and as you're thinking about expanding apprenticeships or expanding a new campus? I know you mentioned you know some of the post COVID-19 challenges associated with construction, but like you know what are you what are you facing?

Albert: Well, I think the external challenge is the perception of the value of education now. You know there's a truly truly a backlash toward education because obviously with unemployment being very low across the country, people feel like they're working and they're good right? They don't want to incur lots of debt. They don't want to take out loans. And they think that in many cases they can get a better job without the college if I just get this cert or that cert. And the truth of the matter is, in some cases, yeah, you probably could get a better job and make more money without college, depending on where you live, depending on what industries are available. But what I say is college gives people options that they normally don't have. And the other piece too is, you know, you have a lot of people and I call these jobs survival jobs, where they're making 16 bucks an hour, right? And they get an opportunity to go from another company that'll go, oh, I can make two bucks an hour more there. Well, then they realize that that two bucks an hour really didn't move the needle very much, right? And so you get people that are kind of caught in that circle of getting, you know, getting that next job, making just a little bit more that on paper looks good, but at the end of the day, it's not really moving them in a way that's drastic. And I think that's where education really comes in because education can move the needle in a big way. You know, when you look at the stats of high school versus associate degree versus some college versus bachelor's degree, it just grows incrementally as you go through that process. But once again, those barriers are still, a lot of it's perception. You know, the economy right now appears to be good, which it is, but once again, we're still talking about those lower wage opportunities that people get into not recognizing that you know for a year or two of college you can go from 16 to 25 dollars an hour. Now you're making a dent. Now you're getting to living wage, And if I'm not mistaken I believe the Georgetown Center for Workforce Education puts a living wage at around 17-18 dollars an hour. So if you're not making 17-18 dollars an hour then you're not really at a living wage and even at 17-18 dollars an hour what really can you do with that? I mean, depending on, once again, depending on where you live, you're probably possibly still living with your parents or possibly in a one-bedroom apartment or you're in an apartment with roommates, you know, how do you really make that next step in your life in terms of being able to, you know, get a family, have children, and all, buy a home, and buy the kind of car you want, you know. That's the challenge, you know, short-term versus long-term for many people.

Julian: Well, the community colleges are such a key lynchpin in making that link from the sort of relatively dead end to the family sustaining wage.

Albert: Absolutely. You know, when you think about it, you know, we got students that have come through our doors and many community colleges, though they came in here, you know, 18, 19, they leave at 20, 21, and they're walking into a job making 25, $30 an hour because they've got a nice skill. A welder, you know, they're a certified welder, or they've got an associate degree in mechatronics, and they're making $60, $70,000 a year, you know. And if they want to go back to school, you know, then they have the opportunity to go back school through their employer being have their employer pay for their baccalaureate degree because one of the things we want to see students do is continue their education because they may not want to do what they're doing right now 20 years from now, and and I think that what education does is it gives you options it gives you plenty of options to make it to make change because you've got that piece of paper that says you've got X number of skills you got X number skill sets that could be transferred in other areas.

Julian: Based on your lessons learned now, what are practical steps our audience can take to become forces in the future of work and learning?

Albert: I think it goes back to where I started. First and foremost, understand your student needs, understand the workforce needs, understand the community needs, and then align your institution strategically to address those needs from top to bottom. And that's sometimes very hard because sometimes you get faculty that doesn't value workforce, and sometimes you get workforce that doesn't value faculty. You know so you got to break down those silos within the institution and recognize that everything we do is geared toward helping someone find a job. Whether if they're transferring to a four-year institution at the end of that rainbow is what, a job. If they're coming here for two years at the end of that rainbow a job. You know so at the end of the day we are prepping students for the world to work you know and there's a contribution that the liberal arts side makes to and and the contribution that the technical side makes to it. And both are equally as important. You know, it should not be either or, it should be and and both in order to move the institution forward. So I think, you know, from once again, from my perspective, understanding student needs, understanding community needs, and understanding the workforce needs are really the keys, I think, to to moving the needle in terms of getting students ready for the world of work.

Kaitlin: That sounds like that's a very holistic way of responding to that question, especially for our audience, right? Like, think about all of the players involved and align your strategy accordingly.

Albert: Easier said than done.

Kaitlin: Exactly.

Julian: No, but it's what it's all about. It's what it's all about.

Kaitlin: That's right. So as we wrap up our conversation today, Al, how can our listeners learn more about what you're doing at Northwest State Community College and how can they continue to follow your work?

Albert: I'm on LinkedIn as Albert Lewis Jr. Dr. Albert Lewis Jr. Also I can be reached at my email address which is [e-mail] or you can call me 216-338-4240. Happy to have the conversation. I'm always in conversation with colleagues across the country because we're all trying to figure it out. You know best practices, replicating best practices. Looking for new ideas, because there's more than one way to skin a cat and I'm not afraid to try any of them. Because at the end of the day it's about learning and then iterating, because there's no, you know, because what you did today might not work tomorrow. You know, so you constantly have to keep a pulse on what's going on with your students, what's going on in your community, what's going on with the workforce. Because things are shifting quicker than we've ever seen them before in history of man.

Kaitlin: Absolutely.

Julian: Here, here.

Kaitlin: Well, thank you so much for your time today, Al. We really appreciate everything you've shared with us today. And we take away many lessons from this conversation.

Albert: Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Julian: Really appreciate it, Al. Thank you so much.

Kaitlin: Thank you. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. Work Forces is available on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Spotify. We hope you will subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends. If you have interest in sponsoring this podcast, please contact us through the podcast notes.