Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: How farming is attracting unlikely students.

02: Roadside Attractions: A mixed story on rural transfers.

01: Postcards

John Pressell been incarcerated for half his life, with intermittent stints that began when he dropped out of high school in 11th grade.

"I used to always look at education like, “Oh, I don't need it," the 44-year-old says. As a teen, John felt like he was making plenty of money on the streets while living what he describes as “a criminal life.”

Two years ago, everything changed. After being released following a decade in state prison, John connected with Reform Merced, a California nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated individuals rebuild their lives.

They placed him at their recently opened organic farm, where he now tends bell peppers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and seasonal crops.

"I enjoy working out around the field, I enjoy driving the tractor and I enjoy planting food," John says. "It's something that can actually stay with me in the future. Something to be proud of, where I can see people go to a grocery store, and think, ‘look, I grew that.’"

An Unexpected Student

Merced College is one of six community colleges that have received $42 million in state and federal grants to create free competency-based programs for agricultural technologies across California’s Central Valley.

"When we first thought about this program, it was designed traditionally for the more traditional farm laborer and upscaling them for the workforce," says Cody Jacobson, Merced’s director of ag innovation.

However, John represents somebody program leaders didn't initially anticipate.

He's one of a dozen or so formerly incarcerated students from Restore Merced who've enrolled in the AgTEC program, which allows students to work at their own pace through 14 skill areas, from digital literacy to equipment operation.

The partnership emerged when Restore Merced's director reached out to explore educational opportunities for their workers, and it’s flourished since.

"It turns out that what they're doing with Restore Merced is a great fit for what we're doing. And these individuals who are trying to get their lives back on track, they're eager to learn."

Starting from Zero

For John, the program began with a fundamental challenge: he had little experience using computers.

He wasn’t alone.

"In that first cohort of 14 students, probably 10 or 12 of them had never even touched a computer before," recalls instructor Karl Montague. "We were having to tell them how to turn the computer on. We were having to tell them, this is what we call a mouse."

That reality forced Merced to rethink its approach. While the program provided funding for computers, the instructors quickly realized that digital literacy was the foundational skill for the mostly online-based, self-paced course.

After all, if students couldn’t handle the basics of using a computer, how could they hope to learn through the program’s digital platform?

Instead of group orientations, support coordinator Nang Thao now onboards students individually, personally making sure they fully understand how to access their online modules.

“It was like herding cats because every single person had no idea what they were doing,” Jacobson said. “So that’s when we said time out, our onboarding process is going to change tremendously, and be much more 1-on-1 based.”

Beyond the Original Vision

It’s a far cry from how instructors envisioned the program. The curriculum was initially bold, futuristic, ambitious.

The marketing promised a new kind of farm worker, capable of operating drones, sensors, and tech-heavy tractors.

“A lot of our faculty thought that industry wanted workers to fill specific needs. That they needed a student who could diagnose the ins and outs of a specific type of electric controller, for example,” Jacobson says.

But when Jacobson and his team reached out to employers, the request was very different.

“Instead, it was like: “We just need to make sure that if something is broken, the employees can turn the equipment off safely. That they know how to communicate with a foreman, how to formulate an email, and operate basic technology.”

In addition to teaching students how to navigate the online course platform, the digital literacy component covers those basics.

And while the course is self-paced, Thao is checking their online progress on a biweekly basis, and personally texts students reminders to keep them on track.

“I would forget, but she was always texting me, and it helped,” John says.

Flexibility by Design

The program's competency-based structure allows John to balance coursework with his full-time farm job with Restore Merced, as well as his family responsibilities (he has four children and a granddaughter in the Merced area).

"Sometimes when I get off of work, I'm tired where I don't even want to like open up the computer," John admits. "But I have to... Some days are harder than others, but I'm going to keep with it."

Of the 60 students in the program’s first year at Merced, less than half are active or retired farm workers. Thao thinks that part of the challenge is convincing them they have time to complete the program while still working.

"A lot of our students, they do work, right? So for them, it’s about explaining that they can put in early hours on, say, a Saturday morning, before they go out to their work day,” Thao says.

She reminds them of the flexibility of the online program, and it’s self-paced nature. Open office hours and assessments with the instructor are available between 2 to 6 pm Monday through Thursday, which allows active farm workers to come after their morning shifts.

"We remain flexible with them,” says instructor Karl Montague, who is willing to make times work to fit his students’ schedules.

Looking Forward

At Restore Merced, John has already proven himself as a dedicated worker, earning a full-time job and overtime pay. The certificate he's working toward at Merced College, typically completed within six months to two years, could open even more new doors.

"I hope to have people recognize this accomplishment and my competencies, to where they move me up, so that I can be the one working as a supervisor, checking on equipment, that sort of thing.”

Montague is seeing John’s progress match his ambition. "He's learning skills that he can now apply back to that farm. We love having students that want to learn, want to better themselves."

"I never thought I would see myself doing this," John reflects. "But I like doing it. I love doing it, actually."

02: Roadside Attractions

• Rural health care education gets a boost in Tennessee. Grants of up to $2 million have been awarded to 20 higher ed institutions across the state, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced this week.

• Rural hospital reopening. A $150 million state investment will go towards reopening a rural hospital in North Carolina’s Martin County, reports Brianna Atkinson, our higher-ed reporter at partner WUNC. The University of North Carolina system had previously approved funds to go toward the hospital’s reopening, in the hopes of addressing a health care desert.

• Rural transfers see mixed progress. For Inside Higher Ed, Gerardo de los Santos argues that lawmakers should recognize rurality as a key lens for evaluating transfer outcomes.

  • He cites a complicated picture, in which rural community colleges experienced a 12% increase in transfers to 4-year institutions in 2023, while other reports show low-income learners from Texas to California are seeing some of the lowest transfer rates in the country.

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