Welcome to Mile Markers, a twice-a-month newsletter about rural higher education.

As I continue to develop my approach for this newsletter and build community around rural higher education stories, I’ve been lucky to have some great conversations lately. And I’m super excited to start talking to folks in person as I hit the road next week!

A couple weeks ago, I caught up with Andrew Koricich who is the principal investigator of the Rural Talent, Development and Attraction Lab. 

Starting in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Montana, the Rural Talent Lab plans to establish new pathways for middle-skills credentials – like associate degrees or certificates – that are responsive to what the rural communities in those states need.

To do this, the team has been conducting community listening tours throughout May and June. With three to four stops in each state, the team is hosting town halls with area college leaders, superintendents, chambers of commerce, economic or workforce development groups and others. They are also doing public opinion surveying across the states.

This approach, which The Daily Yonder wrote about when the project launched last year, appealed to me because it aligned with what a lot of you were sharing through the survey and our early conversations: We need to make sure we are recognizing that rural places are not a monolith, and one solution will not fit all.

That’s why I’m excited to share that I will be following along during the last community listening tour in Montana June 15-18.

I explain a little more about the trip in the video above, but so far I know the main stops will be Colstrip, Glasgow, West Glacier, Hungry Horse and Columbia Falls. Since I won’t be writing to you again until after the tour, you can follow the Open Campus Instagram for updates in the meantime.

If you have any questions or suggestions for me as I make my way through the state with the Rural Talent Lab team, please let me know. 

This initiative is funded by a four-year $7.2 million grant from Ascendium Education Group, which is also a supporter of Open Campus.  It is a collaboration between the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association and HCM Strategists.

Speaking of certificates and short-term programs, it’s hard to ignore the buzzy topic that’s got a lot of people eyeing that July 1 date circled on the calendar: the start of Workforce Pell, federal grants for short-term workforce training.

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some people who are staying on top of the Workforce Pell news like Corey Gheesling at SHEEO and Iris Palmer at New America, and one thing is clear: This is complicated. And for rural colleges, the knotted tangle of rules may mean two things: 

1) They decide to wait it out and determine if it’s even worth the reporting burden – or the financial risk – to fit their programs to Workforce Pell. 

2) They start innovating and creating something new within the existing limitations.

Either way, the eligibility criteria do not seem to favor small and rural colleges, as both Palmer and Kristin Hultquist have pointed out in their pieces.

Over the next couple of weeks, when I’m not traveling, I will be looking to talk to more colleges about how they are thinking about Workforce Pell. If you want to chat or know someone who would have valuable insights to share, please reach out. Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m not as interested in rehashing the national policy conversation. You all get that news elsewhere. But if I can highlight rural perspectives and the specific ways that states or colleges are wading through Workforce Pell, I’d love that.

One way I’m excited about collaborating with others is through webinars or community calls online. Based on the survey responses, it looks like a lot of you find these virtual convenings valuable, too:

Send me an email if you are interested in co-hosting a webinar, or if you have an idea for a topic we should dig into together or an existing Zoom call I should know about. In the meantime, here are a couple that are penciled into my calendar. 

As you may have noticed already, I’m all about experimenting. So as this email lands in your inbox every other week, I hope you’ll bear with me and let me know what is resonating and what’s not.

And if you’re new here, welcome! I would still love to hear from more folks about what you’re looking for in a newsletter like this and how you like to find news and connect with others. 

Don’t hesitate to reach out to stay hello or forward this email to someone you think would be interested. Oh, and if you missed last week’s newsletter or a previous edition, you can find them here.

Thanks to everyone who has been so gracious with their time and insights as I navigate the many acronyms of higher ed and identify stories to follow.

All my best,

Emily

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