Alabama Community College System

Training the Workforce of Alabama

How the Alabama Community College System used Elevate to standardize workforce training across the state

Alabama Community College System

Challenge

Meeting statewide goals required a systemwide solution

Results

  • Simplified workforce training processes across 24 institutions and 130 locations
  • Built a more effective workforce pipeline using insights from statewide reporting
  • Improved course registration, payment, and other student services

Summary

In announcing the $17 million Reimagine Workforce Preparation grant, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey set an ambitious goal of “adding 500,000 additional credentialed workers to [the state’s] workforce by 2025.” With 24 institutions in more than 130 locations, the Alabama Community College System (ACCS) will play an integral role in training and upskilling students in preparation for specific, in-demand jobs. But to scale continuing education across the state, ACCS needed a systemwide solution, unifying their workforce development technology to provide the best possible student experience and outcomes.

Prior to this, ACCS had to use various methods to register students and manage continuing education programs, with some institutions having no capability to do so digitally. This led to slow, manual processes and disparate data that couldn’t be aggregated into insights. As a result, ACCS had no true mechanism to ensure their course offerings would supply the type of training Alabama businesses required.

That’s why ACCS chose to implement Ellucian Elevate systemwide. Seamlessly integrating with Banner, Elevate standardizes processes to accurately forecast workforce demand and quickly meet training needs in each community it serves. By adopting an intuitive, data-driven continuing education solution, ACCS can be an effective partner to local businesses, provide a better student experience, and drive economic growth statewide.

Streamlined and Standardized

To best fulfill the unique needs of Alabama businesses, ACCS’s noncredit courses vary widely in form and length. Because of this, ACCS needed to standardize their programs without flattening the important differences between them. Adaptable technology can support institutions with any type of curriculum and at any stage of workforce pipeline development, all while creating a common foundation for success.

With automated, systemwide reporting, ACCS could accurately gauge headcount, identifying roughly twice as many enrolled students than what had been originally self-reported. Now, ACCS can make faster, more effective decisions knowing the data from each institution is accurate and up to date.

“All the colleges now use the same catalog, same naming conventions, and same data standards,” explains Kathi Carr, a business analyst specializing in Elevate for ACCS. “That way, we’re truly comparing headcount in service programs at every institution on a one-to-one basis, as opposed to doing it 25 different ways.”

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Author
Kathi Carr
Business Analyst
Alabama Community College System

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