Erica Caracoglia, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, Martin Community College

In an interview with Invest:, Erica Caracoglia, vice president of strategic initiatives at Martin Community College, discussed credentials, employer partnerships, clean-energy training, and regional collaboration. “Ultimately, every decision we make at a community college has to have the student at its heart,” Caracoglia said.

What changes over the past year have had the greatest impact on Martin Community College’s strategic priorities?

When I think about our priorities and making an impact, we are looking at several different things. We are looking at how we get students their earned credentials earlier. We recognized that we had some barriers in place that did not give students the confidence or the clearest path, once they had finished one level of their program, to say they had finished their certificate or diploma on the way to their degree, and we would like to acknowledge that. I do not necessarily mean officially walking across the stage, but at least having their transcript indicate that they have achieved that milestone.

We have worked for a little more than a year to solidify a process in which we identify students, tell them they have finished that level, and put it on their transcript. If they want to participate in graduation, we tell them what to do. If they want to keep moving toward their degree, we will see them at graduation when they finish that.

We have also thought a lot about how we expand and strengthen our workforce partner relationships. We have a community that is not bustling with industry. We are a very rural, Tier 1 county, and we only have a set number of organizations with which we can partner. In the last year, we have taken on the challenge of being more specific about how we interact with those partners across the college. That might be at the college level with the president, from a fundraising standpoint, or from a programmatic standpoint, with our program staff asking what graduates need to meet employers’ needs.

What makes a partnership valuable to the college and the community?

A partnership is worth pursuing for us when we can see tangible benefits for our students. Maybe we are looking at potential employers. The better connections we have with these partners, the more likely our students are to be hired there because the employers believe in our educational programs and what we are doing at the college to produce the workforce they need.

Aside from organizations that may employ our students, I think it is also people who have roots within the community, have ownership of the community, and want to partner with us from that standpoint. They can see the value in the college helping the community grow. Maybe they are not hiring our students, and maybe they are not in a place where they can pledge funds, but they respect the community, see that we respect the community, and want to work with us to build it up.

What are employers telling you about workforce needs in clean energy and solar?

Because we are rural, we are seeing growth in solar technology. Farms that had been operated for years have been converted into solar fields. Other areas of the state may have seen old family farms converted to wineries as farming changed. One of our characteristics is that we are seeing more and more solar fields come into play here.

That is bringing people into the industry, whether it is someone who works on the solar panels and makes sure they stay running and up to date, someone doing supervisory work, or someone higher in the industry who recognizes that this is a great place to house that industry. We are seeing more opportunity for solar in our area. Within the Steps4Growth grant in which we participated, other colleges took on other pieces of clean energy to ensure that, across the state, we are all working together to build toward that resource.

How is Steps4Growth training helping people see clean energy as a realistic career path?

Through grant funding, we were able to offer a solar technician training program over what I believe was three years. It was short-term training of between 10 and 15 weeks. We changed it each time by adding or taking out days. Within three months, a student could come in, gain entry-level skills, put those skills on a resume, and approach employers at solar fields with skills we know they are seeking.

We built different aspects into the training. We brought in discussion of electrical work, someone to discuss mathematics and how it plays a part, and people specifically to teach how solar panels work. It has been a joint effort to allow participating students to reskill into a completely new field or potentially upskill. Even if they do not take those skills to a solar field, the skills are transferable to other jobs in the skilled trades.

I think the program opens doors for the students who participate. People who may be scared to take a chance on a full-year or two-year program can start with short-term training and build from there. Because of our grant funding, we have also been able to offer it as a tuition-covered class, so students have not had to pay out of pocket. Money is often the only barrier keeping people from returning to us, so offering the class at no cost has been very helpful.

How is the collaboration with MyFutureNC and other regional partners developing?

We have been part of the Bertie Attainment Coalition with MyFutureNC for several years. We were named a Champion for Attainment from the original work and, as a result, were given the opportunity to continue that work. There are eight partnerships across the state that grew out of the original attainment coalitions. We have an open position that we hope to fill soon for a North Carolina attainment project manager.

Our project manager will work with Martin Community College, Roanoke-Chowan Community College, K-12 partners in Bertie County, and industry. Both colleges share access to Bertie County, and students choose either college. We are trying to make that choice less difficult while building pathways that help students get real hands-on education.

That includes shadowing experiences for students in the K-12 pipeline, so they can see, without investing much time, what they like and do not like and whether they want to consider an industry. At the college level, we have work-based learning that connects an individual student with an individual employer, from a business owned by one or two people to a large industry. An employer may take on a student for a semester with specific objectives for hands-on training.

We are also looking to increase pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship opportunities, starting with Bertie County and expanding throughout the region. We hope to use what we learn over the next two years, together with experiences from the other areas, to replicate those opportunities elsewhere in the state.

Where can regional collaboration create better outcomes for students and communities?

The better we build these relationships, the more buy-in we can get from our K-12, workforce, and community college partners. They will work with us and give us feedback about what we need to teach, what level students need to reach when they leave us, and whether a six-month credential or a two-year credential is needed.

The more the community recognizes that we rely on it for that direction and feedback, the better we can give partners what they are looking for. That can help our region prosper economically because businesses get what they need to operate efficiently, and more students come to us for those skills. As partners determine that they need different skills, they can tell us that, after our work on one skill set, they now need another and ask how we can bring it forward.

What do you want people to understand about the role of community colleges?

Ultimately, every decision we make at a community college has to have the student at its heart. In my position, I do not have much day-to-day interaction with students anymore. They walk by my door, and I say hello. It is important for all of us to put ourselves back into positions where we directly affect students and think about how the decisions we make affect them. That is one of the things that makes me most proud to be a community college employee.

We can see students at every level. We can see them come in and out in a very short amount of time, and that short amount of time can change their trajectory. Community colleges are such a powerhouse, but people still do not consider them first. The message I would like to get across is that we should be considered first in education because of our ability to do things that some larger institutions cannot do.