Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury, Md., has been selected as part of a national noncredit workforce initiative. The Education and Employment Research Center at Rutgers University (EERC) and the National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE) have launched Student Voices Informing Practice in Noncredit Workforce Education. This project aims to understand the experiences and perspectives of community college students enrolled in noncredit workforce programs and elevate the insights of the college staff and faculty who oversee and deliver these programs.
Including Wor-Wic, 15 colleges throughout the country were selected. Through the research and peer learning community created by the initiative, the colleges will advance and strengthen their noncredit workforce programs, services and policies. An important focus of this collaborative initiative is to connect research to practice and to ensure that the perspectives of noncredit students and expertise of college practitioners drive the changes that will improve programs and policies, learner outcomes and Workforce Pell implementation at campuses across the country.
“Wor-Wic is deeply committed to listening to our students and using data to continuously strengthen the educational experience. Being selected for this initiative demonstrates the important role community colleges play in advancing high-quality, workforce-aligned non-credit programs,” said Deborah Casey, Ph.D., president of Wor-Wic.
Noncredit programs are not new to community colleges — Wor-Wic has offered them for 50 years — but recent interest in them has grown as increasing numbers of adults seek to improve their labor market prospects with short-term and affordable programs. Visit https://sites.rutgers.edu/noncredit-voices/student-voices/ for more information about the project.
