Embark on a captivating journey with esteemed guest Ajita Talwalkar Menon, the trailblazing President and CEO of Calbright College, as she shares her inspiring educational odyssey on this episode of our podcast. Ajita's personal story as a student organizer and her influential role within the Obama administration make her insights on equity and innovation in higher education truly riveting. Join us as we discuss Calbright College's remarkable growth, the seismic shift towards skills-based hiring, and the recent accreditation that validates its quality and potential. Discover how Calbright is leading the national conversation on public higher education and redefining the workforce through its innovative educational models.
In this thought-provoking episode, we explore the fascinating future of skills-based hiring and the impact it has on transforming the workforce. Hear about Calbright College's significant achievements and its role in equipping students with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-influenced economic landscape. We delve into the synergies between Calbright's initiatives and California's educational vision, highlighting the importance of reimagining higher education to meet the demands of an ever-evolving future. Emphasizing the college's commitment to both technical and essential human skills, we uncover how Calbright is pioneering educational innovation for the public good through collaboration and responsible experimentation.
Join us in the final chapter as we discuss the evolving role of community colleges and their potential to be the vanguard of transformative education. We explore the importance of innovative approaches, responsible experimentation, and collaboration between institutions to address the tactical challenges of improving learner outcomes. Discover how Calbright College invites innovators to partner with them and participate in competitions aimed at engaging adult learners through technology. With the right investment and structure, community colleges like Calbright can lead the way in educational innovation for the public good. Don't miss this inspiring conversation on the power of equity, innovation, and collaboration in higher education. https://www.calbright.edu/
Embark on a captivating journey with esteemed guest Ajita Talwalkar Menon, the trailblazing President and CEO of Calbright College, as she shares her inspiring educational odyssey on this episode of our podcast. Ajita's personal story as a student organizer and her influential role within the Obama administration make her insights on equity and innovation in higher education truly riveting. Join us as we discuss Calbright College's remarkable growth, the seismic shift towards skills-based hiring, and the recent accreditation that validates its quality and potential. Discover how Calbright is leading the national conversation on public higher education and redefining the workforce through its innovative educational models.
In this thought-provoking episode, we explore the fascinating future of skills-based hiring and the impact it has on transforming the workforce. Hear about Calbright College's significant achievements and its role in equipping students with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-influenced economic landscape. We delve into the synergies between Calbright's initiatives and California's educational vision, highlighting the importance of reimagining higher education to meet the demands of an ever-evolving future. Emphasizing the college's commitment to both technical and essential human skills, we uncover how Calbright is pioneering educational innovation for the public good through collaboration and responsible experimentation.
Join us in the final chapter as we discuss the evolving role of community colleges and their potential to be the vanguard of transformative education. We explore the importance of innovative approaches, responsible experimentation, and collaboration between institutions to address the tactical challenges of improving learner outcomes. Discover how Calbright College invites innovators to partner with them and participate in competitions aimed at engaging adult learners through technology. With the right investment and structure, community colleges like Calbright can lead the way in educational innovation for the public good. Don't miss this inspiring conversation on the power of equity, innovation, and collaboration in higher education. https://www.calbright.edu/
Speaker 1:
Hi, I'm Eloy Ortiz Oakley and welcome back to the rant, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode I get to sit down with a friend and colleague, ajita Tawakar Menon. She is the president and CEO of Calbright College, a college near and dear to my heart. It is the only fully online compsie based education college in the California community college system. Ajita leads a very dynamic institution over at Calbright, doing wonderful work. So to get us started, let me welcome Ajita. Ajita, welcome to the rant.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here and to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:
All right. Well, it's great to have you, Ajita. You and your team are doing great work over at Calbright. But before we jump into all of that, I'd love to talk to you about you. So for our listeners who haven't gotten to know you very well, tell us a little bit about your education journey and how that led you to your role at Calbright.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. My interest in education has really been rooted in the experiences I had in college. I was a student organizer and in some ways still am at heart. When I was in school, some of the persistent conditions that we see today in terms of the equity gaps and the access gaps remain, and they particularly remain for communities of learners that don't fit some of the constraints of the traditional model, and so when I was an organizer in college, I came to understand the barriers that many of my friends and colleagues in the campus community faced. I got very involved in student government and that really led me to be such a passionate advocate for equity and opportunity.
Speaker 2:
And I think, when I fast forward to where I sit today, I've had the privilege of having some incredible vantage points to support this work. I've had the opportunity to serve as an education advisor to Chairman George Miller, as the Chair of Education and Labor Committee here from California. I had the opportunity in the Obama administration to serve under Secretary Arne Duncan, under Secretary Martha Cantor and then later for the president directly at the White House, where the domestic policy council at the White House were. In the second term I was able to lead some of the great work the administration was able to forward, to advance access and opportunity and to lean into innovation and to think about how our higher ed systems were doing in serving learners that needed our support the most.
Speaker 2:
So I really have always looked at these issues, and my journey and my career has had a really important common thread, and I think that common thread is really the ability to continue to keep my focus on seeing the experiences that students have from the lens of the learner their lived experiences, how they're interacting with our system and how we could be doing better. And so that's what has driven and motivated me in my career to try to have deeper and deeper impact in these ways, and that's what led me to the role I play today, and for me, I feel deeply humbled and privileged at the opportunity, because there's so much for us to do in this space. There's so little in the evidence base for how to best support the learner communities that we're talking about, and this population of learners is rarely the beneficiary of really evidence-based practices and focus in terms of being able to reduce all of the barriers they see and they face from an institutional perspective.
Speaker 1:
One of the threads that I've picked up on in several conversations I've had here on the rant is I think the third or fourth individual that I've had here, third or fourth very passionate individual that I've had here that worked in the Obama administration. I just had a conversation with Zikaela Smith. I've had a conversation with James Squall. Wonderful. I had a conversation with you. What was it about that experience that just created the kind of passion that you all come to this work with?
Speaker 2:
I think the leadership is 100% to do with it and I also think the opportunities that were created every day. We woke up and were told to run as fast and hard at the challenges that the American people were facing, and it was both an inspiring time to be involved and it was also, in some ways, it felt a little limitless, even though there was constantly pushback that we were receiving from Congress, constant resistance to the type of needed change that we were working to advance From all corners of this work. I think that idea that we could demonstrate new ways of doing things, demonstrate what is possible for the American people and to be committed day in and day out to that pursuit. I think that that's probably one of the most important takeaways. I was often asked this question coming out of the administration as to whether I was really discouraged. Right? They said yeah, they never let you.
Speaker 2:
They didn't let you pass legislation. They didn't let you do some of the things that other presidents and administrations have had the opportunity to do, and you kind of had to take a step back and say but look at what we accomplished, right, look?
Speaker 2:
at what we accomplished, despite of the resistance, and the resistance that was moving in a way that was not in the best interests of the American people, not in the best interest of advancing opportunity, not advancing the ball on quality and affordability, resisting these kinds of core reforms that were needed.
Speaker 2:
And so I actually, when I think back to how we introduced a new conversation around the value of college, not just in the traditional ways we used to look at access, but really understanding how do we define the value proposition with the learner? How do we really level the playing field for learners to be able to access the information they need to make and families to make strong decisions, sound decisions about education opportunity, about their workforce opportunities. And we did a lot of that. Our efforts to simplify the FAFSA are incredible investments in community college, which has always been close to my heart. Our historic effort to invest in the Pell Grant and minority serving institutions and to push a very aggressive agenda on innovation, because we know that we knew then what is even more true now, which is you can't do things as business as usual and expect to change anything about the trajectory of the outcomes for folks who the system doesn't work.
Speaker 1:
Well, let's pick up on that theme of innovation and let's talk about Calbright. Tell us about the learners that you serve, because that was a very intentional part of the design of Calbright. How are the learners that you serve different than some of the other community colleges?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean I think that our learners themselves can articulate this best. When we talk to our learners, 90% of them we know are over the age of 25. And we see that's kind of double the CCC rates. 70% are members of BIPOC communities, 22% identify as African American, which is triple the CCC rate, and a third of our learners are parents, which is also triple the CCC rate. So these are communities of learners that we connect with and we develop a deep relationship and understanding about, and what they tell us is the most important part of our model. The greatest need that they see in their lives is the need for flexibility. And I would say because I would chase that with the need for grace and the fact that we have seen, amidst kind of historic declines in college enrollment here in California, across the country, especially for this population of learners, that's rebounding a bit We've seen our enrollment regularly increase. We've seen it double.
Speaker 2:
in the past academic year we went from just a few years ago, having 500 students, to almost 4,000 students today, and they represent nearly every county 52 out of 58 counties in California. But the theme is the same these are learners who are highly capable, they are highly motivated and they need the flexibility to access educational opportunities in a way that meets their needs, that meets their lived realities and the constraints they're facing in their lives.
Speaker 1:
Given what's going on in today's economy and the workforce, I can't think of a better time to have an institution like yours. There's another institution throughout the country that are really beginning to focus on this issue of skills, on this issue of economic and upward mobility, so look forward to hearing more and more about how things go with Calbright Now. You recently achieved your accreditation for Calbright. That's a huge accomplishment for you and your team. Tell us what this means for Calbright and your learners going forward.
Speaker 2:
Thank you.
Speaker 2:
I mean this is a tremendous achievement for us.
Speaker 2:
We were so thrilled to receive accreditation at the end of July, in 2023.
Speaker 2:
That's for us. It's a year and a half ahead of the April 2025 deadline that was in our founding legislation. But what's really affirming about it is that it really highlights the exceptional work of our faculty, of our students, of our staff, and what's important about it is that it really paves our path forward as we move beyond our seven-year startup period. Accreditation is kind of another mechanism by which we can build an institution that meets our learner where they are, that's designed around their needs or goal, but that also nurtures their success right, that leads to greater opportunities for them outside of our institution, and whether that be a successful transition into the labor market or, more importantly, the ability to take what they've learned, the knowledge and skills that they've gained or have validated our institution, and to take them and move that currency into further upskilling opportunities into the degree market over the course of their life. And that also, I think, is probably why a lot of us at the institution find it important, because it's such a significant opportunity that it opens up for our learners.
Speaker 1:
Well, it's also a great recognition that Calbright is quality. The pedagogy, the delivery methodology, the learning that's happening is quality. So it is a great affirmation of the work that you all are doing over there. Now use the word startup period and your initial investment. So Calbright very much mirrored what a normal startup would look like in the private sector. Tell us what that experience was like lifting up a brand new college in the public sector, with a lot of scrutiny and a lot of people raising their eyebrows at you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie it was a lot of blood, sweat, sometimes tears, but all joking aside, I think it. Actually you had a hand in such an important hand and leadership role in having this College be possible, along with former Governor Brown, and I think you know you saw what was necessary in that. This wasn't something that could be tweaked on the margins, it was something that required us to think like an enterprise who had responsibilities absolutely to the public sector, as a public sector entity and with public sector dollars, but that needed to operate fundamentally differently. And so I've always said, you know, it's an interesting opportunity, one of the hardest, I think, opportunities out there in terms of standing up a new institution, largely because it had all the expectations of a private sector startup but with all the scrutiny, as you said, of a public sector enterprise.
Speaker 2:
And I always think in this space we are slow to move to systems change in the public sector. But it is also exactly and essentially the place where we have to be focused in doing that kind of work. I think it is always challenging when people can't imagine what a future alternative looks like, and I used to think I used to have been reflecting on this quite a bit, because I think about prior periods in our history where things didn't exist social safety net programs didn't exist, we didn't have the GI Bill, we didn't have the Higher Education Act and it really took a small and thoughtful group of committed leaders to understand that there needed to be a different kind of thinking that goes into understanding how to, how to have responsive models, how to have responsive systems that reflect the times and reflect the people in it.
Speaker 2:
So, just as we can't rest on the fact that they got everything right in 1965, we have to think about this moment that we're in now and I think it is absolutely colleges like this and the committed team that we have at the institution, the commitment and the support that we have from the statewide chancellor's office, from key parts of the legislature, from the governor. Calbright is really a part of California leading this conversation, leading the conversation of what has to come next in our educational system, in public higher education, and we're a very anchor part of that. So it was absolutely difficult and it was absolutely necessary and continues to be so, and I think our accomplishments to date really help illustrate.
Speaker 1:
I think you're absolutely right, I think, in a very strange way, all of the consternation has led to a much better product in the end, and I think your leadership has a lot to do with that. Most of the gray hair that you see on my head comes from those early days of Calbright College, but it was all worth it.
Speaker 2:
I don't know if you know, I used to joke that I was here to have the heart attack you weren't supposed to.
Speaker 1:
Yes, and thank you for taking that on. Let's talk more about Calbright and some of the work that you're leading within the context of what's going on nationally. There's a lot of talk about skills based hiring, a lot of talk about skills, the skills revolution, people writing about it, organizations talking about it, employers talking about it. When Calbright was originally designed, it was designed around this skill acquisition model. So how do you see the evolution of skill based hiring rolling out and what excites you about the opportunities that that presents?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm tremendously excited about it, and largely because I think we have line of sight on how to push, promote and prove out the concept of why it's necessary and why it works. So when we had this conversation five, 10 years ago, it was always aspirational. We leaned into competency based education because we thought it was important to be able to honor learning that had occurred, regardless of where it had occurred, and that also obviously started with an understanding that we were not in our higher education institutions, effectively validating mastery of skills that people had, whether they came to it with it or whether it was knowledge and skills required in residence at the institution. And I think we understood why that was important to be able to translate into the education market. And what started to evolve in the conversation is saying is the reality that this is a two sided market, that the knowledge and skills piece and the ability to really show what you can do matters not just in the context of an individual's educational experience, but really their career opportunities and their career advancement.
Speaker 2:
Having said that, just as behavior changes hard in higher education, it is equally hard in the hiring side of the market, and so what we find is, though we are all many of us are so eager to see advancement in the area of skills based hiring, we also know we can't put the cart before the horse. We know we can align and construct our programs to meet what the skills demands are that are being defined in the labor market, but this question of whether learners will actually be hired on the basis of skills, whether the process of hiring actually allows it, whether the culture and the setup of some of those processes allows for our students to make that transition, and so what I said earlier that we saw a line of sight into how to prove this out it's a lot of the work that we think can happen in the context of public sector hiring. So I think some of the most promising things aren't just a large name company talking about reducing degree requirements for entry to the relevant roles, which is absolutely important and signal bearing for the demand side of the market, but it's also that we've seen a number of governors, especially this governor, really lean into this idea that there are many places in state service serving your community in the context of a good and secure job that shouldn't really require a college degree, that there's other skills that make somebody uniquely qualified to do that work. And what we are actually heavily engaged in, working with Burning Glass Institute as well as Lightcast, is to really analyze within state, local and county level, employment opportunities at the jobs, the good jobs that are available in every community. How do we think about what the right job roles are, how do we look at the tasks involved in those jobs and how do we think about how to work with those public entities who are in great need of talent to be able to bridge and meet the talent gap and the talent needs they have with a workforce that doesn't necessarily have four years or six or eight years to get a degree.
Speaker 2:
How do we open up the lens of that opportunity? And what that will do and what efforts like what we're seeing nationwide can do is really the ability for us to get at the heart of proving out in the hiring market when somebody lands those jobs, why they did, and sometimes the public sector hiring. I'm not going to lie, it's a difficult space to work in. It's a lot of idiosyncrasies at the federal level as well in the hiring process, but it is also transparent and it is also visible so we can see the movement of people, we can see whether the programs that we're doing, the interventions that we're focused on, are working, and so I think that is going to that. Work in the public sector is going to have a tremendous contribution to that the movement around skills based hiring and we're very excited to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:
So you mentioned governors and you mentioned the governor of California, gavin Newsom. He's talked a lot about skills. He's talked a lot about changing the way we think about hiring, changing the way we think about career education and actually proposing a career education master plan for California. That's got to fit real well with the direction that you were going with with Calbright. How do you see that really reinforcing the work that you're doing?
Speaker 2:
It absolutely does. I think we're very complimentary to the idea of rethinking and rethinking from the perspective of what do learners, what are the kinds of opportunities and pathways that learners are going to need? And that has to transcend our thinking between the traditional sectoral divisions that we see in higher education. It has to lean into how folks can have multiple different entry points to access, especially a four-year degree, and that, I think, is something that we can contribute to and I think, because of the rigor and the focus on quality in what we were doing, we will see a lot of national opportunity and alignment to see our learners matriculate beyond Calbright towards that degree, towards that requirement that's still an implicit requirement in hiring, as much as we want to wish for the future, that is purely skills-based.
Speaker 1:
Well, I think it's an exciting time for California, given the work that Calbright is doing, the work that the California Community Colleges are engaged in, with this new focus on company-based education and focus on career education. So look forward to see what happens and, as you've mentioned, this is every conversation I have with leaders across the country. State after state is focused on this issue of career connections, career education, economic mobility. My day job at College Futures we're going to be focused on this whole issue of economic mobility and which institutions are doing the best work in lifting up opportunities for those individuals, those workers who have had the least access to a quality post-secondary experience. So I'm excited about the work that's going on. What excites you about the future of Calbright? What are you thinking about? You just published a strategic plan. What excites you going forward, about where you're leading the institution?
Speaker 2:
I think one of the exciting things is a conversation that we're increasingly invited to that is, asking the question of what is the relationship between what our higher education institutions are doing for people and what the needs are in a very changing and dynamic economy, and so a lot of this is showing up in this conversation around the future of AI and how AI is going to be a transformative technology, and we're just hitting the tip of what that means for us. But it is interesting because people, the mindset and I think, the way that people often think about it, is that the nature of the transformative change is almost like another technology tool.
Speaker 2:
And what we understand about the way that this particular technology advancement is showing up is that it's becoming much more ubiquitous than that. It's actually transforming a lot more of the relational way that we move through. It's a societal transformation as much as it is a transformation in technology, and I point that out because I actually am very excited about the idea of being very intentional in thinking for the communities that we serve. What are the skills they need to have in order to be ready to navigate in an AI world and in an AI future? And that is not a narrow set of vocational skills. That is, in fact, what uniquely human skills that they need to be able to flex on in order to be able to really be successful in the world that we're finding ourselves increasingly driven into. And if we don't do those things, if we don't think about that broader set of skills, we're calling them durable skills. We're calling them, you know, at LinkedIn, they're calling them EQ skills. These pieces of what has been talked about a lot as what is the outcome of a four-year liberal arts education. Sometimes, this most basic thing is not something that necessarily requires an educational institution, but it is something that requires intentional skills building and an access point. So what I'm most excited about are the types of engagements that we're having with our learners that allow them to really think about how they are going to uniquely develop the career skills let's call them career skills to navigate that, and it is not as mechanical, I think, as it might have been traditionally. It's not just the resume writing and the interview skills. It is a bit more in depth than that and covering a wider range of skills. And so what I'm most excited about is we're really working in our student lifestyle and student life cycle and student experience work. The ability for us to think about as a learner moves through our institution. What are the experiences they're having and can each experience have a value to them, so different than thinking about a traditional academic experience over here and a support experience over there, or a program here or a program there. How do we actually look at the time we have with an individual and the opportunity for that growth and development to occur as they're acquiring technical skills, but also as they're developing some of these more durable skills self-efficacy, collaboration the kinds of communication skills that are needed to navigate this very complex future and this very dynamic future. And so I'm really most excited because I think we're really breaking the mold of what an institution looks like and feels like from the perspective of the learner, and we start by doing that in terms of the first relationship and the first contact that we have with our students, and it carries through in the way that we support their experience at the institution and we're continuing to really lean in on strengthening that model.
Speaker 2:
And by doing it this way, this is not a spaghetti on the wall exercise. This is not a lot of guesswork. It is really. We've really leaned on to the types of methodologies that help us measure and learn whether what we're doing is effective. And just as much as the community we serve is in our DNA. The other part of our DNA that's most critical to what we do is ensuring that every thing, every act that we do in the institution has intention, and that intention is meant to be measured and that measurement is meant to improve the experience of our learner overall.
Speaker 2:
And I'll give one quick example of this that I think is telling, which is for some time now we've been engaged with UC Irvine Ideas 42 and Nudge Labs, which is really focused on behavioral interventions, and the reason that we worked with them is not to have an academic research exercise but to really have an actionable capacity for us to do our much more action-oriented research. And in that work we were able to actually look at systemizing, designing. They call them sprints, essentially to identify an area that students were experiencing as a pain point and applying a set of interventions that could be tested to see if it would change the outcome of the trajectory. And what we found was that students were needing embracing, demanding, the flexibility in their education, but it cut like a double-edged sword and they also needed the structure and support in a more organized way. And the outcome of that work was this scaffolded set of scaffolded schedules that relied on the goal of the students right, that were driven by the time a student had and the intention and the goal that a student was setting, and that was such a meaningful understanding for us to have. And so, you know, we rolled that out over a very short period. We did a two-week sprint. It was implemented shortly after and we did it in the context of a one-pilot program. Less than a year later, it's gone from, you know, the small pilot of less than 100 to 1200 students and that idea, the rate and the pace of change and the ability to pinpoint what it is that we're doing that is most effective and then scale it quickly.
Speaker 2:
That's what I'm most excited about our capability to do this as an institution, because what it means for us is that it's not happening in just some isolated pocket of the institution. What it means for us is we now have the ability to do this and to proliferate this across all our work. And when we try to crack this equation of how do we support success, we often think about it in a traditional institution as a programmatic idea for a particular community. We don't often go deeper under the hood to say what is it about? The specific intervention that is or is not effective? And being able to break up those pieces apart become very important for continuous improvement at our institution, continuous innovation at our institution and stronger and stronger successive outcomes for our students. But it also has a profound contribution to what we can be doing for adult learners more globally at institutions across the state and institutions across the country, because we're starting to crack the code of how best to serve adult learners working.
Speaker 1:
That's great. Well, let me let me ask you one last quick question as we begin to wrap up your focus on a very particular demographic of learner learners who really struggle in the economy. There's certainly the threat of AI on the kind of jobs that are being created and the kind of opportunities that they may or may not have going forward. If there was one or two pieces of advice you would have for policymakers, either in the state or in DC, what would that be? Particularly given that there's all this conversation in DC going on around short term Pell and other aspects of career education, what advice do you have for policymakers?
Speaker 2:
The advice I have is really based on the learning and the experience we have as an institution, which is you have to create the space with safeguards and accountability, of course for innovation to happen and for us to be able to test what works. The old theory of action that it is the research one university, which is the primary place that this kind of research should happen, doesn't hold today because it's not an academic exercise purely, it's a tactical exercise, and so giving institutions the space to experiment with that in ways that do not present risk to the student but do allow us to actually hone in on what are the best practices to see stronger outcomes for learners. That is a hard and complex problem to solve and it can't be solved by shuffling around the deck chairs on the regulatory and policy side of things. We have to do a lot of responsible experimentation. It has to be done in the public sector and it has to be done for the public good and public benefit. That's what we represent as an institution and I think that is the direction that needs to be expanded, grown, invested in, and it needs to be housed in a place where the learners are. So I am a lifelong advocate of community colleges, and part of the reason is because there's great potential in community colleges to really excel in this work with the right approaches, with the right investment and with the right structures, and so I would double down on the need for that investment and I would always. I would also say we really enjoy our partnerships with four-year institutions like UC Irvine, who are true partners in the process of being able to solve this equation. So I think that when we think about the relationship between institutions, rather than just thinking about them as segments of the market, how do we think about truly unleashing the collaborative opportunities across those different types of institutions to solve for these very complex challenges? So that would be my advice to policy makers.
Speaker 2:
The other thing I would love to mention, ken, is we talked a little bit about our strategic vision. One of the things I wanted to highlight that was particularly important is that our new strategic vision aligns really well with the CCC vision 2030. And the purpose is just what I was talking about this need to have more of a collaborative effort across the system to effectively serve adult learner populations and to really hone in on closing the equity gaps that we've seen persist for decades. So we've been very focused on kind of three high-level themes that guide us over the next three years of the growing part of our institution which is serving the needs that we've talked about already for students but also employers.
Speaker 2:
This piece around driving institutional excellence, which has all of the component parts I talked about, including a DNA of change, innovation, of testing, of scaling and to really amplify our innovative approach. How much can we share in real time about what we're doing and about what's working for the benefit of California institutions, for the benefit of institutions who are focused on this community of learners nationwide? There's a lot of pieces I didn't get to in the conversation, but I did want to highlight that and also wanted to highlight the work that we're doing in California in really thinking about the role of an institution like this, a statewide institution, in advancing the regional workforce development and economic development goals we've been having, and so we've been very present in the LA area, in the Inland Empire, in Central Valley, increasingly engaging in even rural parts of the state to see the role our institution can play in supporting those efforts.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's amazing body of work. Great advice for policymakers I'll reiterate to all the policymakers that may be listening then, to double down on their investment in community colleges, particularly colleges that are focused on this type of innovation. Now, if folks want to take a look at your newest strategic vision, what's the best way to access it? Should they just go to your website?
Speaker 2:
Yes, it is absolutely on our webpage. I encourage you to check it out, and part of it is an open invitation for the collaboration work we know lies ahead for our institution, and so one of the things, for example, we've done is, in the fall we launched a very innovative tools competition. That's a national tools competition partnering with AXM Group, schmidt Futures Foundation, georgia State, who is running the competitions, really focused in on engaging adult learners in higher education and to see the way technology and innovations and ideas that are out there can be best leveraged to support success for adult learners. And I mention that because I think, both coming out of the learning engineering, tools competition and other opportunities that are more nonconventional in the approaches that institutions in the past, I think, have taken, we're really looking for partners who want to unleash their creativity, their resources and deep partnership with us to solve some of these key areas that we're focusing in on.
Speaker 1:
Well, great Well. That's an open invitation to innovators across the country to work with Calbright College. I'll make sure and put the website address in the comment sections on this podcast. So, Ajita, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to me here on the rant, and thank you for the great work that you're leading.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a great day.
Speaker 1:
Well, you've been listening to my conversation with Ajita Talwalkarman and President and CEO of Calbright College Do an amazing work serving our lowest skilled learners in the workforce. Thanks for joining me here on the rant. Please continue to follow us on this YouTube channel, hit subscribe. And, of course, you can continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for being with us, everybody, and we'll see you soon.