Learning Resources

Abstract: The Kitchens at Reynolds Community College (RCC) exemplify a developing national model, featuring public and private organizations in a successful collective effort to boost economic development and healthier outcomes in a historically under-resourced community. Integrated planning for The Kitchens involves community partnerships and collaboration in education, health and wellness, workforce training, and economic revitalization. In this session, you'll learn how RCC delivers culinary workforce training and academic programs in a satellite facility at the heart of a poverty-concentrated area, pushing back economic isolation and promoting learning and health.

Abstract: Higher education enrollments have trended downwards for each of the last eight years and are poised to enter a decade-long freefall. This demographic decline will force institutions to confront a new structural reality, including an unprecedented wave of downsizing, mergers, and even closures, but only a handful of institutions have begun to respond proactively. A deeper understanding of the enrollment crash is essential. We'll discuss the demographic decline, institutions already affected, and proactive strategies for addressing it (already undertaken by some).

Abstract: Technical and community college education must adapt to the changing workforce to ensure success for the students, communities, and states they serve, and their physical campuses need to support this adaptation. We will explore the planning, design, and stakeholder collaboration behind Lanier Technical College's new, six-building, 95-acre campus designed to house 50 unique workforce development programs. We will also share consensus building and expectation management techniques we employed to build buy-in with diverse stakeholders.

Abstract: This session will illustrate how industry-academic partnerships have led to the creation of cutting-edge, career-focused education that reimagines vocational training through a new, didactic construction sciences facility. With a skilled labor shortage in the construction industry, this program hopes to close that gap while creating an attractive, career-focused educational alternative to the traditional four-year college education. Beginning in middle and high schools and continuing through the workplace, developing new partnerships along the education continuum helps to reimagine workforce education and facilities to inspire the next generation of construction industry leaders.

Abstract: Middle skills education, personalized curriculum, and student-directed training are playing an increasingly integral role in higher education. A new generation of students is already likely to hold different educational expectations and desires than their predecessors. Accommodating those trends means planners, architects, and higher education administrators will need to think differently about how they train skilled workers for the most needed professions.