The two colleges that make up the Rancho Santiago Community College District have been adding good-paying apprenticeship programs to help fill current and future needs in the workforce.
Apprenticeships provide career pathways benefiting workers and employers in specific industries.
Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College, for example, have both launched apprenticeships in the field of early childhood development and education.
And a $1.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor will fund apprenticeships at SCC for students pursuing careers in the water industry.
But before a new apprenticeship or another academic program can be added as a degree or certificate program at a community college, the California Education Code requires the college to demonstrate that there is workforce demand in a particular sector.
That’s where the research conducted by the Orange County Center of Excellence comes in.
“There’s a whole program approval process that community colleges have to go through,” said Jesse Crete, director of the Orange County Center of Excellence. “You have to have labor market information associated with any career technical education program to be able to show what the workforce need is with the curriculum.”
Based in the Rancho Santiago Community College District, the center collects data and publishes reports that present a snapshot of the current labor market, its trends, and what programs and training are needed to meet future workforce demands.
This research helps community colleges design their programs to support the state’s competitive workforce, Crete said.
Data reports can also help shape educational policy, faculty development and work-based learning opportunities for students.
For example, when SCC implemented its apprenticeship program for students pursuing a career in the water industry, the college relied on a report published by the OC Center of Excellence that the water industry faces an increasing demand for skilled workers in the coming years.
The demand stemmed from the projected retirement of one-third of its workforce, a need for younger, more racially diverse male and female workers and other factors.
The executive summary of the report recommended that the district should:
“Address current equity gaps in the water/wastewater workforce through targeted marketing efforts and partnership with community colleges, where the student population is more diverse than the current water/ wastewater workforce – particularly in age and gender.”
SCC recently began offering a noncredit lactation specialist certification program, which trains students to become specialists assisting new and expectant mothers with problems or concerns related to breastfeeding babies and lactating.
That program was also launched based on the findings of a Center of Excellence report.
The center recently conducted a regional labor market analysis of occupations related to clinical genetics and molecular biological sciences, modern policing and construction management.
Additionally, the center has recently published profiles of advanced manufacturing, life sciences and biotechnology, energy construction and utilities sectors.
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office created the Centers of Excellence several years ago. The Orange County Center of Excellence is one of nine Centers of Excellence in the state.
There is a competitive process to determine which region’s community college will host the center for its specific region, Crete said.
“Because the work that we do is so specific to each of our regions, they want us in the region, not just sitting up in Sacramento at the Chancellor’s Office,” Crete said.
The Orange County Center of Excellence was also receiving funding from an alternate funding source known as the Regional Strong Workforce program, which provides a recurring investment of $248 million to grow career technical education in the nation’s largest workforce development system of 116 colleges.
Acting on a recommendation of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the governor and state legislature approved the Strong Workforce Program in 2016.
Orange County and Los Angeles County once made up a single region, but in 2018, Orange County split off to become its own region.
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