Project Summary and Results
The project that lasted from Winter to Spring 2024 was complex and fluid, starting with some structure but ultimately becoming organized chaos. This page attempts to centralize the work that occurred. Undoubtedly some information has been left out or overlooked, but I hope that this small slice of insight into the project will be useful for your review.
Project Summary
With the goal of the project centering workforce education and GenAI, I first had to understand workforce education’s scope. The project began with a thorough investigation into the definition of workforce education at Spokane Community College. Ultimately a binary, paired with transfer education, workforce programs tend to be the “classic” or stereotypical programs offered at community and technical colleges. Working with college administration, including institutional research (IR), I was able to identify the list of divisions, departments, and programs that fall under the workforce. There are approximately 120 active programs that fall into this segment of academic offerings at SCC, across three divisions: Business, Hospitality/IT, Health/Environmental Science, and Technical Education. Organizational woes with this step in the process included a disconnect between the leadership or representative (usually Department Chair) for each program on record and in practice/reality. Additionally, many programs within the departments of the divisions had overlapping leadership, making a consistent, step by step approach to outreach with faculty leadership not as straightforward as I hoped.
Through a combination of cold calling and being connected via other faculty, I ultimately scheduled numerous meetings to discuss GenAI with workforce leads in numerous programs. I had a total of 16 meetings. Most were one-on-one, some were small group, and some were with entire departments. The typical format for these meetings was: introduction, disclaimer about the project versus GenAI generally at the college, and open discussion around the program’s interactions (or lack thereof) with GenAI through a workforce / employment context. I use the word “employment” because one of the concerns I identified early on was the relationship between skill development, resume building, and employer needs. Meetings were between 15 and 45 minutes, often with some relevant or unrelated follow-up due to the fast-growing reality of my identity as an “AI expert.” During meetings I took notes, and documented ideas and concerns as best as I could. The capturing of ideas was one of the more difficult aspects of this project, given the diversity of perspectives, positions, and information I was privy to. In some cases, I noticed that in meeting faculty for the first time, I had to both prove my legitimacy and my intentions around meeting, and occasionally trust was not fully established in the short time span of the meeting.
I will not include the full list of the workforce programs here, but th