DEBI PEZZUTO: Well, there we go. Now we're recording. 

[LAUGHTER] 

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We're excited to have you for the ELL Healthcare Pathways webinar-- resources for round three planning. We are going to be recording the session, as you just heard, and then it can be shared by SCOE later. 

During this webinar, please post your questions in the chat, we'll be monitoring it as we go, and we will have time at the end of the webinar to come back to questions if there's any that we've missed or any that we want to resurface for everyone if they have been answered in the chat throughout the day. 

Let's see. Before we get started, we want to thank the Chancellor's Office, CAEP team, Gary Adams, Mayra Diaz, and Jennifer Yang, and the folks from CDE, Carolyn Zachry and Diana Bautista, as well as the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the California Health and Human Services Agency, and everyone who supports the ELL Healthcare Pathways Grant and supports providing adult education across the state. 

We'd also like to thank our CAEP TAP team for the support that they provide for us in the field, and before we dig in, if we can go to the next slide, Andrea, let's do some introductions. 

My name is Debi Pezzuto. I'm the Senior Program Associate for Adult Education, Workforce Development, and Post-secondary Education at WestEd, and I'm joined by Meghan McBride. Would you like to introduce yourself and pass it around? 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Sure. Good, what is it? Afternoon, everyone. My name is Meghan McBride, and I'm the Director of Adult Education Projects at WestEd. Together with Debi, we lead the WestEd side of the ELL Healthcare Pathways Professional Development Technical Assistance Project in partnership with our friends at IRC, and so I'll hand it over to them to introduce themselves starting with Anne. 

ANNE PETTI: Hi, everyone. Thank you, Meghan. I'm glad to be here with all of you today. I'm Anne Petti. I'm a Senior Program Officer for Workforce Development with the International Rescue Committee or IRC, and we've been working with WestEd on this technical assistance project. 

You'll see my colleague Amber Shevin's name here as well. Many of you have met her, but she can't be with us today, but we do have Andrea Vidal Becker on the call as well with IRC, so I'll pass it over to her to introduce herself. 

ANDREA VIDAL BECKER: Hi, everyone. My name is Andrea Vidal Becker. I'm a Program Officer with the IRC, and will be assisting today on this project. Thank you for being here. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: All right, thanks, everybody. If we can go to the next slide. As always with these ELL healthcare pathways events of any kind, we like to circle back to our timeline to walk through how our technical assistance through WestEd and IRC has provided. 

We are currently in our special topics webinar smack-dab in the middle of our technical assistance for our round two folks, and this was a special request from the Chancellor's Office to provide more information on how to run programs, different techniques focused specifically on round three. All right, let's go to the next slide, please. 

Today's objective-- by the end of the webinar, you should be able to understand the intent of the Round 3 RFA, including the Centers of Innovation and Impact. This has been a constant question from folks. 

We will be providing examples of the RFA's key characteristics and practice, the design accelerated ELL healthcare pathways and talk about what that looks like, engaging employers meaningfully across pathways, some tips and tricks on how to, what points that comes in, and aligning partnerships, occupations, and outcomes to RFA expectations and how this all comes together in the big picture of round three. 

Quick disclaimer. Thank you, Andrea. Neither WestEd nor IRC were involved in the creation of this RFA. We will not be involved in the scoring or selection of grantees. The purpose of this webinar is solely to provide more information about the RFA. Nothing shared in this webinar will guarantee approval or have any impact on whether your consortium's application will be awarded, so please note we are not involved in that process. Any questions? 

[LAUGHTER] 

All right, I'm going to pass it on over to, Anne. 

ANNE PETTI: All right, thank you Debi. So to start out, I wanted to go over a little bit why round three looks different from round one and round two of the ELL Healthcare Pathways Grant. 

So one difference that I know you're all aware of is that all 71 adult education consortia are eligible to apply for the round three grant. And probably the biggest difference in this grant compared to the previous two rounds is the shift from a focus on individual programs at individual institutions to Centers of Innovation and Impact in Health Careers, and we will get a lot more into what that looks like, what that can look like in this grant. 

And then some other characteristics that you'll want to really take into consideration as you're developing your proposal is there's really an emphasis on looking for innovation in the programs you're proposing, definitely including the acceleration or the accelerated pathways models that we'll also get into a little bit more, being sure that you're aligning yourself with the workforce and labor market data. 

There will be a focus on the regional impact, so not having an impact just within your population at your institution, but on having a wider regional impact with this funding and on sustainability and scalability. 

OK, so just to briefly go over what we will and will not cover in this webinar. So some of the things that we will be going over-- we will go over what the Centers for Innovation and Impact, what that can look like, what the expectations are around that. 

We will talk quite a bit about employer engagement requirements, which may be more engagement with employers than that was required in past grants, we will be reviewing the different accelerated learning models that are listed in the RFA, and we will be talking about pathway and partnership design. 

Some of the things that we will not cover. We won't be going over budget line item development or narrative formatting tips. If you have questions about those items, it would be best to direct those questions to the Chancellor's Office, and we also will not be going over data collection and reporting. As many of you know, the CAEP TAP, SCOE, and NOCE are the ones who are responsible for that, and I believe that they will be setting up a webinar to cover that. 

So just to go over here, the big idea from this round 3 RFA is the move from focus on isolated programs to workforce-driven centers, so round 3 is looking not to fund individual programs, but centers that will be comprised of multiple institutions and different programs. 

And it's looking to invest in regional centers of innovation and impact that can drive innovation in healthcare career pathways, build specialization and expertise, coordinate systems. 

I know in some of my conversations with grantees from round one and round two, one of the things that has been brought up is sometimes one institution may have one program and another has one that students could transfer into, but it wasn't always easy to make that transition, so one of the main foci areas of this round is to help to coordinate those systems to bring together programs in a region and make it easier for students to go from one to another along their pathway. 

Also, looking at sustained workforce outcomes and then incorporating employer input at the strategic design level, so in this RFA, we're not looking at employers just as somebody who's on an advisory board and they come to a meeting every six months or so, but getting input from employers about the program design, about the curriculum. Having them be involved in other ways throughout the program, including at the end with employment, and we're going to discuss that in more detail later on in the presentation as well. 

OK, so the big question, what is a Center for Innovation and Impact in health careers? So I know this has been a question on many of your minds, and it was a question I had as well when I first read the RFA, so just to clarify that a little bit, so the center is intended to serve as a hub of innovation, specialization, and expertise. 

Now, it may be a physical location, but it's not required to be, so you could decide to have one location where the center is located, or it could be a group of staff members who are the ones designing and who have the expertise and are driving the innovation, the specialization, and coordinating the healthcare career pathways for that particular consortium or consortiums. 

So the center is intentionally designed to develop and implement innovative service models for healthcare pathways, accelerate English language learner entry into health careers. As I mentioned before, to improve systems, not just services, to create more streamlined systems across the consortium in the region so that for students, the experience is seamless, and also to benefit partners beyond a single institution. 

So there will be, as we mentioned, employers will have more involvement, the multiple institutions in the consortia will have more involvement. You may have other organizations that are providing supportive services or other parts of the grant. All of this will be coordinated from the center. 

Some things that a center is not. So it's not a single class or a short-term pilot. A single class, or program, or short-term pilot can be part of the programming run by the center, but it has a lot more pieces than that. 

Employer engagement, as I mentioned, is not limited to just advisory roles or letter of support. They're looking for more engagement by the employer. It's not a program disconnected from hiring demand, so as I'm sure most of you are already doing, it's important for this project to be looking at the labor market data, looking at which careers are in high demand in your area, what positions are employers hiring for, and to make sure that the programs that you are designing are aligned with that, and it's also not a set of disconnected activities without a pathway. 

And we will be talking in more detail about the pathway later on, but part of the idea of having the center is that maybe this institution has a bridge program, and this institution here has the CTE programs, or this institution has another piece of the puzzle, but instead of those all being separate pieces under the center, they're all working together for a streamlined pathway for students. 

And in this grant, there are some priority occupations that are being targeted, and those are listed here, so dental assistant, EMT, medical assistant, mental and behavioral health roles, CNA, pharmacy technician, phlebotomy, and social or human services assistant, so those are the priority occupations that are being targeted. 

Now, if you in your particular region, you have another occupation that's in high demand and that you would like to include in your application, it is possible to propose other applicant or other occupations. 

Within your application, you will have to demonstrate that occupation will result in living wage outcomes, and also demonstrate that there is a strong regional hiring demand, and tied to that, having an employer or employers who you are working with and are partnering who are going to hire graduates who have that occupation. 

So there are the priority occupations that are being focused on, but as far as the other occupations, you can propose them as long as you provide data to support these points. And with that, I believe I'll be turning it over to, Meghan. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Yeah, thank you, Anne. Hi, again, everyone. So in all of our TA engagements so far, which has included virtual office hours, a community of practice, we've kicked off our world tour of California and our regional trainings, even going back to the CAEP summit, when the chancellor's office announced this RFA, the most ubiquitous question we have gotten from the field, as Anne mentioned, is this idea of the centers. 

And they come off as a little bit nebulous in the RFA, and that is on purpose, and I will reiterate. We, WestEd and IRC, did not write this RFA. We are not involved in the scoring, so what we've done here is use our interpretation of what the RFA is referring to as a center, to try and bring it to life through examples of what they might look like based on the five key characteristics that are described in the RFA. 

And we've amassed this experience in our own professional lives prior to joining our agencies and through our work with these agencies in California and across the country in serving English language learners in various occupational training programs. 

So with that disclaimer, we're going to attempt to describe the centers for you, again, through the lens of the five key characteristics and try to bring those to life for you so you can maybe imagine what that looks like in your individual context. 

So the next several slides are going to ground us in these core design expectations of the RFA, and the five key characteristics come directly from this RFA. And I know when you're writing a grant, you get sick of looking at the RFA after a while. 

Debi travels with her's, so it may even sleep under her pillow, but they come directly from this, so we're not making any of that up. I see it there, Debi, but the expectation in writing the proposal will be that you integrate these key characteristics into a coherent design. Not necessarily an encyclopedic list of the design characteristics, but you integrate them and they're evident in there. Maybe not self-evident, but explicitly evident so that you can demonstrate how your proposal represents a center for innovation and impact rather than, as Anne said, just a disconnected collection of activities. Go ahead, Andrea. 

So the first key characteristic is hubs of specialization and expertise. So when the RFA is talking about a hub of specialization and expertise, that is really getting at your depth and credibility as a center. 

So you are expected, as a center, to be knowledgeable about specific healthcare occupations. Anne, listed the eight that are intended to be part of the grant, but again, you can develop your own occupation so long as they are grounded in regional data and lead to a livable wage occupation. 

You should also be knowledgeable about accelerated training strategies for English language learners. We'll talk about the ones that are included in the RFA and then also in workforce development more broadly. 

Another detail about the hub of specialization and expertise is that you and your faculty should stay current, which means you may remain current on understanding credentialing and licensing requirements as they change knowing what employers are actually looking for. 

So as, I think, it was Anne mentioned earlier, the idea in this RFA is to engage employers not just as end users who take trained employees and hire them, but as a system actor throughout the process from start to finish. 

And then you should also maintain current understanding of effective instructional practices for adult English language learners. That's what WestEd and IRC are here for, incidentally, helping design instructional strategies that are good for adult English language learners. 

Finally, and this is something that is featured throughout this RFA, is that your center's expertise should not remain siloed. In other words, you would be expected, and this should be demonstrated throughout your proposal, that the center can and will connect resources across partners and develop tools or curricula that can be adapted or adopted by other programs across the state. 

This is the third and final round of this grant, so after this, that's it in terms of this grant funding, so we really need to ensure that our centers are helping to make this program sustainable and scalable across the State of California. 

And now Debi is going to describe what this might look like in practice. These are, again, not requirements, but these are our ideas for how to bring this particular characteristic to life. Go ahead, Debi. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Thanks, Meghan. So again, these are just ideas. And if we're thinking about medical assistant or CNA pathways, an example could be that over time, a consortium develops standardized, ELL-focused curriculum for medical assistant or a certified nursing assistant pathway, making sure that it's aligned to the employer competencies. 

So identifying what the skills that are required for the job and also involving the employers all along the way to understand what they're actually looking for from their employees, the skills that they really need, and embedding them into the curriculum throughout the course. 

Then faculty and staff will regularly update curriculum based on the licensure or industry changes. As we know, changes happen, so it could be that the licensing exam platform changes, the style of the exam changes, or over time, you may identify that this particular population of students' needs support in different areas in order to achieve the same result as a traditional student. 

There may also be industry changes. Maybe there's something that has changed to HIPAA or something that's changed in the medical field. We all saw that with COVID. The sanitizing situation changed. We've had to adapt our healthcare classes to meet those needs. 

Then the center can serve as a curriculum repository across consortium members, so what one could do is collect all of this curriculum and then share it out to other organizations talking about sustainability so that other agencies or institutions can also design programming that is similar and build off of it. 

Then the employers help define job-specific language and skill demands, which are embedded into instruction. So often what can happen is when we're teaching to a textbook and whether the textbook has been selected by a board, or by a licensing agency, or the state, we're teaching the students based on what's in the textbook and that may not necessarily be how it's communicated in the field. 

If we're working with the employers, we can get a better understanding of how to best teach our students the real-world application of what they're learning from their textbooks and then also are being tested on. 

This should make the center a recognized regional resource so that other agencies, other organizations, other consortium can look to the center for resources. This ties us back into the key characteristic, one, of hubs of specialization and expertise, and now Meghan's going to talk about the second key characteristic. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Before I do, if it's not too inelegant here, I just want to do a shameless plug for our regional trainings. Go back for a second, Andrea. Well, a couple things that we're doing in our regional trainings, should you be interested in attending, is looking at the employer-defined skills. 

We do a data dive in our regional trainings, where we, I guess, aggregate the job postings in the eight priority occupations to see exactly what employers are looking for. This is a good sub for actually talking to employers, which is always a great way to find out the skills that they want to hire for, but we're also identifying top employers in the region, so these are potential places to look for partners if certain employers are hiring a lot of folks in your area in these priority occupations. 

Oh, look at that. Magically, I did not prep her for this. Put in some of our upcoming events, including our Bay Area event on February 10, our event in Fresno-- 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Clovis, right next to Fresno. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: --on March 3, and then down at Mount SAC with Tischel's on March 23. Thank you all for hosting those for us. I think Sherri's hosting us in the Central Valley. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: That's correct. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Yeah, thank you, everybody. All right, so OK. I'm done riffing on that. Now you can go, Andrea. Thank you. So the second characteristic of these centers is that the center should be strategic in its pursuit of goals and outcomes, intentionally, so centers are expected to operate with a clear strategic plan that addresses sustainability, scalability, and student retention. 

As with any grant opportunity, really, outcomes matter. We're accustomed to outcomes with CAEP, and this is not unlike that, where we have to be explicit about our goals and our targets, tracking our data, and looking at the outcomes, and then refining our models based on those outcomes, so you should be explicit in your application about goals tied to your enrollment, so counts, credential attainment, and transitions into post-secondary and employment. 

Again, this is nothing that we're not accustomed to doing already, but these impact metrics and outcomes will be established and reported on ANOVA, so centers should have a reliable mechanism in place for tracking and monitoring these metrics and outcomes through the grant period. 

I'm going to reiterate here, again, that WestEd and IRC provide programmatic support only, and data collection and reporting are the purview of the CAEP TAPs. Lisa Takami, earlier in the chat posted a link to their upcoming webinar that they're hosting. Thank you for that, Lisa. 

The CAEP TAP team at NOCE is hosting, I'm sorry, N-O-C-E, a webinar on ELL healthcare pathways data collection and reporting on Tuesday, February 3 at 10:00 AM. Did I get that right? Good. 

So this session is designed to provide strategies and suggested systems on the next reporting period, which the deadline is March 31, so while it's not directly maybe focused on round three, the reporting will probably be similar across all three rounds, and you might get some help out of that if you're interested in attending, so please register for that. Again, Lisa, drop the link. Oh, and Mandalay just did too, so thank you for that. Back to where I was. 

The goals that you establish in your proposal should align with local and regional workforce demand and the priorities of your consortium members. Pretty much everything you outline in your application, down to which members you choose to be a part of this grant application, should be grounded in the realities of your local and regional labor market data, which, again, is something that we're helping consortia with for round two and, I'm sorry, round one and round two as they continue to expand those funds and run those programs. 

Your local centers of excellence can help you with data and perhaps even your one stop. OK, that's it for me there. Andrea, please go to the next slide, and I'll kick it over to Debi to talk about what this key characteristic might look like in practice. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: There's my unmute. It feels like Monday, but it's Tuesday. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So what this can look like in practice is shared targets for the ELL enrollment program and credential completion transitions to create to credit programs and a job placement, so having a defined outcome for the students and having defined targets. Rather than saying we will have students transition into an occupation or transition into credit programs, this RFA is specifically asking for defined quantities and specific employers and potential job placements. 

Also outcome goals aligned to employer hiring demand. Looking at the labor market data, finding which employers are hiring, and if those employers have a high demand for that particular occupation, then aligning the goals of the courses and programs into what the employers are looking for. 

Regular data reviews with consortium and employer partners is very important. Not only should data collection be happening throughout the process-- and not to shamelessly plug again, but in our regional events, we highlight a transition tracking tool, just something that's used in Google Sheets. 

It's accessible to anyone that has a Gmail account, that is a way to track from the beginning to the end of the students process, and then also every quarterly review with the student to see if they have attained employment, what their salary is, and this is a way to just track all along the way and make sure that all of the steps are being completed for the student, but that also that data is being collected. 

And then to create a really strong center, everyone looking at the outcomes of the students that have participated to adjust the program accordingly. Maybe it's adjusting curriculum, maybe it's adjusting the employers that you're working with, increasing the number of employers that you're working with, reevaluating the skills that you're teaching in your class. 

Perhaps there's a gap in the skills they're learning in the coursework and the skills that are actually required in their applications and interviews. Maybe they're not properly explaining the skills that they have learned in their coursework. Then making adjustments, as I said, to the design based on performance data, so really the importance of collecting performance data in this is very high. It's repeated several times. 

Early planning for sustainability beyond the grant funding. Talking about braided funding, institutionalization, employer supported models, so when we're talking about braided funding, is there another grant, foundation's grant? Are we looking at other WIOA title programs, title I? Is it going to be on the ETPL that is specifically called out in the RFA so that the students can obtain other funding through title I agencies or other title agencies through WIOA? 

We're also looking at employer-supported models. Are employers involved in funding some of these models? Sky is the limit when you're creating a really successful center and being very innovative, and now I'm going to pass it on down to Meghan. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: I probably shouldn't have been, but I was in the middle of responding to a question, and so I got a little lost here. OK, no big deal. So we are on key characteristic number 3. 

Beth, I'm going to come back to you. Beth asked a question in the chat about pathways having more advanced specific degree. I'm sorry. If they have more advanced requirements, should the outcome numbers be smaller? 

I'm going to come back to what I was saying, Beth, in the chat, and we may touch back on this at the end in the Q&A section so that people who are listening to this webinar can get the full context, and I probably won't multitask again when it's about to be my turn to talk, so anyway. 

All right, key characteristic number 3, and thank you for the question, Beth. That was very helpful. So this characteristic is about demonstrating operational excellence in your center. 

So this is about how well the work that you're doing actually runs, so the RFA specifically calls out high quality design and implementation, data-informed decision-making, and strong fiscal and administrative stewardship. 

So here, again, is where the data that you could gather from the sources I referred to earlier. Also, we're happy to help provide some of this data as part of our individualized TA that we do as an example of data that you might use to provide evidence for why you choose a specific priority occupation. I'm going to refer to some of the data I've looked at for the northern part of California to include the North Central Valley, the East Bay Area, and some of the far north. 

Many of the counties in those regions have, as their number one in-demand occupation among the eight that are part of the grant, as medical assisting. Lots and lots of demand as evidenced by individual, I'm sorry, unique job postings annually. So that might be an example of data that you could use to support why you're using medical assisting as your priority occupation for this grant. 

So I got lost again on the slides. I have 16 screens open y'all. There's the slide where you're looking at OK. So data-informed decision making. This key characteristic also emphasizes cross-agency collaboration, so you would be focused here on strong partnerships as opposed to maybe loose partnerships and show that your systems and processes and responsibilities are aligned across your members and then other agencies in your region. 

And then finally, your center as a hub of excellence, would also provide professional development, technical assistance, and coaching to partners, perhaps in your consortium. This will come up again when we talk about sustainability, because sustainability is not just with regard to funding, but also regarding training for your members. 

You want to ensure that your programs are sustainable beyond the grant by training folks to do this across other members perhaps that are not a part of the grant initially, but maybe you would expand to scale to in the future. So now, I'm going to pass it back to Debi. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: And what this looks like in practice. This can look like adult schools and colleges aligning their intake, placement, and advising processes so that learners can experience a seamless transition. 

One of the largest drop-off points for our adult education students transitioning into college programs, CTE programs, non-credit programs is the change. So one thing that we can do to build really strong centers and really ensure a successful and smooth transition for our students is to align that intake, placement and advising. 

So what that can look like is ensuring that whatever the intake process is, for one, it looks very similar and feels very similar to the intake for the other, as well as placement and advising. 

So what this can look like is, for example, when I was in this type of position prior to working at WestEd, I had the intake process for our students. I had an application for our healthcare type programs that were grant funded. The application lived on the community college website where the classes were provided. 

The students completed the community college application that looked in very similar style to the application they filled out for me, just to ensure that they were prepared for the healthcare class that they were about to take, and then the advising was located in the same location that they received their college advising, so I would visit them at the site where they were also receiving advising from the college. 

This made them more comfortable. They got to see me as the student services coordinator at the beginning of their process, and then they also got to see me at the end of their process when I gave them that really soft handoff into the community college. 

And I know Meghan brings this up a lot, that adult education gets a bad rap for being too gentle and too soft with our students, but it is a big jump to move from adult education to where you're learning for the sake of learning, or learning to get the high school equivalency, or improve your English, to jump over to a college program that has accelerated, it's got high demands. You've got professors or instructors that have no qualms about telling you to leave, and then you also have to be preparing for 16 weeks to take a licensing exam with a state agency that does not care where you came from before your class. 

So anything that we can do when we're building these centers to create a really gentle pathway that is preparing them for the expectations of college, while they're in the safe place of adult education, is a win-win for everyone. 

We want to also have coordinated instructional schedules and sequencing across partners. We want our schedules, as a part of the center, to all seamlessly work together. We want things to look and feel as they will see it in the community college credit, non-credit, CTE, whatever it looks like. 

We also want employer-informed clinical and workplace learning logistics, so what that actually means is we need the employers to be involved in the conversation from the beginning. We can't wait until it's time for them to get hired. We have to involve them at the beginning of our program building. 

The Center should also offer professional development and coaching to instructors across member agencies, so if we bring everyone together from all of our centers, or from our center that is working with the students to provide them with the same professional development, we'll have a much more sustainable model, because we're all working in the same way to help the students, and then can also use that data from a few slides before to improve the professional development to improve the student outcomes. 

We're also looking at data tools or dashboards used to monitor progress and inform decision making across partners, so our typical TE /COMIS tracking the students, but then also maybe like I was talking about before, maybe we have an internal system for tracking our students' individual process and their individual progress. 

Not all students are the same. Not all students need the same supportive services, but we want to make sure that we're ensuring they have those supportive services, so we need to track it and make sure that it's being completed. 

We want to make sure that we've got all of these employer engagement, agency engagement, everybody together on the same page to create one big community with our center. All right, Meghan's going to kick it off with the key characteristic 4. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Thanks, Debi. All right, I did it again. I was answering the chat. I said I wasn't going to. All right, key characteristic number 4. We're almost done with the key characteristics, and then we're going to move into accelerated learning models for those of you who are excited to hear about those. 

All right, so with the length of this grant period, it is a three-year grant cycle, and the size of the grant awards, I believe they go from 1 to 5 million-ish. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: That feels great. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Yeah, that feels right. Thanks, Debi. Innovation is understandably a core part of this, I'm sorry, RFA, so you have the time and you have the money to do something really cool so that is why innovation is a key characteristic for this RFA. 

So the centers are expected to pilot new instructional or support models. The proposal must include details in the program work plan about the career and student support resources that would be available to students to help improve their outcomes. Outcomes meaning completion of the post-secondary credential, transition to more post-secondary training, or to the workforce. 

So examples that are called out in this RFA that specifically include, but are not limited to, services for refugee and immigrant adult learner populations. IRC is a great resource, by the way. That is the core of their work serving refugee and immigrant learners, or sorry, populations. Access to tutoring, academic advising, student support services, career guidance, case management, and success coaching. You could offer these on campus, or they could be provided by community resources in your area. 

In service of accelerated learning, which, again, we will talk about at length in a moment, centers are expected to experiment with approaches like co-teaching as appropriate, so centers should adopt and adapt and apply accelerated learning models intentionally, and you should use data to help support the decision for which accelerated learning model you would use. 

So I believe when you do your application, there is a drop down, where you choose the accelerated learning model that you're going to implement with your pathways. And so if it were me, again, I did not write this RFA and I am not scoring this RFA, but if I were responding to it, which I am not, I might say, if I'm an adult school and I look at my data and talk to Pro Enterprise, and I see that most of my English language learners are testing in maybe emerging or beginning English language fluency, I might use bridge programming as my accelerated learning model, one of them, so that I could introduce and front load English vocabulary for the health field and help students explore available health pathways. 

We have seen that model used across a number of consortia already. And then I might, when students are ready, move them in. When they finish the Bridge program, move them into a non-credit IET in their chosen pathway that they have discussed with maybe their transition specialist, navigator, or whatever you call that person. 

If I looked at my test scores or maybe my talk to my teachers, if I'm a community college non-credit ESL program and the students are more intermediate or advanced English language learners, perhaps the accelerated learning model I might choose would be dual enrollment or mirrored courses. So that's what I mean by using data about our population to determine which accelerated learning model is most appropriate. 

Again, we'll talk about those accelerated learning models in a moment. Importantly, with this very alliterative key characteristic, incubators of innovation and improvement, the improvement part of this is that your Innovation should be paired with evaluation and continuous improvement, so along the way, your center should document what works, what doesn't, why, and be prepared to share that learning with the field. 

Remember, centers should not be siloed, but be prepared to share what they learn, what works, what doesn't with colleagues across the state. Debi. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: So this can look like centers piloting co-teaching models that pair ESL and CTE instructors in health courses. It can also look like technology used to support hybrid instruction or simulated clinical experiences. So we know, and there was just a question that I was actually just responding to in the chat about, we know how difficult it is to secure and then access clinical placement sites and also offer the technology. 

So one thing that we could do is use leverage technology like maybe VR simulators as an innovative approach to getting the clinical practice or the lab practice that's needed without having to travel to locations or just finding a different way to work with the clinical sites. 

We're looking at new accelerated models, like maybe compressed bridge programs that are tested and refined over time, so accelerated and compressed so that the students are prepared before they enter these programs. We can also look at learner and employer feedback loops. We want to make sure, as I said like three slides now, collecting that data. If we're going to change and update and improve these programs every single session or semester, we need to make sure that we're collecting the data and also getting the data back from the employers as well. 

So using maybe surveys to find out what the students thought of the coursework, how prepared they felt, checking in at midterms, checking in at finals, checking in after they've completed their licensing exam, and getting the employer feedback, so maybe it's a survey to the employers or a phone call. 

In the chat, I was responding about ways to secure clinical sites, and what we've universally found, and I found in my own experience, is that it all comes down to relationships. Sometimes picking up the phone is the best way to go, so creating that friendly relationship with the employer sites to check in and see how are the students doing? How are they turning out as employees? What can they improve on? What skills are they lacking still? Even though we've created our curriculum and we've designed it and we've built in the skills, what can we be doing differently next time? 

Then we also want to have the centers documenting what's worked, what didn't and why, and then adjust the program design accordingly, so finding a uniform way to track this information is really valuable, because it's repeated many times in the RFA that you should report back what has improved? What things have been changed? 

And dissemination of lessons learned across the state. We want to be prepared to share. We want to be prepared to be an exemplar, as a center that you're showing what has worked, what hasn't worked, what you've changed. We talk a lot in our regional events and in our communities of practice, and in our open office hours to just see what are people doing and sharing ideas and ways to tweak our programs slightly? 

It's really, really important to document, document, document throughout this whole process so we can create really sustainable program that is making improvements all along the way. And now we're going to look at key characteristic number 5, consortium and community-wide impact. Megan, take it away. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: All right, the last key characteristic in the chat is live today. Again, well, if we haven't-- well, actually, we'll revisit these questions at the end, but certainly for listening to this webinar, you might want to get a copy of the chat because there are a lot of questions flying in into the chat. 

All right, key characteristic number 5. The final characteristic for the centers is consortium and community wide impact. So this characteristic focuses on scale and sustainability of impact, really pushing you to think beyond that three-year grant period as you write your application. 

So centers are expected to have an impact beyond individual students and member institutions to impact the broader community, so you should demonstrate in your application how the work that you're proposing is positioned to last. So think of the round 3 grant funds as a catalyst for the work, but not the sole source for the work, so one way you might do that is actively engaging employers, especially as stakeholders, for helping you build capacity. 

We recommend that you show how your center is being intentionally built with a durable infrastructure for English language learner health pathways programs, so in other words, you should propose and develop partnerships and funding strategies that can help you sustain this work after the grant funds end. 

So you might even consider that your center is demonstrating leadership at the regional level by shaping how partners in your region work together, and how your programs and pathways are financed, and how your services align across systems. It's important to remember that sustainability is not guaranteed when you rely on a single fund source, and those of us who have managed grants are well aware of that, so I'm sure you know that, so braiding funding early and often is necessary to support long-term operation. 

We'll talk a little bit in a moment about ways you could go ahead and work on sustaining the funds beyond the grant period, but sustainability also, as I mentioned earlier, goes beyond funds and can include things like shared curriculum and training across member institutions and across partners to help the program remain viable in the long-term. 

So the goal here would be to allow multiple members in your consortium to even if they're not part of this grant period now, but perhaps scaling to them later to help continue delivering the programs after the grant period ends. 

So the last thing we're going to do here on the key characteristics is Debi's going to bring this one to life, talk about real ways to do that, and then we'll jump into the accelerated learning models that are described in the RFA. Go ahead, Debi. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: So how can we do this? This could look like multiple adult schools and colleges adopt a shared pathway design developed by the center, so we've got multiple agencies working together in coordination as a center all developed together. 

We can also have employers using the center as a preferred talent pipeline. I love this one. If we can identify the employers that have a high need, which we're doing in our regional trainings, and if you can't make it to the regional trainings, or you can't make it, or would like more information before the March 18th deadline, because our Southern California event is March 23, you can either register for one of our other regional events, the Bay Area or Central, or you can reach out to us and we would be happy to overview the materials and help you look at your area. 

But you can look at the labor market information to identify employers that have a high demand and getting connection with them to create a talent pipeline for them. Creating the need, asking them who do you need? What are you looking for? What problems have you had with your employer so far? And then getting their buy in by explaining how your students are going to be more prepared than other employees. 

We know that our adult education students are much more motivated. They have a higher-- often they have a lot more going on in their life that will not allow for them to slow down or make mistakes. They are accelerated. They're ready. They need to get their life on track or get their life on a new track, so we know how wonderful they are, but we have to sell our students to employers, so if we can create a talent pipeline, that could be a great way to create sustainability for these centers. 

The consortium could also host regional convenings or communities of practice, so bringing in that whole community center so that we can all be on the same page, like I talked about before with professional development workshops, making sure that we're all providing the same resources, talking about the different techniques that we've had and documenting, documenting, documenting. 

Practices developed through the center that are used to influence policy, programming or regional strategies beyond the original partners. So remembering that this is a growing center, a growing thing, so you can make changes based on what you find and you know, the data that you've collected from this, the learners and from the employers and from the programs that you're running. 

We want to leverage employers for paid work-based learning, clinical placements, equipment, and direct hiring commitments, and then we want to add programs to the ETPL. We've said this a few times now. It comes up a few times in the RFA as well so that participants can access other workforce funds to support training costs, so this is a great way to provide some sustainability. Excuse my stutter. 

I have done this many times before, where I created-- because I'm from Nevada, and we're a Title II funded program out here, and so we didn't have any state money to help us run these IET programs and provide really any resources, so we leveraged other small grants. 

And then I worked with Title I agencies to get the students tuition paid for so that they could take the courses, and it really made it possible for me to continue running these courses over a long period of time, over many, many years and many, many sessions, so getting those programs on the ETPL can create a great system of sustainability for your centers. It also signals readiness for scale and long-term program viability. Just throwing that out there. 

All right, now that we've touched on that, we're going to go over to acceleration and pathways. Take it away, Anne. 

ANNE PETTI: All right, so thank you Debi and Meghan for a great overview of the key characteristics, so now we're going to pivot to talk in a little more detail about the accelerated learning models that are part of this RFA. 

So first of all, just so we're all on the same page about it, what is accelerated learning? So the reason that accelerated learning models are included in this RFA and in many other models is it's a model. There are many different models, but the overall goal is that they reduce the time to a credential, so rather than a student having to spend two or three years studying ESL and then moving into a developmental elemental course and then maybe entering into their preferred program of study through the accelerated learning models, they can do some of that overlapping at the same time and achieve the credential that they're looking to achieve sooner. 

It also helps to remove a lot of unnecessary barriers by providing additional supports to ELLs. It includes embedded language and occupational learning. So I'm sure all of you are familiar, for example, with contextualized ESL, where students are learning the language but within the context of the health care in general, or a specific healthcare career that they're looking to move into, so they're learning the language, but also learning some of the vocabulary and content that they need to know in that healthcare pathway. 

And then it also includes early and continuous employer exposure, so exposure for the students to employers so perhaps early on in the pathway, they may go on a tour of an employer or have a guest speaker come in and talk about the occupation and help them to understand a little bit more what that career would look like and make sure that that's a good fit for them, and also have an idea if they do continue and choose that career pathway, what that profession will look like at the end. 

Now, some accelerated learning models, these are the ones that are mentioned in the RFA. It's not limited only to these. Again, if you have a different accelerated learning model similar that would achieve the same ends, you can describe that and include that as part of the RFA. 

So the ones that are included in the RFA are pre-apprenticeship. I understand from the chancellor's office that apprenticeship is also an acceptable accelerated learning model, even though it's not explicitly listed in the RFA, bridge programs, dual and concurrent enrollment, integrated education and training, or IEP, and work-based learning, and we're going to talk a little bit more about the characteristics of each of these in the next several slides. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: So accelerated learning model pre-apprenticeships. It's important to note that in the RFA, it does state, on page 26, that pre apprenticeships must be registered with department of apprenticeship standards or DAS, so when we're talking about pre-apprenticeships please keep that in mind. 

These are short-term preparatory prep training aligned to healthcare roles. They're focused on foundational skills, workplace readiness, and language, and they're designed to prepare learners for apprenticeships, first and foremost, entry level employment, and further their credential training. 

Employer involvement in design and transition is critical in pre-apprenticeships. Your pre-apprenticeships are only as good as the employer engagement that you have included in this, because if you don't have the employer connection at the beginning, throughout and then into a registered apprenticeship, or into at very least credential attainment and into employment, then you don't have a successful pre-apprenticeship-- you have a bridge program. 

These can be very difficult to start with healthcare programs specifically too, because as the RFA says, it does have to be a part of that DAS, so you are looking for a registered pre-apprenticeship or confirming that you have a registered pre-apprenticeship, and NOC has a great webinar on pre-apprenticeships that's saved, I believe, on the CAEP TAP website. I highly recommend taking a look at it. 

I have myself run pre-apprenticeships and struggled at the end point with the direct connection to a registered apprenticeship and into employment, and the most successful pre-apprenticeships that I have had were ones that directly connected to an apprenticeship or had an employer at the end point. 

This is, again, one of those accelerated learning models, where you need to have an employer in the room from the beginning to inform the training that the students are receiving and to inform the preparation that they're receiving so that they are actually getting that workforce training they need in order to get into an apprenticeship. 

The students do need to have language and math skills prepared if they need to take an exam to get into an apprenticeship, but they need to have those foundational skills that are specified by the employers for the workforce. 

ANNE PETTI: OK, so the next accelerated-- 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Before you go, I just wanted to say, if there's anyone out there in webinar land who is doing a healthcare related pre-apprenticeship that is registered and does lead to a registered apprenticeship, please let us know. We would love to hear more about that offline. 

Looking at you Suzanne Murphy Martinez, I couldn't tell from your question in the chat about other occupations if you all have one. You do? Please, let us talk offline. I would love to hear about it. We have not been able to find someone doing that. If that's OK, I'd like to reach out. Maybe schedule some time to hear about what you're doing, if that's OK. I see you nodding. Thank you. All right, sorry to interrupt, Anne. I just had to get that out. Couldn't contain myself. 

ANNE PETTI: All right, so the next accelerated learning model that we're going to look at is bridge programs. So a bridge program is usually probably the first or just about the first step on a career pathway program, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a bridge. 

If you have students who maybe due to their language skills, basic skills, academic skills, they're not quite ready to get into the CTE programs or the credit courses, whatever courses next on your career pathway, then a bridge program is a program that can help to give them those skills and bridge the gap from where they are to where they need to get to, so it usually includes contextualized instruction combining ESL and healthcare content. It could also include basic skills, some math, or reading skills as well. 

Debi mentioned for some apprenticeship programs, but also for some other programs, there may be a certain level of math, or reading, or other basic skills in addition to the English language skills, and so those can be included in the bridge program. 

And then you're contextualizing it with the healthcare content, so maybe if they're doing some readings, they're reading about healthcare, either in a sector-specific program, if you're helping them to bridge into a specific sector-related program, or it could be more general healthcare content if the bridge program is designed to funnel into different programs. 

And the bridge program is designed to move learners into CTE or credential programs, and some of the focus areas include so academic readiness, those basic skills. It could also include things such as study skills, test taking skills, learning about a learning management system, different elements like those. It can include career exploration. 

For example, I've heard about bridge programs that are designed to just as a first step to different health care pathways, and then students can explore different healthcare careers, maybe get some exposure through guest speakers, employer tours, or other exposure to the employer, and in order to decide which career would be the best pathway for them. 

It also definitely includes the occupational language to get them familiar with a lot of the language and content that they'll need to know when they move into their CTE or credential program, and can involve some foundational healthcare skills. There may be medical terminology maybe included as part of a bridge program or other foundational healthcare knowledge. 

And then bridge programs are time limited and intentionally sequenced, so they're usually short-term programs, and designed with a backward design model. You're looking at which programs do you want the students to transition into and designing the content of the bridge program in order to directly connect them into that next step? 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: That it for you, Anne? 

ANNE PETTI: Yeah. Yes, that's it for me. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: So again, with both of those models that we've already discussed, remember, it's important to tie that to data to show a justification for why you've selected that accelerated learning model. 

Again, I personally would recommend using bridge programs if you have a lot of emergent or beginning English language learners who need additional support in acquiring English to get to a level where they can really be successful in those occupational training programs, but now we'll move on to dual enrollment. 

This is my particular pet accelerated learning model, so we are at the risk of me belaboring it, and before I do that, I want to say, if you would like individual TA on dual enrollment, which would be defined as a student who is enrolled in ABE, ASC, or ESL, non-credit adult ed and credit bearing programs at the same time, please reach out. I would love to talk to you one on one if you'd like. 

And additionally, on a funding strategy for dual enrollment, because you cannot use grant funds to pay individual tuition, so you would need to leverage some other form of funding to pay tuition. My personal favorite is ability to benefit, which is a new funding model in California that has just been implemented because it was approved to use California state process starting in this current academic year. 

Anyway, so in the context of this RFA, the intent is to reduce the friction it takes and the time it takes for English language learners to acquire English and earn the post-secondary credentials that lead to health care careers where they can earn a livable wage. 

Again, you cannot use grant funds to pay tuition for an individual student, so here you could leverage ability to benefit that is for another webinar, another day, to talk about ability to benefit, but if you'd like to reach out to talk about how you could potentially implement that at your college, please reach out, and I'll discuss that with you. 

But dual enrollment, again, simultaneous enrollment, for example, a student at an adult school, who is in adult secondary ed or ESL concurrently enrolling in a credit program. It is intentional. It is not designed for students to just be randomly enrolled in two places at once. 

You really need to align across the programs there. You really have to work together with your community college partner if you are an adult school to align like advising and student supports, particularly if you're using ability to benefit that requires alignment in several different ways so that learners are moving along a coherent pathway rather than parallel, disconnected programs. 

So dual enrollment can be especially powerful for English language learners when the English language instruction and the occupational training on the credit program are aligned. This would be if you have a cohort and IET, so you can do an IET with adult education and a credit program just like you would a non-credit program. 

You'd have to put in a little extra work to make sure that your instructors are working together to develop that single set of learning objectives that are a component of an IET and to make sure that the English language instruction is appropriately contextualized to the health occupation, but certainly, could be a strategy, so you could kind of blend the accelerated learning models here, do an IET for a dual enrollment program. 

I hope you're all tracking with me. Haven't lost the plot. So yeah, that will be a strategy, but we would recommend if you're using this model in your program, certainly you don't want to gatekeep who is eligible, but I would think long and hard about a student that I would put into a credit bearing program to make sure they have the appropriate skills to be successful in credit courses, because those do have a little bit of a risk in terms of not being repeatable and following you around on a transcript and costing money. 

So rather than simply stating that students can concurrently enroll in adult ed and credit, your proposal, if it were me writing it, should be explicit about the model that you're using and how it accelerates progress toward credential attainment and entry into health careers, so this can include coordinating schedules, aligning curriculum pacing, and SSL development or joint advising. 

I see where Ivan has mentioned that dual enrollment is not as simple as it sounds. Students have to be an HSD HSC to qualify. That is certainly true, and pay points to De Anza. Jenee Crayne, I think of you all the time out there. They have gotten around and have a board policy that allows them to enroll English language learner ESL students into dual enrollment. Not impossible, but and certainly not easy. That's why I said I could belabor this for a long time, but please reach out if you think you want to use this as a strategy. 

You could also leverage workforce Pell when that comes online, as students do not have to, or students can have earned a bachelor's degree to use workforce Pell-- but, again, it's going to take some work, but work that is worth it and has a high return on the investment. 

Anyway, so employer engagement, as we have pointed out for all accelerated learning models, is very important here. Employers should be involved to help inform the competencies that students need to develop both in the English language instruction and in the occupational training. 

You could also layer in here work-based learning or clinical experiences. I acknowledge that clinical experiences are hard to come by. We have heard that from programs across California, but engaging employers here in the design would help to ensure that your dual enrollment programs are aligned to the workforce. 

We would also recommend in your proposal that you explain how these dual enrollment programs help move students along a pathway to help improve their economic mobility and advance their career in the healthcare field, and how you might support students to persist in transition fully into credit programs. All right, Debi, you might be next for IET. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: I am, and IET is my preferred method of accelerated learning models along with bridge programming, what Anne was talking about before. Bridge classes are a great way to lead in to integrated education and training models. These are some of my favorites, because it creates that relationship with the credit instructor, the CTE instructor, whatever that for credit program or non-credit program is. It's creating the connection between adult education and that work-based learning or workforce learning. 

So in an integrated education and training program, we have concurrent delivery of ESL instruction, occupational training, and workforce preparation. The ESL instruction should be contextualized to the workforce training that the students are doing in their other program. 

Really successful models of this-- I'm sure everyone has heard of I-BEST. I-BEST does require a heavy lift because you requires co-teaching. Co-teaching can be amazing. It can also be complicated, because you have to have everyone on board in order to have the adult education instructor in the classroom teaching alongside the say, it's a CNA instructor, or the medical assistant instructor, and they're co-teaching the course together with a blended class of ESL students and traditional or non-adult education students. 

There is no one way to do an IET. You can have your students in a support class two days a week, and then have them in their CNA class two days a week. And in the ESL support class is where they're learning their contextualized English, they're learning occupational skills, they're practicing what they've learned in their CNA course, they're also doing the workforce preparation like writing their resumes, practicing interviews, talking about the skills that they're learning in their coursework so that they can actually present it to an employer when it's time for them to get a job. 

There's also ways to, like I was saying, closely coordinate your teaching, so maybe you can't co-teach in a classroom, but you can have the instructor and the adult education instructor working together to streamline and design the curriculum, ensure that what's being taught in the ESL classroom mirrors what's being taught in the, say, the CNA class, but is more contextualized with the English language skills. 

You can also design to accelerate the credential attainment, so instead of making our students wait many, many semesters while they're preparing their English language skills before joining a CNA program, for example, they can be learning contextualized English at the same time, therefore accelerating. Maybe they get it done in one semester. 

And then it also has strong, strong alignment to the employer needs. I don't know how many times I can say this. I feel like it should be a game. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So making sure that you're working with the employers, you're working with the credit or non-credit CTE instructors to make sure that the students are prepared and are learning the same skills in the ESL classroom or whatever that looks like, if it's co-teaching. We want to make sure that the students are really prepared for what's going to be expected of them in the field. 

And as I've said many times before, and I will always say forever, this comes down to relationship building. Making sure that you've built relationships with everyone in your center that's working to design this IET if this is the accelerated model that you choose. I love this model. And now we're looking at work-based learning. I'll pass it off to the next person. 

ANNE PETTI: That's me, Debi. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Oh, it's Anne. 

ANNE PETTI: Yes, it's me. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So work-based learning is the last accelerated learning model that we're going to review here, and that is just what it sounds like. So it involves structured learning in a real or simulated work setting, so where students are actually either learning on the job or learning in an environment where they're doing work similar to what they would be doing on the job. 

So some examples of that some of you have already mentioned in the chat-- clinical placements could be considered work-based learning, paid or unpaid work experiences, job shadowing or simulations. 

Some schools where say, for example, they may have a simulated dental lab set up where students can practice on a kind of a dummy doing some of the work, so simulations like that. Doing job shadowing, internships or externships, and then in the apprenticeship aligned models, as Debi had discussed earlier, where students are often working and learning as well. 

So any of those models, where students actually have the direct exposure to an employer, they're either doing the work that they would be doing in this profession, or doing a simulation, or a shadowing, or doing something similar, and they're getting that actual hands-on experience can be considered work based learning. 

Work-based learning is employer hosted, so you definitely for this you need to have employer, partner, who you are working with on this and who is willing to offer these opportunities, which I know that can be a challenge in some cases, and it's also competency-driven, making sure that students understand the competencies that are needed on the job and are able to perform those. 

OK, so moving on. You may be asking, how do you choose the best accelerated learning model for your program? And when we were describing the different models, we did address that a little bit, but there's no-- Meghan and Debi mentioned their preferred model. I would say, my preferred model is probably bridge programming, but really what you need to look at, look at all the components for your program and see what's the best for you? 

So there's not one that's the best model for everyone, or if you're not doing an IET model, yours isn't as good as someone doing a bridge program. All of these accelerated learning models are good models. All of them help to accelerate the learning for the students and help them to achieve the credential sooner. 

It really depends on what do your programs look like? What are the different pieces that you have in place? Who is the population that you're serving, and what's going to work best? So you want to look at the English language learners that you're primarily working with to see what would be the best fit. 

Meghan had mentioned that if you have a lot of early English language learners who have a relatively low level of English or skills, a bridge program can be a really good program. If you have students who have a higher level of skills, and maybe you have a great employer partner who has an apprenticeship program, a pre-apprenticeship might be a good program. 

If you have a lot of support among the consortium members for an IET, like a co-teaching type model, then that may be a good one to look at, so it really depends. Look at the population of students that you're serving. You definitely want to be in alignment with employer demand in your area, and especially if you have some strong employer partnerships, what type of program is going to work best with what they're doing? 

You want to make sure, and this is where the center model helps to streamline how everything works. You want that program to have a clear role within the pathway, so you'll want to determine, what is your pathway? Which type of courses can you offer at which institution and how do they all fit together? 

And then as I mentioned, the direct connection to employment, so you want to make sure you have those employer partnerships and that whatever programs and whatever pathways you're doing can lead directly to good employment opportunities in your region. 

And here's just an example of what a pathway could look like and including employer touchpoints. Now, are hundreds of different models of what a pathway could look like, so this is not to say that this is the ideal pathway or this is the type of pathway. This is the pathway they're looking for in this grant application. That's not the case at all, but I just we just wanted to show how could the different pieces fit together in developing a pathway? 

So as this is a sample of what a pathway could look like, you can have an adult school that has the initial course, which is maybe an ESL, bridge program, or a pre-apprenticeship program. 

Then after students complete that, they could move into an IET, or a dual, or concurrent enrollment program, where they're in the CTE or credential course and also have an adult education instructor, or supplemental courses, where they're still receiving support in those areas as well. 

Now, as we mentioned in both the bridge, the pre-apprenticeship, or the IET, there can be employer touch points at those points as well with guest speakers, with two workplace tours, possibly even job shadowing, or mock interviews so that within those first two steps along the pathway, there can be many employer touchpoints. 

Then moving on to the next step could be, for example, a work-based learning experience, where the students have an externship or a clinical placement, where they are working directly with an employer and getting that experience. Then they achieve their credential and then hopefully they receive a job placement with a partner employer. 

And I've found from my experience, when you find an employer partner who has a lot of jobs in a particular area, usually it's maybe difficult for them to fill those jobs, so if you're willing to partner with them, give them input into the curriculum and the skills that they need and make sure that you're helping to train those students to fit those jobs, usually they're very willing to then hire those students upon completing the program, so it can be a win-win for the program, for the learners, and also for you as an institution. 

And then so the job placement and then they have a job as a medical assistant. Now, depending on what the pathway is, for example, for medical assistant after the credential and prior to job placement, they would need to get their certification in that area. So that's another step that depending on which pathway you're using, you would need to make sure that you can coordinate that. 

And speaking with some of you as grantees in prior technical assistance or through the needs assessment interviews, I also understand that in some places the certification is only offered at certain times, so one thing you may want to consider also is how the timeline of your pathway fits in with when the certification exam is being offered so students can take it as soon as possible after they finish the course so that all the knowledge is fresh in their head and they can get that credential and then get the job, but so this is just an example of the different steps and how they can build upon each other. 

And then we've mentioned employer engagement often throughout this presentation, but just touching a little bit more on that. In this RFA, the intention is that the employer engagement is much more robust than it may have been in previous in the round one or the round two. 

So in this RFA, the employer engagement is a core expectation, so it's not optional. Well, hopefully you have a good employer partner. You really want to find strong employer partners that could help with your co-designing what pathway would be or pathways would be the best to pursue, giving input into the curriculum, and what elements are important to include in the curriculum, hosting work based learning opportunities, hiring or prioritizing graduates from your program for job placement, and generally being involved all the way through from the beginning, maybe doing some light touch, coming in to speak, or doing a tour, to hiring students at the end. 

So you'd like to have documented employer partnership, so you want to be able to name who those partners are, give a clear description of what their role will be in the project, and give evidence of a sustained commitment more than just a letter of support. What types of activities will they be supporting with on this program? OK, and with that, I will turn it back over to Meghan. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: All right, so, again, WestEd and IRC did not write this RFA, nor are we involved in the scoring, but based upon our interpretation of what we've read and studied and experienced, we provide for you here a synthesis of our presentation, and what we believe a strong proposal would do well. 

So what you put in your proposal should read as a coherent and credible design, and it should do a few things, because consistently will. First, take that relatively nebulous center of innovation and impact and health careers and define it. 

So for someone who is reading your proposal, maybe test this out on someone who doesn't speak your language. In other words, who doesn't speak the language of adult ed with all of our many acronyms and processes and nuances, and see if they can articulate in plain language what your center is, what it specializes in, and why it exists. That should be explicit in your proposal. Maybe assume who's reading it might not be an expert like you are, so make sure that they can articulate that in plain language for you after reading it. 

Second, you should clearly align your proposal to the five key characteristics of centers that we discussed earlier in our webinar. Again, I wouldn't personally treat them as separate sections, but I would strive to show how those five things-- specialization, strategy, operations, innovation, impact, sustainability are mutually reinforcing and threaded throughout your program design. 

Third, we've talked about this throughout our presentation. Intentionally integrate employer engagement throughout your proposal. Again, employers should be central actors across the student learning journey, not simply end users of your program. That's really hard in America. 

I've been to Germany, where I studied their workforce development system. Employers are engaged throughout the workforce development process. They don't just receive trained employees at the end and put them in jobs. We need to change the narrative here and make the role of employers visible throughout the pathway design, curriculum development, work-based learning, recruitment, job placement. Put very simply, employer input should shape your program from start to finish evidenced by your letters of commitment from your employer, partners, and also just written into your narrative throughout. 

Fourth, if I were writing this proposal, I would make acceleration intentional and strategic and explain what we are designing reduces the time to credential and employment, while still maintaining the quality of the programs and supporting the English language learners. Be clear using data why you chose a specific accelerated learning model and how it fits into your overall pathway. 

Finally, and very importantly, your proposal ideally would demonstrate regional impact and sustainability beyond grant funding. I was monitoring the chat while Anne was talking, and a lot of you are asking about how you're supposed to pay English language learner tuition if you do a dual enrollment program, or if you do an IET with a credit bearing program. 

This is where you get to practice sustainability beyond grant funding. If you can't use your English language learner health pathway funds for tuition, then you need to leverage other fund sources. Those fund sources can be used to pay for non-credit training, such as individual training accounts, ITAs, with your WIOA Title I agency. 

As long as you are on the ETPL, the Educational Training provider list, you can pay for your program using title I funds. So that would be a strategy for sustainability beyond the grant period, as that money can be used to cover the cost of training for your students when this grant money runs out. 

So it's important to demonstrate how you will sustain your program beyond the grant period. Show how the work that you're proposing benefits more than just a single cohort of students or a single institution. And you could do that through shared tools, scalable models, capacity building, and training across partners, and influence on the broader systems of which you are a part. So that is-- Oh, Debi you're coming off mute, are you-- is this you? 

DEBI PEZZUTO: It's both of us. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: I wasn't sure if I was stepping out of line here. We had a number of questions in the chat. You all do have also the ability to come off of mute here. I guess we need to go through some of the questions that came in on the chat. There were a plethora of them. We can try to answer some of them here. We also have about 20 minutes where we can answer your questions if you have any that you want to shout out. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Can I start with the top question? 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Sure. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: So the top question is, will we receive this PowerPoint and the recording? Yes, you will. As soon as the materials are remediated, they will be shared, I believe on the SCOE or the CAEP TAP website, but they will be sent out to you. You'll receive the information once it's remediated, which shouldn't take too long. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: I would also add that there was a question and answer period for this grant application that has closed, but the answers will come out sometime in February ish. I think early February is what we heard. I'm not sure if that has changed, but those will be forthcoming. So if you ask questions at the bidders webinar or if you submitted them to the Chancellor's Office, and those might be better answered by the source, the grant maker, certainly wait for those to come out soon. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Do you want to just walk through the questions Meghan with me? And Anne? Cool. So one of the first questions was about other occupations. And if they can-- if they can be included, if they show growth but are not categorized as Bright Outlook on O*NET. And what are the criteria for strong regional hiring demand? Do you want to talk? 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: I'm a visual learner. Where was that? Who asked that question? I'm going to look for it. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Way at the top. 

ANNE PETTI: Let's go say, as long as you can show labor market data that shows that it's a-- that it's area of growth in your area. And if you have employers who show that they have job openings in that area, and you can show that it has a living wage, then that should be fine. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: This was a question from Beth. 

ANNE PETTI: Thank you. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Marya said that the PowerPoint and the webinar-- I'm sorry, the questions and the PowerPoint will be released early next week. If anybody missed that in the chat. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Very nice. I did miss that. Thanks, Meghan. It says, are you still going to accept other occupations as they have in the past, as Anne just said? Yes, with proper justification. Let's see. There were some questions about the Southern California event. I touched on it when I was on one of my slides. 

The Southern California event is on March 23. If you want to join a regional event before that date, we have the Bay Area, which will be in Alameda on February 10. We also have the event that will be held in Clovis, right next to Fresno. If you're not familiar, on March 3. 

So you can join any event that works best for your location or time frame. If you can't make those events, you really want to be at the SoCal event, but you have some questions about the labor market information prior to the March 18th deadline, you can reach out to us either Meghan myself, Anne, Andrea. It doesn't matter, we work really closely as a team. 

So we'll pull a couple people onto a call with you and talk to you about your area, walk you through some of the materials that we're going to share at the regional events, and some of the activities as well. But I would encourage you to join the in-person regional events, because we got so much from last week's North far North event, where people were working together from different areas. 

People were getting to meet each other that were nearby in different consortium to find ways to collaborate. And we were sharing a lot of really great ideas. That's the thing that you can really only get when you're in person. So I'll just plug the in-person event as per usual. 

There was another question, if the pathways have two to three more advanced or specific degrees, is it expected that the outcome numbers will be smaller for the more advanced careers and larger for the more entry level careers? I'm not sure if we asked this one already out loud. Anne or Megan, you want to jump in? 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: I think that was the one I tried to answer when I was multitasking, which is actually not something anyone could do. Is that the one I started to answer? 

ANNE PETTI: Yes it is. I wasn't sure actually about the answer to that. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: So if it were me, I assume you're not training something as specialized as a neurologist. But I would perhaps compare like-- or look at what the labor market data says. And actually labor market data will show you the demand in your area, compared to what it is in other areas. 

So you can get an idea if that-- Even if it's not like quantifiably as high as, say, a nurse assistant or a medical assistant, you can compare it to other regions throughout the country or in your area in California to see if it is in high demand relative to other areas. You might be able to get that from your local center of Excellence. That'll be my answer. Not speaking on behalf of the grant makers. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: We're all friends here. We didn't create this. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Mayra is providing some helpful answers there about what the funds are allowable-- What-- I'm sorry. What expenditures are allowable using round one, round two, and round three funds. So Nancy, Nancy Miller asked there-- I'm sorry, she wasn't a question. 

She stated there is a concern that if Grant funding cannot be used to assist with pre-employment or internship clearance, it would greatly impact certification and employment outcomes. Molly from Shasta then asked may funding be used for certification exam fees? And like. I've seen a lot of questions about this in the chat, so we'll tackle this one. 

Debi pointed to page 16 for allowable and non allowable activities, and how you might leverage Title I funding to help pay for some of those associated fees. And Mayra responded that similar to round one and round two, round three funds can be used to pay for program required expenses, such as background checks or licensing exams, if the fees are currently being charged to students. 

Since these are prop 98 funds, they are limited to gifting of public fund restrictions. Grantees will want to ensure that the administration of vouchers is carefully managed. Funds, she continues, funds may not be used to pay for students' participation in health pathway programs or other methods, such as student stipends and internships. 

Then Lisa asks another million dollar question that we get a lot. She says, she recalls that one of the prop 98 restrictions is use of funds for foreign transcript evaluation, and Mayra confirms that is correct. ELL Health Pathway funds cannot be used to cover foreign transcript evaluation and acknowledges this is a common question received. We do receive that question quite a lot. Thank you for bringing that up, Lisa. And thank you for your work, your hard work in the chat, Mayra. And everywhere you go. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: There were a few questions about the allowable cost. So just a reminder to point to page 16 for more information on that of the RFA. We do have a question about accelerated learning models, Meghan. Francisco, I believe, asked if the classes will be accelerated and IET like, does the teacher have to be a CTE credentialed teacher? For example, the CNA being taught by an RN and a CTE credentialed instructor. Many small agencies have difficult-- have a difficult time hiring staff and much more difficult if they have to find an RN that is also a CTE certified or CTE credentialed instructor. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Yes, that is an issue. We've heard from across the field it's hard to find instructors, many of those who are credentialed to be able to teach, and they should be for CTE. Certainly, not if you're using an IET or IET contextualized teacher does not have to be certified in that way, but your occupational instructor would. 

They can usually make more money out in the field than they can teaching, which is a common problem that many programs have not only in California, but across the country. I don't know if anybody has any creative solutions to that issue you other than they need more money? 

ADELE: I do have a creative solution, I think, but I don't know if it's allowable. There's about three of us that have articulated courses that are K-12. We use a CTE teacher that's already on staff for the high school, and then we jump onto the articulation agreement with the college. So the student, even if they don't have legal status, can still register with us. And then the college has already agreed to give them the college credit. So there's no cost to the student for this. And you have a CTE qualified teacher. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Thank you for sharing that, Adele. One thing about adult Ed is we always find a way. We don't take no for an answer. I hope y'all got that out there. That was very helpful, Adele. Thank you. 

And Francisco says, thank you, Susan. From Chi partners, also said the Centers of Excellence does provide great occupational demand and LMI data for the state that can be used by everyone, not just community colleges. Their data is excellent. Debi and I use it all the time. It is reliable. It is trustworthy. It is valid. It is useful. So please leverage their data for your region. There's one in all the regions big regions. Thank you Susan, for that. And she provided a link there. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: We also had a question that said is talking about IET models from many years ago. And if there's any additional updated research on the IET model beyond the IBEST model. And I was just responding in the chat. 

But I wanted to say that we talk a lot about IBEST and I think that often people are getting or assuming that IBEST is only talking about co-teaching. When actually IBEST is-- the IBEST training includes many different examples of the types of accelerated, integrated education and training designs that you can do, ranging from the really basic type of model that I was talking about, where we have low connection and we're just supporting the students like an embedded tutor model all the way up to the more complicated co-teaching model with contextualized, high level ESL classes that lead into the IET at like a pipeline similar to bridge classes. 

So in the chat, I'm adding the link to the Seattle IBEST model website. You can actually find their training materials, take a look at the different types of models and see which one works best for you. The idea behind integrated education and training is just that you have a seamless connection and contextualization between what they're learning in their workforce preparation, non-credit coursework, and in their contextualized English language courses. 

So that we don't have students reading Edgar Allen Poe and then also learning CNA. They're taking their CNA class, and in their English class they're practicing how to communicate with patients. They're learning how to read and understand HIPAA. They're preparing for their licensing exam. So they're still learning English. But it's really highly contextualized and specific to the timeline of the coursework that they're working on. So I'll include that in the chat. 

ANNE PETTI: And thanks for adding to that in your question, Angela, about current research available. I think basically the moving away from just IBEST the current research have highlights exactly the types of accelerated learning models that we just talked about in this webinar, where the idea is that there's not one model, but as long as the model is accelerating learning for the students and doing concurrently the English language and basic skills with the contextualized content that that's considered best practice. So that the information presented here today does represent the current best practices in terms of accelerated learning models. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Exactly. And it should be emphasized, too, that when we're talking about these integrated education, these accelerated models, they the strongest in the IET or accelerated models, have broad support services, wrap around support services for the students. 

They're working with the students when they first enter programming, throughout programming, and upon exit. So the transitions are really strong. The supportive services are really strong with these students. So this isn't the type of thing where we would just toss a new student in without even getting to know them, to find out if they would be really successful in this type of accelerated model. 

It's not something where we would throw the students in without additional tutoring support or without some supportive services, or maybe working with our other WIOA Title agencies to give them additional supports for their family and life-- their life needs. Like maybe they need childcare in order to be successful in these programs. So providing those wraparound services, which is also noted in the RFA. So finding ways to support the students throughout their programming. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: There has been some other conversation in the chat, specifically from Margie Moriarty. I don't know where you're from, Margie, but somewhere out there, and others. But specifically, if people watching the recording wanted to look at the question. 

Many people have mentioned that it's hard to find externships and other work based learning opportunities, and Margie asked about using simulations maybe in place of a work based learning opportunity. Again, I did not write this RFA and I am not scoring this RFA. 

But if it were me, and I have done this in the past, in the absence of clinical placements or work based learning placements, I have personally used VR headsets. And based on my reading of page 16, it looks like equipment and materials are allowable. 

So perhaps Mayra, you can correct me if I'm wrong. One might procure VR headsets. They're not quite as expensive as the software that you load onto them necessarily. But not only can they simulate a workplace environment, they're also safe places for students to fail. 

Something I learned in my experience, actually, this isn't health, but I used VR headsets for a construction program, and I had students who were in their 40s who had never used a CAEP measure. And so that might not be something you want to raise your hand and tell your classmates that you don't know how to measure. 

But you can do it in the privacy of your headset. Learn how to use a CAEP measure for the first time, so just highly recommend that in general, as a strategy for helping students get their feet wet or try something for the first time in a safe way without having to share what they don't know. So perhaps that could be an innovative strategy. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: That can also be a great strategy for rural communities too. So a recent grant in the last five years out here in Reno, Nevada, was to purchase VR goggles through the library system. And then it was shared throughout rural communities. So the students were able to check out the VR goggles, take them home. They were all learning together, the same coursework to become a phlebotomist or a CNA. Or they used it for HVAC as well. 

So folks who couldn't commute in and drive three hours into Reno every day to take their classes could complete their coursework elsewhere and then come in for really longer days in clinicals when they had to be in person or for their licensing exam when they had to be in person. So it was another way for our really rural areas to connect as one big classroom, maybe as part of the center, as a big classroom. Lots of ideas out there. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Thanks, Debi. And Margie clarified that she is in Whittier, California, and both of her hospital partners have been bought out. I think we've heard other people say that as well. That being bought out is limiting their ability to partner with their employers. 

I do recommend pulling the data and see if maybe not your largest employers, but maybe your private practices who might not hire 800 medical assistants a year, but perhaps hire 8 or 10, or that could be a potential partner for you to work with for clinical placements. I'm sure you all have tried that as well, but your labor market data can reveal other potential partners other than your largest employers. Anything else that we might have missed? 

ANNE PETTI: Looks like we got the questions that were in the main questions in the chat. 

MEGHAN MCBRIDE: Holly-- That Holly put in a link for-- thank you, Ann. For CAEP TAPS upcoming English language learner health care pathways data collection and reporting webinar on February 3 that we discussed earlier that is being held by NLCE, you can register for that. 

We also have an upcoming health community of practice. In our community of practice, we highlight our grantees and the amazing work that we're doing. I think our topic for the next one is recruitment and retention, so please join us for that on February 19. 

Again, our regional trainings are coming up. Those are posted in the chat, but you can look at all of the upcoming events on the website. I think that's it for us, unless anything help. Yep, Holly posted those regional training links as well. Mayra, would you like to say something? I see your hand is up by all means. 

MARYA: Yes, a shameless plug on my end as well, since there's a little bit of time. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. This is an excellent-- this was an excellent webinar I think it's-- I hope the interested grantees considering applying. We're able to get some of this very helpful information as you start to develop your proposals for round three. 

I just wanted to-- I saw that in the chat. We're promoting the upcoming webinars, and that's primarily applicable to our round one, round two grantees. But I just wanted to flag that if you are around one or around two grantees, please ensure that you are up to date with your required biannual reports. I will be conducting outreach this week to those that have any outstanding reports, so please go in, take a look and see if you have any outstanding reports because emails will be coming out soon. 

That is one of the requirements also for round three. Ensuring that you are completing your required reports. Please work with us to get caught up on that. And then as far as the round two extension requests, I know there's been a lot of questions on when that will be released for round two grantees, looking to request an extension. 

We are working on developing a memo that will be forthcoming. We're reconciling our round one, round two, making sure all fiscal progress reports are submitted as we're getting ready to release the process and memo on requesting extensions for round two, we want to make sure that grantees are caught up with all of the required reports that as you're getting ready to request for an extension. 

So those are all forthcoming, as we have now released round three, the materials we had shared in the chat, materials for round three bidders conference, which was the PowerPoint FAQ. We've received a lot of questions, and we are reconciling all of that, all of the questions and answers that we're putting together. Getting that remediated. And that information should be coming out as early as next week as well. So just wanted to share that. Thank you. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Thank you so much Mayra. I'm going to go ahead and wrap things up. Or do you want to talk first Holly? 

HOLLY: Well, I was just going to wrap it up. But if you would like to, I was just going to remind all the participants that there were a lot of questions that were answered via the chat and a lot of links dropped. And instead of doing the hyperlinks today, we went ahead and posted the chunkier links for their convenience. 

Because if you click the three dots in the upper right hand corner of the chat, you can save the chat. And I've realized when we hyperlink it and you save the chat, it does not give you the URL. So if you want to go ahead and hit those three dots now and save that chat to your computer, you will get the URLs. If you were not able to click on them, then you have them for a reference for a future date. Debi, last comments from West Ed from IRC? 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Yeah. I just wanted to say that this concludes our session. And thank you all for attending and engaging with us in the chat. Feel free to contact us anytime with any questions that you have. As I've said before, you can contact any of us, myself, Meghan, Anne, Andrea, Amber. We work as a team, so we connect with each other very regularly. 

And we want to say thank you again to SCOE TAP for supporting our webinars. We really appreciate you and we hope you all have a wonderful day. Don't forget to fill out the evaluation. 

HOLLY: Yes, everyone, please fill out that evaluation. We read the results. We know West Ed reads, the ERC reads, and the Chancellor's Office read. And we are curious to hear your feedback. So please do take a moment and give us your feedback. 

Thank you all for spending two hours with us today. Thank you everyone for your presentations, and Mayra for being present today and helping us run this webinar. We will see you all at your next events. Thank you very much. Bye, bye.