“Small but Mighty” College Brings Apprenticeship to Rural West Virginia

Whenever there’s a chance to bring new opportunities to the rural communities in its region, Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College (Eastern) in Moorefield, West Virginia, is up for the challenge. Next up is becoming a sponsor of Registered Apprenticeship (RA) programs for the first time.

RA is a powerful pathway that boosts wages for workers and yields higher productivity and other benefits for employers, earning them $1.44 for every dollar they spend. For rural communities like those around Eastern, RA can also be a tool for developing and retaining homegrown talent.

But sponsoring an RA is administratively complex and time-consuming, putting it out of reach for the smaller employers who often predominate in rural communities. Eastern President Dr. Thomas Striplin has decided the school will face these challenges head-on and unlock the benefits of the model for the Potomac Highlands and Eastern Panhandle regions of West Virginia. “It would have felt like a disservice to the community not to do it,” explained Lauren Arbaugh, Eastern’s Director of Workforce and Continuing Education, who is leading the effort.

Eastern is one of 10 community colleges in the first of two cohorts receiving technical assistance from the Association for Community College Trustees (ACCT) to provide content instruction about RA and guidance for each college to systematically and methodically design internal institutional apprenticeship management processes for RA sponsorship. Ascendium Education Group is supporting ACCT’s Scaling Apprenticeship at Community Colleges Project.

With an enrollment of 571 students, Eastern is the smallest college in ACCT’s technical assistance cohort, as well as among public undergraduate colleges in West Virginia. But the college tries to make its small size an advantage by being nimbler and more entrepreneurial than some larger schools. Eastern Vice President of Academic and Student Services Monica Wilson describes the college as “small but mighty.”

Clinical medical assistant is the first RA that Eastern will sponsor because of the shortage of these allied health professionals in its region. Improving access to health care is far and away the top concern of residents of the six counties that Eastern serves. The school is developing the program from its courses in electrocardiogram technology, phlebotomy, medical terminology, and medical administration. Making the program an RA benefits students because they earn as they learn, keeping their attention on their studies without the distraction of an unrelated job.

The college is focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) for its second RA. With grant support from the West Virginia Community and Technical College system, the school has developed the curriculum for an AI-centered certificate program that it hopes to launch next year after it completes the college’s internal review processes and is approved by its accreditor. In developing the program, Eastern sought guidance from Northrop Grumman and IBM, both of which have facilities in Mineral County. Arbaugh will use the program as the foundation for an AI specialist RA that she thinks will also appeal to some small employers in the region. Because the related instruction will be offered online, Eastern will be able to work with employers across the state who want to develop AI talent.

“There are a lot of changes that are making it challenging to survive in higher ed today,” noted Striplin. “Even though we’re tiny, we want to be one of the most visionary colleges as we respond to those trends.”

Becoming an RA sponsor is a strategy every community college can pursue to expand its role as the hub for workforce development in its region. With technical assistance and support from ACCT, Eastern is building a RA sponsorship model to watch for community colleges that serve rural communities.