Overview

Located in rural Washington, Walla Walla Community College (WWCC) has 103 programs split evenly among career technical and general education/transfer. Despite a majority of students entering below college-ready standards, WWCC does a very good job creating pathways to four-year degrees, posting a particularly impressive transfer rate. But it is strong connections with local employers and the community that stand at the center of WWCC’s success. Using a combination of sophisticated data analysis and deep engagement on regional economic development, the community college identifies projected areas of job growth and then provides students with the skills and credentials needed to succeed in those careers. WWCC also partners with segments of its community that, without the college, might remain overlooked. For example, it has established a water management center that works with the local Native American tribe to restore the local watershed and it partners with the Washington State Department of Corrections to educate prisoners. 

Creating tomorrow’s jobs

Throughout the Walla Walla valley, vineyards and wineries have sprung up on land once dedicated to more traditional agriculture. The strength of southeast Washington’s new grape economy is due in no small part to WWCC, which hasn’t just educated the people who work at these wineries—it educated the people who created them.

As lumber and food processing jobs left the region over the last decade, along with many of the people who held them, the college has worked double-time to ensure that its training programs are not just up-to-date, but are forward-thinking. Egils Milbergs, executive director of the Washington Economic Development Commission said at WWCC, “the attitude is not about buying into the recession. It’s about inventing the future.”

The region's unemployment rate is well below the state average and development officials give much of the credit to WWCC. It engages in many of the workforce practices of effective community colleges: relying on advisory boards, hiring from industry, and using surveys to make sure graduates are successful and employers are happy. But the college doesn’t stop there. It attempts to grow the regional economy from the bottom up, creating innovative programs that will create tomorrow’s jobs.

The wine program attracts students from around the country and is a central reason there are about 140 wineries in the Walla Walla area, compared to fewer than 20 when the program began in 2000. The school paired with the local power company to open programs in the growing fields of electrical and wind energy. And, a watershed ecology program created two years ago has convened farmers, environmentalists, and Native Americans in an alliance to restore the local watershed, which creates jobs and brings back the disappeared salmon that are crucial to the culture of the local Umatilla Indian tribes. It also provides an opportunity to Native Americans, who make up one-quarter of students in the degree program and traditionally have lacked the educational credentials to move ahead in water-related careers.

These programs aren’t conceived on a whim. WWCC president Steven VanAusdle is very active in the local and state development efforts. School officials work with outside experts to develop economic feasibility studies and share data about career projections with current and prospective students.

Matthew Locati moved from Boise to enroll in WWCC’s wine program, envisioning working in a vineyard with his dog at his side. But he would not have signed up without the information the college provided him, including evidence of strong job placement and solid salaries for recent graduates. “That was key to me,” Locati said. “I’m 36. Even though I love wine, I don’t want to commit two years of my life to a program if I might not have a career at the end.”

Close connections with students

The careful attention paid to workforce development is mirrored by an equally deliberate focus on student development, which college officials believe is a big reason why the school’s 8,500 credit students are so successful. Nationally, just under one-quarter of community college students graduate in three years; at WWCC, 36 percent do. WWCC students who start off in developmental education have an unusually high graduation rate as well.

Many community colleges require students to see an academic advisor—at some point. WWCC students must meet with one each quarter. Faculty members who advise receive regular training and mentoring and have their schedules cleared each term for a full day of advising.

Garrett Wolf, 24, feels fortunate that the chair of his civil engineering department  is also his advisor, steering him toward internships, electives, and a career exploration class. “He really knows what all the courses are and he gets to know each one of us,” Wolf said.

WWCC developed the online Advisor Data Portal, which houses a wealth of information about each student that used to be scattered in various places, if it existed online at all: placement scores, grades, educational plans, and warning flags for poor performance or attendance. The portal is one of many fruits of a unique collaboration between student services and information technology. Members of both staffs meet weekly and have designed many tools to improve student completion. A degree estimator, for example, automatically maps students’ transcripts against program requirements to determine how close to completion they are. Notices go out to students near a credential—even if they are no longer enrolled—and they are offered a bookstore gift certificate to come talk with a counselor, who helps get them back on track.

Educating prisoners for a productive future

Lloyd Gray, 47, is on the WWCC honor roll. He’s also a prisoner at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

Since 2009, the college has set up degree programs, funded by a private donor, at the penitentiary and the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center nearby. Instructors teach classes on site and students get the same high-touch advising offered on the main campus. Technical programs are available too, with hands-on facilities for students in diesel technology, welding, and other fields. Since 2008, inmates have earned more than 1,300 vocational certificates through WWCC.

The educational opportunities—including credentials aimed at four-year transfer— are targeted to inmates close to release, so that they can have productive futures when back in the community. Gray had been locked up before, but was never given a shot at an education. When not incarcerated, he worked in restaurants and struggled with addictions. He didn’t have an academic future in mind when he entered the penitentiary in 2009, but he jumped immediately at the opportunity.   

Gray calls his WWCC education “probably the most positive aspect of my life.” Without it, he said, he’d probably be headed back to dead-end kitchen work. Instead, in December he will receive his associate’s degree, and his release. He plans to attend Central Washington University and become a behavioral psychologist. Thanks to a community college that has one eye trained closely on students and the other on the future, he thinks he has a great shot of making it.