Jump-start on college degree urged

Sometimes, time off from work can generate the best business leads and ideas.
That’s what Chris Semonelli, a Middletown Town Council member and vice president of sales and marketing for Erez, USA, a technical textile fabric manufacturer in Newport, says about his vision of bringing more early-college programs to Rhode Island to help address the state’s so-called skills gap plaguing mid-level, and available, jobs.
It was during his family’s annual Maine camping trip one year ago when, while reading a local newspaper article about an early-college program there, he got it in his head that Rhode Island would greatly benefit from establishing a five-year, high school-to-associate degree program.
“There is a need out there right now for a student of a certain level of proficiency to fill a job that’s not a four-year [degree job],” Semonelli said recently. “The model exists today. [But] what they need is a direction to have a set course for an associate degree.”
Semonelli started shopping the idea around. He found wide interest among local educators and business leaders to develop a program in partnership with the Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick and Newport County high schools to offer students the chance to earn an associate degree through coursework started in high school and completed in one additional year post-graduation.
The idea would be for students to start taking college-level courses in their sophomore or senior year of high school.
Though several Rhode Island high schools allow students that option, tying it together with CCRI faculty and working toward an associate degree in a fifth year would be new.
“If you look at competitive benchmarking of other states and what they’re doing, it’s my opinion they are more competitive [than Rhode Island],” said Thomas Kowalczyk, a research transition coordinator with the United States Department of Homeland Security office of university programs in Providence. “It’s not a breakthrough idea. [It’s a] case of being bold for business.” Kowalczyk and Semonelli, in addition to serving on the Middletown Economic Advisory Committee, both are members of the Newport County Mentor/Co-Op Group developed three years ago to create career opportunities for students at the county’s five high schools.
Since introducing the idea this past January, the mentor/co-op group has had a series of meetings with CCRI President Ray Di Pasquale, who through a spokeswoman declined to be interviewed for this story.
“President Di Pasquale feels it’s too soon to comment about it except to say that the college is discussing the program for the future,” said CCRI spokeswoman Kristen Cyr in an email response.
Semonelli says the program would be modeled after one at Asnuntuck College in Enfield, Conn. That program was developed to address a labor-market gap in manufacturing technology there.
The meetings also have been attended by area business owners and high school educators, including Dianne Sana, curriculum director for the Tiverton School Department.
The department, which has elective course offerings in some trade sectors, including culinary arts, wood-working and graphics, struggles to secure funding for these kinds of classes.
“We would love to see a series of courses that are connected to a college program,” Sana said. “Presenting them with a career field they’re excited about may get them to college.”
According to data from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program released in May, the Providence area, including New Bedford and Fall River – tied for 54th place in the top 100 cities with the most college-educated adults, with 28.5 percent of its population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher despite being home to several respected higher education institutions, including Ivy League Brown University. Comparatively, the Washington, D.C., area, the nation’s highest-scoring region, has 46.8 percent of its population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“We’re exporting a lot of our bachelor’s degree students,” Semonelli said of the tendency of college graduates to return to hometowns post-graduation. He says it is time to invest in work-skills development at the high school level, where businesses are likely to find young adults who one day will seek employment locally.
Other program benefits include demonstrating a more aggressive approach to workforce development in order to attract new business to the state and the ability to reduce tuition costs for interested students, perhaps lessening student-loan debt and allowing lower-income residents to take part.
“They’re effectively going to have one year of college … but they’ll have a two-year degree,” Semonelli said, though students would have to pay for at least some of the advance coursework while in high school.
Organizers also would seek funding to develop the program.
Kowalczyk said that cost would be in the range of $5.1 million. Introducing a single course would cost between $15,000 and $18,000, he said.
Last October the Connecticut legislature approved spending $2.2 million to expand the Asnuntuck manufacturing program and $17.8 million to help similar programs at three other community and technical colleges.
“When you look at what Connecticut is doing and how serious they are, and you look at the Rhode Island legislature. … I don’t know,” Kowalczyk said. “It takes the will of the government and businesses to get there.” •

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