Rethinking How Education ‘Works’: LSU Eunice Identified as Key Driver of Workforce Development in Rural Communities, Only College in Louisiana to Join National Initiative

Achieving the Dream has selected seven schools from among over a thousand two-year institutions nationwide as key drivers of workforce development in rural communities. LSU Eunice is one of them, and the only school in Louisiana that will now participate in a new Building Resiliency in Rural Communities for the Future of Work initiative to increase enrollment, retention, and student success.
 
LSU Eunice business major Felicity Carrier is an example of the more seamless integration the college is working to achieve with the surrounding community, broadening its role as an educational and industry resource. The 19-year-old entrepreneur is opening her own concession stand by Highway 190 this weekend, specializing in snowballs with “the softest, sorbet-like snow.”

 

 

BATON ROUGE, April 5, 2021 — Achieving the Dream (ATD) is a nationwide network of more than 300 community colleges. Focused on equity and “institutional redesign,” ATD’s mission is to help schools support all students in their respective areas and prepare those students to be competitive in a changing economy and workplace.
 
“For us, this is an opportunity to redefine talent in our region and even rethink what education looks like in Louisiana—how education ‘works,’” said Jessica Jones, director of student success and lead for the new ATD initiative at LSU Eunice (LSUE).
 
Beyond its role as a one-stop shop for associate degrees, certificates, and industry-based credentials or as a conduit to four-year academic programs in the state, LSUE is partnering with K-12 schools and business leaders in the region to make sure it retools its curriculum with more options that are attractive (and known) to future college students while also building the skillsets that will be the most in-demand by their future employers.

 

“We need to adjust how we deliver instruction and think more deeply about who our students really are, or could be, and their needs in the emerging digital economy.”—Jessica Jones, LSU Eunice director of student success

“We’ve seen growing interest in micro-credentialing programs and stackable certificates,” Jones said. “We need to adjust how we deliver instruction and think more deeply about who our students really are, or could be, and their needs in the emerging digital economy. We need to build more pathways into college, and also make it easier for people who are currently in the workforce and returning learners to move more seamlessly between LSUE and the workplace. We currently grant workforce credit to our veterans, and could expand this for people who come back to us to learn new skills to get a promotion or an increase in pay.”
 
LSUE is well known for its high-graduation-rate and high-placement-rate Nursing and Allied Health programs. Allied health professionals make up the majority of workers employed in health care. They provide a wide range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic, and support services, and some of LSUE’s most popular programs educate respiratory, surgical, and radiology technicians. The ATD initiative will in part help translate these educational successes to reach a broader set of students and also find connection points with other programs.
 
“Some students have been left out of our more traditional educational pathways and we want to find ways to bring them in, help them succeed, and make LSUE even more representative of the whole community in this region,” said Jones, who also serves as the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion officer. “I’m from St. Landry Parish and grew up in Opelousas, and I look forward to this opportunity to demonstrate to other institutions how we all can work together to eradicate equity gaps and change people’s lives, and drive economic stability and social mobility in high-poverty rural areas.”
 
Most LSUE students come from the three parishes around Eunice—Acadia, Evangeline, and St. Landry—where the poverty rate is 22%, 26%, and 28%, respectively, about double the national poverty rate of 12%.
 

The Future of Work initiative will give LSUE access to databases and assessment tools to help benchmark the college’s performance before, during, and after its involvement in the three-year program, positioning LSUE among other ATD institutions in the national network. The first year will largely be spent on data gathering, planning, and building partnerships—looking at strengths, needs, and potential areas of growth.
 
“We’ve figured out how to quickly build capacity in nursing and allied health and now we want to translate that to other areas,” Jones said. “You can think of it as building a wider front porch that allows more people to come in, and whatever their route, we can offer them options and help more students get to graduation faster.”

 

In a recent KATC News report, Achieving the Dream representative Karen A. Stout called LSU Eunice and other rural community colleges “workforce and economic development engines.”

The new initiative is funded by the Cognizant U.S. Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Walmart.org, among others. In a recent KATC News report, ATD representative Karen A. Stout called LSUE and other rural community colleges “workforce and economic development engines.”
 
“We’re really excited about this initiative,” said LSUE Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs John Hamlin in response. “It fits well with other programs we’re part of also, such as Reboot Louisiana and Jobs for America’s Graduates, or JAG.”
 
LSUE is partnering with local high schools to train 25 students in CompTIA this summer, partially in response to local businesses asking for employees with higher-level information technology skills. This will be LSUE’s first experience with the JAG program, a long-standing national initiative to help students 12 to 21 years of age with life and learning hurdles complete high school, led by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. JAG Louisiana has achieved remarkable results with a current graduation rate of 97% and a full-time placement rate of 91%, where graduates are either working a job, serving in the military, pursuing post-secondary education, or a combination of the three. Meanwhile, the parishes around Eunice rank 1st, 6th, and 8th in the state for people 25 years of age and older without a high school diploma, which is why LSUE now is broadening its focus to also include K-12 education to support Louisiana’s official goal, set by the Office of the Governor, to have 60% of all working-age adults in the state holding a degree or high-value credential by 2030.
 
LSUE has also played a significant role in another state workforce initiative, the “Reboot Your Career” campaign, where $10 million in federal CARES Act funding was dedicated to retrain 5,000 Louisiana workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19. Just between October and January, LSUE enabled 193 workers to earn certificates and rejoin the workforce in one of five high-demand fields—health care, transportation and logistics, information technology, manufacturing, or construction.

 

“LSU Eunice is one of the greatest assets in our region. The college’s ability to focus on also non-traditional students and provide customized education leads to huge opportunities for someone to turn their life around.”—Amy Thibodeaux, president and CEO of the Acadia Parish Chamber of Commerce

 

Jones and Hamlin appreciate how these various workforce development efforts have been supporting each other and helping to align LSUE’s overall curriculum to be nimbler and more responsive to community and industry needs. Someone else who’s noticed is Amy Thibodeaux, president and CEO of the Acadia Parish Chamber of Commerce, who has daily conversations with local business leaders and residents about how to best promote economic development in the region.
 
“We’re thrilled to see LSU Eunice selected for the Building Resiliency in Rural Communities for the Future of Work initiative,” she said. “There’s no denying students in rural populations struggle well beyond their urban counterparts—whether it’s lack of access to broadband or transportation, it’s simply more challenging to meet the basic requirements of being a student in a rural educational setting. LSU Eunice, meanwhile, is one of the greatest assets in our region. The college’s ability to focus on also non-traditional students and provide customized education leads to huge opportunities for someone to turn their life around.”

Many of the businesses in Acadia Parish grow rice and process crawfish for the world—one-fifth of the total parish area is rice and crawfish farms. And they’re hiring, noted Thibodeaux. Supreme Rice in Crowley is undergoing a $40 million expansion of their mill and looking for workers.
 
“The pandemic has exacerbated some of the challenges we have with workforce development in an extremely rural community,” Thibodeaux said, who herself grew up in Church Point. “That’s why it’s so great to see people taking advantage of programs like Reboot and other training at LSUE. Because it helps everyone in our region when people choose to further their education and become better citizens and employees.”
 
A current student entrepreneur at LSUE is Felicity Carrier from Eunice. She’s 19 years old and a freshman majoring in business. Last week, she spoke on a panel titled “Courageous Conversations: Honoring Courageous Women in Our Local Community” in the LSUE Science Auditorium about her new venture—opening a mobile concession stand or “snack truck” that specializes in snowballs. With help from LSUE, Carrier turned her idea into a limited liability company last January and joined the St. Landry Chamber of Commerce as Double Dip Snowballs & More, LLC. This weekend, she’ll be pulling her new black trailer, freshly outfitted with a serving window, into one of the parking lots along Highway 190.
 
“I’m learning about SBA loans in the business class I’m taking right now at LSUE, and I didn’t know anything about that before,” Carrier said. “So, that’s helping me a lot, just knowing I could get a loan and how to do it.”
 
LSUE has also connected her with other resources, and put Carrier in touch with other local small business owners.
 
“I asked them about their trials and errors to see what I could learn from their experiences,” Carrier said. “I realize I’m young and things will get tough and some people might look down on me because of how young I am and me doing this on my own, but the advice they gave me was to always remember why I started, and that’s motivated me to keep going.”
 
As she was putting the final touches on her menu for this weekend (her personal favorite is sour blue raspberry), she thought about new challenges ahead—what it might be like to hire people to work with her, and managing staff while she’s in school.

 

“I switched to an online format with LSUE this January and that’s helped a lot with starting my business.”—Felicity Carrier

“I switched to an online format with LSUE this January and that’s helped a lot with starting my business,” Carrier said. “It was easy and I can now cram the whole semester into chunks, studying at my own pace while leaving me time to also do other things. I know it’s hard for some to force themselves to do the work when everything’s online, but I like the flexibility and want to graduate with a degree under my name, and that keeps pushing me.”
 
Carrier relies on social media to promote her new business, both on Facebook and Instagram. She also bought her snowball machine “for cheap” through Facebook Marketplace.
 
“I didn’t know it was one of the newest machines when I bought it, but it makes the softest, smoothest ice,” she said. “In Eunice, I have the softest ice—not the hard, crunchy ice—it’s more like a sorbet. Also, I boil my water, which makes the flavors thicker and more like syrup.”
 
Carrier drives to and from New Orleans for supplies. She doesn’t mind; she likes “to see stuff.” And although she’s wanted to run her own business since she was very young, she’s not sure if she’d actually done it had she not been a student at LSUE as well as a student worker in the Chancellor’s Office last semester.
 
“I ask myself that constantly, if I’d done this on my own, and I don’t think so, actually,” Carrier concluded. “How this all came about was me talking with Ms. Courtney, the assistant to the Chancellor, and her telling me how she used to work in a snowball stand. Then, talking about it more, and coming up with the idea, and the idea just got more real each day.”

 

 

Elsa Hahne
LSU Office of Research & Economic Development
ehahne@lsu.edu