Strengthening Virginia's Pandemic Recovery Efforts: Providing High-Quality Community College Workforce Education to Underserved Adults

Purpose: The purpose of this Network project is to examine barriers to postsecondary enrollment, persistence, and completion for low-income, Black, and Hispanic students and generate knowledge that will lead to significant improvements in their progress through and completion of workforce training programs leading to high-demand occupations. To achieve these aims, researchers will partner with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to examine and improve Get A Skill, Get A Job, Get Ahead (G3), VCCS's central pandemic workforce recovery strategy first implemented in fall 2021. G3 is a last-dollar scholarship initiative targeting low-income students in workforce programs in five high-demand fields (health care, information technology and computer science, manufacturing and skilled trades, early childhood education, and public safety) that also provides dedicated advising and other resources to eligible students. The initiative aims to increase enrollment, persistence, and completion of participating students. The VCCS has prioritized further improvements to G3 that are explicitly designed to enroll, retain, graduate, and improve the labor market outcomes of low-income adults and especially low-income adult Black and Hispanic students. The partnership will undertake research to identify institutional and systemwide approaches to enhancing G3 program design and implementation and to track progress on specific student outcomes.