Anyone who still thinks the parking lot at East Mississippi Community College’s Communiversity is “empty” isn’t looking in the right place, Executive Director Michael Busby said.
“We hear a lot about the building not being full,” he said. “I know this is kind of a cop out to say this, but the back is where the kids park. It’s pretty full back there.”
Built in 2019 with $42.6 million from federal, state and local sources, the Communiversity serves as the region’s educational and workforce development hub, though it’s had challenges with low enrollment and frequent leadership changes.
EMCC students at the Communiversity enroll in career technical programs like mechatronics or industrial maintenance where they earn credits for hands-on career training and experience.
Local industries, like PACCAR and Terberg Taylor, collaborate with the facility to provide non-credit training specific to their needs. The Communiversity has 21 training bays.
Enrollment has grown to a consistent 200 students per semester in for-credit classes, up 20% from three years ago. Non-credit workforce programs have trained 2,000 participants since July 2023, Busby said.
Even Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO and former EMCC board member Joe Max Higgins, who has at times has been among the Communiversity’s strongest public advocates and harshest critics, notices its progress.
“I go by there and drive through the parking lot two or three times a week, and over the last little bit, it seems like the parking lot has got a lot more cars in it,” Higgins said. “ … I feel pretty optimistic, but we can always do better, and we ought to be striving to do better.
“To me, getting up to that 240, maybe 300 kids going through (there) shouldn’t be too hard if you get the word out,” he added. “We’ve got to turn these kids’ light switches on.”
Getting the word out
Courtney Taylor, the Communiversity’s first director, said the facility’s founding mission was to build a workforce for area industry that could handle the physical demands and equipment proficiency for those jobs.
The challenge then and now, Taylor said, is tuning in the community — from industry partners to high school students — to what the Communiversity has to offer. That can be difficult when most teens and adults haven’t ever stepped foot in those factories.
“There’s a big reality in the workforce that most people don’t get to engage directly with the companies that are manufacturing things in their communities,” she said. “A lot of the efforts we got started back then were to get people exposed and engaged to the occupations in the area and then get them excited about the training program.”
Still, the facility struggled to recruit its primary demographic — high school students interested in pursuing career technical degrees.
“High school students were the big focus just because we weren’t getting them,” Taylor said.
One solution to that comes from Accelerate Mississippi, a statewide workforce development office where Taylor now serves as the executive director.
Accelerate MS heads a career coaching program aimed at showing students their options for after high school, specifically in career technical education. Career coaches at the high school level, Taylor said, will help drive enrollment at the Communiversity.
The career coaching initiative gained momentum after being funded during the 2022 state legislative session with $8 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. In 2023, the program got another $12 million boost from the legislature and deployed 185 coaches to 78% of the state’s public high schools. Lowndes County, Columbus Municipal and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated school districts each have designated career coaches.
“The whole idea is to give these kids options and show them what their resources are,” Columbus High School Career Coach Jim Sutherland said.
That includes helping with applications for financial aid and identifying alternative pathways that align with the students’ goals and interests.
“A big part of our jobs as career coaches is actually to find those kids that are not going to go the traditional route,” Knollie Edge, a career coach at New Hope High School, said.
Students in career technical classes aren’t always aware their interests can become careers, she said.
Coaching starts with identifying interests with tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test or the ACT WorkKeys assessment.
From there, she outlines the steps students should take to enter the career field by connecting them with local employers and programs, like career technical opportunities at the Communiversity. The goal is to expose the student to in-demand, skilled trade professions that have earning potential.
Once students are aware of their options, Edge said, they are more likely to take advantage of them.
Last week, she worked with a student who, after a quick personality assessment and a run-through of aligning career options, showed interest in becoming an HVAC technician. Edge suggested the Communiversity’s new HVAC program.
“Now he has this full plan for his future where he can make really good money and there’s opportunities to advance,” she said.
Sutherland said he’s noticed an increasing appetite among career technical students to pursue alternative pathways.
Field trips to the facility and visits from faculty at the high schools help foster that.
Exposure to the Communiversity in high school — Busby, Higgins and Taylor concurred — will help drive traffic to the facility.
Job fairs, student tours, summer camps are other ways potential students are exposed to the facility.
But there’s more to be done.
The LINK is working with William Fruth, who conducted the study recommending the Communiversity’s construction, to develop new initiatives for recruiting students such as digital marketing.
Other initiatives will seek to engage younger students, Higgins said, similar to the FORGE Your Path Career Expo event held annually at the Communiversity, where eighth-graders learn about career technical programs.
“If there’s something we can do more of, it’s getting those younger folks out there and exposed at a younger age with a curriculum that’s age appropriate for them,” Higgins said.
A question of stability
Increasing growth on the workforce side is another challenge, Busby said.
“We want to fill capacity the best that we can, especially in workforce,” he said. “The growth needs to be directed in the right way. … We want to be sure we’re helping out industry partners.”
In January, the Communiversity hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for Terberg Taylor Americas, which manufactures vehicles. Terberg Taylor occupies one of the Communiversity’s training bays.
For Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston, the collaboration demonstrated the Communiversity fulfilling its role as a driver for local workforce development. He said the benefit of having a training bay helped bring Terberg Taylor’s new facility to the county.
“I think it can be a model for other industries as well, so I really do like that,” he said.
Higgins agreed, saying Terberg Taylor is a “textbook example” of how the Communiversity has become a major selling point for companies.
“Their management team incubated at that school,” he said. “… Some of their first staff they hired (had offices) at the Communiversity, and then they had a bay (where) they could train people to assemble the trucks.”
Hairston’s concern, however, is a question of stability. Since its opening in 2019, the Communiversity has had three different directors.
After Taylor’s departure in March 2022, David Campbell took the reins for 16 months before Busby was appointed to the role in August 2023.
“I wouldn’t say (it’s) a completely rudderless ship, but they gained some whiplash of having different directors in a short period of time,” Hairston said. “Hopefully (Busby’s appointment) will create some stability.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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