"Seven Days to Kick-Start Your Career" - Elgin Community College & Danielle Kuglin-Seago

The WBLA Catalysts Initiative is an award bestowed by the Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship Committee of the IWIB to recognize excellence in work-based learning programming. 

Meet the inaugural winners of this award, Elgin Community College (ECC), represented by Dr. Gina De rosier-Cook, Dean of Workforce Development, and Elissa Kojzarek, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Experiential Learning (SPEL). They are joined by Danielle Kuglin-Seago of the College of DuPage to discuss the two factors that earned them this distinction: their "intrusive coordination" approach to business engagement and their "seven days to kick-start your career" pre-apprenticeship program. 

This episode marks the end of our National Apprenticeship Week series for this season, and we hope that you will join us in celebrating apprentices everywhere with us in Illinois.

To learn more about apprenticeships, go to ApprenticeshipIL.com and follow Apprenticeship Illinois on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The WBLA Catalyst Initiative is an award bestowed by the Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship Committee of the Illinois Workforce Innovation Board. It recognizes programs and businesses that demonstrate excellence in work-based learning. To take the awardee's work from boutique solutions to statewide standards, the Apprentice Perspective brings our catalyst knowledge to you, our listeners.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Apprentice Perspective. My name is Danielle Kuglin-Sigo, and I'm the manager of the Apprenticeship Program at College of DuPage. I'll be your host for this episode. And I'm joined today by Dr. DeRosier Cook and Alyssa Kozarek, who represent Elgin Community College, the winner of our inaugural 2026 Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship Catalyst recipients.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

I'm Dr. DeRossier Cook. I'm the Dean of Workforce Development and Community Education at Elgin Community College.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

I'm Elisa Kozarek. I'm the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Experiential Learning here at Elgin Community College.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

As the winners of the Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship Catalyst Award, you have really been recognized as an exemplar in good work-based learning programming. So tell us about the exciting things going on at Elgin Community College.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

So I think at Elgin Community College, we understand how important our businesses are to not only our students, but to our instruction. And work-based learning allows us to solidify what the students are learning in their classroom with real life experiences. And it really does cement those concepts within the students. But it also helps them decide what career they want to choose, whether that's an internship, a paid work experience. You know, is this the career for you? If it's not, that's also a win because we've helped them find their pathway to the right career. And work-based learning also changes college. It takes it out of the category of being a program of privilege to something I can afford to do. And we make sure that all of our work-based learning opportunities pay $18 an hour. So a student doesn't have to decide, am I going to go to work at Starbucks or am I going to do something to further my career? And by setting that standard for the programs that we oversee, it really opens up the doors to a lot of our community members who normally would not have taken part in it.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

From my perspective, you know, work-based learning isn't something that I necessarily paid much attention to when I was coming up through my education. You know, I went to college, got a job, just kind of followed the predictable pathways. But it wasn't till I went to and to get my master's degree that I ended up doing an internship that I then got hired into a job that I stayed at for 10 years. So that was the first time I really experienced the power of work-based learning because, you know, the internship was required, but it it let me see what I could do with my education. And it really opened up a passion for me for the nonprofit world because I was with a nonprofit. So any type of work-based learning experience where they have that opportunity to test drive what they think they want to do can help open up doors that they didn't even know existed.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

I am a high school dropout and a teen parent. And I landed on a community college door and was really greeted by workforce development. And how could I raise my children and get an education and put all those puzzle pieces together? It's really hard when you have to choose between putting a roof over your children's head or going to school, let alone any type of work-based learning. Apprenticeship was a scary word to the employers. It was a scary word to the human beings we serve. And we break it down in a way that everybody can understand and see the value in the collaboration. I think that is key to the success in all the work-based learning that we do.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

You know, a key factor in why Elgin Community College was selected to win the Catalyst Award was your innovative approach to pre-apprenticeships. As somebody who works in a community college, we know that you all are doing great work in this space. And you referred to the program as your seven days to kickstart your career. Can you tell us a little more about that?

SPEAKER_03 4:07

What we were finding is that our employers just really didn't have a group of human beings to go to that were ready to start their apprenticeship if they were not upskilling a current employee. And so the seven days to success model was really geared around the human beings we serve with the employers in mind. And so what this allows is someone who's unemployed or underemployed to earn industry-recognized wages and do the career exploration, work on the machines in that industry, really help cement their career idea within seven days so that they can interview with that employer at the end of the pre-apprentip and hopefully get hired into either an entry-level position or in an apprenticeship. We have manufacturing, healthcare, emergency management, and we're moving into culinary. And in each one of those careers, they're doing the industry recognized credentials, they're looking into vocabulary, the day in the life of what it means to work in those careers realistically, what time expectations are surrounding that, what wages they're going to make. Because when you say healthcare, a lot of times we just think nurses, we don't take think rad techs or optimology or things like this. So really getting in the weeds of those careers at the same time, they're earning something of value that allows them to become employed. And then on that last day, we bring multiple employers in who will give feedback after they interview to say, you know, next time look me in the eyes a little bit more or do this. And what we love is when everybody walks away and the employer is like, we're hiring that one for an apprentice, we're hiring that one for a position that we haven't been able to fill. That is what this program has done for us. And what we've done as an institution is we build this into many grants so it's always free for our students. We don't want the cost of a program to be the barrier to success. So something that started as a crazy idea with lots of people in a room saying, How could we make this happen? And me keep saying, make it shorter, make it shorter, make it shorter so that it's obtainable for our human beings, has turned into a well-oiled machine in three major career clusters.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

We're also looking at like, can we just get a bus and take these humans to a local manufacturer so they can just see what this looks like? Because again, if you've never been into a manufacturing facility, you don't know what it looks like on the inside. You think it's like, you know, Henry Ford's Model T dirty sweatshop sort of thing. And that's not what manufacturing looks like today. Manufacturing is very high-tech, very clean, very technical. And I think when you just take people around on a quick tour of that and they see how exciting this career path can be, it helps open up their minds to what those possibilities are. They then come to an orientation the week before the pre-apprentip, where again, we go over the ground rules. You have to come to every day or you don't get your certificates. You can't just show up for one day to get the one certificate you need and then disappear on us. You know, the whole purpose is to go through all of skill days. People think that, oh, I can skip the workplace communication, the team building. That's, I don't need to do that. You absolutely do need to do that because the number one thing employers tell us that the new generation of workers is lacking is soft skills, being able to talk to their teammates, conflict resolution, how to work together with people that you may not necessarily like all the time. Those types of skills are taught in these pre-aprenticeships that just make them better, more employable overall. That's why we have such high completion rates, is because we don't just let them show up on day one and start taking the class. We make sure that this really is the right fit for them. If they do the interviews and none of those employers are the right fit for them, that's not the end of their journey. We don't just say, okay, well, you completed the pre-apprentip. We'll see you later. They stay on our roster until they stop talking to us. We're calling them and letting them know about our job fairs. We're letting them know about internship opportunities. Maybe they came through the healthcare pre-apprentip and decided, you know what, I really want to do be a medical assistant. I like that. Well, we don't have an apprenticeship and medical assisting right now, but ECC has a program. So let's get you enrolled in the program. Let's get you connected to financial aid or we owe a funds. Let's figure out how you're gonna pay for your education. We're gonna figure out where they fit and make sure that they move on to that next step so they can continue forward on their career path.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

In terms of domystifying the process of work-based learning for businesses, what is that process like for you?

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Sure. I think every time I say the word apprenticeship, I can almost feel them stiffen up. And they think all this paperwork and all of these rules and more work is what we would get commonly. The employer would say that sounds like too much for us to handle at this time and so expensive. And so we lay it out from a cost perspective, with Elgin Community College being one of the lower costs for enrollment tuition in the state. That makes it pretty easy. But also saying we're gonna do all the paperwork for you. We're gonna walk through this. We are here as your concierge to apprenticeship or work-based learning. We're gonna tell you what you need to do at what time, and we're going to make it easy, taking all the words out. Like, I don't even approach conversations anymore saying the words apprenticeship. Tell me about your talent pipeline needs. Tell me where the holes are. Let me tell you about a solution I have here. And I think also there's a difference in apprenticeship from something like a construction apprenticeship that's in the city and a local employer who is upskilling someone in their human resources department and demystifying what that can mean. And then also really touting the flexibility of what we do at the college, meaning you can have an employee that's going to school part-time and working part-time or full-time and part-time, days and nights. We really build it to be a solution for the employer and then helping them find the right candidate. And with our connections to the local unemployment office and both of our whips, that has made it a lot easier, especially with our pre-apprenticeship model, where they're getting more career exploration, understanding more about the career, making sure that this is the right fit, allows us to kind of bring them ready human beings that they can interview and fit into their company, because that's essentially what they're doing is growing their next employee. And it's cheaper than if they would have just tried to train and upskill them on their own.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

The other thing that that ECC does is so if an employer thinks they want to do an internship, but they're like, I don't know what to do with them. We have an internship coordinator that will sit with that employer, talk about, you know, what they think they could have the intern do and write that job description. We will do that alongside or even for the employer to help take that burden off of them. You just tell us what you want them to do. We're gonna make that into an internship with structure, with goals, with outcomes, so that all the employer has to do is provide that experience without having to do too much of the back end, like Gina was saying, the paperwork and the thought process. We're gonna try to package it for them so that it's very easy for them to take an intern or two.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

We've heard you referring to this intrusive coordination. So can you tell us a little bit more about this approach that you've developed?

SPEAKER_03 11:28

You know, it's not enough, Danielle, to just give an employer a list of things that we do and expect them to kind of read through this menu and say, I want this, this, and this. It's more important that we stop and we listen to what the employer is saying. Tell us what your pain points are. If you were to engage it with ECC, what does that look like short and long term? And through those types of conversations, we start hearing about the flaws in their talent pipeline or the situation that they would like to solve that we have a solution for. So we start talking about the students that we're producing and how can we get them to you before they go to someone else? And that conversation or that line of thinking really gets them into the apprenticeship space and then making sure we're a part of their company. I don't think that a lot of us think that we should be included at that level, but we want to know when are when is your birthday there? What are you doing? If you're having an event, we want to be there. We want to make sure that we're doing everything that you need. So it's not just about, oh, you're doing an apprenticeship check. It's you're doing an apprenticeship. We also want you at our job fair. We also want to tell you we got a grant where we can support additional training. We want to bring you in as a guest speaker in a classroom, or we want you to come in and do a career connects conversation. This intrusive type of advising we use with our students. So why wouldn't we use that with our employer? Why wouldn't we really get into the weeds and become workforce partners? And I think then through that partnership, things like apprenticeship just flow naturally because we're working together for one solution. And that solution is to make sure that they have a skilled workforce that has the training necessary to do the work and is local. The first time you do an apprenticeship or any work-based learning, there's some kinks that you have to work out. And so making sure that we are working on solutions together and our partners has really made us successful.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Our first step is always what we call a triage call. We'll get an email, we'll get a referral from someone else. Hey, this company is looking to hire someone. They might have some other needs, they're not sure. Can someone reach out to them? So we have a standard where we set up a call, we include the dean and some directors on it, and we we just listen. We listen to what they need, we listen to what their pain points are because sometimes they think they just need to hire a person. But maybe this could be an internship opportunity for one of our students who's graduating in May to come in now in April and get started learning the ropes, learning the system as an intern. And then you can hire them full-time when they've completed their degree. Or they think they need to do one thing or the other. But after we listen to them, it sounds like they really need some upskilling for their current employees. They have great talent there. They just need them to learn this newest piece of technology. Great, we can set that up as a corporate training. Let's let's walk you through that. So that way an employer can come to us and just not know what they need, but know they need something and we're gonna help them figure that out. And then we're going to not even warm handoff. It's like a hot handoff. Like we're not just going to give you another person to call and say, oh, you need to talk to them about this. We're gonna set up that meeting, we're gonna loop that person in. We're gonna be on that call as well to provide that context and that introduction. So at no point does the employer feel like they're trying to figure this out on their own. They they know we end every call with, if you ever have any questions and don't know who to call, call me. I'll figure out if it's something I can help you with, I will do that. If it's gonna be a different department at ECC, I'm gonna make sure you get there. So treat us as your first point of contact for anything you would have in the future, whether it's next week or next year.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

You know, with the time that we have uh left here today, would love to learn a little bit more about how you work with your employer partners. Um, so briefly, if you could share with us what are some of the expectations or the metrics that you set for employers to make sure that they're able to really meet these needs that you set out for the participants of your work-based learning activities, knowing that that's a cost to employers. So, how do you get them on board and how do you work with them to make sure that they know what they need to do?

SPEAKER_03 15:45

I think the most important part is bring facts. You know, anecdotal information is important. So going into those meetings, we bring the median wages for our area. We tell them what the employer up the street is paying. We really tell them that we can't puts in subpay places. They can continue to offer that, but we are not going to build an apprenticeship that has lower wages than what is going in our area. I think that's important. All of our apprenticeships here on campus lead to a degree or a certificate, not just a bunch of classes. We have to look through the lens of not only the business, but the employee. And essentially they're trying to find employees. So if we come in and say, these are the parameters that we require to have a work-based learning experience, it's to teach and educate those employers why these things are so important. The reason that you have an open door that is revolving at the company is because maybe you're not meeting these parameters. And here are some ways that we can help you. Oftentimes, an employer is not looking from the employee vantage point. They just keep repeating to us, we can't fill these positions, people aren't staying. It's showing them why they may not be staying and showing them how we can create an environment that people want to work at this company. And so setting up those parameters for every experience so that there is a job description, so that it is a life-sustaining wage, and that it leads to an industry-recognized credential and advancement is very important to us. And we lay that out in those initial conversations and give them the reasons why.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

The more we talk to companies, the more they talk to each other. And then we'll have companies call us that say, hey, I was talking to someone from company XYZ and they were raving about this intern that they got from the college. And is there a way for us to get connected to the internship program? So, you know, the very hard work that was done to get this up and running has really set us up for this success, where now it's becoming more known in our area what ECC can do to help companies with their talent pipelines. Um, our job fair, for example, we brought it back um in the fall of 24 to be on campus and in person. You know, we've had slow growth in the number of employers that have attended, but this one that we're hosting on April 22nd, we now have 145 registered employers. And our one in the fall had about 90 registered employers. So something is happening where companies are hearing about us and knowing that they can come here and recruit our students, recruit the community members, because I think that's a key piece in what we do is a lot of times we we talk about students, but we are open to the entire community. A person does not have to be an ECC student to come to our job fair, to come on campus and get help finding a job, to participate in an internship or a job shadow. That's open to anyone. So anyone can come in and say, hey, I think I want to come back to school and be this, but maybe an internship would be good to do first to make sure that's what I want to do. Absolutely. Let's find you a placement. Being open to that is what has helped the program grow as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

In one sentence, what does being named a work-based learning and apprenticeship catalyst mean to you and to your team?

SPEAKER_03 19:07

This award, what it means to us, is just being recognized for the countless hours and effort that so many of our team have put into this. You have no idea. Like we took our little picture and everybody was proud. And there was 20-something people in that picture. Just that's what it takes, you know, to make this work. And so thank you so much for recognizing us.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Dr. Cook, Alyssa, it's been a privilege and an honor to meet with you today to learn more about the great work you're doing as a catalyst at Lgin Community College. So thank you both so much for your good work. We look forward to see what comes from Elgin Community College in the future.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Tune in next time to hear Revolution Workshop talk through how they offer their trainees low-interest car loans in partnership with Self Help Credit Union. To learn more about apprenticeships, go to apprenticeshipillinois.com. Thanks for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you next time on the apprentice perspective.