P20 Executive Director Presents at NCETA Spring Conference 2024

The North Carolina Employment and Training Association (NCETA) held their annual Spring Conference in Concord, NC, on May 1-3, 2024. Emily Nicholson, Executive Director of the Land of Sky P20 Council, presented on the second day of this year’s NCETA conference. The theme was “Exploring the New Frontier.” Mrs. Nicholson’s presentation was about our Student Ambassador program.

The full title for the session Mrs. Nicholson led was The Empty Chair: Why the Voices of Those We Serve Matter & How We Can Amplify the Unheard into Our Strategic Goals & Workplan. In her presentation, Mrs. Nicholson explained that all of our efforts revolve around one core concept: improving the lives of North Carolinians. Stakeholders in our efforts include all the relevant partners; those from education, workforce, even the government. However, how have we incorporated our most important asset and stakeholder: the clients/people we strive to serve and help? In this presentation, Mrs. Nicholson reflected on the Land of Sky P20 Council’s addition of Students as Stakeholders through our Student Ambassador program.

The Land of Sky P20 Council members represent early childhood education, K-12 education, postsecondary education, local government, and industry–but that’s not all of the stakeholders in the education and workforce ecosystem. We created our Student Ambassador program to fill one key gap of essential stakeholders by including and elevating student voices in our work to improve education and workforce outcomes in the Land of Sky region. By sharing their perspectives and experiences with our P20 Council members, these dedicated and passionate individuals have added the essential component of Students as Stakeholders. Their voices are vital to our work, and their input about the strengths, challenges, and opportunities in our region’s cradle-to-career pipeline is helping us learn more about factors that might remove or ease potential barriers to student success.

First, we secured a small grant to pay for program costs, including costs for printing and distributing fliers and for paying student stipends. These stipends were an essential part of the program design. We respect our Student Ambassadors’ time, and we value their input. Stipends communicate this value authentically and help make the program more accessible.

Second, we created recruiting fliers in both English and Spanish, with two versions of each flier for each of the three educational levels we recruited from: high school, community college, and university (a total of 6 fliers in each language). We leveraged our strong partnership with our regional representative for the WNC region for the College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC) to help spread the word about the program and to share digital versions of the fliers with our region’s school counselors. We also mailed laminated copies of the fliers to our contacts at our region’s high schools, community colleges, and universities. When we recruited for the Spring 2024 cohort, we had both English and Spanish versions of our interest forms available.

Third, we promoted the program on social media via our LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, and we asked our P20 Council members to share the posts with their networks and within their institutions.

With our first group in the Fall of 2023, we recruited 20 students from 10 high schools, 2 community colleges, and 1 university, representing all four of our counties. The second group in the Spring of 2024 included 17 students from 6 high schools, 1 community college, and 2 universities, again representing all four of our counties.

Our Fall 2023 Student Ambassadors shared their perspectives and lived experiences with their educational journeys through written quotes, face-to-face meetings with our P20 Council Members, and through video interviews. For the Fall 2024 program, we revised the program to include four components (three required and one optional):

1. Their Personal Voices
2. The Voices of Their Peers
3. Creativity via Video Content
4. Meet with Our P20 Council Members (optional)

In this final segment of the presentation, Mrs. Nicholson presented some guiding questions to ask when considering creating a similar program in your organization, including:

• Who are you serving?
• In what ways are their voices currently being heard by you, your staff/colleagues, your board, etc.?
• What staff/colleagues are particularly vocal about tailoring changes/updates toward those you serve?
• What buy-in do you need for starting with a small framework/test run?

Emily Nicholson presenting at the NCETA Spring Conference 2024 in Concord, NC, on May 2, 2024.