National Workforce Development Month: How Empire Supports Students and Industries

September is National Workforce Development Month. To mark the occasion, we spoke with Dan Fogarty about Empire State University, where nearly 25 percent of enrollment stems from workforce development efforts. Ahead, the assistant vice president of enrollment management and marketing weighs in on collaborating with employers, creating opportunities for students, and what makes Empire special.  

What does the workforce development team do?

Our team connects Empire to the workforce. We work with employers and industry, government, and community partners to better understand where the workforce needs are, and then we connect them back to what Empire can offer them. At the same time, if we don’t have what they’re looking for, we can have the university build a pathway to respond to their needs. So it’s a unique spot that we’re in at Empire where we really respond.

What industries does the team focus on and why? How does the team decide which areas to target?

We work with all five colleges at the university to figure out how we can better promote their programs to industries with workforce needs. As an example, we work with our College of Health and Human Services on promoting a lot of the healthcare programs, which include nursing—a field with a dire workforce shortage. One of our major partners for that is Northwell Health. We try and take Empire’s academic strength to the industries and businesses that could use our education and training to upskill their employees or create entry-level roles for them.

How do our partnerships impact enrollment at the university?

One of the nice things about Empire is that our workforce development team and our enrollment management team work hand in hand. The partnership and workforce development team at Empire does a good job at building relationships with employers and communities and ultimately connecting the workforce needs to our academic programs, which in essence also creates a recurring source of enrollment.  

Most employers want to retain their employees and also see a constant pipeline of employees coming into their organization. Helping a company build a network that grows and trains their employee base helps Empire with our enrollment because we’re creating the courses, the education, and the training that’s needed to bring those cohorts of students in the door year over year. We’re creating a mechanism with that employer to retrain and modernize the workforce that they currently have.  

One thing that makes us really special is we don’t just try and get those students in the door and then move on to our next group. We build a whole career pathway for that student so when they start in a role, they will have the opportunity to continue their education and training with Empire to benefit their overall job mobility. This pathway doesn’t just stop at one credential, degree, or training. There is always a next step if they decide to move up the ladder and better set themselves up for more success with their current employer. It’s a really neat synergy that we have with the employer. They benefit, we benefit, and most importantly, that student benefits from both of us working together.  

We’re building these opportunities all across the state in a multitude of industries with students who never thought they would have access to education. But now because of what we built, they have access not only to education to get them started, but education that can follow them along their career pathway.  

What new partnerships might we expect to see this year?

Our partnerships and workforce development team is continuing to work with industries all across New York state. Some of our upcoming opportunities lie within the healthcare and education sectors. We are also working more with IT and cybersecurity organizations. We’ve had a lot of opportunity, especially down in the New York City area as they are looking to grow their apprenticeship network and are looking to have Empire be a major leader on the higher education side.  

Empire has been a well-kept secret with how successful we can be at transforming a company by building up their workforce. What I look forward to most this upcoming year is getting the word out there more so that on top of growing what we’re doing with our current partners, we’re also adding brand new companies and organizations to our partnership base.