Page 39 - BusinessWest February 6, 2023

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Provisions
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the Amherst store, said Hyde, adding that education remains a big part of the equation at Provisions. “There’s usually a theme to these classes,” he
explained. “We’ll take people to a region, for exam- ple; it’s everything from ‘Wine 101’ to how you taste wines, to deep dives on regions or grades or producers.”
Such classes — and tastings — continued through
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the pandemic via Zoom, he said, noting that produc- ers brought attendees into their operations virtually. “Having that actual producer in their winery talking about the wine is a cool way to experience it,” Hyde said, adding that the partners are looking to add more of these types of presentations in the future.
“Generally, we want to keep our eyes and our ears open to what people are wanting, what spaces we can
With a student graduation rate and a first-year retention rate higher than the national average, that effort has paid off, he added. “There are a variety of things we put in place to ensure we help students be successful, including a physical Center for Student Access, but also supports like coaching.”
Benitez said 50% of AIC’s student body is Pell-eli- gible, and many are the first in their family to attend college. “We have a number of programs for first-gen- eration college students that include very basic things like time management, how do you learn, how do you study, how to you financially plan? This is often new to them, so helping them navigate their college expe- rience is very important to us.”
STCC’s Center for Access Services helps students tackle issues such as homelessness and food insecu- rity that could hinder their ability to get an education and climb the economic ladder.
“If any students are struggling for any reason that would keep them from persisting and staying enrolled at college, we have a whole team dedicated to help- ing them work through that,” said Kemp, adding that the STCC website also has a ‘chat now’ feature for student questions on anything from admissions to financial aid to understanding the Blackboard learn- ing-management system. “It’s another way to demon- strate to students that we will engage with them in any way they want to engage with us.”
Rolling with the Changes
In short, Kemp said, “it’s important that we contin- ue to share with students that there are opportunities to manage all the things they have going on. If a work- ing parent wants to go to college, they can; they don’t have to choose between taking care of the family and obtaining a degree.”
That proposition is easier now, she added, with the program flexibility — in person, hybrid, or fully online — that emerged during the pandemic.
Benitez believes academic institutions today need
more than they do in the 413, he added. “We always had a pricing advantage over areas like Eastern Mass. and Southern Connecticut, and we can more easily use that pricing advantage to our benefit by expand- ing our footprint and working farther outside Western Mass.”
Though hybrid work may be here to stay, Stratton said, most of his firm’s clients are small to medium- sized businesses, and the majority of them have emphasized getting workers fully back in the office, though some are embracing hybrid work schedules and remote-work tools.
“A lot of large, national corporations, you see fully remote, where a lot of their workers are in different offices anyway, so it’s less impactful to be spread out,”
fill, and how we can keep ourselves different from the bigger package stores,” he went on. “We do have a big selection, but we’re geared more toward service than having a ton of product; we have well-chosen, curated, thoughtful, fun products.”
Such an attitude explains not only why these two are successful, but why they are BusinessWest’s Top Entrepreneurs for 2022. BW
to serve as engines for workforce development, and in AIC’s case, the impact is local, as most of its stu- dents hail from the region, and many stay and work here after graduation.
“We ask our business partners, what do you need in a graduate? What is the skillset, the competency set? And how are we going to revise and reimagine our academic offerings so it’s responsive to the work- force needs of this region?”
Because young people today plan to change jobs many times, one role of colleges is to teach them
to be lifetime learners, he added, so they can easily adapt to their changing environment; in some cases, they’re training for jobs that don’t even exist yet. “We should prepare the groundwork for them to learn as they grow,” Benitez said.
Dumay told BusinessWest that the past few years have been a difficult time for all colleges, one in which they’ve had to be prudent financially. But he believes those efforts to tighten up and adapt are worth it.
“We’re providing a tremendous service to the gen- eral public — not just Elms, but all colleges like us
— by helping the citizenry, both young people and not so young, get a foot on the economic ladder. That ben- efits all of us,” he said.
“If higher education struggles, the entire economy struggles,” he went on. “We are certainly staying strong, and the help that has been provided by the federal and state government helped a lot of colleges remain strong. But it is still a challenging time for higher education, and we want to remain healthy and strong so we can serve our students.”
To do that, Benitez said, requires a willingness to do things differently — in other words, to reimagine a college education. He believes the alternative, stagna- tion, is unsustainable.
“Academic institutions must be able to adapt to the current times, to meet the student where they are,” he said. “That’s critically important in these times.” BW
he added. “But small to medium-sized businesses
in this area, in my experience, are generally pushing toward being back and find it more effective, which is consistent with our experience as a small business.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all model, however, and Roberts said everyone is still grappling with the new work styles and how to make them effective.
“We need to figure out how to mourn the loss of the old way and transcend to a new way of working. It’s not the same as it was 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, where you were identified by the office you worked in, and you had celebrations and events, things happening there. It’s different now; people are looking for a different way of working, and employers have to think differently.” BW
Enrollment
had on men of color, who dropped out disproportion- ately during that period, STCC also created the Male Initiative for Leadership and Education (MILE), a program that provides inclusive academic support, mentoring, and community-engagement opportunities to male students, particularly Black and Latino stu- dents. Participants connect with professionals who serve as mentors throughout the student’s time at
the college, helping them stay on track to reach their degree goals.
That can be a challenge at many institutions. The Education Data Initiative reports that first-time under- graduate freshmen have a 12-month dropout rate of 24%. Among first-time students in bachelor’s-degree programs, almost 26% do not earn their degree; among all undergraduate students, around 40% drop out.
The economic impact can be significant; the same report notes that college dropouts make an average of 33% less income than those who hold bachelor’s degrees, and college dropouts are almost 20% more likely to be unemployed than any degree holder.
That’s why student advisors at STCC work closely with students to make sure they’re taking the classes they need to achieve their degree goals, and why the college regularly looks back five semesters and reach- es out to anyone who has paused their education and not returned during those two and a half years, to talk about what supports they might need to continue, and what steps to take to re-enroll.
“We need, in higher education in general, to invest time and energy into resources that help students reach their personal and academic goals,” Kemp said. “It’s an individualized conversation for each student.”
Dumay said 44% of Elms students are Pell-eligi- ble, meaning they come from low-income families, so it’s important that they succeed. “You don’t want to come to Elms and not graduate, whether with debt or without debt, because of the investment of time. It’s really important we help our students graduate.”
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Remote
have the ability to get the best available talent. Unfor- tunately for us, a lot of our positions are hybrid or in the office or banking center; we don’t have the luxury of large companies that are fully remote — but we’ve increased the candidate pool for sure.”
Stratton said the tools of remote business has helped his firm expand its client base beyond Western Mass.
“It allows us to reach out geographically with cli- ents because clients are used to working by Zoom meeting and don’t feel that same compulsion to meet in person that they used to,” he said. “That’s given us more flexibility to actually grow our footprint a little more.”
And grow it into regions where legal services cost
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