Five grants totaling nearly $1 million awarded to Associate Teaching Professor Carol Clymer and two College of Education colleagues, Associate Teaching Professor KayLynn Hamilton and Research Technologist Michael McCarty, will help provide professional development to adult education agencies throughout the state and adult education services in Centre, Clinton and Lycoming counties to assist students to build their basic reading, writing, literacy and math skills.
Some of the funds also augment high school equivalency programs for individuals who do not have a high school diploma as well as English language learning for those who aren’t native speakers of the English language and are trying to learn.
“The programs available could be for someone who does have a college or high school degree but they have low basic skills, they don't read really well or they don't have enough math to get into college,” said Clymer, who is co-director of the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy (ISAL) and the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy.
“Adult learners with high school degrees can come into the programs as well. We try to help them get into post-secondary through boosting their basic skills...whatever they would need. So that's another part of the service that we can offer.”
The grants, ranging from $75,000 to $543,701 are for direct service programs called Career Pathways and Family Pathways, and three state leadership projects — workforce development system liaison, integrated education and training technical assistance, and management information system — are funded by state and federal grants awarded from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (DOE), Division of Adult Education.
“Direct service funding is used to offer classes and support services. For example, some of the people with whom we work could be homeless, and we would try to help them make sure they get the assistance they need to get into housing,” Clymer explained.
“We help people decide what careers they should pursue, because we have outcomes we are measured on. We have to help a certain number of people get employed and stay employed. We have an outcome on which they have to build their reading, writing, math or language skills, if that's what they're working on.”
Grant money also is used to fund instructors who teach the math, reading and language classes, as well as classes related to obtaining a high school equivalency diploma.
Clymer noted that state/federal grant funding has been a staple since 2011, and it increased in 2018 when the optional tutoring program was included in the request. “We work with the English department to provide what's called Lit Corps. It's a six-hour class (202B) that the English department offers and we help with the instruction; there are Penn State students in that class, and they're learning how to be tutors,” Clymer said. “And then we match them with individuals in the community who are trying to build their reading, writing, math skills or language skills.”
Funds are designated for the Career Pathways program to benefit 340 people while 25 families are eligible for assistance under the Family Pathways program, according to Clymer. There are also interactive literacy activities, she said, in which the parents and the children learn together.
“In family literacy programs, we're trying to help the parents build their educational skills, as well as learn about the educational development of their children, and then get a chance to practice what they've learned in working with their children through fun activities that they can do together,” Clymer said.
Hamilton is Clymer’s principal investigator on the workforce development liaison project, and she has been writing the proposals for the DOE’s Division of Adult Education (DAE) State Leadership Project since 2005.
“While aspects of the project have evolved over the years, the primary purpose has been to provide training and technical assistance to align workforce development programming within the adult education system,” Hamilton said. “This is achieved by providing training and technical assistance to adult education agencies that build capacity to address the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) as well as function effectively as a partner in the Pennsylvania workforce development system.”
Staff members on that project work on several items, including but not limited to:
- Provide support to adult education and family literacy programs pertaining to integration and alignment of services to support their efforts in working collaboratively with workforce development partners and in meeting their obligations as a one-stop partner;
- Provide support to programs in partner relationship development and provide leadership to programs for statewide initiatives related to workforce development as described in Title II of WIOA;
- Work to integrate adult education and family literacy activities with workforce initiatives conducted by partners;
- Provide support to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Division of Adult Education (DAE) in aligning its workforce development programming through communication and collaborative strategic planning to build capacity to address WIOA, particularly Title II performance goals; and to function effectively as a partner in Pennsylvania's workforce development system;
- And, support the division in meeting requirements of being a PA CareerLink® partner and identify opportunities to expand efforts in building relationships and linkages with key stakeholders in the commonwealth’s workforce development system.
“Our team works to achieve these project goals by researching best and promising practices and developing resources for programs,” Hamilton said. “We typically meet with programs to assess their workforce development issues/concerns and then develop customized action plans to address the concerns. Since multiple programs may have similar concerns, we can provide professional development opportunities in the form to face-to-face trainings, communities of practice, networking opportunities, webinars and other interventions, as appropriate.”
Additionally, Hamilton wrote a proposal for an Integrated Education and Training (IET) Technical Assistance State Leadership project and she and Clymer were awarded $75,000 to accomplish the following:
- Develop and deliver a professional learning opportunity for programs;
- Provide technical assistance to programs in developing IETs that can be completed at a distance or as a cross-state cohort;
- Provide technical assistance about integrated and team-teaching models for IET;
- Provide an introduction to working with English language learners for IET training partners;
- Assist programs in developing activities to ensure recruitment of appropriate participants for IETs, including internationally trained professionals and skilled workers; and
- Research IET activities throughout the United States and make recommendations to the division on related policy and guidance.
McCarty, who works in the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy, is the principal investigator on the $165,000 management information systems (MIS) project that serves about 50 DAE agencies across Pennsylvania. “The agencies we support provide no-cost adult basic education services to residents of Pennsylvania via in-person and remote instruction,” McCarty explained.
“This instruction includes assisting adult learners with gaining basic skills for employment, preparing for high school equivalency credential assessments and English language learning activities, which are just a few examples.”
The MIS project has been part of ISAL since 2007 and McCarty has been project manager since 2017. “The MIS project provides guidance and technical support in the areas of data collection, data entry and data analysis. Since we work with agencies from across the state, our services occur remotely with agency staff and DAE staff,” McCarty added.
“Specific services we provide to adult basic education agencies and DAE staff include phone and email technical support for the eData database and the Access template, professional development courses (delivered remotely via synchronous webinars and asynchronous LMS work) focused on data entry in eData, as well as statewide presentations and webinars used to inform eData and template users about changes and issues throughout the year,” McCarty said.