The Chronicle of Higher Education
Community Colleges
From the issue dated October 27, 2006
Living Laboratories
community colleges offer lessons that have produced
results
By ELYSE ASHBURN
HOUSATONIC COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Bridgeport, Conn.
Listening to the Business Community
After only a few weeks on the job, Rab Thornton got the kind of news no college's community liaison wants. "My president and I woke up one morning and read the paper, the letters to the editor, and saw that one of the leading manufacturers in the area said we weren't listening to the business community," says Mr. Thornton, dean of outreach services at Housatonic Community College. "It was a wake-up call."
College officials took stock of what they were offering the business community, and said, "Oops, he's right," Mr. Thornton says.
Since that article appeared less than a decade ago, the college has reworked its curriculum to meet industry demands — most recently rolling out an associate-degree program in industrial technology, in 2005. But perhaps the most fundamental change has been the way college officials view the institution's relationship to the business community.
Housatonic has positioned itself not only as a provider of skilled labor, but as an economic-research center and a visionary institution that can teach the chief executive as well as the machinist. It boasts business tools more commonly found at Fortune 500 companies and institutions like Harvard Business School. Unlike many university research centers, however, the fledgling Housatonic Research Institute is not focusing on start-ups or large companies. Instead, it is courting small, often struggling businesses in the community at a time when colleges nationwide are being asked to take on a bigger role in economic development.
"This is where the country really needs to go," Mr. Thornton says. "We don't train enough people to work in small business, and those are the places that can really have that local impact."
Katherine A. Saint, president of Schwerdtle Stamp, a 126-year-old company that makes industrial stamps, was already working closely with the college when the national recession hit in 2001. In the next two years, as manufacturers' migration overseas intensified, Ms. Saint lost about 20 percent of her business and had to cut her work force from 50 to 25 employees.
"It was a huge shock, and it was a personal shock," she says, because many of the workers were longtime employees.
In a city built around such iconic manufacturers as Remington Arms Company and Moore Tool Company, Ms. Saint's business was not the only one struggling. If the companies simply relied on increasing operating efficiencies, their future prospects were dim.
Back in 1999, the college had helped local businesses form a business consortium known as Metal — the Metal Manufacturers' Education and Training Alliance. So when the recession hit a few years later, the consortium was positioned to take a hard look at the manufacturing industry. What the small- and medium-size-business owners realized was that they needed Fortune 500 resources, like up-to-the-minute data, in order to compete strategically, and they needed Housatonic to provide them.
"There was a shift from work-force development to how can they help us be innovative," Ms. Saint says.
Housatonic first turned to resources the college already had. Mr. Thornton realized that businesses could benefit from use of the Community College Strategic Planner, a database compiled by CCbenefits Inc. that projects regional job growth and demand for certain products and services over 15 years. He showed the tool to Ms. Saint and another local chief executive, and then approached CCbenefits, a for-profit company that has sold the database to about 300 colleges nationwide, about the possibility of making it available to businesses. Officials at CCbenefits agreed.
At the suggestion of another business leader, the college also sought access to OneSource, a huge database that provides information on more than 18 million companies worldwide. OneSource is a powerful tool for companies looking to move into new niche markets, but the $75,000-a-year access fee is prohibitive for most small businesses.
OneSource agreed to let the consortium split a membership 10 ways, with nine businesses and the college pitching in. Businesses that opted not to buy in can access the database at Housatonic for free, and three months ago, the college hired a researcher to help businesses navigate the sometimes-tricky system.
Ms. Saint, who bought into the group membership, uses the database on her laptop but goes to the campus frequently to get help doing research. Through the database, she was able to find a new market for her company — making stamps to mark shipping pallets. That niche is a small but growing part of her company, Ms. Saint says.
She has been able to hire five additional employees in recent months, and in part as a thank-you to the college, she has agreed to serve on the search committee to replace the former president, Janis M. Hadley, who retired in September.
"We weren't talking to CEO's of companies before," says Mr. Thornton. "We now have more people wanting to talk to us."
Anson C. Smith, Public Relations Coordinator
Housatonic Community College
900 Lafayette Blvd.
Bridgeport, CT 06604
Tel: 203-332-5229, Fax: 203-332-5247
E-mail: asmith@hcc.commnet.edu