Test. Test. We also know that while these institutions are doing the most work to close that achievement gap, and advance economic mobility, theyre severely underresourced. Its great to see the Community Coming together in a bipartisan way to prioritize and address this issue, and i look forward to working with all of you on this. Madam chairwoman, id like to enter into the record this report by the United Negro College fund, which is led by my close friend, michael lomax, who actually the emcee when i was sworn in to congress in our event just recently, entitled the hcbus make america strong, the positive impact of historically black colleges and universities. So ordered. Thank you. The 2017 report found that the total Economic Impact in the u. S. Is 14. 8 billion annually. The equivalent of ranking among the top 200 corporations on the fortune 500 list. In maryland, we have four hbcus that generate 1 billion in economic output and 10,000 jobs. A maryland graduate can expect to make a Million Dollars more a year due to that credential. So, dr. Verret, if we strengthen federal investments and hbcus, what do you see whats it look like on longterm roi by making this investment look like . Whats the return on investment . The return on investment is huge because right now it is critical that we develop our talent. The talent that we have to build our new industries, whether its the digital industries, its the Hightech Industries and also our creative industries, whether its the movie industry, et cetera, is from these young people. That talented we love on the table underserves us. Building our diversity with better ways and different ways to look at the problems and challenges we have. The Creative Minds that we have on the table and in our second and third grades should not be wasted. Absolutely. Dr. Dubois, i know you have extensive experience in both Community College system and criminal justice space. Top priority of mine is criminal justice reform, i believe the impact of education of these individuals that have been incarcerated, society as a whole is crucial. Research from Rand Corporation found that incarcerated individuals that participated in education while in the Correctional Institution decreased recidivism 43 . How do we best strengthen and expand highquality education responsibilities for justiceimpacted individuals, and what would that impact on this be . Thank you for the question. In the mid90s, i taught in attica state prison, a maximum security prison, with genesee Community College. So its something im very familiar with. Research is clear, most prisoners are going to be released within three years. 97 . What do we want them armed with . A future . And if we do, its going to be some kind of educational credential because recidivism rates have been clear for over 25 years. At one time, the federal government was supporting prisoners through pell. I think we had one college that participated in an Experimental Program with pell. We would welcome the opportunity to receive more pell support for incarcerated persons. Have you seen a state thats done a bestcase job in this area . Sometimes i hear alabama, but anybody know of a state thats really worked with Community Colleges and Correctional Institutions hand in hand to help address this disaster . In the 90s, new york. Of the 30 Community Colleges in new york, we probably had about 14 or 15 of them very involved in inmate higher education. There was a lot of research that was done back in those days. I can certainly make that available to you. How do we help students in virginia with their Mental Health disabilities . How do we get more money focused on that . What should we be doing to help you there . Thats a great question. We are struggling with that question as we speak. It was only just two weeks ago where i announced a major task force on this very, very issue of student insecurities, including Mental Health, financial problems, legal problems. These are the students that are coming to us today. We need answers, more and more answers to that kind of a situation. Thank you. Mr. Timmons. Thank you, madam chairwoman. Thank you each for coming to testify before this subcommittee. Im going to begin, dr. Verret, Xavier University of louisiana has created an Emergency Fund to cover unanticipated student expenses. How were you able to establish this grant funding, and what have the results been for students who end up needing this unexpected money . Well, the Emergency Fund was founded four years ago when i arrived, and it was first funded through alumni and also friends of xavier who were not alumni. We have raised these funds because were aware that there are students who are in good academic standing, especially as they are in their third or fourth year, about to finish, who are at risk of not persisting. It may be from tuition funding, but it also may be other things, for example, clothing, a home medical crises, and we apply that. Its small because we are not a rich institution, and we do need more. But it parallels what my friends have been speaking about, other needs including Housing Needs because we do give housing scholarships for homeless students. Weve received calls from homeless shelters that you have a student here, do you know about this . And we have ways of responding. We need to respond. So we need resources to meet those needs. Thank you. Do you have a ballpark of how much has been put into the fund or the average the average year we had somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 in the fund. Thank you. Also, dr. Verret, you note in your written remarks that a challenge for many students of color is their preparedness for collegelevel course work. What are you doing to increase student retention at xavier, particularly for students who may struggle in their first year . I would say not only students of color, but it clearly affects our urban students especially. What happens is in the first year, our diagnostics, Early Alert Program will tell us students in their early first semester, that are in need of academic support. Theyre given academic support and make sure the individualized tutoring they need in certain areas is provided. Xavier is not a selective institution. We have students from 18 to 34 on the s. A. T. S. But those students in greater need, we have seen progress because last year we saw, especially among the group with greater precollegiate challenges, that their retention numbers have gone up significantly. Do you think this program could be modeled for other hbcus . It could be modeled for almost any other institution. You mentioned a tcu innovation core to help entrepreneurs put their ideas into action. What are the goals behind this initiative . How do you anticipate the program will work, and what are the expected results for students and local economies . Sorry. Ill give you the question. You mentioned a tcu innovation corps. Initiative to help entrepreneurs put their ideas into action. What are the goals behind this initiative . How do you anticipate the program will work . And what are the expected results for students and local economies . The tcu innovation corps is built around the concept that in the research and work that students are doing with particularly science programs, that they would find marketable patent programs that could then be scaled up and marketed to build the economy through creating new jobs and new enterprises. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. Ms. Wild. Thank you, madam chairwoman, and thank you to the panel for being here to speak today on this very important subject. I will tell you i am not a member of this subcommittee, but i came to hear what i could of your testimony and have read your testimonies because i feel that this is such an important area for us to cover in this committee. I am a representative from the 7th district of pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley of pennsylvania, allentown, bethlehem, easton area, where we have a wealth of institutions of higher learning. We have several very fine private fouryear colleges. We have a smaller parochial private college. We have a state school. But the pride and joy of our community are two incredibly good Community Colleges Lehigh CarbonCommunity College and North HamptonCommunity College. These two schools in my district are such high quality, they offer a range of academic and Career Training programs. The statistics on those two schools is after graduation from the twoyear programs, 93 to 94 of their alumni are either continuing their education or in a career. And i think thats a statistic to be so incredibly proud of. And both also serve a Large Population of students of color. Lehigh carbon Community College is a hispanicserving institution. North hampton Community College is the number one associate degree granting college in pennsylvania for latinos. So if i seem like im bursting with pride, i am a little bit about those two schools. Having said that, i visited both of those schools since i was elected, and i have learned from their administration about some of the challenges that the administration faces because in the face of constant decreases in funding, these kinds of schools not just these two in my district, but these kinds of schools across the country that are struggling so much to keep from raising tuition for their students, and by and large are doing a pretty good job of it. But that money has to be taken from somewhere. And so what im consistently hearing from them is that the schools are contracting the services that they provide to students and that too is a real harm to the students. And id like you perhaps, dr. Mchatton, to address well, first let me go to dr. Verret and ask you about how Student Outcomes vary depending on what institutions are able to spend on the instruction and the Student Support systems. I dont have a thorough study in front of me that i can refer you to. But in my experience i should mention i was in luzerne county, so i know the other lccc quite well. What i would say, that the resource that we need to meet the needs of students where they are takes time and faculty. We have very few adjuncts. We have fulltime faculty engaged with students even in their introductory classes. That devotion is important for our students. It costs. If you were to reduce those services at xavier, our outcomes would suffer. We know that. So it is important that when we speak of remedial or other needs, but meeting students with the course they need or the support structure that they need to persist in subsequent courses rather than throwing them into deep water without knowing how to swim. Thats criminal. What we need, those resources are crucial. As you reduce those in Community Colleges or colleges around the country, the outcomes will suffer. Some of the things i was told and all of you may also have seen is there a greater need for things such as child care on these campuses. Theres a need both of these schools as well as some of the fouryear schools in my district have food support programs, food banks, and then of course theres the issue of attracting and retaining good talent in the academic force. So i commend you for being able to keep fulltime professors as opposed to relying solely on adjunct personnel. I wanted to ask, if i could, dr. Boham, because im very interested in your testimony about the look with local Industry Partners to ensure that students are on a pathway to good jobs. If you could just in a very short period of time ive left you, give us a little bit more information about how you make those connections with local industry. We do that in a very facetoface kind of handson way with our business partners. And a good example of that was one of the studies that we did said that we needed people in our hospitals that were certified medical assistants instead of the on the job training assistants that they had had before. They were changing their practice, which a lot of medical fields are doing, changing the scope and role of particular jobs. And so we implemented a certified medical assisting program that would meet the needs of those hospitals statewide, because its two different providers, and theyre regional, so theyre not its not just montana. Thank you very much. Sorry. It was my fault. I left you with very little time, but thank you for your input. Thank you. Ms. Omar. Thank you, chairwoman. Thank you all for being here today to have this important discussion. I have a staffer who made the choice to attend a Community College. He then went on to a fouryear university and eventually got a graduate degree in an ivy league school. While that is the kind of stories that we would love to hear, not many have the opportunity of having that kind of progress achieved. Some of our students are getting stuck in Community Colleges. After six years in college, four in ten students still havent earned a degree, and that as a nation, weve barely made any progress in increasing College Graduation rates over the past two decades. And we know that underfunded colleges with low Graduation Rates disproportionately enrolls students of color and lowincome students. Community colleges that are less selective or open access receive less state funding and charge lower tuition. And affordability remains a challenge even at college with relatively low tuition costs. The full cost of college includes textbooks, supplies, living expenses, causes which are similar to colleges. Many students who are lowincome are working adults who face instability in jobs, who have family demands, who have emergency expenses. All of Community College students nationwide, 40 are firstgeneration college students. Among Community College students, 22 were both food and housing insecure during the last year, and 80 experienced both of those challenges as well as homelessness. To all of you, i would love for you to share how your institutions are helping some of these students move through these challenges so that they can attain graduation. Thank you for the question. Your description is certainly very accurate. We are challenged with students that are facing the more difficult life circumstances, and we are funded at the lowest rate of any Public Sector of higher education. So it is fiscally a challenge. We also are under pressure to not raise tuition, and yet we have to, and we try to do that in a very modest and careful way. What were doing in virginia is were trying to whatever extra dollar that we have, we want to invest it in student services. We think that thats the best bang for that dollar to help students be successful. Our students need coaching from day one. They need guidance. They need navigators. They need social workers. They need people who understand where the resources are in the community and put those students in touch with those resources. Can you yeah. I cant see your names. Yeah, you want to take that . Yes. If we can be mindful of the time. Sure. Along with some of the things that have already been discussed, i think whats really important as far as our institution is building capacity within our faculty so theyre able to stay connected and identify students early on when theyre in need of particular support services. Developing a Summer Bridge program to prepare students who are firstgeneration students and maybe might have some academic needs has been very successful. Weve also had some peerled team learning and supplemental instruction, so theres a lot of academic support throughout their first year and beyond in order to help them with any academic needs that they may have. Thank you. And dr. Verret, if i can just have you follow that up with maybe recommendations that you would have for us to implement in helping close this gap. I would begin its about finding students in crisis, especially throughout the first year is crucial, but other years as well. The early alert and how we use early alert is important for us because its important that professors and instructors be able to identify a student who is actually not appearing in class, a student who is coming in very tired for another reason, and to give a shoutout through the early alert system to say you need to pull this young person in because we think something is going on. To look to see whether a student whose grades is you may not know what it is, but to get someone competent to engage with that student at that point and to build a structure that is necessary, whether it is housing, whether it could be food. It could be other things, another crisis that is occurring, that the student was injured in some way. We need to find out. I appreciate that. Education is the greatest equalizer, but we also have to first equalize the situation so young people are able to attain that education. Thank you so much, and i yield back. Thank you. Ms. Hayes. Thank you, madam chair. Again, thank you for allowing me to waive onto this committee because this, as well, is not my committee. And ive been listening, and dr. Verret, i can blame you for this today because generally my staff gets so upset because we spend so much time working and preparing for these hearings, and i have these beautifully puttogether binders, and then i hear something, and i throw all of this away because i am so personally invested in the work that this committee does. You know, i went to a Community College, and what i heard today was you talking about your thoughts about k12 education. And it reminded me of an experience that i think would be tremendously relevant here. During my time, i was a High School History teacher 15 years in the classroom. I taught africanamerican history, and i had so many students who had never even heard of an hbcu, so i created a unit on it, you know, in connecticut. Many of the southern states, its a part of the community. Its a part of the culture. There are so many kids outside of this network who until someone teaches them about it, and that coupled with the fact that i also recognize in my time as National Teacher of the year, i traveled to over 40 states, saw something that was i thought was a connecticut problem, but its a national problem, and it is diversifying the educator workforce and the number of teachers of color who are out there. I happen to know that hbcus produce more teachers of color than any other teacher preparation institutions. So i guess my question to you would be do you have any thoughts on how we expand this network, broaden the spectrum so that youre not just having this conversation with young people in louisiana who might be thinking about entering the profession, but also kids in connecticut or what i would say is that we do need to resource and support teachers because we dont want we want them because we have students who are going through education who have high loans, high costs, who eventually have a family and they have to make a decision to leave the profession. We dont want that, especially if they are good teachers. We need programs that support teachers because they are our most precious commodity. Theres an exam at the National Science foundation which came out from the lack of stem educators where we would actually provide tuition support for students who commit to teaching for the next five to six years after that, and many of those teachers remain in the teaching profession. We need for other disciplines as well, whether its social studies, whether its special educators. We have to actually provide a way of even loan forgiveness for that because i do say the work that we do at our colleges, whether its Community Colleges or hbcus is only made easier by having students who come in with the basic fundamental good k12 education that they deserve. Thank you. Again, i dont think its just about the money. I appreciate you saying that because thats very important. But we cannot under score the fact that just the Capacity Building. I went through Community College, undergraduate, a masters program, and a graduate program where i was the only africanamerican in a Educator Program in my program. Were an education state, and i was the only person of color through my academic journey. The Capacity Building is a recruitment issue. What we do in recruiting educators is beginning to speak of it in high school with student whos might consider becoming teachers. We have to do real outreach the same way we have done in stem in the last decade as we needed that. We have to do that. We also have to think well about the capacity of our hbcus that are producing numbers of teachers. I can speak for xavier what were doing but i no other hbcus that need support to build their capacities as well. Thank you. Dr. Boham, i notice that your campus is majority female and most of them are over 25 years of age. A congresswoman from my state recently introduced a bill to provide child care, which i know is a challenge. I went back to Community College as an adult with a child as a single parent. Can you talk about what types of support this specific population needs to succeed, and how we can help here in congress . Child care and quality child care that you can take your children to and know that theyre going to be safe and well cared for is critical for our female and male students. We have a number of fathers that are primary care givers as well. And so we have on our campus a preschool, and that is critical, but we also need quality afterschool programs so that parents can focus on their schoolwork and not be worrying about the safety of their children. We also know that children that are in preschool and that go into kindergarten are going to have larger vocabularies and be better prepared, and that preparation will follow them through their entire k12 education. When i was working in the k12 system, literally a third of the native students that were defined in special ed between k3 were there for language, and it wasnt that they were actually special ed. It was the number of Vocabulary Words that they had. So these programs are critical. Thank you very much. I now turn to mr. Bobby scott, who is the chairman of the overall education and labor committee. Thank you, madam chair and ranking member. Dr. Dubois, its good to see you, and i want to congratulate you on your success at the virginia Community College system, particularly the success youve had in the shortterm programs that dont necessarily lead to a degree but lead to a good job. Theres a growing consensus that we ought to allow pell grants to help finance these shortterm programs, but theres a lot of concern we want to make sure they only go to quality programs. Can you say a word about what elements there are in your program that we should look at as we evaluate whether or not a program is of such quality we want to allow pell grants to help fund it . Thank you, congressman scott. I could suggest to you there should be two elements and some kind of an accountability system. One is program completion. Two is unemployment in employme two is unemployment in employm employment in highdemand, familysustaining wage job. Now, how do you work with local businesses to make sure that there will be a demand for your graduates . To receive any kind of state funding in virginia, first of all we have to have demonstrated demand. That has to be that information and data needs to be collected by our local Community College. It needs to be verified by my senior staff and the state board has essentially granted me authority to certify that program as eligible for some state funds or not. And then the truth is really in the pudding when we look at job placement rates, which are very, very, very high. And when we see the job placement rates and we will. At some point, how many pharmacy technicians will we need in virginia . When we see those placement rates starting to come down, we will probably turn off the state support for those programs because we only want them to be in high demand. They differ region by region, but the colleges do a very good job, as demonstrated by job placement, that we have an accountable system. How do your programs differ in rural virginia as opposed to urban virginia . Its interesting. In virginia, we have 2 Million People in rural virginia and 6 millionplus people in the other part of virginia. 40 of our fastforward credentials are now being earned in rural virginia. The only difference i would suggest to you, the big one is the jobs that are in demand in certain regions, lets say southwest, south side, are different from the jobs that are in demand, congressman scott, in your region. For example, in grundy, they dont really theyre not really crying out for a lot of welders. But your major employer, that ceo goes to sleep at night and wakes up worrying about where can he find welders to build aircraft carriers and submarines. So we look at these regional differences, and we pay a lot of respect to those regional differences to see what were not a kind of a franchise where we have the same menu across the board at 23 different Community Colleges. Thank you. Dr. Verret, xavier has an outstanding reputation of producing minority medical doctors. Can you explain how you have that success, what you do to create that success . Well, it begins first of all i think with the intentionality of our advising as students arrive. In their first year, we begin to prepare them for the pathway that theyre headed to, what courses they need, what experiences they need to have, and even how to prepare for the interviews and preparing their essays. The other piece is also theres a curriculum that is very well set in mind with our faculty. The faculty, theres a great commitment to how that curriculum is delivered and to make sure these students are at the top of their games even when they take the medical entrance exams. So it is faculty. It is also the advising. Is that replicable . Can you replicate it . It is replicable because weve had not only a number of hbcus but also a number of other