When the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority was looking to build a pipeline of experienced bus drivers for the city, the organization turned to the Corporate College at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) to develop a Class B commercial driver’s license training program.
The partnership proved so successful that the Transit Authority also asked Tri-C Corporate College for help in training its public safety and maintenance teams, as well as in developing front-line leaders. The college created a customized assessment to identify Transit Authority employees with leadership potential and an executive leadership program to cultivate managerial talent for the organization.
“They’re engaging with us in many different facets,” Geraldine Weiser, executive director of client solutions for Tri-C Corporate College, says of the Transit Authority.
This article is an excerpt from the new issue of the Community College Journal, published by the American Association of Community Colleges since 1930.
Community colleges already work closely with local businesses to develop training programs that meet regional workforce needs. “Corporate college” programs provide an opportunity to take these partnerships to a deeper level by developing customized workforce training and consulting services for client organizations.
Often, a corporate college’s training programs are developed specifically for a client’s existing employees, and the training is paid for by the client organization. Sometimes, however, these programs are aimed at potential future employees, and students pay the tuition for these open-enrollment training programs themselves.
The Corporate College at Metropolitan Community College (MCC) in Kansas City, Missouri, is working with several local organizations — including Whiteman Airforce Base, Honeywell and Winchester ATK — to develop customized training and workforce solutions. Some of these programs are aimed at incumbent workers, while others are training future workers through open-enrollment opportunities.
“For example, our Corporate College has a contract with Church & Dwight to train current employees in very specific technical skills such as welding and industrial technology,” says Tiffany E. Hunter, vice president of workforce and economic development for MCC. “On the flip side, we have a partnership with North Kansas City Hospital to host an open-enrollment CNA+ Patient Care Technician program at their location in the hopes of recruiting for open positions they have.”
When executed well, these programs can be a win-win for colleges and their communities, helping local organizations grow their talent and meet their workforce goals while providing an additional revenue stream for colleges.
Assessing needs
Building a successful corporate college program involves getting to know local organizations and their needs. This requires spending time to understand each client’s unique circumstances, including its internal culture and the key workforce challenges it faces.
For Tri-C, the process typically includes a needs assessment to identify the root cause of a client’s challenges. This assessment might be completed in as quickly as a few weeks, but usually within a few months.
The needs assessment culminates in a proposed course of action, which might involve the development of specific training programs to build the capacity of current or future employees. But not always.
“We’ve worked with clients who thought they needed one thing, and it turned out to be another,” Weiser says.
In one example, the leadership team at a local manufacturing company assumed that employees needed more training around technical skills. After completing a needs assessment, Tri-C Corporate College discovered the true nature of the problem was that the company’s operating instructions weren’t written at an appropriate reading level for everyone to understand.
Training leaders, too
A common challenge facing organizations today is how to attract and retain workers in the current job environment.
“So many companies are struggling to retain employees amid the gig economy,” Weiser says. “Employee engagement is critical.”
A corporate college can help local businesses overcome this challenge by training managers and supervisors to be empathetic and inclusive leaders.
“This is probably the most sought-after skill we’re seeing today,” Weiser observes.
Choosing instructors
While understanding the needs of their client organizations is fundamental to the work of corporate colleges, hiring the right instructors is also critical. While some corporate college offerings are taught by full-time faculty at the college, many are taught by adjunct faculty recruited for their expertise in a particular field.
Because of its stellar reputation locally, Tri-C Corporate College has many people approaching the college and expressing an interest in teaching. Often, these people are newly retired professionals who want to give back to the community by sharing what they’ve learned in their careers.
“They get immediate credibility with learners when they can say, ‘I’ve been in your shoes before,’” Weiser says.
However, to be considered for employment, they also have to be expert facilitators.

Premium on prior experience
The Corporate College at Monroe Community College, located in upstate New York, occupies several floors of the college’s downtown campus, which includes a new, state-of-the-art Finger Lakes Workforce Development Center, featuring 50,000 square feet of flexible training space.
“We have anywhere from 150 to 200 clients that we impact annually in some way or another,” says James Gertner, director of workforce projects and operations for the college’s Corporate College. These include local businesses, nonprofit organizations and government entities.
Gertner credits much of the program’s success to its approach in hiring instructors. Aside from extensive subject-matter expertise, Monroe’s Corporate College places a premium on instructors who have prior experience in teaching or training adults in particular.
“Training an adult audience is very different from teaching students just out of high school,” Gertner explains. “With adult learners, engagement is key. If they’re stepping away from their job to learn, they need to see the value of investing that time in training immediately.”