Berks for School, for Good

Chad Ganley, Assistant Director of Career Development at Kutztown University, and Katie Diamond Rothstein, Generation Impact Program Director at VOiCEup Berks, join the Sparking Change podcast to discuss student retention in Berks County. The idea to increase employment and internship opportunities, as well as community engagement for recently graduated college students, originated from an initiative led by Kim Sheffer, Lifelong Learning Program Officer for Berks County Community Foundation.

You can connect with the foundation by emailing info@bccf.org, calling at 610-685-2223, or visiting www.bccf.org.

Chad Ganley can be reached by emailing ganley@kutztown.edu

Katie Diamond Rothstein can be reached by emailing katie@voiceupberks.org 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Sparking Change, the official podcast of Burks County Community Foundation. Join us each month to learn about the good work happening in Burks County. Each episode will feature some of the change makers who make our community a better place to live. Opinions expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of Burks County Community Foundation.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

Hello, I'm Kim Sheffer, the Lifelong Learning Program Officer at Burks County Community Foundation. On today's episode titled Burks for School, for good, we'll talk with community leaders about the importance of retaining the young adult population of Burks County. Joining us today are two members of the Burks community dedicated to helping our college-aged residents find opportunities for internships, employment, and community engagement. If you could tell the listeners your name, job title, and connection to Burks County, that would be great. Katie, let's start with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Hi, thanks for having me. My name is Katie Diamond Rothstein. I am director of Generation Impact, which is an initiative by VoiceUp Burks designed to empower young adults through service learning, volunteerism, networking, ages 18 to 24 in the county. Great. Thanks, Katie. Chad?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Hello, Chad Ganley, Assistant Director at Kutztown University in the Career Development Center. Also an adjunct faculty member in our College of Business. With over 10 plus years in the field and industry, my role really focuses on helping our students prepare for internships, life after college, and building partnerships in the region with our employer partners.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Thanks, Chad. And thank you both for joining me today to discuss student retention. Before we get the conversation started, I want to give our listeners some background on how this initiative came to be. We can all agree that population growth is a key indicator of a healthy, thriving community, right? Well, in the traditional sense, population growth can improve with rising fertility and birth rates, but it's a lifelong learning program officer at the foundation. My work specifically focuses on the Berks County residents who already live here or who move here to attend a local college or university. Every year we have hundreds of young people moving to Berks to attend one of our colleges or universities, which actually is a form of population growth. But how do we keep them here after they graduate? That question led me to talk with leaders from Albright College, Alvernia University, Reading Area Community College, Cootstown University, Penn State Berks, and Drexel University's College of Medicine in West Reading. We also convened other community leaders to discuss opportunities to improve the college experience for students while they're here, hopefully encouraging them to connect deeper with the community around them. From these discussions, two major retention factors were identified: community engagement and opportunities for internships and employment, which brings me to our guests today. Like Katie mentioned, Generation Impact is a program of Voice at Burks that, prior to our student retention initiative, had already been engaging 18 to 24-year-olds in Berks County. Similarly, Chad has been working with this demographic for years now, leading career development efforts out of Cuttown University. So, with all that being said, I want to let Katie and Chad talk about their programs now. How have things continued to develop and also expand from these initial meetings that I just mentioned?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I think Generation Impact right now we are in year one, closing out year one. The first year that we measured and tracked data, we had 66 students participate within the Generation Impact lens. And now we were, we'll have at close of academic year around 700, I'm hoping. Wow. So it's grown. There's definitely a need there. The Genesis for Generation Impact, Voice Up Burks has 11 to 18-year-olds in our pipeline. And they wanted to do more service learning. They wanted to network. They wanted to have a connection back to the community. And that made and created Generation Impact with this new age demographic, which is 18 to 24. Traditionally, college-age students, but also people entering the workforce. We are busy doing networking events, service learning, and social connections. So I kind of guide those three buckets in the direction of planning. So we just recently had a networking event at the Reading Airport for students to work with area industry business leaders. Last night we were at Olivets planning a vegetable garden. A few weeks ago, we were at a golf range, Keystone Golf, and we it was purely social. So it's connecting this age demographic in a variety of ways to inspire growth, to fuel our economy, to make a better Berks for all.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

And just to clarify, students from any college campus, or even like you said, even if they're entering the workforce, they don't have to necessarily be a current college student, but it's all inclusive, right? Multi-campus and people in the workforce are all invited to participate in these events.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, my background is in higher education. I'm adjunct faculty at Alverney University. And a lot of what we do is at promise and at launch with students, I feel like there's a shoe for every foot. So what are you doing after graduation? Does that look like going to college or university, or does that look like joining the workforce? We just don't want this apathetic generation, but a plan for students to make the next right step and whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Right. And by doing that, they're also making these connections within the community. That's right. Chad?

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, awesome. So uh what I want to hit on is the Burks Internship Summit. So what's been really exciting is watching a little shift in this county with regard to talent retention and the strategies that the BCCF is looking to implement. So the Burks Internship Summit really started off as meeting and just discussing some of these challenges about retaining our young talent. And now we've actually moved into obviously the initiatives with being able to collaborately work with the universities and our community partners, the educators to create some of these really cool things. So the Burks Internship Summit is a half-day event, conference style, with an opportunity that brings together, as I mentioned, our educators, the community partners, the career professionals in Burks County to help strengthen and expand our internship programs. So some fun facts we'll call, or some research I recently saw with this initiative is that employers who have a likelihood of hiring their interns on full time after those internship programs, those employers will typically stay longer with a company. There's a lot of research behind that, that even just one-year retention rates, it's above 75%. And a five-year is above 50% for your return on investment, which is higher than that traditional random hire you find online or, you know, on Indeed or whatever it may be. So we're really trying to strategically do some more of these events, which the Burks Internship Summit is hitting on, that colleges, universities, employers, community organizations all come together. They work together to help educate the county on what our best practices are and how do we retain these students in the area.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

And just to clarify on that, the event itself isn't necessarily for the students to attend, it's for the businesses. And it's for any size business, right? Larger businesses, smaller businesses, even nonprofits participate.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Correct. Yeah. It's an annual event at this point, which it takes place over the summer when most students, unless they're in summer classes, are out, you know, enjoying their summers. So this event is specifically targeted to those employer partners, large, small, nonprofits, to help if they're looking to start an internship program, if they don't know if they can fit that in and squeeze that in budget-wise or funding-wise, to go over all the ins and outs, how to create a job description, where to post your jobs, who to connect with. So we're really trying to help create a checklist, an easy-to-do outline. So these employers can either grow or if they have a really amazing internship program already, even add on to that based on hearing from other employers in Berks County.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Thank you. That sounds like a really important educational piece for the businesses, for the nonprofits that either have something in place and they're looking to kind of bolster what they already are doing, or if they're not sure where to start, but they want to begin an internship program. That's awesome. Thanks, John. Could you both give us some specific examples of how you're working on efforts to increase engagement with this 18 to 24-year-old demographic?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, I think we are fortunate enough to be in like a hotbed of higher education. There's so many colleges and universities in the Berks County area, which is a great thing. We're educating a large number of students because of how we're set up geographically. College towns don't necessarily exist with the exception of Cutz Town, Chad. But we're really trying to have people lock into the local community. For example, in West Reading, a West Reading College night, tagging on to already existing, really successful programming, like First Friday events, so that students at Alvernia or Penn State Burks or Albright could feel free to use West Reading, for example. I think the colleges and universities and their student affairs departments do such a good job providing programming on campus, but we are essentially trying to retain the brain in Berks County. And that involves getting them off of campus into our communities, which fuels our economy, creates a better sense of community and belonging, gives people direction. So I'm kind of working a two-prong approach here that we're trying to activate them on campus and then also get them immediately into the community to see what our problems are, how we can course correct, what solutions do you have. One thing for sure is that whenever I'm working with this age demographic, I'm left inspired. Better ideas are brought to the table. And I think that's the way we grow as a community. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

And again, the importance on these events being multi-campus events so that we don't have specific college nights in a silo, bringing these students together, creating those connections and introducing them to areas of Berks County that they might not even know about. Like that happens too, right, Katie?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, yeah, all the time, which I think is a natural thing that they're involved on campus activities and kind of forget that some of these really beautiful gems in Berks County exist. But then when you know about them, you'll frequent them, tell others about them. This is such a special place to live and where we're situated on the map, provide so much access to other states and attractions. And I just think we can be utilizing all of our assets in Berks County to help everybody.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Definitely. Could you also speak about the new campus ambassador program that's been part of the Generation Impact expansion?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah, I'm really excited about this initiative. So we have identified in year one three schools: Penn State Burks, Alvernia University, and Cootstown University. And essentially, it is a paid internship with VoiceUp Burks and Generation Impact. And we pick a student and they serve as the campus ambassador on their home institution and promote our events, activities, kind of take a pulse of what's going on on their campus, bring it back to us. It is definitely a feedback loop of this is what it's like at Cootstown, this is what I think we need. What can we do to help? And vice versa. So we have some programming that we look at to do each year and how can we get the word out on college campuses via a student? But we're also working with college administrators as well to help push that forward. We had three schools year one, and we will have six schools year two.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

So in year two, you are increasing the number of campus ambassadors you'll have. Did you want to just mention who's involved with that?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yes. So we'll have Cootstown back for another year, Alvernia back for another year, Penn State Burks, Reading Area Community College, Reading Hospital School of Health Sciences, and Albright. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

So everyone's on board starting next year. That's so important to have that student ambassador going back and forth because a key part of this retention initiative that we did talk about during all of our initial meetings was incorporating that student voice. So is there anything else you want to say about that, or maybe some networking opportunities that have come up because of this?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, I think it's a great kind of community and larger conversation that we're having with Berks County leaders, industry leaders, business executives, the workforce in general to tie back to this population who is either in college or getting ready to graduate, or again in that 18 to 24 demographic that loops everyone together. Definitely.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Thanks. I would like to next talk about some of your wins or success stories that you've already experienced even in the early stages of this work. So, what are some of your wins and what kind of feedback are you already getting from the students that you're working with? So that question is for both of you.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

I can jump in here. And I just wanted to obviously second what Katie was talking about with really trying to streamline some of our events and things going on, as you can probably assume. And one thing we are noticing on our campuses is students have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things, which is a good thing. The programming going on at each of these universities is a high volume. It's well-intentioned, but I hear from our students that, like, well, we're asked to do this, we're asked to do that. Like, we can't attend all these. So, what is really cool that we have been working on, and as Katie mentioned, is this idea that we can host events for all these universities for all these students to participate in. So we're not duplicating efforts. We're not hosting a networking event every single night for a different college or you know, employer partner. So it's really cool to see that the county is coming together on that and really working as a team, right? So one other thing I just wanted to bring up is students today are looking for connection and relevance more than our previous generations. They, I don't want to call them creatures of habit, but they do like to pursue opportunities with organizations or with individuals they've already interacted with, right? So when we're talking about these events, whether the university perspective hosts a career fair, we host networking events, we're getting our employer partners into classrooms or clubs and organizations, really that familiarity just builds trust. So that's what we're really trying to drive home, educate not just our students, but the employers that are looking to find a pipeline of students to come in as interns, maybe work over summers, but that long-term goal of bring them on full-time. So I guess the win that we can be talking about would be just the engagement factor, right? So even if some of our outcomes aren't those immediate hires, what success really looks like in my perspective, which I hope in many of ours, is just increased awareness, all right. And then increased internship like exploration opportunities or students being really into finding internships and spending time instead of maybe a part-time job they've had since high school, getting into something a little bit more professional to help grow their careers and then ideally keep them around.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Definitely. And I think it's fair to say that it's overwhelming for a college or university's career development department to reach everyone on campus. So any additional support like this, I feel like is helpful for the students who are seeking these opportunities. And, you know, hopefully for the most part, they're paid internships. That is what will keep our students here. So we want to see more of that for sure. And you made a good point too about if they make those connections early, they're a little more familiar, more comfortable. That also leads to them hopefully sticking around and getting those placements and putting some roots down for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

I think that our number, the the number that we started, the number that we're growing is something to be really proud of. And that is because of the community partnerships with the colleges and universities. People have been responsive to Generation Impact, and I'm hopeful for the future. I think that we have had a focus on experiential learning and living and growing, getting out and meeting with employers, doing community work, having social events. It touches on all parts of community. Again, I feel like I'm saying that word a lot, but that's what we're trying to focus to provide meaningful experiences, build leadership skills, foster personal growth, professional growth, and strengthen the community ties. It's only this first year, and I think that we're off to a good start.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

We really are. And I think we say community engagement a lot, but that covers so much. It's such a broad term because that could be someone doing a service learning project. That could be someone volunteering, that could even be someone discovering a new little cafe on Penn Avenue in West Reading, and you know, they're a student at a nearby college or university, and they don't even realize where they are in that moment. I know you shared a story with me like that before. Right. Like where West Reading, where am I?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

And it's a magical place.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

And they had no idea. So we are opening eyes. And I know I have heard that it's also important for students to find those third spaces. I don't know if you could speak a little bit about that. Is that do you feel like this is helping them discover some things in Berks County that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah, I think Berks County, we're trying to do some live local series, um, connect people to all parts of the county and do things. It feels like we're trying to find events and activities that all people can participate in or might have interest to. Some of those are big scales and other are is very small and tiny. We're looking to do some sustainability efforts, some hiking this summer, but then we also want to do First Friday and get people out for live music. And again, you're gonna hear my community word, again, just bringing us all together. I think the notion that we're trying to retain the brain. So we have all of these talented people studying in our county to make it an attractive place to land and to perhaps start a family, fuel our economy, give back in meaningful ways. Yeah, so events are happening all of the time and growing as the calendar continues. That's wonderful. Thank you both.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Can I add another win? Is that please?

SPEAKER_03 18:12

I want to hear all the wins. Give me all the wins.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

I just wanted to chime in again on the internship summit, hosting it last year in my eyes was a big win. And one of our survey questions to the roughly a hundred attendees there was like, would you come back? Would you, you know, want to do this again on an annual event? And 100% said yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

So 100%. Did you hear that?

SPEAKER_00 18:35

In the survey, right? Uh, hopefully they weren't just being nice, but they they they genuinely want this type of community involvement, right? So the one thing I think of with this is maybe a little bit of a call to action on top of this win would be let's try to really bring our alumni connections out from these universities. If you're an employer and a community member and you know that you have a Cutstown or an Albright, Alberta, Penn State, whatever it may be, alum working in your organization, please encourage them, incentivize them, whatever you need to do to get them in touch with these students, these current interns or these current students at all these great events, because that really is what the stories that they can hear that, oh, I can have a wonderful career, a wonderful life living here in Berks County.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

I think that's a fantastic resource to tap into. And I'm going to go ahead and use myself as an example because I graduated from Alvernia University and I am still in Berks County.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So win-win.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Totally. All right. Moving on, I would like to hear a little more about what you have planned in the pipeline for these programs and events. So we started to touch on this a little bit, but if you could kind of explain what's your vision for the future of this work in Berks County?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

I will start at a very basic level of just brand awareness, brand recognition, knowing that when people see generation impact, what comes to mind is someone who can take charge of the situation, who is connected and linked into the community. Obviously, we want to grow numbers. So our involvement is going to be increasing with three more colleges next academic year. So I think that will be a great thing to retain more students, to get people more attracted to the programming. Our same three buckets, which I've talked about, networking, service, and social connections will remain true, but increasing the people that participate would be a huge win for everyone. I would think and I hope that Generation Impact would help fuel the economy, but I would also think that it would be a more attractive place for this age demographic to settle as a first stop. And I think we all have a responsibility to do that. And that that, you know, covers a lot of different areas, which we would need a longer podcast to talk about. Um, but yeah, making it an attractive place to be, to raise a family, to live, um, to thrive. And Generation Impact is just trying to highlight some of those places with the help of all of these community partners and colleges and universities.

SPEAKER_03 21:03

Definitely. Thanks, Katie. Did you have anything to add to that, Chad?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, I can uh jump in real quickly. Just with near term for the Burks Internship Summit is just continuing to grow that initiative to become a pretty well-known annual event, building on feedback from the previous years and again where the region looks like it's headed, would be really cool to make that a signature event every year and then grow off of that. So, some other focus areas that I know I've been in connection and talks with other university career center folks would be an internship toolkit that we plan on putting together to again give a landing spot or a baseboard for these employer partners, right? So just some basic resources where we know everyone's bandwidth and their time is extremely valuable and limited at times throughout the years. So to give them something to get them started or help them with these internship programs is something we're working on. And then in addition, working with our community partners at the college career center level would be great for other of these networking events and getting our students more involved in the community.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

That sounds great. And I think the employers will really appreciate having that toolkit. Sounds like an amazing resource to just help them get on track with their programs. So I'd like to take a moment to let you both promote anything you might have coming up soon. And then you can tell our listeners how they can reach out or contact you if they need more information or want to connect and work together somehow, whatever the case may be. Do you want to go chat?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah, let me since I'm on the internship.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

You have your internship summit coming up this summer. So yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

So please tell us about July 14th. It's a Tuesday. It is actually being hosted at Kutstown University this summer. So the idea with the summit is to rotate between the universities. And last year was at Alvernia. So pretty cool that we are now taking charge at KU. So it's, as I mentioned before, a half day event, roughly 8 a.m. to noon. Registration will be opening soon. So by the time your summer gets rolling, hopefully you can save the date for again July 14th at Cutztown University and more information to come on that. So the best way to contact me would be at Kutstown University. My email is Ganly, G-A-N-L-E-Y at Kutztown.edu. But you can probably just Google Cutstown Career Development Center and find our information there pretty easily. I'm always open to just have quick conversations with you or someone in your talent acquisition HR departments as well to just see where you're all at with internship programs, recruiting, getting on the campus. We do a lot of information sessions. I can connect you with the other Burks County Career Development Centers too. So we're a pretty close-knit family at this point and definitely want to make sure that we are guiding our students to you all. So please reach out in that aspect 100%.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Thanks, Jen. We just had a really busy two weeks. So I'd just like to highlight we had Keystone Golf, we had the Writing Phillies game, we were at Olivet's last night. But upcoming, we are going to do a Habitat for Humanity build again this summer. It's going to be August 12th. We have mural painting at a new Olivette's, the Mulberry Street location is opening back up. We're hopefully working with East Penn student interns again in that 18 to 24 AIDS demo that also pulls in one of our major employers from the county to paint with a local artist, Theron Cook, which I think is going to be a really fun event. And we're going to have opportunities for people to volunteer and paint part of the mural as well. We do things with helping harvest mobile markets all summer. The first Friday in September is going to be a college night feel as well. So we're inviting all of the colleges and universities that I talked about to attend that first Friday. And it will be a fun event. Like Chad said, if you want more information, voiceupberks.org. We have a calendar and it will say generation impact. And we haven't scheduled all things yet for the summer. But voiceupbergs.org, my personal email is Katie K-A-T-I-E at voiceupbergs.org. I just wanted to close with our mission is to mobilize and empower young change makers to shape more equitable communities through service learning at voiceup. And generation impact is an initiative of VoiceUpBurks. So we're really trying to mobilize is the keyword to empower this young, very powerful demographic to build a better Berks County.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

These are our change makers for sure. All right. Well, thank you so much, Chad and Katie, for coming on the podcast with me today. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in. Now you know how to contact Chad and Katie if you have any other questions. Check their websites, reach out to them for more information. Make sure to follow the Community Foundation on social media. Subscribe to our podcast mailing list to receive alerts whenever a new episode of sparking change is released. And as always, remember the change starts with a spark, your spark.