This blog was created in partnership with the Foundation for California Community Colleges with the support of the Lumina Foundation. Special thanks to Jeff Claryfor his collaboration on this series.
In the United States, higher education is a unique enterprise that provides a broad array of experiences to prepare people for success in their professional and personal lives. Through the nation’s community colleges, millions of people are prepared for a variety of careers that contribute to individual and collective well-being. Alongside community colleges, the American approach to higher education also includes Cooperative Extension — a system intended to align the work of land-grant colleges and universities nationwide with community needs at the state level, even in the most rural locations.
While many people are familiar with community colleges, Cooperative Extension is often a less familiar part of each state’s higher education offerings. Cooperative Extension provides affordable or free noncredit education to people seeking to connect with research and learning from their land-grant colleges and universities. Extension has its largest footprint in agricultural education and research related to natural resources, areas that are integral to the land-grant mission and have historically been highly relevant to rural communities. Yet these two systems, Extension and community colleges, do not consistently coordinate their efforts, despite serving overlapping communities and confronting shared challenges.
Among other roles, Extension campus-based faculty and local agents respond to the short-term needs of people building careers and livelihoods in agriculture and natural resources. They anticipate challenges that people working in these areas may face in the future. Indeed, these challenges are complex and will require many people working together to solve. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, American agricultural production depends heavily on the climate, and shifts in precipitation, temperature, and timing of the seasons impact both agricultural production and the people who rely on it for their livelihoods. At the same time, community colleges across the nation prepare students for careers that will help our country respond to and adapt to these same changes. According to the Community College Research Center, more than nine million new jobs are anticipated in areas related to our climate, and community colleges will play an integral role in preparing these workers.
Across the nation, there are examples where Extension and community colleges are collaborating to support people working in agriculture in the short term. They are also working to produce the skilled workforce needed to continue preparing our nation for natural disasters, as well as shifts in temperature, precipitation levels, and seasonal timing. In this three-part blog series, we explore these partnerships with a specific focus on work in California focused on healthy forests and strong rural economies. We will also explore examples focused on disaster preparedness and community response. These examples illustrate that partnerships between Extension and community colleges can positively impact people and communities.
Photo by Allison Shelley/Complete College Photo Library.
