Building Registered Apprenticeship at Rural Minority-Serving Institutions

With support from Ascendium Education Group, CMSI is leading a two-year initiative focused on registered apprenticeships and work-based learning at rural-serving Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). We will work closely with three rural-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), to explore how apprenticeship opportunities can be developed or strengthened in ways that make sense for their students, communities, employers, and institutional capacity.

Our approach is centered on collaboration. We want to work alongside each institution to understand what is already working, build on existing strengths and relationships, identify what could be strengthened, and determine together what approaches are realistic and useful within each local context.

What is a Registered Apprenticeship?

A Registered Apprenticeship combines paid, on-the-job learning with education and training. Participants have the opportunity to build skills while working, earn wages, and prepare for careers in fields where employers need qualified workers.

For colleges, apprenticeships can create stronger connections between what students learn and employment opportunities in their communities. For employers, they can provide a way to develop and retain local talent. For students, they can offer a pathway that connects education, paid work, and preparation for a career.

However, there is no single apprenticeship model that will work for every college or community. Rural institutions operate in different employer environments and face distinct staffing, transportation, technology, and resource considerations. Students also bring different needs and responsibilities to these opportunities. TCUs work within distinct Tribal governance structures, cultures, relationships, and community priorities.

Our starting point is that institutions and communities understand their own contexts. The project is designed to bring that knowledge together with CMSI’s research, capacity-building experience, and apprenticeship resources to explore what is possible.

What Will the Project Do?

Over two years, CMSI will work alongside three institutions to explore what it takes to build or strengthen apprenticeship and work-based learning opportunities in rural settings.

The work will begin with what each institution already has in place. Some institutions may have existing apprenticeship activity or strong workforce partnerships that can be expanded or strengthened. Others may have academic programs, employer relationships, or community partnerships that provide a foundation for something new. Our goal is to determine, alongside our partners, what makes sense locally and what would be needed to make that approach sustainable.

Together, we will:

Identify promising career fields and occupations based on local opportunities, institutional strengths, and community priorities.
Engage employers, workforce organizations, Tribal and community partners, and others who can help shape the work.
Build from existing programs, relationships, and institutional strengths rather than creating unnecessary new structures.
Explore how academic programs, workplace learning, and employer needs can connect more effectively.
Consider opportunities for students to receive academic credit for appropriate learning and training.
Identify barriers that may make participation difficult for students, including transportation, childcare and caregiving, work schedules, internet access, financial pressures, and accessibility.
Explore the different roles an institution might play in apprenticeship and work-based learning rather than assuming that every college needs to manage every part of the apprenticeship infrastructure.
Develop an approach that reflects the needs, priorities, and capacity of each institution and its community.
Identify the partnerships, resources, staffing, and other conditions needed to move from planning to implementation or to strengthen existing work.

Each participating institution will receive a $100,000 capacity-building subaward over the two-year project period to support staff time, employer engagement, and related activities. CMSI will provide ongoing, hands-on technical assistance, including support with employer engagement, institutional planning, apprenticeship design, and documentation. The three institutions will also have regular opportunities to learn from one another.

Learning With Our Partners

This project is as much about learning as it is about planning. We want the knowledge and experience of institutional leaders, faculty and staff, students, employers, Tribal and community partners, and others to shape both the work itself and what we ultimately share with the broader field.

CMSI will document what participating institutions are learning about apprenticeship development in rural communities. We are interested in understanding what makes this work possible, what barriers institutions encounter, which partnerships are most useful, and how approaches need to change depending on local circumstances.

We also expect learning to move in all directions. Participating institutions bring deep knowledge of their students, communities, cultures, employers, and local contexts. Their experiences will help CMSI and our partners better understand what effective apprenticeship and work-based learning can look like across different rural-serving MSIs.

Importantly, participating institutions are not required to launch a new Registered Apprenticeship during the project. For some institutions, the most valuable outcome may be strengthening something that already exists. For others, it may be developing a model and the partnerships needed to implement it. And in some cases, the work may identify conditions that need to change before an apprenticeship can be successful. All of these are useful outcomes.

Keeping Students and Communities at the Center

Students’ lives and experiences will be central to the work. A career pathway is only meaningful if students can realistically participate in it. We will therefore work with our institutional partners to consider wages, transportation, childcare and caregiving, work schedules, broadband access, academic support, disability access, mentoring, workplace belonging, and other factors that may shape students' ability to participate and succeed.

Community context is also important. Employers, workforce organizations, Tribal governments and enterprises, community organizations, and other partners may play different roles depending on the institution and region. Smaller rural institutions may also benefit from partnerships and intermediaries that enable them to expand apprenticeship opportunities without having to build and manage all aspects of the infrastructure themselves. For TCUs, this means recognizing Tribal sovereignty, governance, cultural protocols, community responsibilities, relationships, and local priorities as integral to the work, rather than as considerations to be added later.

Rather than designing programs for students and communities, we want to work with them. Their knowledge and experience should help determine what is useful, what is feasible, and what can be sustained.

What We Hope to Learn

By the end of the two-year project, we expect to have a clearer understanding of the different ways rural-serving MSIs can build, strengthen, and sustain apprenticeship and work-based learning opportunities.

We do not expect the three institutions to arrive at the same model. In fact, one of the project's most important contributions may be showing why different institutional and community contexts call for different approaches.

CMSI will share what we learn through case studies, practical resources, webinars, and a national framework for rural-serving MSIs and the organizations that work with them. We will share successes, but we will also be candid about challenges, approaches that had to be changed, and ideas that proved less useful than expected.

Our goal is to develop practical knowledge that rural-serving MSIs, employers, workforce organizations, funders, and policymakers can use and adapt to their own communities.

Building Registered Apprenticeship at Rural Minority-Serving Institutions