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Building Capacity for Innovation Across Montana’s Community College System

Montana’s Year-to-Career (Y2C) initiative, a collaborative effort between Education Design Lab, the Montana University System, Montana’s Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education, and community colleges, represents a significant undertaking to address the state’s evolving workforce needs.

In this Impact by Design brief, we show how the process of designing micro-pathways, when facilitated through human-centered methods, can build institutional and system capacity.

You can also explore Montana’s 11 micro-pathways in detail … as well as our seven recommendations to the state system, based on interviews with campus leaders and state partners.

Part of the Impact by Design series

A few key insights:

  • Human-centered design builds new muscles for adaptation. By centering learner interviews and employer skill-mapping, colleges redesigned programs to fit the lives of rural working learners and adjusted job postings to reflect actual skills. 
  • Precision over volume, enabled by a common design method. In a rural state, the “win” is fit, not headcount. Using a consistent process, colleges tailored pathways to local hiring cycles and small cohorts, brought the first tribal college into micro-pathway design, and began aligning K-12 via an employability certificate. 
  • Shared language and shared data are prerequisites for system coherence. A common taxonomy plus a unified approach to noncredit data (minimal common fields, governance, and a public dashboard) are now seen as essential.

Contributors: Tait Kellogg, PhD, Director of Learning, Evaluation + Measurement, Education Design Lab. This publication was supported through a grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust.

Published: November 2025

Download the Brief

Why Montana Matters

Montana is one of the most rural states in the U.S., with 56 counties, long distances between population centers, and local economies built around healthcare, natural resources, and small business. Colleges serve learners who often balance education with full-time work and caregiving.

Employers are spread across regions and vary widely in needs, which means that any statewide workforce solution must allow for local adaptability. Enrollments are small, sometimes fewer than a dozen students in a program, making economies of scale difficult to achieve.

In rural settings, scale cannot be reduced to raw enrollment or headcounts — it must embrace the qualitative, relational, and contextual dimensions of access, capacity, and place. Rural learners often struggle because they live far from institutional hubs, juggle multiple responsibilities (work, childcare, elder care), and operate in communities with limited local infrastructure. Philanthropic strategies that gauge success by urban-style metrics systematically disadvantage rural places, which are harder to “scale” in conventional terms. Indeed, evidence shows that rural areas receive only a small fraction of philanthropic funding: foundations allocate just 3 % of their dollars to rural communities, even though 15–20 % of the U.S. population lives in rural counties (Headwaters Economics). This disparity reflects a “blind spot” in philanthropy: funders gravitate toward urban density and institutional partners, often underestimating rural distress or treating it as too costly to engage. Leaving rural learners and communities behind means abandoning a significant swath of Americans to underinvestment and stagnation. For these reasons, Montana’s rural context offers a valuable model for other rural states, pointing to the value of place-aware, capacity-building approaches.

In addition to offering a rural case study, Montana is also ripe for opportunity thanks to their emerging investment in workforce issues. The Montana University System (MUS) has elevated workforce readiness as a strategic priority, responding to growing demand for short-term credentials that still connect to longer-term degrees. Policymakers and employers alike have called for more visible pathways that connect education directly to high-demand jobs.

 

Montana’s Micro-pathways

Community colleges across Montana participated in the Year-to-Career design process, working alongside employers, learners, and the Montana University System to create and launch a total of 11 micro-pathways (with several additional programs in development). These pathways span healthcare, education, construction, and skilled trades, reflecting the state’s commitment to building locally responsive, stackable routes from learning to work.

Human-Centered Design as a Catalyst

The Lab’s human-centered design process structured Montana’s Y2C work around three activities central to the Community College Growth Engine (CCGE) process:

  • Interviewing learners to uncover barriers and aspirations
  • Developing T-Profiles with employers to surface both technical and durable skills, and
  • Running prototyping sessions where campuses, employers, and sometimes learners iterated on potential pathway designs.

These activities represent a departure from traditional practice. Instead of designing programs internally and in silos, faculty and staff were asked to listen first, build empathy, and then test ideas in real time.

Knowing it can be difficult to capture the outcomes of human-centered processes, the Lab has recently put forward our Impact of HCD framework, which includes four categories of change which we have observed as outcomes of our processes (beyond programmatic and learner-level outcomes). This work in Montana contributed to our collective understanding of this new framework.

The Lab’s human-centered design approach drives four key types of change: (1) Innovation and Change Capacity (2) Policies and Practice Changes (3) Deeper Relationships and (4) Mindset Shifts

Innovation and Change Capacity

For a rural system like Montana, navigating tight budgets, staff turnover, and highly localized labor markets, the capacity to keep solving new problems is more valuable than launching any single program. At the Lab, we define innovation capacity as a state or college’s repeatable ability to discover needs, prototype solutions, and iterate with evidence; a capacity we build through teaching the human-centered design process. This cycle equips cross-functional teams to pivot with the workforce, building muscle memory for problem-solving that persists after the grant ends.

Montana colleges expanded their capacity to align with a rural workforce.

Montana’s workforce challenges look different from those in large urban systems: Industries are dispersed, hiring needs fluctuate by season, and the scale of demand often measures in handfuls of workers, not hundreds. Innovation, therefore, required a kind of precision engineering rather than mass production. One state-level leader described this shift as a new capacity for “strategic partnership” and “intentional alignment.”

“We learned how we could strengthen, through a strategic process, our partnerships with employers, and do that almost the same way across the state. In this partnership we identified what it is we need to strengthen workforce development pathways—marketing plans, better data, repositories for data, and good communication amongst us as a system.”

 

Montana’s Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education added a new state-level workforce director to coordinate these efforts — expanding capacity particularly around employer engagement at the state level. As another leader noted, this addition reflected a maturation of the state’s workforce strategy:

“For the first time we have at the system level a person who is tasked with bringing all our workforce pieces, including micro-pathways, under one umbrella. It’s really an exciting time, and I think the micro-pathway initiative is what brought us here, especially as we point to the taxonomy that was developed as a result of this.”

 

This shift has also required redefining success for rural economies. Precision has replaced scale as the key performance indicator.

“What we’re seeing a need for in Montana, as we consider almost any profession, is precision in the outputs. Schools up on the High Line might only produce two or three teachers in a year, while our larger communities may need 20 or 40. We’ll be very pleased with outputs of two here, one there, three here, all coming from the same program.”

 

Through this lens, innovation in Montana is about designing for fit rather than size —programs that are responsive to local hiring cycles, reflective of regional industries, and sustainable at small cohort levels.

Montana has the first tribal college in the country to offer micro-pathways.

One of the most significant milestones in the Y2C initiative came when Salish Kootenai College became the first tribal college in the country to design and launch micro-pathways. The college’s participation marked a meaningful step toward aligning workforce development with the priorities and sovereignty of tribal nations. As one system leader shared this accomplishment:

“We wanted to partner with the first tribal college to sign on to the [the Lab] initiative to develop micro-pathways. They’re the first tribal college in the country.”

 

This partnership laid the groundwork for culturally grounded workforce pathways that connect local learners to both regional employers and community needs in sectors like healthcare, behavioral health, and education. Building on this momentum, three additional tribal colleges have joined the upcoming cohort of Lab-supported colleges, signaling a broader movement among tribal higher education leaders to use short-term, stackable credentials as a tool for accessible talent pipelines.

Montana is aligning the high school experience to skills.

An emerging innovation in Montana’s workforce system is the deliberate effort to align the high school experience to skills, bridging secondary and postsecondary education through credentialed demonstrations of employability. Building on insights surfaced through the Lab’s facilitation, the state is developing an employability certificate that validates the durable skills, career readiness, and applied experiences students gain before graduation. One system leader described the approach:

“We have lots of employers that say, yeah, we can give them the technical skills, but they need to come in with these soft skills. Something we’re working on, which stems from conversations we had with [the Lab], is an employability certificate. We’re working with our high school partners on this, though it could also be used for adult learners. It’s just easier to engage with high schools than to find adults. High schools are supposed to produce students who are employable and ready for work or college, but employers say graduates aren’t meeting expectations. So we’re trying to validate those skills through an employability certificate.”

 

The certificate sets a new standard for readiness across Montana’s education system. It affirms that a graduate has mastered twelve durable skills, completed an internship, and taken a career readiness course that covers resumes, interviews, and professional communication. The process begins early, with career exploration and aptitude assessments in high school, followed by structured collaboration between colleges, K-12 partners, and local employers throughout the student journey.

“Throughout high school, they work on these activities with the college and high school. When they graduate, they have an employability certificate to show employers. We’ve told employers: you said you could train technical skills — here are students who’ve done the work on top of that. We’re also working with employers to guarantee interviews for students who earn the certificate — almost like an add-on to a diploma.”

 

This innovation reframes readiness not as a passive outcome of schooling but as a co-designed process between education and industry. It formalizes the partnership between K-12, community colleges, and employers, translating durable skills into verifiable evidence of employability.

Montana selected key talent opportunities for micro-credentials based on data.

Key to the Lab’s process of building innovation capacity is utilizing data at key stages of design. System and college leaders noted the value of bringing data into decision-making processes. One system leader noted the value of narrowing on key fields based on data early in the design process:

“[The Lab] folks pulled together data around [economic opportunity]. And then that drove our three areas, education, healthcare, and then the three, TS, technology, trades and tourism. So we would design our pathways under those umbrellas.”

 

Montana has embraced a statewide framework that empowers local employer innovation.

Key to the system leaders vision of Montana’s system is how the state provides a framework rooted in local empowerment. The state system provides a consistent process, but implementation remains locally driven. Instead of enforcing uniform programs across campuses, OCHE has built what one leader called a “flex model,” supporting statewide coherence while protecting local innovation.

“The commissioner’s office has always approached these initiatives as: we want to support a systemwide effort and ensure that resources available at the system level are provided to each local community, each campus, and those stakeholders decide how they deploy them. It’s a statewide system effort, but adapted locally — and that’s been the key.”

 

This flexibility has proven essential in a state where “welders up in Lewistown” may have entirely different employers, tools, and certifications from “folks in Butte.” Local teams run the same design process but tailor outcomes to local conditions. As one leader summarized:

“It doesn’t lend itself to a full-scale model. We’re undergoing the process the same way, but we’re truly tailoring our programs to meet the needs of local employers.”

 

The state’s coordination role has been equally important. Through Y2C, Montana has begun to streamline employer engagement so that outreach, communication, and design sessions follow a common pattern across institutions. This shared process makes it easier for employers to participate and strengthens the system’s credibility with industry.

“We can streamline our engagement with employers across the state, we can systematize it. We’re putting CNAs in hospitals, welders on shop floors, HVAC technicians on job sites. That’s really exciting.”

 

The state’s innovation is not in mandating sameness, but in standardizing the method of collaboration, allowing each college to meet its local workforce where it is, while advancing a unified statewide vision. Through the Year-to-Career Initiative, Montana is not only producing new credentials, it is adapting what it means for a rural system to innovate at scale.

Policies and Practice Changes

Even the best design stalls without enabling rules and routines, which is why policy and practice shifts are core to durable change in community colleges and state systems. In our approach, HCD surfaces the specific frictions learners and employers encounter —credit/noncredit gaps, timing misaligned to hiring cycles, unclear credential names — and translates them into targeted fixes. In the case of Montana, the state system is expanding their practices through two major tools: a shared taxonomy and reimagined state data system.

Montana developed a shared state-wide taxonomy.

One of the most significant system-level outcomes of Montana’s Year-to-Career (Y2C) initiative has been the decision to create a taxonomy, or a shared vocabulary for describing micro-pathways, credentials, and skills. The idea took shape during the state’s early convenings, when colleges, employers, and faculty realized that they were often speaking different languages. Learners reported uncertainty about what credentials meant and how they could be stacked; employers admitted they did not always understand digital badges or micro-credentials; and campuses used inconsistent naming conventions for noncredit training. As one system leader explained, the work began with a simple but foundational realization:

“We realized we didn’t have a common system across Montana in terms of language, right? What does this mean? What is a micro-credential? What is a pathway? That’s hopefully informing campuses and going from there. It was really fun and really necessary.”

 

From these conversations, the taxonomy project emerged — jointly developed by the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education (OCHE) and the Lab. The taxonomy functions as both a guide and a governance framework: it defines the terms used across campuses, aligns them with state and national standards, and establishes a transparent way to communicate the meaning and value of credentials to learners, employers, and funders. As one OCHE representative put it:

“This taxonomy is going to be a great support, especially as we point to workforce training initiatives. We now have some framework in our policy guidelines for things like dual enrollment and credit for prior learning being brought in. The taxonomy acts as a guide, a framework, a living document that will get us there. We didn’t have that before, we had campus policies and some existing frameworks, but we’re hoping to strengthen this, to give it more teeth.”

 

The taxonomy is a foundational step toward systemwide alignment and visibility. By naming and defining programs consistently, Montana is building clarity across a dispersed system — helping industry partners, students, and instructors “use the same language to frame what we’re doing so the industry understands, so that students understand, so that instructors understand.” Until now, Montana had no comprehensive catalog of noncredit training, making it difficult to track what was offered or measure quality. The taxonomy changes that by establishing a common structure to inventory programs, define what constitutes a “quality” credential, and assess how offerings align with regional workforce needs.

This structure helps the state move beyond reactive responses to employer requests and toward a systematic, evidence-based approach to program development. As one college leader noted, the taxonomy allows campuses to vet new proposals through shared criteria:

“When industry comes in and says, ‘We need this,’ it’s not just jumping at every single request. It’s really having a process to vet the program and the need. Does it lead to a livable wage? Does it offer upward mobility? Can it stack into other credentials? The taxonomy helps us evaluate and then create and implement programs in a more systematic way.”

 

Key Insights of Value

  • Shared language is foundational. By using common definitions across K-20 education, employers, and funders, the taxonomy builds clarity and trust. Everyone  industry, students, instructors — can speak the same language about skills, credentials, and outcomes.
  • Taxonomy enables statewide visibility. It provides a framework for cataloging and comparing noncredit training, helping the state understand what exists, what works, and where gaps remain.
  • It strengthens design and accountability. The taxonomy helps colleges and the state evaluate whether programs lead to livable wages, provide upward mobility, and can stack into higher credentials.
Montana is reimagining their data infrastructure.

If taxonomy addresses language, data addresses evidence. One of the most urgent lessons to emerge from the initiative is that Montana’s data systems for noncredit learners are fragmented, incomplete, and deeply manual. Most campuses still rely on spreadsheets, email exchanges, and personal memory to track learners after completion. For small, rural colleges, that often means outcomes are known only because staff live in the same community as graduates. There is no consistent mechanism for tracking noncredit enrollments, completions, or employment outcomes, nor for linking those records to credit-bearing programs.

As one campus leader explained, this fragmentation obscures the full story of community impact:

“Through our university, credit students are fully captured in the student information system, but we don’t have a comparable system for noncredit programs. There’s no bridge between the two. If a student completes a noncredit upskilling program and later returns for a degree, I can’t track that progression or show how many medical assisting students went on to become registered nurses. Without those connections, it’s nearly impossible to tell the full story of how critical noncredit workforce training programs are, unless I build those links manually.”

 

The lack of integration has consequences far beyond administrative inconvenience. Without reliable data, colleges cannot demonstrate the economic value of micro-pathways to policymakers and funders. Employers lack visibility into outcomes, limiting their confidence in new programs. Learners, in turn, cannot see how short-term credentials connect to long-term educational and career goals. Data is the connective tissue that allows micro-pathways to be seen and trusted as a legitimate part of Montana’s higher education ecosystem.

To address these gaps, the Lab and the Montana University System (MUS) launched a comprehensive statewide data needs assessment, co-designed with college partners. The process was based on a survey to map what data colleges collect, where it resides, and how it flows. The Lab’s Data Survey captured the range of tools used across the state, revealing widespread inconsistency in student information systems (SIS) and minimal capacity to track noncredit learners. One campus leader shared:

“Any data would be helpful — I don’t even have my own data system, so I couldn’t tell you how many students attend my campus. All of our data is tied to another college. When people ask how many students I have, that’s not even the right measure of our contribution. We do so much more than what shows up in enrollment counts.”

 

Through this process, the Lab introduced its Data Collaborative (Data Collab) framework, which established a system-level data team— composed of a Data Lead, Data Steward, and a dedicated Lab Data Coach—to map current data flows, test spreadsheet templates, and complete readiness rubrics. As one system leader described, the outcome of this work is a new vision for statewide coherence:

“For all of our data work generally, I think the Lab has helped us set the stage. My vision is that we leave this next biennium in a place where we can say we have a statewide data picture—at least of what’s happening around our micro-pathway enrollment and completion.”

The Case for a Unified Statewide System

A statewide, integrated SIS for noncredit programs has been described by leaders as the “biggest missing piece” in Montana’s workforce data infrastructure. Such a system would automate reporting, support targeted marketing, and allow the state to demonstrate impact with precision. It would also position Montana to meet the emerging Workforce Pell reporting requirements and compete for new funding streams tied to measurable workforce outcomes.

“Our current structure isn’t really a system. We have Montana State University and University of Montana as flagships, and everything else falls under them unless you’re a community or tribal college. So MSU does it one way, UM does it another. The state just needs to decide and tell us: this is what we’re doing. It’s okay to make decisions and make us do stuff.”

 

This call for decisive state leadership — to select a shared platform and enforce standards — was echoed in interviews across campuses. Colleges are “hungry for that leadership,” recognizing that a consistent framework would save time, improve accuracy, and make data more actionable.

In parallel, leaders envision a statewide public dashboard displaying available programs, costs, contacts, and outcomes. One interviewee described the potential impact:

“A dashboard like that would be phenomenal for everybody—colleges, employers, job service agencies. We could make better referrals, track results, and tell a much more complete story of what’s working.”

 

Montana’s redesign of its data systems is not only a technical challenge — it is a transformation in how evidence is valued and shared. Reliable data allows colleges to demonstrate the return on investment of workforce programs, helps employers identify effective partnerships, and gives learners confidence that their credentials have value beyond the classroom. By addressing the evidence gap with shared infrastructure, Montana is positioning itself to move from non-credit data being siloed to a comprehensive system that allows for decision-making around programs that stack.

Deeper Relationships

The foundational change that emerges from the Lab’s HCD process, of which all other changes are dependent, is the deepening of relationships, particularly between the colleges and state systems with learners and employers. In rural contexts where scale is relational, progress depends on trust and clear roles among colleges, employers, learners, and the state. The Lab’s HCD process institutionalizes those relationships by replacing ad-hoc input with structured co-design: Routine learner interviews and focus groups, employer T-Profiles that map skills to jobs, and cohort debriefs that drive continuous improvement. Over time, these practices move partners to shared ownership of outcomes, strengthening both program quality and system coherence.

Montana community colleges and system-level systematized bringing in the voices of learners.

Some participating Montana colleges established consistent, replicable ways to center learner voice in program design. During the design process, learners were not simply surveyed; they were interviewed, convened in focus groups, and invited to prototype sessions. Faculty partnered with administrators to recruit participants, often segmenting groups by age, employment status, or degree progress to capture nuance between traditional and returning adult learners.

One college leader described how learner input reshaped her entire view of program structure:

“What’s really nice about human-centered design is talking to students. There’s a lot of interest in accelerated programs — sprint degrees that get you out the door faster — but that requires quitting your job and going to school every semester. Many students on my campus want to be registered nurses but can’t quit their jobs. So instead of a sprint degree, we said, why not take a longer pathway? Start with medical assisting, work full time while training as an LPN, then bridge to your RN. Instead of a two-year degree that often takes three with prerequisites, we spread it over five or six years. It’s not accelerated, but it lets them work full time and meets a different student population.”

 

Rather than equating innovation with speed, Montana colleges began designing for responsiveness — programs that align with real lives and allow learners to earn and learn simultaneously.

Another administrator emphasized how listening changed her approach to learner feedback going forward:

“Now, every time I approach a program, I’m thinking: What is the capacity to have a full-time and a part-time option? We heard loud and clear — students can’t commute, can’t quit jobs. Coming from K-12, that’s been a big shift for me. Now I look for more opportunities to talk to them. We don’t know what’s best for them — they need to tell us what’s best for them.”

 

At the system level, OCHE and the Lab encouraged colleges to adopt standing learner-voice mechanisms, from QR-code surveys posted around town to focus groups targeting adults who had never enrolled. This consistent practice has moved Montana toward a data-informed empathy — where learner feedback is systematically collected to inform regular decision-making.

Montana colleges deepened employer partnerships by shifting them from advisory roles to active co-designers.

Like most community colleges, those in the Montana CCGE cohort came in with existing local relationships with employers. One college leader, for example, highlighted how employers are included as educators in the classroom, saying: “Our most successful programs have somebody from those industries teaching — not just telling us what skills. They come in, help with curriculum development, and actually teach it.” However, these relationships deepened at many colleges and at the state level through the Lab’s well-honed design process.

The Lab’s T-Profile process became a cornerstone of employer engagement. The Lab team facilitated structured sessions where employers mapped the technical and durable skills required for key roles, then compared those needs to job descriptions and curricula. This revealed striking inconsistencies: employers frequently overstated requirements in postings, inadvertently deterring qualified applicants. One college leader explained:

“There was a disconnect between what employers said they needed and what their job postings required. For example, they listed ‘preferred experience with electronic medical record systems,’ but everyone had to be trained on their specific system. We know women especially won’t apply if they don’t have that experience, so we suggested making it a duty— ‘you’ll receive full training’—rather than a preferred qualification. That conversation helped align the job description with what was actually needed.”

 

Another college leader shared the value of the Lab’s employer engagement process:

“We have a local hospital with a large shortage of medical assistants. We had previously provided training, but it wasn’t producing students fast enough to fill their spots, and they lacked some technical skills the hospital wanted. We worked with [the hospital system] to identify improvements and attempted to shorten the training so students could be hired faster. A lot of good came out of it— it’s shorter, more streamlined, and revised based on feedback from the T-Profile session.”

 

At the state level, OCHE reinforced these college-employer partnerships with a flexible governance model. Rather than mandating uniform programs, the state established a coordinated but decentralized structure — a shared process with local adaptation. One system leader shared her vision of the state system’s support of campus/ employer partnerships:

“We want to drive systemic change, but you decide how it needs to be implemented and deployed locally. Each campus has the relationships, the context, the employers. We provide the tools and the framework.”

 

This “flex model” of shared responsibility has become one of Montana’s signature innovations: the state ensures coherence, while local colleges retain the agility to meet community-specific workforce needs.

Innovative Employer Partnerships

The following partnerships exemplify how Montana colleges and employers have redefined collaboration through the Y2C initiative:

Allied Steel + Montana State University–Northern (Welding Bootcamp)

  • Allied Steel co-designed a short, intensive welding bootcamp with MSU–Northern, providing both funding and equipment, including a rented semi-truck outfitted for mobile welding training.
  • The company reserved slots for its incumbent workers and opened remaining spaces to the public, creating a model that simultaneously upskills existing employees and trains future welders while meeting a regional labor shortage

Bitterroot Health + Bitterroot College (Medical Assistant Pathway)

  • Bitterroot Health partnered with Bitterroot College to co-design the state’s first employer-led micro-pathway after discovering a mismatch between the college’s two-year CMA program and the employer’s urgent hiring needs.
  • The employer participated directly in the Lab’s T-Profile design process, aligned job descriptions with curriculum, and now subsidizes tuition for learners who commit to work at Bitterroot Health after completion — showing a sustainable model for employer investment in community-based pipelines.

City of Butte + Highlands College (CDL Pathway for High School Students)

  • Through a partnership between the municipality of Butte and Highlands College, high school students can now earn a CDL credential before graduation and immediately begin driving city trucks locally (not interstate).
  • This model demonstrates how micro-pathways can be adapted to local government workforce needs and how partnerships can integrate K–12, higher education, and municipal employers in rural communities.

Mindset Shifts

Lasting change requires people to see their work differently: Who the learner is, what employers truly need, and what community colleges are for. Through facilitated HCD experiences, a key change in Montana is the expanded view of community colleges as workforce anchors.

Montana has embraced community colleges as workforce anchors.

At the system level, the Montana University System (MUS) is undergoing a significant shift in how it understands the purpose and potential of its community colleges. One senior official captured this evolution by saying the partnership with the Lab is “turning traditional higher education on its nose.”

Montana’s rural character demands a different kind of higher education system — one that can adapt to small enrollments, vast distances, and highly localized employer needs. Leaders emphasized that Montana’s community colleges are increasingly viewed as workforce engines that keep local economies running by training nurses, welders, and educators who stay in their regions. Several interviewees noted that in many towns, if the college doesn’t offer the training, employers struggle to hire locally. This perspective reflects a shift toward seeing community colleges as part of the state’s workforce infrastructure rather than solely as academic institutions.

System leaders also highlighted how this reframing has begun to unify disparate efforts under a clearer workforce mission. The appointment of a new statewide workforce lead — tasked with integrating micro-pathways, data, and marketing across the system — was seen as a direct outgrowth of Y2C. One system leader noted, “For the first time, we have someone at the system level whose job is to bring all our workforce pieces under one umbrella and figure out how to meet both campus and system needs.” This structural change signals a new understanding that workforce alignment is not a side project, but central to how MUS defines success.

The emphasis on workforce alignment is also changing how colleges collaborate. Rather than competing for students or duplicating programs, campuses are beginning to discuss how to share pathways and coordinate employer partnerships. As one leader explained, “We’re all competing for the same students in Montana — we’re too small. I can’t stand up a program for four students. But maybe across the state, if there are four students in every community, that’s a program.” Colleges are increasingly viewing themselves as part of a shared workforce system rather than as isolated institutions, recognizing that collaboration— not competition —is the only sustainable way to meet employer demand in a small, rural state.

Recommendations to the State System

Colleges across Montana voiced a clear and consistent message: Statewide alignment is essential, but it must balance direction with flexibility. Through the process, institutions built capacity to design pathways and strengthen partnerships, but they also identified structural barriers that require system-level action. The following recommendations reflect priorities shared by campus leaders and state partners in interviews:

1. Provide Clear Statewide Vision

Campus leaders repeatedly emphasized that progress stalls when expectations are ambiguous. Colleges want the state to articulate a coherent vision, set requirements, and follow through.

“The state just needs to decide and tell us all this is what we’re doing… It’s okay to make decisions and make us do stuff.”

 

This call reflects a desire for clarity rather than control. College staff described spending unnecessary time interpreting guidance from different offices or guessing which data and processes to follow. They are ready for consistent expectations that allow them to focus on implementation rather than interpretation.

2. Establish a Unified Noncredit Data System

Every campus identified data capacity as the largest system-level gap. Colleges cannot currently track noncredit students, completions, or employment outcomes through their existing student information systems.

“Through our university, credit students are fully captured in the student information system, but we don’t have a comparable system for non-credit programs.”

“I don’t have my own data system, so I couldn’t even tell you how many students attend my campus.”

 

Leaders agreed that a statewide SIS or shared data warehouse is needed to automate reporting, reduce manual tracking, and tell a more accurate story about workforce impact. Several emphasized that OCHE should own the system and establish governance rules for how colleges, agencies, and employers share data.

3. Support Shared Marketing and Public Visibility

Small campuses, especially those in rural communities, struggle to communicate the value of micro-pathways. Leaders expressed that they cannot afford professional marketing or coordinated outreach.

“We need help showing people what these programs are and how they connect to jobs. That’s not something each small campus can afford to do alone.”

 

Participants suggested a statewide campaign that builds awareness of short-term credentials, clarifies how they stack, and reinforces the credibility of community college workforce programs.

4. Incentivize Collaboration over Competition

Current funding models often pit campuses against one another for a limited number of students. Leaders emphasized that Montana’s small population makes collaboration — not competition — the only sustainable path.

“We’re all competing for the same students in Montana — we’re too small. I can’t stand up a program for four students. But maybe across the state, if there are four students in every community, that’s a program.”

 

They recommended funding formulas or performance metrics that reward shared programming, joint employer partnerships, and pooled cohorts.

5. Formalize Program-Sharing and Curriculum Repositories

Building on the desire for collaboration, colleges asked OCHE to create a central repository or formal process for program sharing. Many institutions have already developed high-quality curricula for micro-pathways that could be replicated elsewhere with minimal effort.

“I did Medical Assisting, Flathead did HVAC, and Great Falls did Dental Assisting … I’d love to stand up Dental Assisting here if Great Falls did all the work. And I’d be willing to share all my materials with another community.”

 

A repository or cross-college sharing policy could reduce duplication, save resources, and allow campuses to specialize based on local workforce strengths.

6. Update Performance Funding to Reflect Workforce Learners

Several interviewees noted that Montana’s performance-based funding model still counts only traditional credit enrollments and degrees, leaving noncredit workforce training invisible.

“This work is not captured in our performance funding at all … we’re funded off headcount, and we can’t make big changes if those learners don’t count.”

 

They urged the state to incorporate noncredit metrics — such as industry-recognized credentials and job placement — into key performance indicators, ensuring that colleges are financially recognized for serving working learners and employers.

7. Continue Statewide Convenings and Professional Learning

Colleges found the Lab’s design process — interviewing learners, conducting T-profiles, and iterating program design — to be transformative. They recommended that OCHE continue hosting similar design-based learning opportunities even after the grant ends.

“That illumination of the process … the lights came on for everybody that day.”

 

Participants valued having a structured space to learn from peers, see what other campuses were building, and deepen understanding of data and employer engagement.

Conclusion: What We’re Learning

Montana’s Year-to-Career (Y2C) work shows what’s possible when colleges are given a clear process and flexible structure to respond to workforce needs in their own communities. Through interviews, campus and system leaders consistently described the experience as practical, grounded, and capacity-building rather than abstract or transformational. Colleges learned how to engage employers more systematically, use data to inform program selection, and bring learner perspectives into redesign efforts. These skills are now shaping how institutions think about aligning education and work — not as a one-time initiative, but as a way of doing business.

The work has not been without challenges. Montana’s small enrollments, limited staffing, and inconsistent data systems make coordination difficult, and there are ongoing questions about how to sustain new practices once grant support ends. Apprenticeships remain hard to fund for nonprofits, and some colleges still rely on manual data collection or local spreadsheets. Yet across these constraints, several bright spots stand out: Bitterroot College restructured its nursing pathway based on student interviews; Great Falls College built co-teaching models with employers; and the state’s taxonomy and data efforts are helping institutions communicate and measure progress in a more consistent way.

We’ve identified three strategic priorities that emerged directly from the challenges and opportunities presented in the first two-years of the initiative:

  1. Micro-pathway and Dual Enrollment Design
    Phase II will support the co-design of up to eight new micro- and dual enrollment pathways in high-need sectors like healthcare, education, and skilled trades.
  2. Statewide Marketing Campaign
    While high-quality, short-term credentials are available, awareness and access remains a challenge. The campaign will promote programs, highlight career opportunities and available financial aid, and increase equitable participation.
  3. Tribal College Program Assessment
    This six-month design sprint with Blackfeet Community College, Chief Dull Knife College, and Little Big Horn College will provide an opportunity to identify the skills and credentials that best support economic mobility and tailor offerings to the unique cultural contexts of tribal communities.

Looking ahead, the collaboration will focus on building consistency and sustaining momentum. OCHE and the Lab are working toward shared data infrastructure, expanded employer partnerships (including with tribal and rural communities), and continued alignment with K-12 through initiatives like the employability certificate. As one system leader put it, “We’ve built the foundation — now it’s about follow-through.” The next phase of Y2C will test how these new tools — taxonomy, data, and local partnership models — can support a statewide vision that keeps pace with employers’ needs while remaining grounded in the realities of Montana’s colleges and learners.

 

Acknowledgements

About the Contributors

This publication was authored by Tait Kellogg, PhD, a Strategic Impact Director at Education Design Lab. Tait is dedicated to helping everyone see themselves as a “data person” by supporting Lab project teams and community college partners to identify their intended social impact, develop clear measurement strategies, and share insights learned along the way.

How We Used AI

AI was used for editing purposes for select passages (ChatGPT). Key themes were organized based on past Lab frameworks, not using AI. All use of AI has been reviewed to align with Education Design Lab’s approach to human-centered design and responsible innovation, and its standards for accuracy, equity, and ethical use.

About Education Design Lab

Education Design Lab (the Lab) is a national nonprofit and intermediary with a mission to co-design an inclusive, skills-based learn+work system that facilitates upward economic mobility and closes opportunity gaps for the New Majority Learner-Earner. Our facilitated design process helps employer and education stakeholder groups co-design and launch scalable, skills-based education-to-work pathways that align  talent supply and demand.

Impact by Design

The Impact by Design publication series is part of an ongoing effort to share Education Design Lab’s impact across the learn+work ecosystem.

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