On Thursday, December 4th, 2014 CEWD presented at the 13th Annual CUNY IT Conference at John Jay College. The presentation was moderated by Dr. Edgar Troudt, CEWD Director of Technology, with speakers including Christopher Pileggi, Min-Kyung Park, Gillian Gooding, Christine Zagari-LoPorto and Jessie Cinelli (read our full bios here).  Workforce Development Supported by Strategic IT Investments detailed our multi-faceted use of technology that supports CEWD’s many programs and initiatives.  

Chris Pileggi kicked off us off by introducing our Dynamic Outcome Tracking System, also referred to as DOTS. Initially created for use in our US DOL TAACCCT-funded program, CUNY CareerPATH (CCP), DOTS was so successful it is now being used for KCC’s Round 3 TAACCCT program, the Northeast Resiliency Consortium. DOTS has a big and powerful shell that has allowed developers (us at KCC!) a high degree of flexibility while still offering enhanced protection needed to manage all of our participant. What is even more impressive: DOTS has been recognized as a best practice by the U.S Department of Labor.

Min-Kyung and Gillian then discussed the various ways they evaluate, quantify and utilize our secure data for reporting purposes. They also discussed the many taxing quality assurance steps required to manage participant information coming into DOTS from the many colleges that make up our consortiums (8 for both CCP and NRC).

Stepping away from internal program management, Christine Zagari-LoPorto presented about the technology used for CEWD’s marketing, outreach and communication efforts. CEWD is fortunate to be able to cast a wide net to target our broad audience–from young adults without their HS diplomas, to adults who are unemployed and looking for either college enrollment or immediate careers, to students interested in urban farming (recreational, professional, and educational)–using print, social, online and direct/indirect mediums. Over the years, CEWD has developed various marketing strategies to target our range of audiences, including many technologically-focused sources including online Ebay classifieds, Craigslist.com and Backpage.com, just to name a few. We use direct communication using constant contact and texting services, as well as the most popular social media marketing sites that help broaden our approach.  With this range of technology we are able to brand our message to the community and saturate many audiences that would benefit from our services.

Lastly, Jessie Cinelli spoke about CEWD’s blog that she not only created but also manages. If you’re familiar with what we do, it’s easy to see that we’ve got a lot on our belts. And, assuming you’ve gotten this far in the post, you know our outreach and communication efforts are huge. The blog serves to combine all of CEWD into one, well-oiled machine. It is our central communication tool that keeps visitors updated, tells program and participant success stories, provides more detailed communication and is just really nice to look at. Put all together, the blog not only reaches our initially targeted audiences, but also targets people who we don’t know and people who don’t know they’re looking for us. (Job fairs are a great example of this. We don’t host job fairs, but by posting information about local fairs, we can steer visitors who are probably unemployed towards our training programs.) 

You can view our full presentation here:

If you would like to learn more about what we do or contact us for more information, please email us at cewd@kbcc.cuny.edu