Events

Stay up-to-date with Alabama Possible events! Each event is open to the public but might also have an intended audience listed in the description. On-demand recordings can be found at youtube.com/alabamapossible.

Upcoming

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In partnership with the Alabama State Department of Education, Alabama Possible will celebrate the successes of the 2024-25 school year. In addition to recognizing the Cash for College award winners, we’ll also feature some highlights from the Alabama College Application Campaign! Educators will have the opportunity to hear tips and strategies from their peers and receive professional development credit.

It’s Time to Celebrate Your Students’ Next Steps: College and Career Decision Day
College and Career Decision Day celebrates seniors committing to pursue education and training beyond high school, whether they’re enrolling  in college, enlisting in the military, or  joining the workforce. This workshop will discuss creative ways educators can celebrate the next steps of the Class of 2025.

Career readiness is about more than just education—it’s about aligning skills, passions, and opportunities to create meaningful economic pathways, especially for Gen Z, a generation that prioritizes purpose in their careers. This session will challenge outdated ideas about post-secondary success and explore the diverse routes young people take toward fulfilling careers. Instead of focusing solely on traditional four-year degrees, we’ll discuss how work experience, technical training, military service, and service-based programs like AmeriCorps can provide valuable stepping stones. Participants will engage in small-group discussions and reflections, sharing their own experiences with career exploration and the opportunities available in their communities. Through interactive conversations, they’ll examine what career readiness means for Gen Z in their own context, identify barriers that young people face in accessing meaningful careers, and explore ways to bridge those gaps. By the end of the session, participants will leave with actionable ideas for how they can support career exploration and workforce development in their own networks, whether through leveraging technology, strengthening partnerships, or rethinking how young people are introduced to career possibilities. This session aligns with the conference's theme of "Uniting Pathways: Aligning Education and Workforce in Alabama," by expanding industry leaders' understanding of what successful pathways can look like and highlights the power of strong partnerships between education, industry, and community organizations to effectively prepare young people for the workforce.

Presented by Amelia Hastings from Birmingham Corps.

There are several challenges that adult graduate learners face, including competition, resource limitations, organizational uncertainty, and lack of institutional expertise (Wallenstein, 2022). Also, graduate adult learners are often working professionals, have families, and may be returning to school after a long hiatus. Due to these challenges, it is critical that degree programs become intentional about student success through relationship building. The question arises: How can institutions create student success while building a sustainable, authentic working relationship with a graduate/professional adult learner? What are some ways that institutions can maintain these authentic working relationships until graduation?

Our workshop will introduce a case study of Northeast Community College in Nebraska, and their attempts to use partnership, qualitative data collection, and system-building practices to increase participation in dual credit/enrollment. We will begin by presenting the challenge, the conditions, and then walk through the multi-month change process used to create an action plan that redesigns internal dual credit/enrollment systems. We will then provide the steps, tools, frameworks, and processes used through the change process. Finally, attendees will have the chance to apply these learnings to their own context.

This workshop blends several of the conference topics together, including dual enrollment/early college, access strategies, culture building, and using coalition and system-building practices to increase enrollment. What's more is that these frameworks and processes can be used in other areas beyond early college, though the case study is one that is easily adaptable to any early college program given it is a context dependant.

Finally, we will also equip people with insights on the required conditions for this kind of change process to occur, and give attendees a chance to examine how they could build a culture and cultivate conditions for change.

Presented by Dakota Pawlicki from Civic Lab

Across the nation, community leaders are hoping to draw big business and industry to their states and cities. This session will take a look at Alabama’s status of childcare, how to source data specifically for individual communities, and a program review of Shelton State's latest initiative to engage community members and business and industry partners to increase childcare supply. Additional information will be provided on Alabama's new tax credit for childcare and how to utilize all available resources to the benefit of a stable workforce.

Presented by Holly Glasgow from Shelton State Community College

Collaboration across sectors is essential to aligning workforce initiatives with industry needs, driving Alabama’s economic growth and ensuring long-term competitiveness. However, communication barriers, misaligned priorities and siloed efforts often prevent these sectors from working together effectively over the long term. This session will explore strategies for cultivating meaningful engagement, improving communication and using data-driven decision-making to create alignment between key stakeholders. By emphasizing the principle that people support what they help to create, this session will provide insight into how organizations can develop inclusive engagement strategies, communicate results effectively and turn awareness into action.

The session will examine the common communication challenges that hinder collaboration, such as unclear messaging, stakeholder disengagement and biases in decision-making. These barriers often lead to ineffective workforce initiatives, underutilized resources and missed opportunities for regional economic success. The discussion will emphasize the need for consistent messaging, transparency and trust-building to facilitate long-term collaboration. By understanding how to align goals and create shared priorities, attendees will gain insight into strengthening partnerships across sectors.

Through real-world examples and case studies, the session will highlight strategies such as crafting compelling messaging, leveraging data to drive initiatives and maintaining continuous engagement. Success stories will showcase how cross-sector collaboration has influenced policy, secured funding and addressed workforce needs, providing participants with actionable insights they can apply within their own organizations.

A major component of the session will focus on campaign-driven strategies for awareness, engagement and action. Many initiatives fall short of creating meaningful impact because they focus solely on raising awareness instead of driving measurable change. This session will explore how to move beyond outreach efforts and create engagement campaigns that lead to actionable results. Attendees will gain insight into using digital platforms, storytelling techniques and targeted outreach to build momentum for workforce and economic initiatives.

Another critical discussion will center on preconceived biases in decision-making and how they affect collaboration. Biases can influence hiring, training program development, funding allocation and policy decisions, often resulting in inequitable outcomes and missed opportunities. The session will provide strategies for recognizing and mitigating these biases to ensure workforce and economic development efforts are more inclusive and data driven. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how awareness starts with education but must end with meaningful engagement that leads to measurable outcomes.

To reinforce these insights, the session will feature thought-provoking examples and strategic frameworks that attendees can apply to their own work. By analyzing best practices, participants will be encouraged to reflect on their communication approaches and identify areas for improvement. A summary of guiding principles and actionable takeaways will reinforce key insights.

By emphasizing practical strategies and real-world applications, this session will equip attendees with the tools and knowledge to enhance cross-sector communication, develop impactful engagement campaigns and mitigate biases in workforce and economic development. They will leave with a clear roadmap to strengthen collaboration and drive meaningful action, ensuring long-term success for their organizations and communities.

Presented by Danny Markstein of Markstein Co.

The prevalence of intimate partner violence is shocking and the psychological impact of relationship violence is significant, leading to many negative coping behaviors such as abuse of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, Increased risk for depression, anxiety, and PTSD and Increased risk of poor work/school performance and even an Increased risk for dropping out of school for sexual assault victims. The first six weeks of college are considered the “RED ZONE”, when freshman students are most at risk for sexual assault with Less than 10% ever reported to authorities. Could the freshman drop out rate be related to this? It is rarely reported in exit interviews.

37.5% of ALABAMA women and 29.5% of men have experienced Intimate Partner Violence; and is disproportionate for black women, with 45% who have been physically or sexually abused by their intimate partners.

Presented by Susann Montgomery-Clark and Meredith Montgomery-Price of the Megan Montgomery Foundation

Get Schooled is dedicated to helping students bridge the gap between education and workforce readiness by providing free, research-backed resources. This session will explore how students who work during school can use their experiences as a launchpad for future career success. Participants will engage in an interactive discussion, starting with a reflection on their own first jobs, before diving into practical tools such as Get Schooled’s Resume Builder, Interview Coach, Durable Skills framework, and The Way exploration tool. The session will highlight how these resources help students translate their work experience into career-building opportunities. Attendees will participate in small-group discussions to analyze challenges students face in balancing work and education, apply Get Schooled’s resources to real-world student scenarios, and explore strategies for integrating these tools into their own counseling and workforce development efforts. The session will close with a live Q&A, resource sharing, and actionable next steps for attendees to implement in their own work. By equipping educators, counselors, and workforce professionals with accessible and effective career readiness tools, this session aligns directly with the conference’s theme, Uniting Pathways: Aligning Education and Workforce in Alabama, and will empower participants to support students in connecting their education to long-term career success.

Presented by John Branam, Get Schooled

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