Intersect With Earl January 2025

by Earl Buford on Jan 14, 2025

A new look at the national landscape of CPL policies: CAEL and the American Council on Education teamed up on a national scan of state and system policies on credit for prior learning (CPL). It categorizes more than 360 state and system policies according to 11 different policy themes — including methods of assessment, requiring each institution to have a CPL policy, transcription, transfer, data collection, and more. Our analysis of these policies, along with examples for each of the themes, is available in a new policy brief, The National Landscape of Credit for Prior Learning (CPL): Effective State and System Policies for Success and Equity. To make the research even more accessible, we have accompanied the report with an interactive database you can filter by state and policy theme/source. You can find these resources at the ACE website. I also hope you’ll join us Jan. 30 at 3 p.m. ET, when CAEL and ACE will host a webinar reviewing these new resources and their implications.

Making an impact: I am delighted to share a special edition of the impact report for our most recently inventoried year. We thought the report made for a nice capstone to our 50th anniversary celebrations, so it also includes some select milestones from the half century we just closed out in 2024. You can view it at cael.org. As always, I greatly appreciate the support we receive from the many and diverse members of the CAEL community. It is they who allow us to scale our impact to reach a growing number of adult learners and workers.

The power of CPL and HBCUs: Congratulations to CAEL staffers Dr. Gloria Mwase, Dr. Monique Tuset, and Dr. Alicia Myrick, who joined panelists from Elizabeth City State University, Atlanta Metro State College, Delaware State University, and Fayetteville State University in a conversation entitled “Advancing Adult Learners to Completion: The Power of Credit for Prior Learning in HBCUs” at Lumina’s Conference Collectively Advancing the Power of HBCUs. The HBCUs are participants in CAEL’s HBCU Learner Initiative, made possible by a grant from Lumina Foundation.

Building Better Careers in the Sunshine State: South Florida is among the regions participating in our Build Better Careers program, funded by the Truist Foundation. Build Better Careers is all about establishing extended pathways that can reach workers from diverse—and too often overlooked—backgrounds to connect them with rewarding education, training, and employment opportunities. My colleague Ashley Wilhelm and I recently spoke with our friends at WorkingNation about this exciting initiative.

CAEL Member Mention: The Piedmont Triad Regional Workforce Development Board’s Reentry Empowerment and Workforce Integration has received a $125,000 NCWorks Local Innovation Fund grant. The grant will support Piedmont Triad Regional WDB as it trains NCWorks Career Center staff and other regional agencies on collaborative approaches to helping formerly incarcerated workers access education and employment opportunities. North Carolina’s Reentry2030 strategic plan hopes to increase the number of “second chance” employers.

Grant opportunity: The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Institutes for Higher Education Faculty and K-12 Educators has posted an RFP for funding professional development programs that explore and strengthen the integration of humanities in education. Funding could support residential, virtual, and combined format professional development programs that convene higher education faculty to deepen and enrich their understanding of significant humanities topics while enriching their capacity for effective scholarship and teaching. Eligible applicants include nonprofits, accredited institutions of higher education, and state and local government agencies. The maximum funding request (ceiling) is $220,000. Applications are due by February 12, 2025. Interested applicants can visit the NEH website at www.neh.gov or www.grants.gov for detailed information and application guidelines..