If you ask Dr. Denise Reading, the business of education is no different than growing a startup company.
At first, there’s the overwhelming job of getting the message out. Then there are struggles with brand recognition — demonstrating that Corporate College, the workforce training and development arm of Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), is for businesses, not students.
“Our goal was to be self-sustaining and profitable and to run like a business,” says Reading, who was recruited by Tri-C President Dr. Jerry Sue Thornton to serve as Corporate College’s leader, and given walking orders and “the freedom to make this happen.”
But this is not what companies might expect from academia.
Corporate College is a business with an educational hook. Its mission is to foster innovation, promote job creation and retention, train leaders and increase productivity and profitability. Corporate College isn’t ruled by a syllabus and theory, but by customer demand and practice-driven content. Because, like any company, Corporate College only succeeds when satisfied customers return.
“We were plowing new territory,” says Thornton, the visionary behind the concept. “This is a radical departure from the typical way that higher education responds to business and industry.”
In doing so, Reading must hire talented workers, manage rapid growth as demand for services increases and respond to customer needs. Enter the job of listening, engaging with the community, asking customers — corporations like National City Corp., nonprofits like Cleveland Clinic, midsized firms like Champion Staffing and the sole entrepreneur — where is the knowledge gap? What’s missing?
There was never any doubt that Northeast Ohio was a supple market in desperate need for the services Corporate College offers, Reading asserts. “We, as a region, must be engaged in learning every day, or we will be left behind,” she says matter-of-factly.
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Dr. Denise Reading, president of Corporate College
Photo by Jesse Kramer
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Prior to Corporate College, what Tri-C called its “incumbent worker training” was not a solid brand with a facility, trademark, dedicated staff and its very own business plan.
“We found ourselves in hotel meeting rooms, and we also used companies’ training rooms,” Thornton says, “but people were distracted.”
Tri-C campuses were populated by students. Business conference rooms were interrupted with phone calls, e-mails and other reasons to put training on the back burner.
“Our target audience is people who have already graduated from college and are already working, and they like an environment similar to their workplace,” Thornton says.
This thinking evolved into a better plan with a dedicated facility focused on worker education. Enter the Richard E. Jacobs Group, which approached Thornton with a proposal to sell its Westlake headquarters.
Corporate College’s doors opened in 2003, and with leadership from Susan Muha, who was executive vice president of workforce training at the time (eventually coining the acronym WEDD, or Workforce and Economic Development Division), it reached out to small and midsized businesses.
“We knew that some of the larger corporations would download some of their training to us, and we knew there was a need to serve a lot of small- and medium-sized businesses that didn’t have training,” says Thornton, who realized Corporate College’s success depended on its ability to thrive as a “business” under Tri-C’s academic umbrella.
At the same time, enrollment and interest grew. Corporate College would open an East campus and eventually its Unified Technologies Center (UTC) downtown.
“We were looking at Corporate College as a startup business,” says Thornton, who felt Reading was a natural fit to lead the venture and lured her away from Baldwin-Wallace College in 2004.
“I’ve always been a builder,” shares Reading, tracing her entrepreneurial roots back to college at the University of Arkansas. “I like things that are broken or that haven’t been done.” Involved in her sorority, Reading rallied against hazing. Raised in the south, she took on diversity issues. During her 16-year tenure at Baldwin-Wallace, she implemented a program to help single parents access education.
Reading’s response to issues has always been to ask questions.
“About 90 percent of the time, education has an answer in one shape or form,” she says. “That is why I left corporate America and went into education. But I have such value for both.”
Reading joined Cincinnati’s Proctor & Gamble after earning her bachelor’s degree in Arkansas. She earned a master’s degree from Bowling Green and a Ph.D. from Kent State University before her switch to academia. But when she departed the corporate world for a career in the ivory tower, the entrepreneurial spirit in her itched.
Reading launched an art gallery in Berea, which she still owns with a partner. Today, her experience gels in these three worlds. Corporate College is a startup business, an educational outlet and a corporate solution. Reading masterfully draws from her experiences in these arenas as she oversees curriculum and designs new ways to touch the organization’s target market: businesses of all sizes.
For example, immediately after joining Corporate College, Reading sought support for small business. KeyCorp answered the call with a $1 million gift to launch Corporate College’s Entrepreneurial Center downtown. Today, there is a center at the East and West locations as well.
“We had to respond to small business — that was my first priority,” Reading notes. “That’s the backbone of our economy in Northeast Ohio.”
Next, Reading knew she must listen to her target customers. “I met with CEOs and presidents and HR people from all pillars of our community and asked them what critical issues they confronted and what their initiatives were,” she says.
Not surprisingly, she learned that education was the answer to concerns like global business competition and leadership training. “An unspoken rule was that we would not duplicate,” Reading says. Corporate College would be different.
So she continued to listen.
Big companies said, “Help us be more entrepreneurial, more innovative.”
Small companies said, “Help us fine-tune technology.”
Manufacturers wanted to incorporate Lean Six Sigma practices, and everyone talked about competition and staying ahead of the curve.
Reading realized that access was a critical success factor for the programs Corporate College offers. Today, businesses can take advantage of tailored training at their workplace, and individuals can attend open-enrollment programs. “This helps our small and midsized clients who can’t afford customized training,” she points out. Facilities provide off-site programs that range from The ‘C’ Suite Executive to EMS Advanced Training.
“Whether people are in business for themselves or working at a company, they must really prepare themselves to be a part of this aggressive workforce that we live in today,” Reading asserts, “and it will never be less than that.”
But this argument doesn’t always tug at corporate purse strings.
“There is a constant struggle to help companies understand the value of investing in their workforce,” she admits. “There are days when we are overwhelmed by the opportunities to be really engaged in the community, and there are times when we can see that there are certain programs that could really be helpful to organizations — and some organizations are behind in knowing that these investments will make a difference.”
Thornton adds that rallying businesses to spend money in order to make money in a dull economy is a challenge. But positioning Corporate College as a professional, cutting-edge venue for advanced information — a forum for knowledge that will ultimately drive economic growth in Northeast Ohio — has prompted the organization’s fast growth, despite the frustration of getting some corporations to “buy in” to the idea. Since 2005, sales for Corporate College’s courses have increased 391 percent, and facility and classroom rentals have jumped 168 percent.
Some companies turn to Corporate College as a more convenient alternative to bringing in expensive outside consultants. John Joyce, chief of police and director of security for the Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA), enrolled 116 officers in several homeland security programs. “They tailored the delivery of the classes to fit our officers’ availability,” he says.
“Generally speaking, we have to bring in people from out of town,” Joyce adds. “And to do that, [consultants] have to be here for several days.”
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Extending Its Reach
Corporate College was founded to tighten the talent gap in Northeast Ohio, but more than 40 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies with a presence in this region are not actually headquartered here. Until April, these national businesses could only access Corporate College training at its Cleveland-area offices. That introduced inconsistencies in workforce training.
Now, Tri-C has partnered with 10 other community colleges in the country, who cooperate to provide workforce training in their respective markets.
“Together, we rounded up the top group of community colleges that can respond to workforce issues no matter where [a business’] headquarters is,” says Dr. Denise Reading, president of Corporate College. “We can deliver training online, in person, blended, anywhere a company’s footprint goes.
“We have this fast, wonderful biotech area and we need to have great curriculum to support it,” adds Reading, noting that this region can benefit by bringing in early adopters from the West Coast.
And by fall, Corporate College will extend its reach overseas. “Global Corporate College is our response to closing the talent gap in America for multinational and national companies,” Reading acknowledges.
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But Reading wants to introduce quality measures. She wants to show companies that if they invest X dollars, they can expect X percent of improved productivity. “Sometimes companies can measure employee retention based on growth, sometimes they can measure morale,” Reading says.
Still, hard numbers are a more convincing platform for embracing education.
This month, Corporate College will roll out its new methodology to help clients measure dollars they spend and return on investment. “We will be able to quantify the impact of everything we do,” says Reading, revealing only that “there is research” and enrolled customers will be privy to it.
“There is so much to be done,” she concludes, always asking herself the question: How can we grow inch by inch? New programs continuously refresh Corporate College’s course offerings, including one called “Techno Chaos,” which focuses on how to manage the constant buzz of electronic communication.
“My personality says, ‘Let’s do it all!’ but you really have to focus,” Reading says.
Reading’s true passion is also the source of her greatest stress. She envisions Northeast Ohio’s industrial riches, its natural resources and potential in emerging fields such as biotech. She sees the promise of alternative energy and other sectors that could root in this region and thrive here.
And she notices what’s not happening.
“Our mission is to provide access to education, but the second part that people don’t hear as often is our commitment to economic development,” Reading says.
Education, she knows, will fill the fault line that divides the past and progress. “It’s time for new paradigms,” she says. “We can’t rely only on our traditional educational systems. They are not enough. They are a foundation. They represent the bottom part of the pyramid of learning, but we talk about learning in a society and world that is global and rapidly changing — learning that must go on forever. We have to create avenues for people to get that.”
More community colleges nationwide are responding to “knowledge gaps” that deter economic development, Thornton says. Beyond the campus, colleges are serving the workforce.
“We are trying to take that to a different level,” Thornton says. “Companies in Ohio pay our taxes — they pay our way. So by creating Corporate College, we are really saying to companies: We want to be a part of your workforce solution. We want to be there for you as a partner.”
Other community colleges look toward Corporate College as a model, adds Reading, who has been on the road in Wisconsin and Florida teaching the model and explaining how it can serve companies, industries and neighborhoods. By collaborating with 10 other community colleges in the country, Corporate College will serve Cleveland businesses that have headquarters in these other markets, too.
“We will have a presence in two-thirds of the states by October,” Reading estimates. This summer she is planning several meetings abroad to expand this imprint overseas (See “Extending Its Reach” on page 52).
The reason Corporate College’s model is effective, and duplicable, is because of its structure, Reading acknowledges. As the concept pushes borders, she constantly returns to the drawing board to tweak, improve, envision. “This is emerging, growing and alive, which means it will continue to change,” says Reading, inspired by the challenge.
She pauses to consider the potential of a business like Corporate College that sells knowledge and learning. What if everyone invested? Could that change what is not happening in Cleveland? Reading thinks so: “We want to be a part of telling that good story.”
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