Wenatchee Valley College outlines faster, skills-focused workforce pipeline to Port

WENATCHEE — Wenatchee Valley College leaders told the Chelan-Douglas Regional Port Authority on Jan. 27 that the school is reshaping its workforce programs around faster, more flexible training models aimed at meeting the region’s growing demand for skilled workers in health care, trades, manufacturing, and emerging industries.

In a wide-ranging presentation, college administrators outlined a shift toward competency-based education, modular credentials, and closer partnerships with employers — an approach they said is designed to get students into living-wage jobs more quickly while also helping the region compete for new business investment.

Tod Treat, Wenatchee Valley College’s vice president of instruction, said the discussion reflected a broader regional moment.

“This is a happy accident of a conversation about who we are as a valley and what we’re trying to become,” Treat said. “Our goal is to make sure that all of our graduates have the credentials and designations needed that employers in the area can be confident that they know they can do what they need to to meet an industry standard.”

Much of the detailed presentation came from Tracy Donnelly, dean for professional development programs in allied health, who highlighted strong demand and outcomes in several programs, particularly in health care and skilled trades.

Donnelly said the college recently accepted 24 new students into its surgical technologist program and 10 into EMT training — numbers she described as strong for the region.

“We’re really proud that we have strong employer demand and that we have high pass rates,” Donnelly said, referring to students who pass credential or certification testing on their first attempt. “Almost all of our programs are at 95 to 100 percent.”

She also pointed to the college’s expanding role in training for energy systems and data center-related work, noting that one recent graduate left the program earning $83,000 a year.

“That’s just unheard of,” she said.

The college is also launching a new bachelor’s program in behavioral health, which Donnelly said already has 50 people on the waitlist for next year’s cohort.

“We started this year and we already have 50 people on the wait list for the next year,” she said. “That’s a new profession we’re pretty excited about.”

A central theme of the presentation was a move away from strictly two-year, linear degree paths and toward shorter, stackable credentials that can be completed around work and family schedules.

“We need to be able to take people at different phases that aren’t able to take two years out of their life and get them into something and back out into the workforce,” Donnelly said.

She described a model in which students might complete targeted training in a matter of weeks or weekends, demonstrate specific competencies, and then return later for additional skills as needed.

“Instead of taking the whole term, it may just be three weekends,” she said. “Then we check off that they can do all the competencies and the employers are like, ‘Wow, they can do that. Come on in, let me hire you.’”

Commissioner Richard DeRock said workforce availability is one of the first questions businesses ask when considering locating in the region, and one the Port does not always have an easy answer for.

“One of the common questions they ask is, ‘What’s the workforce and what’s the workforce training availability in your area?’” DeRock said. “What I’m not seeing is a pamphlet or brochure describing what services you can offer.”

DeRock said proposals sometimes move on short timelines, leaving little opportunity for detailed coordination.

“We have to respond sometimes in a couple weeks,” he said. “It’s not time to sit down and talk to you, but what we have on the shelf are examples that we can present to people who are looking to locate businesses.”

Donnelly said the college is beginning to think more deliberately about how it presents its programs to employers, not just to students.

“We’ve already started to think about how we might package things not just for a student audience but for a corporate audience,” she said, adding that the school is building out a stronger customized and corporate education model.

Commissioner Jim Huffman raised the growing importance of artificial intelligence literacy as a core workforce skill, saying it has the potential to either empower workers or displace them.

“I think AI fluency is going to be a really important skill to have,” Huffman said. “Not only that, but it has a potential to do very positive things and hopefully AI will enable workers to do more with what they have rather than displacing workers.”

Donnelly agreed, saying the college is already grappling with how to teach both effective use of AI tools and critical evaluation of their output.

“What we’re learning now is that knowing how to prompt AI and then being able to also evaluate the credibility of the response — these are skills that folks across any educational sector are going to need,” she said.

Near the end of the discussion, commissioners asked whether the college was preparing students for concepts such as industrial symbiosis, a planning approach that links industries so that waste streams, energy, or byproducts from one operation become inputs for another.

When the term was raised during the meeting, Donnelly said she was not familiar with it by that name, but said the underlying ideas aligned closely with the college’s direction.

“The answer would be yes,” she said. “We’re going to find ways to do stuff like that. I think that really feeds into that competency-based education where it isn’t necessarily an entire program. It might be dipping in, understanding something that’s needed at that time, and then dipping back out.”

After the meeting, Donnelly confirmed informally that she recognized the concept once it was described and said the college is interested in developing coursework and training pathways aligned with that kind of systems-based, cross-industry thinking.

She said the broader vision is to create more entry points, and re-entry points, for people whose careers do not follow a straight line.

“My life has not just been a linear path,” Donnelly said. “We want to be able to offer those opportunities.”

For Port leaders, the presentation underscored the growing connection between economic development and workforce training, and the need for both sides to stay closely aligned as the region continues to evolve.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media