Shaun McAlmont is President of Career Learning at K12 Inc., an online and blended educational course provider to high school students, schools, and companies with over 120,000 students. He has a background of an EdD degree from the University of Pennsylvania and brings to K12 a long career experience in for-profit higher education at Newmont College and the Lincoln Tech system of colleges. Shaun’s job at K12 is to lead on career learning solutions and that is what brings him to this podcast. More and more private companies are moving into the experiential education space, whether in secondary schools or higher education with the goals of bringing skill-building work-related activities into the classroom and thereby increasing student career awareness, educational engagement, and success. We explore that space here.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
Resources Discussed in this Episode:
Music Credits: C’est La Vie by Derek Clegg
ExperiencED Season 2, Episode 2
[00:00:00] Jim Stellar: Welcome to the ExperiencED podcast. I am Jim Stellar.
Mary Churchill: I am Mary Churchill
Adrienne Dooley: and I am Adrienne Dooley.
Jim Stellar: We bring you this podcast on experiential education with
Mary Churchill: educators and thought leaders
Adrienne Dooley: from around the country and the world
Jim Stellar: We are pleased to have with us today Dr. Shaun McAlmont, president of career learning solutions at K12 incorporated, a company that provides innovative, high quality online and blended educational solutions, curriculum and programs to students, schools, and companies in primary, secondary, and most recently postsecondary settings.
K-12 brought on Shaun in 2018 to lead their growing career readiness education programs, including the destinations career academies programs, which combined traditional high [00:01:00] school Academy academics with career technical education. Shaun got a BS from Brigham Young University and MS from U S F and an EdD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Before coming to K-12, Sean was president and CEO of Newmont College of Computer Science and served a decade long tenure at Lincoln Tech system of colleges where he held multiple leadership positions including president and CEO. His career in technical experience is balanced by early student affairs roles at Stanford and Brigham Young Universities.
Shaun and I met when a company that I advise, IQ4, and who's CEO did a podcast with us last fall, Frank Ciccio, reached out to K-12 to explore partnership. And as they say, the rest is history. Thank you, Shaun for your time today.
Tell us a little bit [00:02:00] about K12 Inc. to go beyond the introduction I just gave.
Shaun McAlmont: Well, I'll tell you the K-12 is really the largest virtual K through 12 education tech company in the country.
At any given time, we will have about 120,000 students on our learning management platforms. Students and families come to K-12 for a variety of reasons either. There was, a social or emotional situation that forced them to go to a more virtual type of education. We have a lot of athletes and actors that need an alternative type of learning and then some that want to accelerate their time and they can graduate in as fast as they can get through the curriculum.
An interesting point is that there are events that come up across the country that cause fear, like school shootings, bullying, the coronavirus. And as these types of events increase, so do the inquiries we get about K-12 type learning [00:03:00] programs in schools. Our platform ultimately allows for homeschool children, charter schools, school districts that have certain curriculum or service needs to all utilize K-12. for their learning benefits. It is really been a great service to the country for those who need it. Looking forward, we always expect those students to come to us from a little bit of a defensive posture or something. They might be, you know, moving away from, or needing to do what the traditional school district doesn't.
But what we are moving forward is trying to open our doors to a new population, those who are making proactive choices about types of schools that they'd like their sons or daughters to attend, that also might relate to being more career ready down the road.
Adrienne Dooley: I find that to be a really interesting platform. What are some of your current projects at K-12 [00:04:00] and some of the strategic gaps you're trying to fill in?
Shaun McAlmont: That's a great question. You know, we feel that, students really have to be able to envision where they could possibly see themselves. They have to be able to dream about a future that will, that will give them success for them and their, their future families.
The only way to do that is to really give them a glimpse at it early and to build confidence along the way. And so our career readiness initiative, which I'm leading. It really is, is intended to do that. you know, sometimes you, you can look at disadvantaged populations. Some of those young people in their current home life, their current schools, they've never really seen a modern working environment or how technology can really drive innovation and how they can be engaged in it.
If they can't see that their view is already limited. At a young age, and what they are seeing sometimes is not positive. And so they see themselves in [00:05:00] that world. We're trying to, in a virtual way and real way, move them out so they can dream and picture themselves on different types of career pathways.
So right now, that's our most pressing need, biggest initiative. And K-12 feels that because we have a platform that's pretty pervasive across multiple States, we can really help do that at scale, especially opening up access to populations that, in rural populations where they can't have doctors and nurses and accountants come in and talk to students all day long, or they can't have their students job shadow or inner cities where those opportunities don't exist, we feel that K-12 can provide that platform to open up access. so students can have that vision forward.
Jim Stellar: Shaun, that's great. Now as you know, many of our listeners work at the higher education level. Could we spend a moment having you talk about how you think it's different at the K-12 [00:06:00] level, and what are the similarities?
Shaun McAlmont: That's a great question, Jim. And, and you know where right now in the process of really trying to expand our career readiness definition outside of K through 12 into adult learning and beyond because we feel that, that, that career path thing doesn't end magically at any given point. And later on, if we talk about my own career, I'll tell you just how that's happened for me, but right now, I come from higher education and I worked early in my career, at traditional schools like Stanford and BYU.
And then I moved on to technical schools like Lincoln tech and Newmont college. And now at K-12, and the reason I think I was brought here with higher education experience was to bring the things that we've learned from adult learning, et cetera, into earlier ages for young people.
[00:07:00] So they can, you know, experience, you know, sort of workplace learning, work based learning, et cetera. They can look at, different types of career readiness. how do you work with, peers and teams and introducing some of those concepts that are, employed in higher education and earlier ages to, again, just better prepare students for a pretty fast moving economy.
I think that if I look, you know, sort of line by line and some of the differences, I think career, higher education program to career K-12 program, not much difference at all. It's experiential. Right hands on. But when you start looking at maturity levels, confidence levels, the ability for students to think creatively and dynamically, that's developing at the K through 12 level, until we have more of a role to play in that maturation process.
Maybe you would say that at the higher ed level too, but at the higher ed level, at least you could count on some of [00:08:00] that already being there. And so you see some differences there. social media influence that is really prominent today. We're seeing very equal, types of influence between young people in high school and at the college level but I think also the ability to be independent work while you're going to school. The role of, parents, it's drastically different because you've got a parents really making the decisions, through the K-12 level. in almost every way, shape and form. Whereas in higher ed, you have the student learning to make decisions for themselves, but an interesting mix to say the least.
Jim Stellar: Well, sometimes in higher ed we do get that parent influence. And one time when I was at Northeastern in a coop school, we had a parent call the co-op employer to say that her son didn't feel well and wouldn't be coming to work that day. That required us to have a conversation with the mother about who was doing what in the student's college education.
[00:09:00] Adrienne Dooley: That's tough. That's really tough. But I have to ask on a personal level, after a long career in higher education, what made you move to a company and into an industry for your own career path?
Shaun McAlmont: Oh, Adrienne, I get that question almost every day. I think people are always wondering why in the world would you go to K-12? And you know, it's interesting. I think I'm an example. I've got sort of, live what I teach. And so I'm an example of career pathing and lifelong learning and change and career risk management, you name it. I actually met the CEO of K-12, when I was the CEO of Lincoln tech managing career and technical programs, and he had asked me to bring our team into Herndon, Virginia, where K-12 is to just talk about what we did and how we could possibly build bridges for K-12 students [00:10:00] who weren't on that traditional path to look at different options for their own learning past high school. So the original goal was to just build bridges to technical training if the student had that area of interest. And the reason that was a really big deal at the time, and this was about seven years ago, it was a really big deal for K-12 because traditionally in high school, teachers and counselors have been, you know, teaching and advising sometimes for 20 or 30 years in a given school. And that is a tremendous, benefit to those students, the community, et cetera. But those teachers are really focused on the traditional path. They're almost incentivized to get more students to higher performing liberal arts, four year education. again, which is not a bad thing for the right student.
But if a student ever said, look, I'm interested in automotive technology, or. nursing, they were caught in [00:11:00] a bind because the school didn't really have a way to help that student and not to mention while they're advising students, students are being educated. And really it's sort of this pre-industrial 7:00 AM classroom lecture format, which is really tough as you see demographic and generational changes coming through.
Not to mention., the economy's driven now by technology, just driving new types of jobs and, and a modern workplace. And those teachers and counselors are just out of that loop. So with all that said, I think K-12 saw that stagnation or that tendency to drive everybody toward the same type of post high school experience.
They said, there's gotta be a different option because a large percentage of our students want to do other things. So the goal was to build these bridges. so when I, when I, when I met him, we talked [00:12:00] about that and we, we actually introduced two or three introductory courses for K-12 students into fields like nursing, automotive, technology, and the skilled trades.
Fast forward five years, the CEO of K-12 called me and he said, we're ready to do career readiness. Like now inside of K-12. As a strategic part of what we do moving forward and it's going to expand us out of our normal ways of doing things. It's going to expand into, adult training. And he had laid all that out.
I thought this is an opportunity for me personally to be a multi-site movement, education expert versus just one element. And I thought that, you know, what I'd like to do in the future is. Speak consultant right on, not the whole stream of education and all the options that are available and the necessary career readiness.
I would imagine that over time, those skills [00:13:00] gaps are going to get more pronounced and high schools are being left behind even more. So it was my way to basically position myself for the future and, and I actually went back to school. And, you know, got my doctorate at Penn really to prepare myself for what I'd like to do down the road.
So this job kind of helps me even prepare for that.
Jim Stellar: So, Shaun, you mentioned in your answer just now something about a skills gap, and this is something I think that I'd like to drill down on a little bit and have you talk about it with that marvelous background that you just outlined. America does seem to have a skills gap, and companies are complaining that college graduates from four year programs, for example, take longer to onboard than they would like. The hiring risk is higher because they might not know what they're getting into when they join the company and they might then leave and they've lost that recruitment cycle.
Could you talk a little [00:14:00] bit from your perspective from K-12 about how you see that higher education skills gap? Maybe do that first and then go onto perhaps K-12. So talk about the skills gap.
Shaun McAlmont: I think that, you know, maybe 20 years ago when we started talking about the skills gap, the demographics were changing. Our test scores are poorer in a world competitive nature. You know, the USA has fallen in, in a STEM related training where the engineer's going to come from, where the computer scientists going to come from. Are we going to have to outsource to countries like India and China, etc., to fill our own gaps because we weren't even generating enough graduates in those fields to fulfill the skills gap that existed at the time?
So from a higher education perspective, I think that [00:15:00] we, we saw lots of liberal arts graduates who were graduating and needed a job that could help them pay off their student loans, and prepare them for the next phases of, of education. But as they showed up in interviews, they were missing some of the technical skills that could add value to a company immediately. And, and even though they had just sort of a great well-rounded education and were, were definitely management talent, there was a short term gap that that wouldn't help the company at their time of, of technical need. So that skills gap was technical in nature, but it was also soft skills in nature.
There were also generational changes. I mean my four kids that range between 18 to 30 all are living in social media in a way that I don't even understand, and I try to stay up on it. [00:16:00]. They communicate differently. Their work ethic is different. What satisfies or motivates them is very different. And we see it as we're interviewing young people here. I actually have someone on an advisory council, who works for a major medical, company and was saying that the young doctors and nurses and medical assistants coming in have a completely different work ethic, and they're joined by maybe three generations of different workers that that will be their teammates. And those older, more experienced in the former way of looking at the world, are complaining about the young ones. They, they don't want to work certain hours. They need other types of, support through their Workday.
This gap is, is really complex. As we saw it, for those who are just leaving higher education, we thought [00:17:00] we could start preparing people in middle school and ninth grade. And not just on the technical stuff, but the modern work environment. You know how it's changing and how you can get yourself ready just to get them in the thought process.
We could at least start filling a pipeline of potential short- and long-term value add.
Jim Stellar: Soft and hard skills.
Shaun McAlmont: Absolutely. Oh, by the way, on the soft skills, we just did a survey jointly, a research project with a consultant, and we spoke to HR executives across the country.
Interestingly enough. They are saying a couple of things. Number one, only 15% of them are still looking at the bachelor's degree as the gating degree for certain levels of jobs. That's 15% at this point. Wow. The rest are saying they need somebody who's [00:18:00] ready to work and learn. They will teach them skills necessary, but they need communicators.
They need people who can work in teams, who are, flexible. And, and so I think that, you know, the soft skills have now evolved into all kinds of different communication skills, et cetera, related skills. And, and, and it's, it's, it's just a part of the whole mix today.
Jim Stellar: Now here we're even calling them power skills now.
Shaun McAlmont: Exactly. Professional skill, FOS skills, power skills. Exactly.
Adrienne Dooley: I can tell that this work at K-12 means a lot to you. Is there a personal story behind, why you're so interested in career readiness skills?
Shaun McAlmont: Great question. Yeah. You know, I think I mentioned earlier my four kids and I'll just tell you about each one of them real quick.
My eldest daughter's named [00:19:00] Chelsea. She went the traditional route. Two years in, she called my wife and I one day, and, she was crying because she felt like she just was not in the right place at the right time and not doing what she wanted to do. So we said, tell us what is it that you'd like to do?
She said she wanted to become a buyer for retail and make up. It was something completely different from what she had started, and it was at that moment that we realized we and the schools had been pushing her into this traditional route because we thought it was the way to go. She just broke down saying this is not what I want to do. So we supported her in changing paths. She ended up working for Nordstrom as a buyer and in makeup and has had an amazing career. It's been beautiful.
I have a daughter named Camille who went into sociology, graduated, did international [00:20:00] studies. She was able to translate those skills into an HR job that she's in today, and she absolutely loves it and uses a lot of her education.
My oldest son, Collin is a banker. He just graduated recently from business school. He was locked into that career and he is really intense. And he loves working what seems like 40 hours a day. He stretches the day in ways that most people can't. And so by the end of his week, I think he's doubled what he does with 80 hours in. He absolutely loves it, but, but he knew what he wanted to do and got right into that career path.
And my youngest, who's graduating is going to make us empty nesters next year. He has no idea what he wants to do.
I think the variety between these four kids and what we've experienced over the last number of years just advising and helping them find their own career path is really just a [00:21:00] microcosm of the country and the world. I think young people need options. They need to not feel that they're letting anybody down if they decide not to go on the four year route. And if they do go the four year route, they need to explore different options even before they start paying tuition, so they don't get into heavy debt. All of the things we faced as a family. I think that if I can share those experiences with even more people at scale, then to me, my job is done.
So that's the personal side of why I do it.
Jim Stellar: Well as someone who works in higher education, let me just say thank you for sending four of your children to college and paying that tuition. I do work at a public institution, so if some of them went public, you may have experienced slightly lower tuition than my parents experienced when they sent me to a private institution.
This has been a great interview, but I want to, end up by asking you [00:22:00] to look a little bit into the future. For K-12 particularly, what do you see coming down the road and also while you're at it, is there just anything in general you'd like to add to this conversation?
Shaun McAlmont: I think we have really, Jim, committed to the career aspects, as I mentioned so many times today, in preparing students for the future. And to do that we've also committed to acquiring different companies and programs and educational contents. We've committed to partnerships that are strategic with other entities that can help us do this. Recently we announced the acquisition of a company called Galvanize, which is, a tech training company that trains software engineers and data scientists, and actually works with a lot of [00:23:00] career changers. So people who have had a bachelor's degree that want to get into the tech field and work for companies like Google. And, and by the way, every company now has a tech arm. That has to be pretty robust to manage their website and the backend administrative, their data, their big data projects, et cetera.
These jobs are becoming more and more prominent, and they're, they're finding some pretty amazing salaries after six to nine months of intensive training. So we, we purchased a company that, that does that, and we thought that that would help inform us and help create stackable credentials for our graduates. And it helps us just become more a part of that world. We're also looking at healthcare training companies and partnerships, certifications, clinical experience, continuing education credit - all a part of highly, structured fields like [00:24:00] healthcare.
It's another element that we would like within our realm. We learn and we can help actually promote it within our career readiness efforts. And so from, from K-12, you'll see many more strategic partnerships, announced and, you know, the, acquisition activity, et cetera, which starts making us look like an educational, an ed tech company, a training company.
And also one that really believes in lifelong learning and addressing the skills gaps wherever they may make fit or whoever may find them.
Jim Stellar: This is just fascinating. I wish we could go on forever, but I have to say, Shaun, I can really see in you the history of the higher education, training and leadership that you bring to K-12. It is really encouraging and I hope that going forward that background can lead to better collaboration between higher ed, which can be an ivory tower at times, [00:25:00] and companies like your own. Thank you so much for being with us today. Adrienne, do you want to add anything.
Adrienne Dooley: I did actually want to thank you for supporting your children as they went multiple different ways, because as someone who changed her path halfway through undergrad, as Jim knows, I'm supportive.
Parents are a huge key in pushing our kids from the, you know, even enrolling in something like K-12 comes from the parents. You can't do it at that age without that support. So that's really important. And I think something that shouldn't be overlooked.
Shaun McAlmont: Well, thank you so much, Jim and Adrienne. Thank you. I love what you're doing. This podcast is incredible and anything I can do to help in the future, let me know. But this is great.
Jim Stellar: Well, let's get you back after we have a few more seasons under our belt to track the continuing changes in this joint venture that we call a skill building in America. Thank you so much.
Shaun McAlmont: Thank you.
Jim Stellar: Take care.
Mary Churchill: Thank you for listening. We hope you will come [00:26:00] back soon for the next installation of experience. Ed,
Adrienne Dooley: as we continue to talk about the neuroscience and sociology of enhancing higher education
Jim Stellar: by combining direct experience, classical academic learning.