Faculty, Workforce, and Partnership in Action: EDvance at the ECEPTS National Conference

EDvance College was proud to present two sessions on breaking barriers for multilingual, first-generation college students in the early childhood education field at the Early Care & Education Pathways to Success (ECEPTS) National Conference.

The EDvance team — Dr. Liz Alvarado, Full-Time Faculty; Anna Wolde-Yohannes, Director of Workforce Development; and Alicia Osborne, VP of Admissions and Workforce Development — presented alongside Dra. Gigi Munoz, Ed.D. of Felton Institute and Dr. Dionne Clabaugh of Izzi Early Education (formerly IHSD Inc.) / EarlySpark Institute. Together, the panel offered an in-depth look at how intentional collaboration can open meaningful pathways for students who have historically faced the barriers to entry.

Faculty at the Center of Workforce Development

A defining theme of the session was the relationship between faculty and workforce development — and the case that the two are inseparable. Faculty are not peripheral to workforce development; they are central to it, and most effective when deeply connected to the partners doing this work in the field.

Dr. Alvarado anchored her remarks in testimonios lingüísticos — the language journeys of students in EDvance's Spanish-language program, told in students' own words. The testimonios offered a powerful, human-centered lens on what it means to build pathways that truly serve multilingual learners.

Partnership as Practice

The session reflected a core truth about how this work gets done: through coordinated, intentional partnership among faculty, workforce development teams, and employer partners in the field. None of it moves without all three.