Good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for joining or bringing adults back to community college webinar. My name is Chris Geary. I'm a senior policy analyst at new America and I'm the author of the bringing adults back to community college playbook that we published yesterday. I'm going to get us started today. My going over a presentation on our bringing it up bringing adults back to community college project, as well as our major research findings and recommendations. I'll then hand it over to Iris Palmer is the deputy director for community colleges at new America will be monitoring a panel with experts in the fields. At the end of that panel discussion there will be time for q amp a so again please do think of questions as they arise and submit them. Great. So to get us started I really want to contextualize this conversation in terms of the broader changes in higher education enrollment that we've seen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This slide shows changes in college enrollment across all sectors of higher education from fall 2019. That's right before the pandemic to fall 2021. And what we see that is really clear is while enrollment declined across the board, we see particularly pronounced enrollment declines in community colleges. But when we looked at enrollment of first time adult students that is students that are over the age of 25 that are enrolling in higher education for the first time. We actually see a more nuanced and I would argue a more troubling reality. So we saw a decline across all sectors, but that decline of an first time adult students was particularly large at community colleges and actually corresponded with an increase of enrollment of first time adults at for profit institutions. I would argue this is a troubling trend, given that for profit institutions tend to have worse educational and economic outcomes and do community colleges. So, given this, as well as the fact that community colleges serve more than half of all undergraduate students from low income backgrounds, community college enrollment declines threatened to worse and educational and equity. So we found education and labor at New America wanted to offset these declines. So to do so, we partnered with six colleges in three states over the course of 18 months. And based on that work, we published a playbook that contains recommendations for colleges nationwide on how to increase adult enrollment. This slide shows the bringing adults back to community college cohort so over this period, we worked with two colleges in Oregon, that's Mount Hood Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College. And then two colleges in Illinois, that's Harry S. Truman College, which is one of the city colleges of Chicago, as well as Prairie State College. And then two colleges in Louisiana, that's Fletcher Technical Community College and Delgado Community College. So based on this work, we came up with five themes and recommendations that we believe community colleges nationwide should implement in order to increase adult enrollment. Based on this field research and our learnings from this cohort, we believe that community colleges should one, improve their communications with adult students. To revise their satisfactory academic progress or SAP policies, three, increase course flexibility for established case management systems for enrollment and advising. And five, help students afford their basic needs. So I'm going to go over each of these themes and recommendations in more detail throughout this PowerPoint, but I do want to say that we go into much more detail in the playbook itself. So for some questions, if you're thinking about how do I make this change on my college campus or, you know, how can I get more specific, please do look at the playbook. There are a lot of really helpful resources there to get you started. So to jump in with theme one, improve communication. So as part of this work, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with current and stopped out adult students at each college in our cohort. And I think that this student quote from an adult student at a college in our cohort really summarizes a broader finding that we saw at community colleges in different parts of the country. So this adult student shared with us, with enrollment, advisors need to communicate better. I sat around in 2020. I was waiting on an advisor to let me know what classes I was supposed to register in. It was weeks I was waiting until they finally got back to me. I didn't know that I was supposed to enroll at the city park campus, and I started out another campus. Because of this, I took classes that first year that I didn't need to take. Nobody's trying to take extra classes. That's like money that could have gone to something that you actually needed. So again, while this represents one adult students experience, we saw that there's a lot of truth in this statement that applies to community colleges more broadly. So to offset this, we recommend four action items for community colleges nationwide. The first is to create a messaging campaign on the specific financial benefits of career and technical education programs or CTE on your campus. Given that so many adults attend community college to increase their economic security and are attracted to career and technical education programs as a result. We think it's really vital that community colleges market and message the specific financial benefits of their CTE programs as a way to increase adult enrollment. Second, we recommend creating a central place on your website for returning adults with step-by-step reenrollment instructions. Third, we recommend hiring enrollment navigators and communicating their availability directly to students, and I'll come back to that enrollment navigator piece subsequently in this presentation. And fourth, we recommend creating a set of incentives to entice students to reenroll. So I want to lift up a success story from one of the colleges in this cohort, and that's Mount Hood, which is in the Metro Portland area. So throughout this project, Mount Hood decided to incentivize students to return and reenroll at campus to reduce outstanding student balances owed to the college in a way that would remove registration holds for hundreds of students on campus. So in doing this, they assisted 685 students, which led to a 285 student enrollment increase, and the college spent about $107,000 on reducing these outstanding student balances. But because it led to this big increase in enrollment, it actually netted a $400,000 return on investment. So this just shows that incentivizing students to reenroll on campus can actually be a financially beneficial strategy for community colleges in the short, medium and long run. Now, our second theme has to deal with SAP, or again, satisfactory academic progress. And before I jump into this quote and recommendation, I just want to provide a little bit of background on what SAP is to make sure everyone on the line is sort of aware of this issue. So to be eligible for federal financial aid authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, college students need to make satisfactory academic progress for SAP. And colleges must have a policy to define and monitor that progress. So in terms of specifics of what constitutes making SAP at colleges varies, generally, this means that lots of institutions, this means that students need to achieve a GPA of at least 2.0, and they must pass at least two thirds of the classes they are enrolled in. So this quote comes from an administrator at a college in our cohort that really lifts up the issues with SAP. So this is one of those hot button issues. Last semester alone, we've seen more SAP requests than ever before. Students are having other challenges, but it is affecting the SAP process. We saw in a student survey, when you get into trouble with SAP and you start getting these emails that are using words like probation and threatening dismissal, that can compound issues. So while colleges are required to have a defined SAP policy and students must make SAP in order to be eligible for federal financial aid, there are things colleges can do to help students in this process. So we have three recommendations relating to revising SAP that we think colleges, community colleges nationwide, should employ. So first, we recommend improving communications with students before and after they fail to make SAP. Second, we recommend creating a fair, well documented and simplified appeals process. And third, we recommend all colleges analyze SAP patterns by race, gender and PEL status to see if there are inequities on campus in terms of which students are failing to make SAP in any given term. I also want to lift up another success story from a college in this cohort, and this deals with Delgado in New Orleans and their ability to revise SAP. In this project, Delgado reexamined their SAP appeals data, and they noticed that they had hundreds of students with incomplete SAP appeals. And the reason for all of these students was they had failed to submit third party documentation to back up their appeals, their appeal and the SAP process. And so this was an institutional choice Delgado realized they as a college had required students to have this documentation requirement as a way to kind of bolster and back up their SAP appeal. Delgado changed that institutional policy, and as a result, they no longer have a single student with an incomplete SAP appeal. And so what this does, it allows hundreds of students to become eligible for federal financial aid, which opens up the doors for them to reenroll at Delgado. Our third theme is on increasing course flexibility and has everything to do with the very many demands that adult students tend to face. Not only are they students but they're often balancing caregiving and work responsibilities. And I think that this quote from an adult student at a college in our cohort really speaks to why it's so critical for colleges to increase course flexibility. Taking virtual courses was awesome. She was born right before the pandemic. So I went back in the fall of 2020, and it was all online. So I didn't have to do any shifting or anything. And I loved it. I wouldn't have gone to the class at all if it hadn't been online. So based on this we offer three recommendations for colleges to increase course flexibility. The first is to offer more night and weekend courses, and we understand the staffing constraints to this and we go into that in more detail in the playbook. The second is to offer more high flex courses or courses that can be taken virtually or in person. And the third is to increase flexibility for entire programs rather than just one course at a time. And so taking a step back, this was really about crafting course schedules to meet adult students get adult students demands, so that adult students can take courses that work with all the things that they're trying to balance. Our fourth theme is about establishing case management for enrollment and advising and integrating enrollment and advising as a continuum of services. I'll kind of come to what we mean by case management on the next slide, but first I think this quote from a stopped out adult student in a college in our cohort really illuminates this problem. There were too many emails that got me confused. I just want to talk to one person, like one person to ask all of my questions. I don't want to go through different offices. They say go to this one for financial aid, this one for health insurance. The pandemic made it hard and virtual made it not attractive. So to offset this problem, we recommend that colleges hire enrollment navigators to integrate enrollment and advising and establish a case management system to do so. Now this figure directly from our playbook I think really illustrates what we mean. So enrollment navigators are trained professionals whose job is to work with students throughout the application and enrollment process to help answer any questions they may have. After enrollment navigators established one-on-one relationships with students, they're in a really great position to introduce those students to a college navigator or more traditionally a college advisor once they actually start classes and re-enroll in campus. Now those college navigators and those advisors in a case management system would work with the same students throughout their entire academic experience so that students have one person, one point person to go to with all of their questions. This works or allows college navigators to learn a lot of a lot of things about their students so that when applicable, they can refer those students to benefits coordinators, which brings me right to our next recommendation. So our final theme is on the need to help students afford basic needs and the need for community colleges to help address basic needs in security on their campuses. I think this quote from a stocked out student at a college or a cohort really illuminates the extent of the problem in terms of basic needs in security on community college campuses. Everything costs so much and I'm at the point where now I can barely afford groceries and I can get public assistance and still can't afford groceries. I don't plan on living like that. It's not a goal of mine. My goal is to be financially stable where I can take care of my children without public assistance. So given the extent of basic needs in security on college campuses, we recommend four action items for community colleges nationwide. The first is to hire benefits navigators who are trained professionals who coordinate basic needs support on campus and help students access available resources, both in terms of community resources, as well as public benefits programs that the students might be eligible for. The second is to require student basic needs training for all faculty and staff to help build a campus wide culture around the need to address basic needs and security. The third is to review institutional policies relating to basic needs and financial aid to see if there are any specific pain points that colleges can address to help not exacerbate this issue. Finally, offer students free resources. There are so many great examples of colleges stepping up and finding ways to offer students free food, free transportation vouchers and free technology throughout this pandemic. And we think that for colleges to increase adult enrollment moving forward, it's critical that they maintain these efforts. So with that, I will pass it over to Iris Palmer who will be moderating our panel discussion. Thank you so much, Chris. Really appreciate your outline of all the things we learned in this project. And I also wanted to add a couple of thank yous to other people who are involved in this project. So I want to thank ECMC who helped fund the work and really provided a lot of the thought leadership in helping us design the project. And I also want to thank student ready strategies for their help in providing some of the direct technical assistance to the six colleges that we worked with. And I also want to thank our advisory committee. So we have some wonderful members of our advisory committee joining us for this panel here today and there are a few who are not on this panel. But I want to thank all of them for providing thought leadership and help and support, not only in designing the research, but also helping connect it to the field. So thank you everybody. It's just been an amazing project and we're really excited for the results and what has come out of it. And with that I'm going to introduce our wonderful panel. So we're joined today by Tess Henthorne, Senior Program Manager for the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute. Julia Lawton, Director of Program Administration and Achieving the Dream, and Michelle Wilson, Director of Evaluation and Learning at the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. So welcome everyone. We really appreciate you joining us here today. So to kick us off, I'd love to hear from each of you about why you think this work matters, why it's important for community colleges to focus on adult students, and why should community colleges nationwide be prioritizing enrollment services and student outreach. We'll go ahead and start with Julia. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. We don't have a choice, I think is is the answer. The average age of community college students is 27, 28. But the way that community colleges were designed, our structures, our processes, our culture, our policies were typically designed for the traditional 18 to 21 year old student who, you know, was a full time student was able to be there on campus. That's the way we were, we were designed as institutions, and this has resulted in us not being the best place for adult learners. And so adult learners take longer to complete their credentials, they stop out more frequently, they drop out more frequently. And then they're more frequently less likely to get connected to their college at all. So it's something that we have to work on. And it's something that we absolutely need to at the same time, the K 12 pipeline of students is starting to decline and most if not all communities across the country. And so it's really both an imperative not only for our mission as institutions as community colleges, but it's also a financial reality for most of our institutions for many of our institutions. And part of that is why achieving the dream partnered with Illumina Foundation and other national partners. And a couple of years ago to support 20 community colleges to focus on expanding access for adult learners to community colleges. And we have learned so much from that effort so thank you so much for helping us cross pollinate the learning from your colleges to our colleges and to help inform our playbook as well. Michelle, I'd love to hear from you and your perspective about why this work is so important. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for inviting me to the table it's been wonderful to see you guys move this work forward. From our perspective at the National Fund, it's important because it really taps into an underutilized talent pipeline right so one of the key things from our work and the advancing workforce equity. That initiative was about how much money was actually left on the table and communities as a result of inequitable practices and equitable practices right and so a large part of that has to do with looking at the workforce ecosystem of which community colleges play a role. So the points that I want to make in that is that finding ways to support adult learners returning learners is critical to our work so looking at equitable practices and access to community colleges and I love what the playbook does in terms of like in terms of improving communications like you have some really targeted strategies that really work to address the talent pipeline like increasing that talent pipeline so it's good to see that that work get launched into the field. I really appreciate that perspective the sort of workforce equity perspective is one that is missing too often I think in these conversations so thank you so much for bringing it here today in this in this particular panel. So Tess, I'd love to hear from you and your perspective on why this is such an important topic. Absolutely. Well to echo Michelle and Julia. Thank you for the invitation to joining today. And it's been so exciting to see kind of this playbook come to fruition that's doing a lot of really important work. And I think the thing I would add to Julian Michelle's answers is just that this is kind of all happening in in context and in conversation with enrollment declines and retention declines that are we're seeing across the country. So being able to get adults back on campus and enrolled as well as through college and you know achieving high and equitable rates of post graduation success is going to help combat enrollment declines but it's also helping to deliver on the promise that the college is based around, which is to get folks jobs that are going to be sustaining themselves and their families and their communities. So I think that this is all happening in a very timely moment as well. So the workforce pipeline connected to actually helping people have fulfilling lives and fulfilling careers so drawing that line all the way through so we sort of have a college perspective. Workforce pipeline perspective and then like connecting it to the individual and what the individual wants from their education. All really important points and I think it is very well said and then also I think we agree with all of you and why this is so important. So if we could jump back to you. We regularly hear from community colleges that they, they'd like to know who's doing this work well and how, particularly how they fund it I think is a big question we get a lot. So they can bring those strategies to their campuses. Share some successful examples that you've seen in your work of community colleges that have effectively and equitably managed this enrollment, particularly for adult learners. Sure. I'm going to apologize in advance. I think the simplest thing is painfully obvious. The audience might grow no, but it's asked them. And adults in your community not necessarily the people who are already enrolled in your college, but the adults that don't get connected to your institution. If you don't ask them why they're not getting connected what they want what their goals are what their challenges are. You're not, you're going to run the risk of leaning on assumptions. And this is something we found out in the pace grant, the grant that's focused on adult community college enrollment. Colleges that started by asking their adult learn their adult learners and their adults in their communities that aren't currently enrolled in any kind of program. They're the colleges that really were able to to move quickly and swiftly to address some of those issues. So, as painfully obvious as that is. I'm going to say it and say it clearly that ask adults in your community what they need what their goals are. Another thing that is being proven by some of the grantees in this effort is that a strong community presence is essential to the successful adult learner enrollment strategy. In some colleges this has meant hiring adult enrollment outreach coordinators, we have a wonderful event next month where we're going to hear from three of those individuals who do this work about what that looks like for them. For others this is also meant that they're just they're physically located in the communities that they're serving so they've identified neighborhoods where perhaps they have had less interaction with historically, and they're really trying to be more intentional about how they're showing up for those communities. So there's there's different ways of doing that. One of the colleges in Alabama or rural college in Alabama has got a partnership with a local judge. And they go to the court. Frequently, and there's a back room that they go into where the college has kind of an enrollment process set up. And they the judge in shares information about the college with with individuals who are in the courtroom and encourages them to go and meet with the college personnel in the private room to learn more about their programs and their different opportunities. So there's a lot of creativity in our colleges. There's a lot of these things happening that, you know, we need to be elevating, and we need to be sharing because I think there's, there's a lot of innovation happening, and a lot of really good mental energy being spent on this problem. And I think that we can continue to share more examples of what this looks like. And the more of you who are listening also who have examples of what you're doing that you can also share and connect with each other on this as well. Absolutely. We're always looking for good examples to share and particularly just going to put a pin in and reemphasize regularly speaking to your students and also the adults in your community that you want to enroll is so important. And not just the people that you see a lot or that are very engaged in your community, but the people who maybe are less connected to your community. I think people that we have found are very surprised when they start to have those conversations about how they're actually interacting with the community and how the community proceeds them. So really important points, Julia, thank you so much for making them them. They're really important. So, Michelle, in your experience, what role does Community College data play in this work, and how should colleges be using it to reenroll and support adults. Michelle, I think your internet connection is a little bit unstable so I'm going to come back to you, and hopefully we can get that sorted out.  So what are some of the largest challenges you've seen Community College's face when it comes to equitably serving and rolling adult learners. So I think two challenges come to mind where the first is getting students onto campus so thinking about messaging and recruitment, as well as enrolling students in credentials of value on their college campuses. So the first challenge with recruitment and messaging to prospective students. We've seen a challenge being able to have colleges and have reached the individuals that are in their communities in a way that's honest and informative and kind of speaks to their experience and their needs. So in the last one we've done some substantive research on how to effectively reach underrepresented populations in particular, and a lot of times from colleges we've seen kind of language that is speaking to, you know, an 18 year old that has just graduated from high school. They're looking to enroll in a two or four year institution, and it's not really speaking to a single mom who's balancing childcare and needs to enroll in night classes, but is excited to kind of pursue further education. So we see the adults are kind of coming with unique needs and motivations. So we see childcare someone that needs a flexible course schedule because they have to maintain their job and enroll in school. Someone that even might have like a mistrust in higher education. There's someone that had enrolled before and dropped out, or had folks kind of in their personal network that have had negative experiences, and that now kind of have, you know, colored how they view community as if that's not the institution that they had been enrolled in within their own community. And so it's really kind of a question of communicating the value proposition around community college programs to these adult learners. And I guess the last piece to kind of pull the thread from what you were asking Michelle about data and enrollment is that the data in messaging is Chris was sharing earlier is so important. When we did focus groups with prospective community college students, everyone was really, really savvy. And we had folks, you know, looking at a message from their regional community college and saying like, this is great, but I'm sure they're not telling me, you know, how much books are going to cost or how much transportation is going to cost. You know, this isn't telling me what my actual odds are of getting in a job after graduation, kind of all these different components that go into enrollment but also to kind of doing folks all the way through college into a good job. And then just the second piece that I've seen a challenge around is kind of shifting enrollment from enrollment in any credential colleges to enrollment and graduation in credentials of value. Because we know that students are enrolling in college to get a good job and advance their career whether that's directly after community college or through transfer and then into a job. So focusing solely on increasing enrollment numbers doesn't actually help students complete or have strong rates of post graduation success. So so the enrollment number only does so much. And I'd be happy to speak about that a little bit more but we know that being able to deliver on value is helping colleges to make good on their promise to students. It's helping students in their community that they can help secure future enrollments, and it's helping to improve equitable outcomes. Really important points about the data piece and welcome back Michelle I actually want to think that's actually a really good way to pivot to you to hear a little bit more about that about how data should be used to do this well and equitably. Yes, and thank you technology for doing what you do. In my opinion I think it's really important. When we talk about data there are four things that we know to be true is that data helps us identify barriers and it also and what's preventing adult learners from enrolling and I think that's what test was speaking to. And also, is critical in using that data to be able to better respond to the needs of adult learners this is what tests mentioned as well to, and attract progress, and so I'm going to state the obvious. And it helps us to understand and measure impact, and all of that also in the, in addition to looking at the challenges it also helps us to lift up what's working which is what you guys did so beautifully in your examples. So I think it's a great book, right, but what I really want to point to when we start talking about community colleges and data is just even we know that community colleges have access to a wide array of an amazing amount of data. So it goes beyond having the data but how to use the data right so it's also so in my experience and working with community colleges across the country it's about gathering the right kinds of data to answer the right kinds of questions about what we need to know. Right. And so, and it also speaks is critical and helping us determine who needs to be at the table right so we're talking about the work, the workforce ecosystem of which community colleges play a role similarly in community college systems who needs to be at the table right and so one of the things that we've identified here when talk to students talk to a dirt one adult learners is right like so we haven't been having employers at the table, having students learners at the table as well too right so we can ask the big questions where everybody can give their input is really critical. And what I love about the playbook is that it pairs so nicely with the work that we're doing at the National Fund with community colleges right in our community college labs right looking at the social determinants of work, looking at how to use data to improve industry partnerships. So looking at how to bring race equity or race equity lens to gradient credentialing programs, all of these things are really important and just like again, we talk about the tools and resources that are available. Being able to draw from all of these spaces the work that's happening and achieving the dream it's just really critical but they all have a data component so again just to wrap that up it goes beyond. Having the data but knowing how to use the data in a way that it can help student learners. Using the data is the hardest part. Having the analysis and the decision making structures to be able to actually act on the data is definitely the most difficult piece I think of this. I'm going to pause and just say to the audience, please put in any questions you have for the panel or for me about the work more generally. We're happy to answer those as we go along. I have a few more questions but I'm really excited to entertain the questions from the audience as well. So, we've talked about a lot of different things that colleges should do to address adult learners and address their enrollment shortfalls and to make their structures work better. There's a lot here. Who would like to talk about how colleges should make the decision around where to start and how to start this conversation on campus or actually making policy and practice changes on their campus. I'm going to go ahead. Well, I mean obviously I'm going to lean into the data piece right because that's what tells the story right and so I think understanding also this I think there are two parts of us like understanding. What does the data tell us about the challenge, the size and the scale of the challenge. What are the drivers of that right so I mean I love Chris is in his PowerPoint up top he talks about the decline in enrollments and offered a couple of points of why that was critical and what was important look at like that's an important data point that we should do right and so being able to tell your story with data from to me as a starting point for how you begin to address the problem right and I think that is both the quantitative data and qualitative data like what does the scale and the size, and then the impact it has on the people in your community. That's where I would start. I agree full heartedly with Michelle, and I guess I would just expand that to say so. Looking at the data for your institution but it also feels like within your community and the partners in your community. And when you ask the question I was thinking even about employer partners. So, to be able to look at the data to say like, are our students that we think are going on to get jobs at x employer in our region, or transferring, are they actually doing that and then going new on the path that we've set forth from them but to expand the scope of the data to look beyond your college to is key. Is there anything to add to that. I 100% cosine on everything they just said, I have nothing more valuables add to start with your data. Start with your data in your community qualitative and quantitative data I think that's really important point it's not just about your student reference system or about a general BLS survey of your area you really need to talk to people. And that is a really important part of the data. I just like drill in a little bit more on the enrollment piece because I think that a lot of colleges 10, or a lot of community colleges tend to just sort of receive who comes and not necessarily have the most directed enrollment approach. Anybody has recommendations with the colleges that might be on here or other policy organizations around like where colleges can work on the sort of enrollment funnel for a back of a better term like where do you think them, like they should be focused on in increasing their capacities around it. So I think that's a great question made I think the work that we're doing with Lumina around advancing industry partnerships with and with community colleges is looking at ways to increase enrollment around women of color. Right, and one of the strategies around that is like how do we even like how do what pockets of our work, can we dig into that can help build that pipeline right and so. So how do we use our industry partnerships are employer engagements how do we have conversations at that level that help shift policies and practices around certain sectors that make enrollment or women particularly women of color people of color, are accessible, right and so I think this is to test this point about looking at the community and engaging employers in the conversation, I think it's one of the ways so really excited about the work that's happening now but I think that is just that I think that's one way of looking at it I mean I think that's what we're tackling right now. I will definitely try to include a link to that work with the recording of the webinar because I think that is a really important point. And I want to open it up to Julia and test and say like are there any resources that you've been working on that you'd like to highlight for people in this conversation as well. Yeah I think marketing is one of the major things we're not good at shouting about what we're good at. I think community colleges can do a better job there. I know funding is an issue. I'm not going to try and pretend it isn't that is that is a major issue. But there is also a return on investment for for colleges that really do this well, and can actually attract adult learners back. It's a significant potential return on investment, and if they can keep them and support them through their credential learning. So it's, it's both a challenge upfront and something that can that can bring some rewards later and improve our websites. We're not to navigate. They're, they're, they're challenging again this goes back to finances I know. But, but we could absolutely do a better job at funding with our websites on marketing what we do what we can offer and how we can fit into adult learners lives. The other piece is the partnerships are so critical, particularly for underserved communities communities that we've neglected before. If we are not physically present there, we are not building the relationships that we need to be building that are going to lead to enrollment enrollment for adult learners particularly is very relational. And if we are not going in and intentionally making those connections and ensuring the communities that we really care about them and that we have what they want and what they need to better their lives and better their families lives then we're not doing the work that we need to do for our adult learners. I really appreciate that Julia because I think this goes back to creating equitable practices like equitable and accessible practices right it's it's understanding the needs of your community me and responsive to it. I just appreciate that point. I'd love to hear you jump in here. I just wanted to speak to Julia's point about funding. The realities that kind of come with that as part of as part of making reforms the institutions and just to acknowledge that like that's a reality that everyone is working with them, but it often requires making some really difficult decisions in order to be able to make different resources to other areas of the college that really are going to be able to help with enrollment and the other thing on my mind is advising which feels like it kind of is coming hand in hand. So, recently I know that we just had our big Aspen Prize ceremony, and we're sharing kind of about all the finalists for the award and I was really struck by Broward College implemented this program called greater impact budgeting. But part of that involves cutting their entire athletics department so that they could divert some of those financial resources to advising and marketing so that they could hire more advisors and they did a lot of really intentional work to kind of help with the enrollment onboarding and advising structures at their college. And, but that was really difficult decision that I think also had other impacts in the community so I don't know if there's a neat takeaway except for to take knowledge that it is difficult but we're starting to see folks in the field take strides towards towards those goals. And then to your question, though about kind of other work or resources I know that Aspen is recently done some research about thinking around enrollment and completion, particularly for STEM fields. So what does excellent and equitable outcomes for STEM fields of community colleges look like. And so that's an area that I think we would also be happy to share some additional resources to after today. Thank you so much for that helpful test. Thank you. And the priority samples a great one. They also, I believe got rid of their on campus childcare center, which is like a really hard decision to make obviously we talk about how important that is a lot for adult students but also it was very expensive and not serving very many students and they had to make really tough choices about transferring some of those resources to additional and more intensive advising and how that would affect more students they believe so one of those things you got to have the data and you have to make really tough choices sometimes because you do have limited resources so I think it's an important example to sort of pulled out there. So nice. So limited resources but I also think it's important to be real about what it takes to support students right I mean I. What one of the colleges that comes to mind to me is central Pmont Community College and Charlotte right there opportunity scholarship programs like we recognize the realities of the students with the students face right so we know that some of them may have to support their families we know it's like transportation like the realities of what it takes and so taking that into consideration when you design programs is really critical. As well to right. Yeah, we talk about like continuing a lot of the basic needs supports that students that colleges provided during the pandemic which is just so important and we're incredibly impactful during that time period but of course they were meant to be funded by the federal government through higher education emergency funding and so it's like how do you continue to do that when you have to make these tough choices because yeah transportation and the basic needs supports are so important and so it's like it's a definitely a tough choice and I want to just acknowledge that it's not easy because I think. As like policy people tend to be like do all the things for people then that'll just fix everything but of course it's much more much more challenging than that. And I just also want to acknowledge that capacity of staff at community colleges is limited. Many of these people are doing three or four jobs, and to me able to do like institutional reform is just like another job on top of that top of their three existing job so it can be really challenging to do. And hopefully the resources that we provided make it slightly easier because we're going with that. So, our playbook looks at enrolling and reenrolling adult students, but it focuses on enrollment strategies and how to serve students once they're on campus which is a little bit what we've been talking about now, but I was hoping that you all could talk a little bit about the importance of focusing on serving students needs from an enrollment perspective like we can sort of focus on that outreach piece and like guiding people through the enrollment process but why is it also important to make sure that people are well served once they enroll in the community college so they actually complete their credential. Yeah, so I think so it goes beyond if you build it they will come right it's just like so once they come and how do you get them to stay. And again, for me it's still about access in terms of making services readily available right. There's been a lot of colleges like when you come into certain student services it's like, if I have to go way across campus and you mentioned this in terms of someone who was waiting for an advisor to respond or just having accessible if I have to go way across campus to get to something that might lessen my you know I might be less inclined to do that if I don't know where it is if I don't move around, if I can't move around campus if I'm unfamiliar with campus or whatever but it making students available so if you go into a building, you're like I can go here for this type of service I can go here for that type of services right so I think just thinking about the proximity of services is critical and developing and getting people to feel comfortable enough to to. That's one step and getting people comfortable and saying okay. I can, in terms of getting them to stay I think is what I'm trying to say here. I think it's an important point to think about the design and the structure and where they're situated and whether or not they're available virtually and at night weekend like all the other things. All the things right. Julia did you want to jump in. I fully cosine on everything Michelle just said I. The way the way we talk about this work is that we aren't designed for adult learners is because we don't have those options, because we assume that. Whether we're aware of it or not, we assume that students can be on campus from nine to five and physically they're physically present and that's just not the way adults. It's not going to fit adult learner lives. And so if we're not thinking about evening hours, virtual hours weekend programs, those kind of things, which is, we're just not designed for adult learners. I also, I think, I'm going to stop there. Fair enough. I have thoughts. But I'm going to like to speak. Okay, go ahead. So I think for me it also comes back to what Michelle was speaking about a few moments ago where it's really being able to make data informed changes that are meeting students where they are. What also comes to mind for me is Amarillo College where they kind of saw real challenges with course scheduling, and they looked at college data that showing up most of their students who failed to complete course, usually struggled around the halfway point of the semester and so they ended up shifting to eight week terms and they improved their completion rates by like 12%. They looked really hard at the data and the students they were serving and the students they wanted to serve. And did a lot of difficult work to kind of meet those challenges head on and make changes that have now had a large impact on students staying and students going all the way through. Julia, did you want to jump back in and add your last point or not so much. I, I've got new, new thoughts. Okay, go for it. Given given what Ted said, I, the eight week approach has has been really popular with a lot of our colleges since I think Trident Technical College is one of the first colleges that started doing this back in 2013 ish. And there's resources that achieving the dream has put out there that my colleague who worked at Trident put together about how to do this well. One of the things I love about Amarillo is they are willing to say what went wrong. And I really wish more of us could be honest about what we haven't done well and what we learned from that. And that's part that is one tangent that my brain has gone down right now. And after hearing tests talk about Amarillo, one of the things they learned was going to that they piloted that. And they, they, it wasn't the right strategy. They should have gone to scale immediately because it was so challenging for them to pilot it and then figure out how to scale it and I just love that they share that and how open they are about talking about that kind of thing. But no, that was not my original point. But as a researcher, I too would really like people to be more open about what does not work. It's really, really challenging to get people to share things that they feel failed. And I think that that does a disservice to the rest of the community because we don't know what challenges to be looking for and what they fall into the same traps right. Right, exactly. Go ahead. This is a weird, this is a important policy indicator our leadership indicate point where we can make a shift right in terms of not penalizing folks for being transparent about their work, but using it as a data point to improve what's working right what's working right like because failures are data points and lessons like how do we improve unless we know what's going wrong so I just wanted to make that point so I joined you Julia and the aim and fire on that 100%. Yeah, so to bring back up the funding piece again I think people who provide funds for these initiatives in different ways either be that the federal government be that state government be that colleges themselves be that fund philanthropy like thinking about how to structure your funding, your funding so that if the work does not work, actually figuring out why I'm being able to disseminate that in and of itself and not necessarily punishing the people who have the idea tried to implement it in the first maybe it's a good idea. I don't know. Um, so with our last few minutes here I'd love to hear some final thoughts from each of you, particularly about your work and how it and how it intersects with this and any last things you want to make sure you leave colleges with around and rolling adults and supporting them through to completing their particular programs. So we'll go ahead and start with test this time. Thanks Iris. I think I shared a little bit about this at the top of the call but the thing that intersects the most in Aspen's current work is that we're really thinking about post graduation success and equity. But really thinking about kind of credentials of value as it factors into enrollment. And just because we know that you know many students are coming in lacking clarity of purpose about their programs of study, they're graduating with credentials maybe that are aligned to low wage work. And they are not, you know, sustaining themselves and their families. And also we know that this is impacting students of color and low income students. I don't want to say the most but they're a large kind of portion of this and that they're less likely than others to even graduate, much less being able to think about kind of graduating into what type of job. So that's something that's been on our minds is thinking about kind of success and equity in terms of enrollment, but very excited to hear kind of other thoughts from folks on the panel today. So maybe I'll turn it over to one of them but thank you again. Thanks for being here to us we really appreciate it. Michelle you want to go next. Sure. So I work at the National Fund really is around centering race equity and all of our work right and so we work across the board obviously we work with employers. We look at how we activate employers for improved outcomes we talk about who invest solutions and also equipping workers for success and systems change so all those, all of those threads are really critical to creating space for people to live the kind of lives that they want right so it's really important that when and that we lift up what's working around jobs and opportunities that create space for people to make little wages like a little wage and have meaningful lives and not being tracked into one particular job because that's what's there but it's because what people want to do and so the difference between being in a job because you wanted to and what you have to do is like, really huge when you start thinking about having the kind of life that you want right and so creating equitable access to that is just important and so when again looking at the playbook. The community colleges make those shifts small shifts sometimes they're small I think I remember when you first talked about what happened at the college with the SAP policy I think I said to you like oh I've got chills because it's just like little tiny things can make big improvements and shift the trajectory for a whole squad of people and so looking for that are the ways that we move equity forward right and so it's not always like the big sexy things that people like think of but sometimes the tiny shifts and so looking for those tiny shifts and we can all we can all work for and adjust those kinds of things in our work so that's what I have to share. Here here Michelle I particularly like the idea that you don't need a giant investment to do a lot of this work a lot of it is simply fixing the way you communicate with your students like just making that more clear and concise and understanding how to re-engage with federal financial aid like those are things that anyone can do you don't need a lot of money. You need time so I will say that but you don't necessarily need to. So Julia go ahead. When we brief I know we're coming up to the hour. I think the one thing I have to plug an event that we have coming up focused on adult learners that I'd love you all to participate in, and I'll share that in the chat. I think the last the thing that I would love to leave you with is having an open door to all learners does not automatically translate into access for everyone in your community. When we talk about access it is even the dream we're not just talking about access to your institution we're talking about access to opportunity to social mobility to community vibrancy to things you want in your life not necessarily need as you say you distinguish between shell. And so I want to make sure that as we think through how we do this work for adult learners that we're making sure that we're not just assuming that an open door leads to access. I think that is a great note and an open door doesn't necessarily mean access it doesn't mean access to something that's valuable. And so that's up to us to make sure that it does equal access to economic mobility a good life and what people want their lives to look like so with that I want to thank you all once again for joining us I want to thank everyone who participated here today I want to thank ECMC for funding the project and I want to thank student ready strategies for helping us implement it. And with that, thank you all and have a wonderful rest of your day.


and welcome to Descalade Ada. Hey, are you cool cats and kittens? I hope you're keeping cool, as I mentioned, on this sweltering hot July evenings that we're having.  So I got some stuff to show off on the Descalade Ada, and we've also got a very timely, great search for those of you who are dealing with part shortages. Don't forget, if you're trying to find an alternative or a part, you can't, because silicon shortage, drop us a link on Discord, and we'll maybe we'll cover it on a great search and help you find the part you need so you can get your stuff made, because that's what we're all about, making stuff. Some logistic stuff. The reason we're late is we're hanging out with Helen from Carrot Supply. Super cool, drinks like a fish. Yeah, and Helen will tweet up some photos from the Adafruit Factory and more. She's our first guest from the world in the last 18 months, and we really like crowd supply, so. It's so cool to see her, and we chat about things that we can do together and ways to promote more makers and engineers than doing business. Next up, thank you G3 Holiday. The Ada box was epic. We tried really hard. It's harder and harder to do Ada box, so thank you for appreciating it, because a lot goes into it each time, and it's hard to get parts, it's hard to ship stuff, and there was a heavy lift, so thank you. Yeah, I thought, I always think every box that goes out, I personally think they're really cool, and you know, 99% of people think they're cool too. You know, I get it, it's not for everybody, but that's what I think makes it so special. If it was just a box of kittens and ice cream, I think everyone would love it. Well, it would be melted ice cream in a dead cat. Ah, I guess so, all right, what's wrong? People would really not like that. That's what I'm trying to say. So, go get Wednesday unboxing. Yeah, Wednesday's unboxing. Now I'm paging everyone Wednesday we're gonna do Chantel. And also, since the title of this was The Desk of Lady Aida Hot Summer Sunday Stemmas, I would like to point out that hot girl summer, hot girl summer is a meme, originating with rapper Megan V. Stallion, and it's about feeling confident in who you are, having fun, looking good while you're doing it, often involves women posting selfies in summery swag and style using the caption. I heard it's hot girl summer.  You should at least say where it came from and no one ever does, but we will. But don't worry, someone is still gonna not like me about this.  Well, I'm just saying you could be perfect nowadays. It doesn't matter. There's always gonna be someone, but we'll always be, I'd rather be honest and perfect. That's right. So that's where I'm at right now. I posted this up. Yeah, some people are not even familiar with this meme, and that's good for you because that means you're not gonna get people attacking you. It's not from this year, it's from last year. Yeah, when someone says hot girl summer, or hot, you know. So I saw someone- You can have hot boy summer too. So I saw someone in a 3D printing community say it's hot nozzle summer. Yeah. That's super cool. And then someone says, you're stealing this meme or whatever. So my opinion is, why not just put the credit for where it came from, and then everyone could be happy, but no one is ever happy. No one's ever happy, and that's where it's a hot summer Sunday. So let's jump in, and maybe you know, let's actually start with the computer because I'm trying to show off some stuff. This is a hot matrix summer. So people from the previous Adaboxes, remember I did the matrix portal, which was a SAMD51 plus ESP32 airlift. And so we got like the power of the SAMD51, the wireless slash, you know, wifi Bluetooth of the ESP32, together on one board plugged into the back of an RGB matrix to make an awesome RGB matrix display that's really easy to program. I think we did a really good job with that design. However, I cannot get SAMD51s. I can barely get SAMD21s. SAMD51s, I'm getting like 60, 70, 80 weekly times. And so I thought instead of just being sad, I don't want to be sad or something. Oh, there's an author, a pretty prolific author that does electronic books that emailed me and they said, I am so screwed. And so usually that's when people email me when they're at the very end of the room. And they're like, how can you fix my problem? And they were trying to figure out their book requires a SAMD. And I'm just like, it's not, I'm just like, you can't do it, but I gave them an out. And so anyways, it's resolved, but. Yeah, no, it's tough. So the previous design, it's actually, you know what, maybe I'll open up the previous design. So the previous design looked like this. I'll show this off. So it was, and let's do the, let's do basic. Okay. So on the front, hold on, I have to turn on the T docus because it looks good. There you go. Whoops. Okay. So this you can see here, here's the SAMD 51 over here. And up here is the ESP 32. And then together, you know, then this plugs into, this is a level shifter and plugs into a matrix on the back. But like I said, you cannot get SAMD 51s right now. Although interestingly ESP, Espresso's doing a pretty good job of keeping their stuff in stock. I'm more confident that I'll get Espresso chips than I'll get SAMD 51s. And luckily, we've just recently ported in the last, you know, six months or so, reported circuit Python and Arduino has a great port for the ESP 32. Not reported, but ported. You didn't report something. I didn't say report. I said ported. You ported, yeah. Sorry. If I meant report, I meant they, we ported circuit Python and Arduino has a port also. I report things, but as a company, Adafruit ports things. Look, I want to get it. How can we report things? Like if we do, do we do port? I would say re-implement a port because report, bad word. Okay. Anyhow. So what I did is I actually ripped up everything and slapped down an ESP 32 S2. Just a lot longer than the ESP 32, but it has, you know, enough PSRAM, which I really like and it has enough processor capability. And then this is kind of the standard war over pinout, the module. So if when there's an ESP 32 S3, which is like the dual core version of the S2, we can drop that in. Only downside is there's not going to be enough, as much storage space because we're using the built-in for megabyte to flash. What I have to do is actually contact Espresso and see if they'll make me a 16 megabyte version of the war over. I would spend a little bit more for that. But otherwise, you know, otherwise it's the same exact, you know, layout for everything. Same pinout down here, stem and QT, stemma, matrix here, level shifting, and then of course the Wi-Fi. So, you know, it's something that I've been meaning to do it when I designed the matrix portal, the ESP 32 S2 was not out yet, so we couldn't use it.  It's like, well, I was going to do it anyways. Now I just kind of have that little bit of the push. I'm also going to redo the PyPortal as well to use the ESP 32 S2. So that's, you know, this is the redesign story. So it's going to be a little bit weird. It doesn't be like stuff not coming out, like it's, you know, I designed a couple of boards and like I can't get chips and some of that can get chips. So it's like, all I can recommend is constantly be looking. Don't, just because you don't see something and it's like, they won't be in stock, keep looking. Sometimes things, you know, pop up. Okay. So speaking of designs that I'm getting back into, let's go to the overhead. And so one design that I have to, oh, that's really dark. Oh boy. I know, it was so bright. One design that I took a break on was, I designed, if people remember, I designed this SCD for 41, sorry, one second. You can do it. Okay. This SCD 41, this is a CO2 humidity and temperature sensor. People love the SCD 30, which is a really great NDIR, CO2 sensor, very popular because people are doing a lot of CO2 sensing for, and air quality. You know, they're trying to prevent the passing of viral particles by increasing air quality. And CO2 is a really good mimic of that. It's, you know, it helps you know if there's enough air flow because you want to get it down to about 400 PPM. I designed this, you know, it's really psyched, ready to ship it and then of course I can get sensors. But then I suddenly, you know, suddenly there's, they're available again. So I picked some up and so this design is going to go out the door. Just on a note though. Just get some of the expressive stuff. Yes. I saw that Espresso is going to be launching a Zigbee ESP. It's an ESP32 H2 based on the Git commits. It's a 96 megahertz wrist five core with a 802.15.14 Zigbee radio, BLE, no Wi-Fi with a 40, 45 GPO. Oh, cool. And someone spotted that because of the GitHub commits. Eagle eyes, I know. Subscribe to people's GitHub Adams. You know, you never know what. Yeah. RSS is still one of the best to investigate. No, this wasn't it. This was Matt Metz, who I happen to know, posted it up on Twitter. So I'm going to put that in the Discord chat. Cool. I know, secret. Well, I'll say something expressive there. They're secretive, but they're not that secretive. Like they do, you know, they do betas and they get people involved. But it's not, look, if you have a 2.4 gigahertz radio and you've been able to tack that on to your chip, of course, you know, Wi-Fi, of course, Bluetooth and of course, ZigBee. All of these are 2.4 gigahertz. Anyways, make sense. So I put links on that. Cool. I might disappear later. One thing I did that's interesting with the SCD-40 is this module can run from three to five volts, but I still stuck a voltage regulator on it. You know, why? You know, when you can run enough through your five volts. Well, first off, this is kind of an expensive sensor. You really don't want to blow this up by accident having a regulator is just a little, another little level of protection in case this is very sensitive to voltage spikes. You know, if you accidentally plug it to VIN on Arduino, it's nine volts, you'll be fine. Another thing is, it's very sensitive to ripples in the power supply. The data sheet sort of says please keep the ripple under 20, 30 millivolts and a low dropout regulator will really help with that. You know, you power this from, you know, not necessarily the quietest power supply, but the highest power supply. So on Arduino, the three volt power supply actually may not be a good choice for this. It might not be able to handle the current requirements, but if you plug it to five volts and then regulate it down to three, you might be good to go. I don't know, whatever. I'm putting some jumpers on the back if you don't want that. And then another STEMI QT design that I'm finally wrapping up, and this one is just like hell of a right, is, I think we chatted about this is the IS31FL3741. This is an RGB, this is the chip here. It's an RGB LED driver. So these are bare LEDs.  So, you know, this, there's just kind of missing one row and this LED doesn't have a lot of pins and this one like didn't make it at all. I just kind of didn't feel like, you know, because if the grid in general works, I know it's working fine because this is a grid matrix layout. The pick in place will do a much better job than my hand tweezing. If you really like watching people hand tweeze small RGB LEDs, check out Greg Deville's social media. He's definitely a beast. He'll just like, he'll do thousands. I'm not, I'm much lazier. I have a machine. I want the machine to do it. I just want to get this prototype done enough that I can hand it off to the pick in place. So it looks good. So just doing a little RGB test with this. And this is, we chatted about this a while ago. You know, if you want to make a breakout with a lot of RGB LEDs after 10 or 20, it flips over to being more a better idea to use a LED driver and raw LED chips, which we covered on the great search, then neopixels or dot stars, because neopixels and dot stars are quite expensive individually compared to their RGB LEDs, which are like a penny or two a piece. So that's what I've been working on. So is there any questions or we'll go into the great search? What's the name of the LED driver? This is the IS-31FL-3741. All right, and Skirr placed 450 neopixels in front of me. Total of 500 last week. Who did? Skirr. Okay. He chatted a lot. Yeah. All tweezed. Yeah, these were, yeah. Once you, you know, it's like, you know, I can rework some of these, but eventually I'm just like these on one. On one hand it's therapeutic. On the other hand, just be careful. Cause like that's a lot. I find my eyes get a little twitchy if I do too. I just want to get this up and running again, you know, the pick and place will do an excellent, excellent job at this much better than my acting out. I have no problem tweezing, believe me. I tweeze, tweeze, tweeze. I think it's soothing, but you might not be able to do it longer. This is what nine, 13 by nine LEDs. So what's that? Yeah. Wow. Someone placed 1100 805 LEDs a day before and they were using a vacuum pickup tool. Y'all are committed. I like, I like, we've discovered a thing which is the LED placement, you know, the LED placement group. Someone kind of said the same thing. I always wonder the new risk five chip from espresso so nice. I hope it has native USB so it'll work at circuit Python. Yeah, me too. And I know it doesn't. It doesn't. It has a, it has a weird, not weird, but special debug only USB. It's not a true native USB. But I think they will eventually, I would look, I would love to see a native USB risk five. We'll get there. Because I think it would be great for Arduino or circuit Python. I think one of the things that's going to hold back risk five is the USB sport. But once they do it, there'll be a menagerie of boards that come out. I just, look, I would, as soon as risk five uses USB, we'll have 10 USB, I guarantee you, we'll have 10 USB for it. And then once there's two USB, you know, it makes, it makes easier to do Arduino and makes easier to circuit Python. We've been joined the risk five like coalition and I thought that would be like a track. Yeah. But it wasn't. I tried. Okay. All right. Is it great search time? It's time for the great search. Where is it? All right. The great search is brought to you by Digikey. Thank you. Digikey and Ada Fruitley. The user skills of an engineer to navigate the Digikey site to find the things that you're looking for more so and ever that's the most important thing because planet Earth ran out of parts. I know. We have a lot of sand, but we don't have any silicon. So what's the great search this week? Okay. This week's great search. So one of the nice things about the great search is what I do is during the week, when I'm struggling with finding a part, because every week there's a part that I can't get and me and the purchasing team, we use our wits to find alternative parts, which is an engineering skill. You're speccing the parts one thing, but then being able to find alternative spec parts is important also. It's really easy to get the exact same component every time, but eventually that component is not available and that's happening a lot. So let's talk today about one of the most jelly bean components we use, which is the BSS 138 dual. Can you say what jelly bean is for the folks who aren't in this industry? Jelly bean, I don't know where this came from. I picked it up from someone, but jelly bean means it's a part that's so common that it's made by multiple places like a 7805, linear regulator, right? Very, very common. Made by multiple companies. It's a well-spec. It's not a unique part. Like I was showing off the IS-31FL3741. That's a very specific chip. If anyone knows why it's called jelly bean, put it in the chat because this week coming up, LeVar Burton is hosting Jeopardy and I know this is gonna be a question. Oh, it's totally been a question. Electronic component history. Yeah, but if you know why it's called jelly bean are the origins of it. No Googling allowed, because I can Google later, but I've heard this too, and I heard Bunny say it to me like, I don't know. I think they picked it up from Bunny. I heard it from Bunny like 15 years ago. So I have a feeling this is an older industry term. But anyways, it'll probably be the final jeopardy of this. Passage of jelly beans, basically it's the things that you sprinkle that are not, you know, there's the Wi-Fi chip, the Bluetooth chip, the expressive chip. This is like, you know, there's only one place to get it. Then there's jelly beans. Okay, so the jelly bean part we're talking about today is the dual BSS138N channel MOSFET. So this part, as shown here, we use tens and tens of thousands, like 100,000 a year easily, because they go on to every one of our breakout as level shifters. We use them to level shift I-squirt C. You know, pull-ups on either side. Why do we do level shifting I-squirt C? Because when we sell sensors, a lot of sensors, like 99,999% of sensors and devices are 3.3 volt logic and power. Although, you know, we do have a couple 1.8 volt ones as well, which is important. We'll actually talk about that. And I wanna make sure that people can plug in their boards into an Arduino Uno or a Mega or a Zero or, you know, an ESP32. You don't know if it's gonna be five volts or three volts on the other side. And we want to shift the I-squirt C logic and nothing beats the simplicity and price of this. Two N channel FETs, four pull-up resistors, and you're golden. In fact, this is NXP in their kind of famous I-squirt C level shifting techniques in bus designs. It's like a tome, a famous work.  And then it shows, you know, this is basically what's going on. You have I-squirt 10 either side and this does a great job and this is a rock, rock, rock solid design. I mean, I've used this hundreds of thousands. I have some breaking news. Oh, you want it? Jellybean dates from the early days of Intel and Fairchild Semi-conductor referring to common chips. Gordon Moore may have coined the term jellybeans. You know, if it's not true, you've totally tricked me. Well, if we're gonna start misinformation, let's just start with that. This is the best, this is way better than most. Right? Let's do this. Okay, so the, you know, I, the Beats is 138, I've really liked it and I've used it before. It's kind of famous, people use it a lot. And I like the dual FET because, you know, you need two. So why not just have it in two? So this is the, hold on, let's go with that one. This is the piece. It's a SOC 363. It's small. It's easy to pick in place. It's, you can hand solder it. It's, it does the job. It's great, except when you cannot get any.  And then if you look, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, all out of stock.  There's always like a million of these on stock. Cause again, they're so jelly bean, they're used everywhere. Time to freak out and give up. No, time to use our great searching power to find an alternative. And note that this is a jelly bean, the BSS you see it's made by MCC and diodes and next period. This is the one situation where not only is the, I tend to buy the next period part, but all the alternative sources for the jelly bean are also out, right? So it's not like, oh, just find it from another maker. We actually have to find something that has a different part number, but the same functionality. So let's, you know, I like to use the product attributes as a way to pick out which ones to get. So let's go with active, dual end channel. I'm not gonna necessarily pick the logic level gate. The drain to source voltage act, it's 60, you don't need that much, right? Obviously we're not dealing with more than a couple volts. I don't want to be specific about the RDS on or the current drain, because again, it's a little flexible with that, but I am really picky that I want to be surface mount and I want it to be a SOT 363 because I need it to be drop in replacement. So let's view similar, and you got about 118 options. Since I really need to, you know, I need to have this in stock, I'm just gonna pick in stock immediately to pair down the options. So the next question is like, what of all of these things are important? Well, RDS on is something that you care about when you're dealing with like a power transistor when you have a lot of current passing through because the RDS on determines the voltage drop across the drain and source. In this case, it's logic level shifting.  I don't care about that. Also current, there's almost no current passing through here. This is a logic level. This is, you know, milliamp maybe when the, it gets pulled down. Almost nothing. So, you know, power max, the temperature, a lot of these things are actually not important, but there is one thing that is important, which is the VGS. Why? Because when you look at here, this voltage, especially for the low voltage, you used to be able to turn this on and off based on the lowest voltage that you will encounter on the bus.  I like to have it a little bit lower than just on the edge, even though it's the max, in case your, you know, your power supply droops and it's not exactly 3.3 and it's three. So you want it to have a little bit lower. So maybe 2.6 volts. However, we use these transistors also to logic level shift 1.8 volts, like the SGP30 gas sensor, a couple other sensors we use are 1.8 volt. We have 2.6 volt logic. There's a couple, not a lot, but enough that I want to make sure that I don't mess things up for them because believe me, I have accidentally placed a two and 7,002 dual-fat and it did not work on low voltage level shift. I think it was a 7,002. I don't know the exact product number, but basically it didn't have a low enough VGS. The turn on voltage was too high. It didn't turn on and off.  Yeah, we get to the point when we show stuff on the desk of Lady Aida, we make sure we purchase it before we talk about it. Yeah, I already bought it. You'll see like, why are you showing this stuff? There's only 5,000 stuff. Yeah, because I already bought like 50,000 stuff. We learned our lesson. I learned my lesson. Mistakes for Made, lessons were learned. Lessons were learned. It's a new segment, so we're not doing it this week because it's Aida Box, but the new segment is called Mistakes for Made, Lessons are Learned. So this will help all of you out there thinking you need to be perfect, you don't, just be honest. Okay, so this, what I liked about the BSS138 is it has this VGS you see here, 1.6 volts.  And you'll notice that actually there's nothing here that's exactly 1.6. That's why you don't want to be, I didn't click that off because it's like, it just can't be larger than 1.6. So let's select everything less than that. And I don't really care about the VDS or anything here, and nothing else here is that important, to be honest. And then when you go down here, we actually have a couple options. Again, these are all in stock. You'll note that none of them have hundreds of thousands of stock because I kind of purchased a bunch of them, but they all have the same package. And here's the good news, all these have the same pinout. The dual fit pinout is a standard pinout. Like they are symmetric and equivalent. So yes, I'll check the datasheet, but you can, in this case, just trust me, I already looked it up. So what I did was, I only really care about price. In this case, because the specifications are that important. And so I actually found the alternative, which was an NX138, which is actually, I like the look of that, right? BSS138, this is the NX138. This is kind of a good feeling about it. It matches the specs, but I also like it when they reuse the part numbers. It's a little bit of a hint, kind of telling you, like this is going to be similar as a drop-in replacement. So this is the part. So this is, you know, there's still some in stock.  So they do have a question about it. So sir, pull-up resistors on the board, I assume I don't need to add them. You know, we put very weak pull-ups, 10K, which is good for, you know, 100 kilohertz I squared C. If you want to run one megahertz, I would recommend adding another one. But 10K is a nice balance of you're not going to hang your I squared C bus, it'll run at 100 kilohertz or 400 kilohertz, which is like kind of, you know, most default buses when that. But also if you put multiple of them in parallel, you know, because you plug in I squared C, multiple QT boards, you can plug, you know, up to five of them, and then you'll still only have a 2K pull-up, you know, and that's what it'll look like to the host, which is the standard pull-up size. So what I'd like is you can put like five to 10, and the host will get overburdened by the pull-up. So I'd like 10K, I'm like a 10K kind of girl. All right, someone has, I think this might be a future great search, or it's a general question, I'm not quite sure. It says, how did you use piezoelectric actuators for replacement parts for in-body image stabilized cameras? Oh goodness, those are going to be really custom. I really think what you should do is try to, I would actually go on eBay, to be honest, and see if you can find them. Yeah, that's also camera repair. I think that's in the camera repair category, where it's like- It's a different thing, but you want to find people who are throwing away, cameras with like broken lenses or broken mainboards, and then you can maybe recycle the piezo actuator, but like, oh yeah, that's gonna be really neat. I feel like there's an industry around this that I don't know about. It's custom, I think piezo is super custom. All right, so that's the great search. Thanks everybody. Where? I think that is it. Just a little bit of a programming note. We just sent, so all the eight of boxes are getting processed to ship. So if you have one, well, if you have one, don't tell anyone what it is, but if you ordered one, we're wrapping up the last few. We still have a thousand to ship. We're getting through them, believe me. It's been a journey. Yeah. You can, I mean like, you know, you don't spoil it, but you could figure out which, what's in this eight of box and... Look, I don't try to, it's not super, super secret. Yeah, I mean like, this is kind of gear for kids too. But if you want, you can still sign up for eight of box like this second because we're about to close any shipments soon. So this might be the last. We are wrapping up early, early next week. Yeah. We're like Monday. So, you know, if you look around and you want to figure out what it is you can, and then you can still get one, like right now. Like if you order one today, you would possibly, it'd be shipping by the end of the week. So that's kind of a big deal. Other question that came up or a request. We'd love to see a four to two milliamps with maybe a 16 volt source and a stem connector. Yeah, I haven't done a lot of four to 20. I gotta look into that stuff. Okay. So in order to get three of the box and them and their daughter assembled it, okay. That's good. And yeah, someone who lives close to New York. Yeah, sorry, you're the last one too. We actually do a little, it's not a hundred percent but we try to ship the ones that are far this way. Yeah, cause it's UPS ground. So that if you're on the opposite side of the country, it's not 100% but we try. So that because if you're close to us, you're gonna get it the next day and so we wanna kind of try it. We're trying to make it so it's like if you're the last person shipped and you're all the way across the country, it takes another week. So that's, you know. All right. Meh. All right, thanks everybody. Thanks everybody. Just go lady at a, bye folks. Have a great week.


My name is Reem Malik, and in this presentation, I will discuss considerations in autonomous applications and how you can accelerate your development using Asina's inertial navigation solutions. Our world, today and especially tomorrow, is comprised of machines that move. Many of these machines need to move autonomously without a human to guide them. Underlying any autonomous technology is the promise and necessity of superior safety. The technology in an autonomous vehicle helps it navigate the world around it. To do it safely and precisely is of utmost importance. The increasingly sophisticated functions of AVs necessitate that each vehicle have reliable knowledge of its position. Perception sensors see the world around the vehicle and are often the primary source of information for active decision making and vehicle control. Perception systems include lidar, radar, cameras, infrared and others. These are all combined with massive compute power and deep learning algorithms. Guidance and inertial navigation systems inform vehicles where in the world they are and how to navigate to their destination. These systems consist of GNSS, GPS receivers and an INS inertial navigation system, which includes inertial motion sensors and inputs from odometry and steering sensors. An inertial measurement unit, or IMU, is an electronic module that integrates multiple inertial sensors to generate acceleration and angular rate measurements along multiple axes or degrees of freedom. A six degree of freedom IMU consists of three-axis gyroscope and a three-axis accelerometer. Measurements from these sensors taken over time are combined using an extended Kalman filter to make highly accurate calculations of position, velocity and attitude or orientation. Attitude heading and reference systems combine magnetometer readings with IMU data to calculate heading, roll and pitch. An INS adds GPS to track the position, orientation and velocity of an object. In traditional vehicle applications, the guidance system is providing destination navigation assistance along a route. Road level accuracy of a few meters is adequate. In a typical AV application, the INS works in conjunction with HD maps and perception systems to not only navigate a route but also for localization. Localization enables critical functions such as lane keeping and obstacle avoidance. Precise absolute position as well as relative position accuracy is important. This means you need lane level accuracy of under 10 centimeters. So when all systems are operating normally with nominal environmental conditions, good satellite coverage, an INS with a traditional automotive grade IMU provides sufficient positioning accuracy and reliability for safe operations. However, environmental conditions are often less than ideal. GPS signals are lost or degraded due to urban canyons, tunnels, overpasses, multi-path errors, poor satellite coverage. You may encounter conditions such as precipitation or reflective surfaces which can compromise the performance or integrity of data from camera, LiDAR and radar. In all cases, it's still imperative that the autonomous vehicle is able to reliably continue to navigate, safely maneuver to a stop and or request intervention. Fortunately, the one external factor we can always rely on to remain constant is Earth's gravity. Regardless of environmental conditions, the IMU will keep sensing and provide position data. Using the appropriate level of IMU performance can be the difference between making it through a tunnel or not. The task of navigating when perception sensor and GNSS data is unreliable is a process called dead reckoning. Here, the navigation system relies on other sensors, primarily the IMU, to continue to steer the vehicle safely. Menoms-based inertial sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers have long been used in vehicles as discrete safety components. For collision detection, airbag deployment and electronic stability control. High-end IMUs using MEMS or fiber optic technology are commonly utilized in aircraft and tactical guidance systems and they offer performance way higher than traditional MEMS sensors. As autonomous vehicle technology and safety standards progress, it's becoming apparent that the positioning accuracy and precision required from IMUs and INS is approaching those for aerospace and tactical grade devices. Consistent, reliable centimeter level accuracy rather than meter level accuracy. Until recently, this level of performance and safety integrity for IMUs has been cost prohibitive for high volume markets such as automotive. However, we are now seeing innovations in design and manufacturing certainly from companies like ST that make high performance IMU technology accessible for a wide range of autonomous and industrial use applications. ASINA leverages ST sensor and processor technology to deliver high performance autonomous navigation solutions such as the open IMU-330. This is a triple redundant, six-dough IMU, fully calibrated and stable over temperature. It's offered on ASINA's open source development platform. The triple redundancy enables fault tolerance for safety critical applications. The 1.5 degree per hour bias stability ensures higher accuracy for longer duration dead reckoning during GNSS coverage gaps. IMUs like this with built-in redundancy provide even higher precision estimates with further benefits of safety, integrity and reliability for the entire AV system and sensor fusion network. Another exciting trend in precise positioning is the emergence and expansion of RTK or real-time kinematics. RTK improves GPS positioning accuracy by more than a factor of 100 from meter level accuracy down to centimeter level. RTK technology refines the position data received from GPS signals by correcting for ionospheric and tropospheric delays, multi-path, satellite clock and ephemeral errors. Network RTK systems use survey grade base stations in a 50 kilometer radii which broadcast corrections wirelessly to rovers. The corrections are fused with GPS and IMU data through complex algorithms and common filters to provide a final position specific to the rover. Until recently RTK and services such as precise point positioning have come with a hefty price tag and long acquisition times. They have been used primarily in agriculture, land survey, construction applications for off-road vehicles in geofenced areas. The proliferation of autonomous technology and the need for precise positioning is given rise to new RTK solutions that are scalable across geographies and are economical, easy to integrate and optimized for AV sensor fusion. Cassina is excited to introduce our RTK positioning platform which includes the open RTK-330 hardware and our OpenARC streaming software. The OpenRTK-330 is a high-performance and cost-effective INS module powered by ST's Tessio 5 dual-band GNSS chipset. It's integrated with a triple redundant IMU like the IMU-330 and an RTK precise positioning engine. It has an open source framework which provides flexibility for developing your own customized applications. OpenARC is a proprietary GNSS correction network built to serve the needs of modern automotive and robotics applications that require precise performance, security and reliability while remaining affordable. Some more details about the OpenRTK-330 module. As mentioned, it integrates a GNSS receiver, high-performance IMU, GNSS corrections and a precise positioning engine with embedded INS sensor fusion algorithms. It includes an entry client and server for connecting to OpenARC or other streaming services as well as a web server. Peripherals are many including Ethernet, CANBUS, UART which can be used for development as well as final system integration. This product is powerful enough that it can be used out of the box as a standalone INS with OpenARC GNSS corrections and flexible enough that you can embed and customize your own algorithms and applications. Typically, it would be used on a rover but you can even program it to be a mini base station. The OpenRTK evaluation kit provides access to all the peripherals via connectors and also comes with an ST-Link debugger for development. Used along with Asina's open source development tools, it's a convenient platform to quickly simulate and develop your application as well as log, test and evaluate data. Asina's open source development platform works with our OpenIMU and OpenRTK hardware and includes online tools, IDE, GitHub and a community forum. For the development environment, there is an Asina extension for Visual Studio Code which includes all the published code and applications which are also available on GitHub. You can use these applications as they are or as a starting point for developing your own. Navigation Studio is an online GUI for viewing real-time data which can also be used to log and export data. Documentation and details for each product and application is available through our website where our community forum is also a great resource. Please visit our virtual booth at the conference for more resources. I'm also excited to share some real-time drive test results using the OpenRTK 330 INS. We used a Novitel span CPT unit for our reference to gather data and statistics on position accuracy. This drive consisted of open sky conditions with multiple overpasses. As you can see, with the OpenRTK you can achieve under 3 cm of horizontal position accuracy, 95% of the time and under 11 cm, 99% of the time using only GNSS, GNSS corrections and wheel odometry. While open sky conditions are ideal for receiving a reliable GNSS signals, tunnels are the opposite. This is where your IMU performance kicks in for dead reckoning. In this tunnel test, we again use Novitel as a reference and are also comparing the OpenRTK to another product on the market. Driving through a 1.5 km long tunnel which is just over 1.5 minutes of GNSS outage, we are able to maintain a position accuracy of under 3 m for most of the drive. The other solution, on the other hand, starts to drift almost immediately due to a less stable IMU. 3 m sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that this test is isolating the accuracy of the INS engine. Most automotive AV or ADAS applications would also be using perception for lane keeping and navigation. Having confidence in the IMU and positioning engine performance adds an extra level of reliability and safety for the overall system position accuracy. To wrap up, I would like to reiterate how essential it is for any autonomous vehicle to precisely know its location, its destination, and how to get there. The combined capabilities of advanced IMUs and RTK promise to democratize inertial navigation systems that provide the high performance, safety, and enhanced integrity that is vital for scalable and secure autonomous operation. Casino works with great companies like ST in striving to provide you with high performance solutions and platforms that are easy to use for development and system integration to make precise navigation easy. Thank you for your time. Please reach out if you have any questions and don't forget to visit our virtual booth for additional resources. Thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference.