This section covers two related topics: identifying community resources for program research, and understanding your community demographics.
Community Resources: Effective program research means contacting employers, Chambers of Commerce, Economic Development Boards, professional organizations, and government agencies. Direct employer contacts (business owners, HR managers, training directors) provide the best hiring data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) is a particularly powerful free resource, offering job titles, training requirements, local and national outlooks, earnings data, and decade-long projections.
Six Demographics to Track:
Census — total population, household composition
Income — affordability of tuition
Ethnicity — language and cultural considerations
Age — program-type alignment
Transportation — access barriers
Employers — existing job market and growth patterns
Core Principle: You can't recruit students you don't understand, and you can't train graduates for jobs that don't exist in your community. Demographics plus employer data equals realistic program planning.
For your Amherst Center context, you already know your community intuitively from years of relational leadership. This module simply provides formal language for the awareness you've been operating from.
