SPRINGFIELD — Western Massachusetts leaders in education and economic development met with Massachusetts Secretary for Labor and Workforce Development Lauren Jones for a summit on how to grow the region’s workforce to meet the needs of today and the future.
The meeting, hosted by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and led by state Sen. Jake Oliveira, identified the need for a robust bridge between education and the workplace, in the form of educational pathways, internships and registered apprenticeships.
Jones said the roundtable was an opportunity for “candid conversations on how we can advance labor force participation, grow our workforce in this region by tapping into the great talent that studies in our higher ed institutions right here.”
Speaking about the higher education partners at the summit, Oliveira said, “They’re the folks that are training the next generation of workers here in Western Massachusetts and I wanted to make sure that our higher ed institutions, our workforce development leaders know that they have a partner in the state government — the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the Executive Office of Education and the Skills Cabinet.” The Massachusetts Workforce Skills Cabinet coordinates the work done in the state offices of Education, Labor and Workforce Development, and Housing and Economic Development to create a cohesive agenda.
Bay Path University President Sandra Doran said, “We need to think about our students. That is our only focus, making sure our students are successful. We know that a good internship leads to a better job and career. Students who have internships frequently start at more of a mid-level position than a junior position, at a higher salary, and I don’t think that’s completely understood. Where you start in the marketplace, the workforce, has a direct relationship to where you’re going to end up.”
Oliveira pointed out, “A lot of their students can’t afford to take the time, that might be working full-time jobs already, to do unpaid internships. To find ways that we can get more paid internships here to students in Western Massachusetts with Western Massachusetts employers, I think is another very important piece.”
Jones said registered apprenticeships, which combine paid, on-the-job training with classroom education, are a “proven model” that has long been used in trades and is becoming more common in other fields. In December 2025, the Healey-Driscoll administration announced $1.8 million in grants for registered apprenticeship opportunities in the field of early childhood education. The funding went to eight organizations to train and place more than 300 apprentices.
Holyoke Community College Vice President of Business and Community Services Jeff Hayden said, “HCC has a fairly strong infrastructure in relation to the current employment market, much of it at the entry level.” However, he said some entry level positions do not offer a family-sustaining wage. “What we need to do is to build pathways so that people can not only get a job but get into a career where they can advance. How do we get them more education and more employment for them to get that sustaining wage.”
One example of such a pathway would be to become a licensed practical nurse. He said the program would be designed for people who work in healthcare fields but not providing direct medical care. The pathway would allow them to further their education and work in the field with the goal of becoming an LPN.
Among the challenges that the summit explored was connecting people with what Oliveira called “the changing economy,” and ensures the workforce continues to meet the future employment demand in various sectors, including quantum computing and food science. He said the colleges and universities in Western Massachusetts are positioned to meet those needs.
Jones said that her office takes “a sector-based strategy” and looks to prepare people entering the workforce for the fields where there are opportunities, such as health care, education and advanced manufacturing in Western Massachusetts. She described it as “building a bridge.”
Jones said it was important in designing a strong network of pathways to “understand what the gaps are in our skills for our current talent as well as our future talent. Linking that to sector strategies and making sure that we are closing that immediate gap that we know employers are looking for today, but also leveraging our workforce infrastructure, our education ecosystem, that we’re preparing our future students for opportunities that we know will also be here down the road.”
Doran said the three principal areas of study at Bay Path University are health care, education and entrepreneurial management. “Our programs are intentionally aligned with needs of this community,” she said, “That’s our mission, for our students and for the region. We are ready to go. We’ve always been career focused, for 125 years. We’ve got the infrastructure, the programming, we’ve got the personnel. We just need more internships.”
Funding will be critical to creating those internships, Doran said, adding, “We’re looking to some of our closest friends and donors. We’re looking for grants. We know that the federal government may not be a partner in this.”
Likewise, Oliveira said funding will be key to making pathways work. “Funding is always a challenge, especially when the federal government is pulling away from a lot of grant programs that go to help institutions of higher education, nonprofits and the workforce side,” Oliveira said. While the state cannot fill that funding gap, he said, “What we can do is identify proven programs that have worked in the past and build off of that.” He cited Westfield State University’s internship incentive program, which provides funding that is matched by the university to provide paid internships as one such proven program.
When it comes to funding, Jones said, “I think it’s an opportunity to understand, what do we want to do, how can we do it and how can we be more efficient with the tools that we do have?”
