S02E03 – Rural Education Collaboratives, Partnerships, and the methods for organizing the community of the willing. An interview with Ms. Shannon Nicholas at Colorado Succeeds and Dr. Landon Mascareñaz at Colorado Education Initiative.

For this episode of the Rural Voice, our cohosts Drs. Bigham and Pratt interview Dr. Landon Mascareñaz and Ms. Shannon Nicholas about rural planning, partnerships, and connections between business and education and ways to capitalize on partnerships to better serve rural school districts. They discuss their work and advocacy in Colorado to connect rural school districts with partnerships that align market needs with educational goals. This includes how rural districts of different sizes capitalize on outcomes, goals, and building graduate profiles, including the larger community in its deployment. Our guests share how career-connected learning and partnerships have helped many schools, but at times, lacked connections to rural communities. They discuss creating a graduate profile for students, family, and community to help make education successful. They discuss many of their programs in giving schools and school districts the tools needed to generate innovative and novel approaches. They also discuss methods for organizing partnerships of the willing. Ms. Shannon Nicholas is Chief of Staff at Colorado Succeeds, where she works closely with the President and the Board of Directors on the organization's strategic priorities. In her role, she oversees the communications, advocacy, and program implementation teams. Dr. Landon Mascareñaz is Vice President of Community Partnership at Colorado Education Initiative (CEI), where he leads community engagement, family partnership, equity, and policy initiatives.