In this report, the authors examine the evolution of the Tristate Energy and Advanced Manufacturing (TEAM) Consortium from 2017 to 2025 and highlight how regional partnerships can tackle persistent workforce and economic development challenges in rural regions. The authors document TEAM’s promising practices so that others who are aiming to build or strengthen cross-sector collaborations can adapt and implement those practices.

Sustaining Strong Rural Partnerships and Interventions to Serve Student and Regional Workforce Development Needs

Rita T. Karam, Marwa AlFakhri, Melanie A. Zaber, Elaine W. Leigh

ResearchPublished Dec 1, 2025

Rural regions across the United States are facing enduring challenges in aligning postsecondary education with industry and workforce development to advance economic mobility. The Tristate Energy and Advanced Manufacturing (TEAM) Consortium—which spans 45 counties across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia—brings together ten community colleges and 14 workforce development boards (WDBs) to serve a largely rural region. TEAM’s founders established the consortium to create a durable and collaborative framework that addresses workforce needs and builds resilience and sustainability.

In this report, the authors examine the evolution of the TEAM Consortium from 2017 to 2025 and highlight how regional partnerships can tackle persistent workforce and economic development challenges in rural regions. By documenting TEAM’s strategies, progress, and lessons learned, the authors showcase promising practices that others who are aiming to build or strengthen cross-sector collaborations can adapt and implement. This report is intended for such institutions as colleges, employers, and WDBs that seek to build partnerships to meet regional labor market needs and for funders who support such collaborative initiatives.

Key Findings

  • TEAM’s experience illustrates that regional partnerships evolve in cycles—they can mature, stall, and later regain momentum through adaptability and renewed alignment.
  • TEAM initially gained strength by engaging community colleges with a strong history of collaboration, which allowed the consortium to shape a unified vision and align goals, pool limited resources, and expand workforce infrastructure across counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
  • In its early years, TEAM deliberately engaged employers indirectly through WDBs to protect colleges’ established relationships. While this approach built trust among partners, it limited the real time industry input needed to meet their needs.
  • TEAM’s collaboration protocols and partner engagement fostered a strong culture of transparency that drove rapid growth in the consortium’s early years through diversified funding streams.
  • A flexible tristate partnership structure sustained TEAM even as engagement fluctuated amid funding shifts and pandemic disruptions, and the consortium was supported by in kind communication rather than project specific funding.
  • TEAM’s coordinated efforts produced tangible outcomes, such as articulated career pathways in energy and advanced manufacturing and shared marketing platforms. However, pandemic disruptions and funding changes shifted attention from joint product development to networking and information exchange.
  • Some TEAM structures and programs are now institutionalized within partnering institutions, sustaining the consortium through designated staff, in kind support, and aligned curricula with TEAM pathways.
  • TEAM’s long-term policy influence will depend on renewing joint product development and demonstrating measurable student and workforce impacts. Currently, it lacks a framework to monitor and track impact.

Recommendations

  • In addition to using WDBs for labor market insight, partnerships should establish direct channels for employer participation, including headquarter and regional employers, in strategic planning and program design to ensure that initiatives remain closely aligned with evolving industry needs.
  • Partnerships should implement a communication plan that regularly reinforces the shared partner vision, connects activities to strategic goals, and uses structured agendas and facilitation practices to maximize input and collaboration among partners.
  • Partnerships should establish protocols and formal transition procedures that document their history, mission, strategic priorities, and key responsibilities to ensure knowledge transfer, preserve institutional memory, and maintain operational continuity during staff or leadership turnover.
  • Partnerships should maintain funding or in-kind support for essential staff roles beyond leadership to prevent operational bottlenecks.
  • Partnerships should pursue a diversified portfolio of multiyear, high-value funding opportunities by engaging state agencies, industry groups, and other relevant stakeholders. Efforts should focus on braiding multiple funding streams—public, private, and philanthropic—to create a coordinated and sustainable flow of resources over time.
  • Partners should collaboratively design and implement partnership-wide initiatives—whether focused on product development or joint programming—that directly advance shared goals and priorities.
  • Partnership should monitor implementation for consistency, student outcomes, and workforce impacts of partnership activities and interventions.
  • Partnership should pair outreach and networking with data on impact to position the consortium as a trusted expert informing regional- and state-level workforce policy discussions.

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Karam, Rita T., Marwa AlFakhri, Melanie A. Zaber, and Elaine W. Leigh, Sustaining Strong Rural Partnerships and Interventions to Serve Student and Regional Workforce Development Needs. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4282-1.html.
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This research was sponsored by the ECMC Foundation. This work was conducted in the Education and Employment Program of RAND Education, Employment, and Infrastructure.

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