Calhoun County

Starr Commonwealth broadens its reach through partnership with GVSU's Omni initiative

Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.
 
ALBION, MI — Starr Commonwealth’s efforts to provide adults with the tools they need to work with children who experience trauma is expanding through a partnership with Grand Valley State University’s Omni initiative.
 
An agreement was signed by leaders at GVSU and Starr, based in Albion, on August 12 at GVSU's DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health. This is the first agreement between the Omni initiative and an organization. The other partnerships are with community colleges throughout Michigan, including Kellogg Community College, Jackson College, Northwestern Michigan College, Southwestern Michigan College, and a campus in Detroit at GVSU’s Detroit Center.
 
The agreement that GVSU has with Starr has the same mission as the community college’s partnering with GVSU.
 
“We are partnering with community colleges to bring GVSU programs to their institutions with a focus on rural and underserved areas across the state,” says Kara Van Dam, Vice President and Chief Executive of GVSU Omni.
 
Through this format, students can earn a Bachelor’s degree from GVSU on the campus of the community college where they earned an Associate’s degree.
 
Each of the community colleges partnering with GVSU’s Omni offers a Bachelor’s degree in one area of focus. As an example, Van Dam says KCC and Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac, the most recent community college partner to sign on with GVSU Omni, are offering a Bachelor of Applied Science. 

The professional innovation leadership and business majors are offered on the KCC and SMC campuses by GVSU. This builds on associate’s degrees earned at both community colleges and gives students the ability to continue their education and pursue a bachelor’s degree from GVSU without having to travel to the GVSU campus.
 
r. Caelan Soma, Chief Clinical Officer with Starr“We are looking for other opportunities to focus on healthcare. Students can earn a Bachelor’s degree without relocating to the main GVSU campus,” Van Dam says. “There are many higher education deserts across the state where many people don’t have access to an in-district community college. This enables those who start their educations at a community college to earn a degree from GVSU without leaving their communities.”
 
The advanced degree courses are taught by local faculty who work for GVSU. The Starr model differs in that it will be an online format providing GVSU with the ability to offer online content created for Starr’s Children of Trauma & Resilience course onto a platform that will reach a considerably larger audience throughout Michigan. The Starr course focuses on continuing education in relevant fields.
 
Starr’s online content is derived from the knowledge they have amassed through direct practice work with some of the more than 300 youth and families they work with, says Dr. Caelan Soma, Chief Clinical Officer with Starr.
 
“We take what we’ve learned and package it into content to teach other professionals to do what we’ve done,” Soma says. “GVSU is really aligned with our mission. Our online content is something they need and something that we have. The content is very customized engaging and accessible. It used to be that mental health practitioners had to travel to a conference for training which is becoming harder and harder for them to do.”
 
Starr Commonwealth offers clinical to support to over 300 families and youth.Casting this wider net is a necessary component to addressing a National State of Emergency in Children’s Mental Health, she says.
 
“Coupled with this National State of Emergency declared in child mental health is a real shortage of licensed mental health practitioners. There are not enough practitioners for the sheer need. We are really in a space where we can equip anyone and everyone who works with kids with a foundation to learn how trauma impacts kids and the things that any adults can do that will make a difference.”
 
Sharing the training modules she initially created for Starr on the GVSU platforms, is addressing the child mental health crisis and practitioner shortage by providing anyone who interacts with youth, including teachers, law enforcement, and parents with information and resources they may not have otherwise.
 
“Many professionals come out of school where they learn how to be educators, nurses, probation officers, social workers, and counselors but trauma and resilience content is lacking in those curriculums,” Soma says. “We can help infuse this information into their course of study. We would love for these things to be part of the curriculum. We’re sharing this with GVSU so that they can offer it to their students and alumni or their other audiences.”
 
“We serve a number of working professionals who will benefit from having greater access to the Starr training,” Van Dam says.
 
Humble beginnings, far-reaching impact
 
Starr was founded in 1913 by Floyd Starr who purchased a barn and 40 scrub-covered acres in Albion, Michigan, to create a refuge for “homeless, dependent, neglected and delinquent boys,” says information on the organization’s website. “In his heart, he held a revolutionary belief, that 'there is no such thing as a bad child,' and with steadfast conviction and the support of his family, his 'boys,' and the commonwealth he sought to help every child see and believe in their greatness.”
 
“We work with kids in outpatient behavioral health and have kids in our Resilience and Empowerment Center in Calhoun County. We serve between 300 to 400 kids a year,” Soma says.
 
Starr Commonwealth offers clinical to support to over 300 families and youth.A staff of 40 works with these youth, the majority of whom come from Calhoun and Wayne counties. Soma says the organization’s behavioral health facility in Detroit focuses on “very, very traumatized kids.”
 
Starr’s mission, she says, is focused on positively impacting as many children, families, and communities as possible. Soma came to Starr 15 years ago after the company she was working for — The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children — was acquired by Starr which was already producing online learning courses. Soma assumed that role and said the target audience for that content at that time was social workers, counselors, and clinicians.
 
“Then what started to happen is we got teachers saying, ‘I’ve got one social worker and they’re in four other buildings in our school district.’ Our reach largely became educators in schools. We’ve always had a national reach, but our direct service is from Detroit down the I-94 corridor to Albion and the rest of Calhoun County.”
 
The partnership with Omni is “great,” she says because Starr will have access to many more professionals who work with youth across multiple disciplines creating a foundation that they can get into for training in trauma and resilience. This will enable them to access more advanced training that Starr also is available through Starr’s online format.
 
Currently, the Children of Trauma and Resilience course is the only one offered through the Starr/Omni agreement. Soma says Starr is awaiting Continuing Education approval of three additional advanced courses which gives those who take them the opportunity to earn a Trauma and Resilience Specialist certification. This is geared more toward educators, Early Childhood Education practitioners, educators and clinicians.
 
Meeting the Needs of Students Where They Are
 
In 2022, the highest level of education for 24.9 percent of the U.S. was a high school diploma, 9.2 percent had obtained an associate degree, and 37.3 percent had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the Michigan Center for Data Analytics

r. Caelan Soma, Chief Clinical Officer with StarrMichigan slightly exceeded national rates of associate degree attainment but lagged in the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree. In Michigan, the terminal degree for 26.2 percent of residents was a high school diploma, 10.2 percent had obtained an associate degree, and 34.0 percent had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.
 
In Michigan, where the population was 10,037,261 in 2023, 2.5 million adults had no college degree while 2 million have some college but no degree,” Van Dam says, adding that this is close to half of the adult population of Michigan.
 
She says national research shows that students of all ages want flexible schedules and learning opportunities or options to attend in-person classes within 100 miles of their home. If these choices aren’t readily available, she says, people often choose not to go to college at all.
 
“As we have expanded our regional network we’ve looked at communities where there’s a community college but not a four-year institution,” Van Dam says. “It’s important to have local faculty at these locations because students want the flexibility of online learning, but they also want to have someone there to talk to.”
 
Students pursuing a degree through GVSU Omni are paying the same tuition as if they’re accessing the same programs on the main campus. The difference, Van Dam says, is that they’re able to earn their degree online or on the campus of their community college.

“We know there are people who end up not pursuing an education at a local community college because they can’t continue their education there. That’s one of the things we heard from. A lot of community colleges,” she says.
 
Kara Van Dam, Vice President and Chief Executive of GVSU OmniShannon Owen, Director of Omni’s Northern Michigan program, says she believes that Grand Valley’s approach is unlike other programs around the nation and says GVSU’s presence in the state fortifies Omni’s credibility and mission.
 
“What we're hearing from our local constituents and partners is that students are looking for more of a hybrid model with access to both online and face-to-face classes,” Owen said. “They want to establish a community and want to have some in-person components. Not only is the hybrid model helping them connect with other potential or prospective students, but it also helps the students with accountability.”

Van Dam says Omni takes a campus-by-campus approach to make sure “our footprint is very aligned.”
 
“We’re creating that web across the state so that wherever you live in the lower peninsula there’s a GSVU nearby. We look at community colleges to determine where their portfolio and our portfolio align and also look at the labor markets in their geographic locations. We want people to be able to stay in their communities and find meaningful employment.
 
“We try to be very mindful of where there are other higher ed institutions and where are they leaning in. We’re not trying to be on every community college campus.”
 
But, where they are provides cost savings for students, the community college, and GVSU.
 
“One of the things we’ve seen in corporate America are these very lush office spaces that are now mostly empty,” Van Dam says. “All of us in higher education face decisions about our physical space. When we can partner to share facilities that’s a win-win for the students.”
 
As a public education institution, she says GVSU recognizes that many Michiganders have not had access to the education they should have.
 
“We have a moral obligation to ensure that they have access and opportunity.”
 

 
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Jane Parikh is a freelance reporter and writer with more than 20 years of experience and also is the owner of In So Many Words based in Battle Creek. She is the Project Editor for On the Ground Battle Creek.