When Misty Fields graduated from high school in Sidney, she did what many of her fellow graduates did — take a job working in the local factory of the Amphenol Corporation. When layoffs came in 2001, she was able to enroll at the Utica School of Commerce in Oneonta with the financial support of the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. TAA, which was allowed to expire in 2022, was designed to help workers who had lost their jobs due to increased imports to train and search for new employment.
After earning her associate’s degree at USC, Fields went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from SUNY Cobleskill. Today, as the director of the Extended and Community Learning Center of SUNY Oneonta, Fields is passionate about her role in connecting job seekers with local employers and opening new untraditional paths to job training and higher education.
I recently met with Fields at the Starbucks on campus to learn more about both the ExCL Center and her work in supporting our local business community. Fields said she sees the ExCL Center, which opened in March of 2024, as “giving the local community another avenue to interact with the college and learn that we want to help them in any way we can. For many, being able to pop-in to the ExCL Center downtown is less intimidating than heading up to the college on the hill.” The center’s offerings include opportunities to audit a college course, enroll in personal and professional enrichment courses, access workforce training programs and even take college courses while still in high school. Through the ExCL Center, Fields is now working to find ways to support our local businesses.
“The college can help businesses and industries, within the local community, to train, upskill or reskill their employees or new employees,” Fields told me. When asked, “How?” she answered, “I meet with businesses to learn and understand where the needs are within certain sectors — whether it is health care, manufacturing or education — and then build training programs that meet their needs.” She said she was excited about the new Manufacturing Boot Camp — the first session of which will begin this September. The session will include two weeks of classroom work covering the soft skills and expectations of working in manufacturing. The third week will be hands-on training at the sites of the program’s local business partners, which include Ioxus, Brooks’ Manufacturing and Custom Electronics. Fields describes the program as “a bridge to micro-credentials and employment and a less challenging, non-traditional path for those looking to continue their education at either SUNY Oneonta or SUNY Broome.” Fields hears from local business leaders that their biggest challenge is employee retention. They are looking for help in reducing employee turnover by hiring workers with the right fit. She said she sees the boot camp program and the registered apprenticeship programs she is now working to develop as ways to help.
When I asked Fields if she feels the ExCL Center, after its first year and-a-half of operation, is meeting expectations, she lit up and said, “Exceeded! We have had more than 2,100 learners come through our doors.” As for the future, Fields looks for the center to “evolve into a regional training center that will bring in partners from other universities like Mohawk Valley Community College and SUNY Cobleskill while growing in our ability to understand the needs of business in our county,” she said. “I am passionate about helping our local community, working with our partners, bridging the gap, and building relationships. I want to see as many learners succeed at entering pathways that they did not think were even possible for them as I was in that position at one time.”
Our conversation led me to think of a recent New York Times opinion column by David Brooks in which he cited education segregation as a key factor in what currently ails America. The trend, Brooks states, has been for “many college-educated people segregating themselves in neighborhoods where nearly everybody has college degrees, into professions where everybody does, into social circles in which you can go weeks without meeting somebody from the working class.” What is needed, Brooks goes on to say, is policy and institutional reform.
Reform at the local community level can often be a catalyst and Fields’ work in making SUNY Oneonta a university accessible to all, while supporting our local businesses, feels like a good place to start.