The BOCES Consortium of Continuing Education (BCCE) has secured accreditation from the Council on Occupational Education, a national recognition of the high quality of its adult career training programs.

The accreditation status follows a rigorous three-year journey that included a year-long self-study of processes, policies and student outcomes of both vocational and literacy programs as well as two separate site visits by a national evaluation team. The entire process, which is voluntary, assesses whether applicants meet COE’s quality standards for postsecondary technical education providers and meet the needs of its students, employers and community members.

MOBOCES Director of Adult Education Brenda Wolak leads BCCE, an adult and community education partnership between Madison-Oneida and Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES. She said she is thrilled to have achieved an initial accreditation for six years, the longest term granted by COE.

"The whole accreditation process really helped us look critically at ourselves and look at our work through someone else’s eyes,” Wolak said. “It was a significant body of work, and it took a lot of collaboration across the entire BOCES organization, but it was well worth the effort.”

The benefits of earning COE accreditation extend beyond internal structures and course rigor. Most significantly, vocational programs covered under the accreditation that meet for at least 600 hours can now be submitted for recognition under FAFSA, allowing students to apply for financial aid for those training courses, just as they could do at a college.

“We know that some people do not enroll in continuing education because of financial barriers, so this is one way to address that,” BCCE Vocational Coordinator Rachel Burleigh said.

Accreditation applies to any career training program that leads directly to employment and meets for 100 hours or more. The 12 programs at BCCE that meet these criteria are: Phlebotomy, Medical Assisting, Nurse Aide Training, Practical Nursing, Dental Assisting, Nail Specialty, Cosmetology, HVAC, Heavy Equipment Operation, and employment entry level courses in Electrical, Welding and Carpentry. Those programs have the capacity to serve approximately 300 adult learners a year from the region.

Of those, Cosmetology and HVAC meet the 600-hour minimum to be eligible for financial aid, once approved by FAFSA. BCCE Senior Coordinator Randy Raux said other options may become available in the future.

Beyond financial aid, visible changes due to the accreditation process include:

• A stand-alone Local Advisory Committee (LAC) for each of the 12 accredited programs. The LAC is made up of instructors and industry representatives who evaluate courses for rigor and relevancy. BCCE previously partnered with the Career and Technical Education high school programs at MOBOCES to monitor and assess the adult courses.


• Enhanced student services offerings, such as academic tutoring, job placement, and increased support for non-English speakers.

Wolak said much of this work was already happening at varying levels in different programs.

“What this did was to help us to formalize these programs and services across the board,” she said, “so that everyone is consistently operating at a very high level in all areas.”