Unleashing the potential of all West Virginians

Excel Together West Virginia is a new statewide initiative designed to provide every West Virginian with an opportunity to build their educational and workforce skills and confidence.

Excel Together West Virginia introduces the CSM Certificate backed by the self-paced, online CSM Course. CSM uses the world’s most-advanced personalized educational technology to help people of ALL academic abilities succeed. Excel Together West Virginia is working to embed in the CSM Certificate college math credit and recognition by employers in hiring.

Excel Together West Virginia works in partnership with local organizations -- schools, colleges, adult education programs, workforce development, employers, and government at the city, county and state level. Read more below about our initiative and the benefits that it can bring to individuals and your organization. Join us in boosting the skills, confidence, and opportunities of West Virginians!

West Virginia faces many education and workforce challenges

West Virginia grapples with a wide range of education and workforce issues:

  • low high school graduation rates
  • low rates of postsecondary matriculation and graduation
  • too many 16-to-24 year-olds who are discouraged and disconnected from education and the workforce, known as "opportunity youth"
  • a current workforce whose skills don't meet current and future needs
  • many adults who are stuck in low-pay futures, without the skills or confidence to take advantage of further, advanced training

These problems affect hundreds of thousands of West Virginians, and have crushing personal consequences, burden employers with an inadequate workforce, and hobble communities' economic development efforts to retain existing employers and attract new ones.   

While there are many programs across the state targeting some of the challenges above, rural West Virginia is largely left behind. Furthermore, this isn't just a school problem - any solution that focuses only on the schools leaves out adults already in the workforce deserving of help, and will take decades to have an effect on the current needs of employers.

The underlying problem

Like "The Six Blind Men and an Elephant", communities see themselves as having many different problems, without seeing that they are all facets of the same underlying problem.

Instead, Excel Together West Virginia views all of these challenges as facets of the same underlying, fundamental problem: that many West Virginians lack a set of core academic skills, effective learning strategies, and essential dispositions and mindsets -- we call these "High Performance skills":

High Performance

  • quantitative reasoning and associated literacy
  • problem-solving strategies and mindsets
  • the ability to learn effectively and independently
  • the intention to excel supported by persistence and attention to detail
  • and most importantly, self-efficacy, a person’s belief in their ability to succeed at what they put their mind to.

No matter whether you're a high school student, an opportunity youth, a factory worker, or a white collar manager with a college degree, your success depends on your High Performance skills. With these skills come resilience, lifelong-learning, and an ability and confidence to grasp for opportunity.  

Excel Together brings CSM to West Virginia

CSM Course

The self-paced, online CSM Course develops High Performance competencies.

CSM is the world's first and only next-generation learning technology that not only personalizes instruction in the students' academic skills, but also simultaneously in how the student learns, how they act, and how they feel. CSM is patient -- if a person is having trouble with a skill, it will take them to another skill where it thinks they can be more successful. CSM congratulates them on evidence of persistence and good learning behaviors. When a person learns a skill, CSM tells them what percentage of college grads and all adults could do that skill (often well under 50%).

In a third party national evaluation against "gold standard" online courses from publishers McGraw-Hill and Pearson, CSM had the largest math and literacy gains, and the highest student engagement. And in an opportunity youth program at Cuyahoga Community College, an unprecedented number of youth on finishing CSM entered and then completed associate degree programs.

CSM is for everyone. The same CSM Course is taken by high school dropouts, and also corporate managers with college degrees. The CSM Course is used in schools, colleges, career and technical education (CTE), adult education and workforce development programs, and workplaces. In an education context, CSM builds not only college math skills, but also more general academic success skills. In a work context, CSM builds transferable "employability skills" that are useful in every sector and job and are valued by employers.

CSM Certificate

The CSM Certificate, earned on completion of the CSM Course, demonstrates High Performance skills to colleges, employers, and the wider community.

Excel Together West Virginia

Truly addressing West Virginia's challenges involves involves changing the skills and life trajectories of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. Furthermore, with stretched funding sources, any progress must be done on thin budgets. And progress is needed now, and not over the next few decades!

Non-profit initiative Excel Together West Virginia is working to embed within the CSM Certificate both college math credit and recognition by employers in their hiring so that there are concrete benefits to having earned it. In return, this creates incentives for schools, adult education, workforce programs and employers to offer the CSM Course, and for individuals to take it.

Assisting at-risk populations

West Virginia has many students at risk, including those in low income families, families that are impacted by addiction, students with disabilities, English-language learners, studetns in credit recovery, students with poor attendance, and more. Excel Together West Virginia and CSM bring an entirely new approach with the potential for major improvements in outcomes for at-risk individuals.

Click here to learn more about Excel Together West Virginia and at-risk students

Partnering with Excel Together West Virginia

Excel Together West Virginia works to boost High Performance skills across communities by partnering with schools, colleges, employers, adult education, workforce development, and non-profits, as well as state, county and local governments.  

Click on "Learn more" below to see brief descriptions of how different partners can benefit.

Learn more

City/County Partners: convene your community

Learn more

Community Programs: offer CSM

Learn more

Employer Partners: recognize and use CSM

Learn more

High School Partners: offer CSM

Learn more

College Partners: articulate and use CSM

Advisory Board

Jonathon Compton
Assistant Director, Workforce Development, Workforce West Virginia
Dr. Teresa Eagle
Dean, College of Education & Professional Development at Marshall University
Amber Furman
Director of Workforce Development, West Virginia Hospital Association
Mendy Marshall
Executive Director, Office of Adult Education and Workforce Development, WV Department of Education
Jimmy Smith
President/Director, WV Society for Human Resource Management

Team

David Goldberg
Co-Director, Excel Together West Virginia
Miriam Goldberg
Co-Director, Excel Together West Virginia
Kaitlin Garrow
Partnership Specialist, Excel Together West Virginia

Some of our partner organizations

Chemical Alliance Zone
Concord University
Gas and Oil Association of WV
Glenville State University
WV Hospital Association
WV Manufacturers Association
WV Office of Adult Education
WorkForce West Virginia

Let's work together!

We're expanding quickly in West Virginia and are actively seeking partners: schools, colleges, workforce and education non-profits, employers, civic organizations, city / county governments, state agencies, and more. If you'd like to stay informed of our progress or meet to learn more and explore ways we could work together, please fill in the form below or call at (303) 862-7233.

Contact Form

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Excel Together West Virginia is an initiative of
national non-profit SeeMore Impact Labs
#ExcelTogetherWV