January 26, 2015

Legion 'uniquely positioned' to host credentialing summit

By Marty Callaghan
Careers
Legion ‘uniquely positioned’ to host credentialing summit
Legion ‘uniquely positioned’ to host credentialing summit

The American Legion has been fighting against credentialing barriers to veterans since the 1990s.

The American Legion’s National Credentialing Summit on Feb. 17-18 in Washington will bring together experts on the credentialing issue and about 200 key decision-makers from across the country – individuals who can collaborate to improve the licensing, certification and credentialing of veterans in the private sector.

The Legion has been involved with credentialing since the 1990s and issued its first national report on the issue in 1997. Its first credentialing summit was in 2012, co-sponsored with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Lisa Lutz, president and co-founder of Solutions for Information Design, LLC – a company that specializes in research and analysis for social science policy – was a researcher for the Legion’s 1997 report. Lutz and Steve Gonzalez of The American Legion’s Veterans Employment & Education Division are co-leaders of the Legion’s summit. Her company specializes in areas of education, employment and training for veterans and servicemembers. She recently spoke with The American Legion about the upcoming summit:

Q: What is the credentialing summit’s purpose and why is it important to hold such an event?

A: One of the key objectives of the summit is to talk about the best practices and share with stakeholders what might be done to emulate those. The last summit really turned the spotlight on the credentialing issue and, as a result, we’ve seen legislation passed at the national and state levels. We’ve seen the Department of Defense proactively start addressing these issues, the White House has implemented a number of initiatives since then. So there are a lot of good things to report.

But there are still some issues that have not been fully addressed, and we need to continue to highlight these issues at the summit. For instance, very little research has been done on tracking the outcomes of credentialing, both in the civilian and military sectors. It’s hard to know specifically what credentials actually yield for people in the civilian work force.

Another objective of the summit is to take a look at quality and value. Credentialing is a relatively new form of establishing workplace competency. We’ve been doing that through higher education for hundreds of years but certification is relatively new – about the last 25 years. So the infrastructure around it is not as built up.

Q: Why does it make sense for the Legion to play a leading role on this issue?

A: The American Legion is one of the rare organizations that can really draw together folks from various industries, across political aisles, and everybody can convene around this important issue. But the Legion has a long history of delving into credentialing of servicemembers and veterans, and understanding the issues in depth, and I don’t think there really are any other organizations that have done that.

We have worked with the Legion for many years on credentialing issues, which are very complex. Some of the first research done on how to alleviate barriers to servicemembers and veterans on credentialing was done by the Legion in the 1990s. I happened to participate in the research for that report.

A lot of people seem to think that this is a black and white issue that can be easily solved. But the research The American Legion sponsored back in the 90s, along with the efforts that have been underway since the last Legion credentialing summit, really highlight the complexities. There are a variety of stakeholders involved. The Legion really has its arms around those complexities and is uniquely positioned to bring together the right stakeholders to continue to address the issue.

Q: How has the landscape changed on this issue since the Legion’s first summit in 2012?

A: It’s changed tremendously, and I really attribute that to the Legion’s effort to raise awareness of the issues. Since then, we’ve seen several pieces of very significant legislation coming out of Congress, such as the Vow To Hire Heroes Act, where the Department of Labor was tasked with developing a credentialing pilot to look at how veterans could be better-suited to obtain credentials – particularly state licenses.

Numerous states have passed legislation that requires recognition of military training and experience for state licensure purposes. What we’ve seen is that state licensing boards are now proactively identifying military occupations related to their state licenses, so that they can delve into the military training and recognize it for state licensing purposes.

Q: Who is attending this summit, and what would you like them to take away from it?

A: The idea is really to convene a diverse group of stakeholders. So we’re expecting to have representatives from industry, academic institutions, certainly credentialing agencies, the military, other federal agencies, and other veterans organizations, because they all can play a role in facilitating credentialing.

And that’s one of the key takeaways that we want to happen from this summit, is that each stakeholder group needs to better understand what their role can be – for example, the credentialing agencies. The Manufacturing Skills Standards Council adapted its study materials for the military so that they could better translate terminology. That’s a best practice. That’s something that other credentialing agencies can do, and there are a number of other examples like that, where credentialing agencies are recognizing that they can play a role. So we’re trying to increase their awareness of how they might go about implementing some of the best practices.

The bottom line – and this is what I hope is everybody’s takeaway – is that servicemembers are highly trained. The military spends tens of thousands of dollars on training a servicemember; they provide high-quality, state-of-the-art training. Society really can’t afford to not recognize that training when individuals leave the military and want to join the civilian work force. We know that employers recognize the tremendous soft skills that military servicemembers bring, but they also have tremendous technical skills as well.

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