Mike Wolanin | The Republic Kathy Oren announced she is retiring as the president of the Community Education Coalition. Oren served the CEC for nearly 12 years. She is pictured at the Columbus Learning Center in Columbus, Ind., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024.
Community Education Coalition (CEC) President and CEO Kathy Oren is retiring at the end of this year, capping more than a decade of working to align education with the region’s economy.
Oren will have been with CEC for 11 years and 11 months when she steps down on Dec. 31.
With family in Colorado and a desire to spend more time enmeshed in various outdoor hobbies, Oren made the decision comforted by knowing her successor would be former BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts, who left the job to become vice president of the coalition in July.
“You hear people say when they retire, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done it sooner,’” Oren told The Republic. “… I’ve got lots of family, lots of things that I want to do in my life. I’m an outdoor person. I like to be hiking and mountain biking and doing other things like that. And I thought, with Jim here, he really enabled me to make this decision to retire a little bit earlier than I was planning. And it’s been a gift to be able to make this decision.”
Oren worked as an industrial engineer at Cummins Inc. from 1986 to 2013, with a six year-gap in the 1990s to focus on raising her three sons.
By 2009, she began to wonder what else she could do with the skills she fostered. Oren wanted to become more engaged in the community, so she started networking.
“Julie Abedian, Angie May and Tracy Souza all said — you want to meet John Burnett,” according to Oren.
In 2013, the role of executive director at CEC opened and Oren was hired. She worked alongside Burnett until he transitioned to a part-time role in January 2023, with Oren becoming president and CEO.
“The work that we do is understanding the barriers to academic success and working with partners on addressing and breaking down those barriers,” Oren said. “… It’s our responsibility as a coalition to look at the data all the time to understand what the workforce needs are and what does the data tell us about education.”
Some of the current trends are a decline in college-going rates, particularly among males. Oren also mentioned impact of being in a child-care desert, a significant barrier to many families, as well as the growing importance of early learning opportunities.
“One of the most important, complex challenges that we have in the world of education is making sure every kid has the opportunity from birth to age 5 to access high-quality early learning opportunities or child care. And that’s a workforce issue, right?” Oren said. “I think if you want to improve high school graduation rates, it starts with early learning. If you want to improve third-grade math or eighth-grade math, it starts with early learning.”
Another important component of the work CEC does today, Oren said, is helping students understand what their choices are beyond high school.
That doesn’t mean everybody needs a two or four-year degree, and could take the form of short-term credentials, according to Oren.
CEC was one of 28 organization selected for career coaching grants by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education earlier this year as the state rolls out a new career coaching framework.
Under Oren’s leadership, CEC received $492,303 to go towards funding pilot programs within CEC’s TuFuturo and Black and Black-Biracial initiatives through 2025 with a particular focus on low-income students.
She also mentioned the impact of initiatives CEC has collaborated on with local community partners including iGrad, which saw 100% of students who started senior year in the program graduate last year.
“We have an excellent education system. We have two of the best education systems in the state of Indiana right here in Bartholomew County,” Oren said, going on to mention the uniqueness that is the AirPark campus, where students go to attend Ivy Tech – Columbus, IU Columbus or Purdue Polytechnic Institute. In fact, the majority of the communities’ high school graduates stay right here to attend the post-secondary school of their choice, Oren said.
“The institutions are all doing really best-in-class work, I would argue, in terms of providing the opportunities, programs and pathways. What’s needed is understanding each student’s individual needs and providing strategies to address their challenges and barriers. BCSC is doing it with their new cohort model in the high schools, and I think that’s a way to better understand each individual student need.”
When asked if she had any words of wisdom for Roberts, Oren called him a “systems-thinker” who is ready for the role, equipped with 37 years of K-12 experience.
“The thing I’ve said to Jim and the thing I would keep saying to Jim is—maybe this isn’t the professional thing to say— but the work we do is unique. There are very few organizations and communities around the country that work the way that we do,” Oren said. “… I’ve said this since 2013, it’s a gift to have a quote, unquote job that really matters. That matters to you and makes a difference in the community. It turns out it’s not actually a job, it becomes a calling. And most people don’t have the opportunity to have a job like that.”
