ACTE Postsecondary CTE Summit 2026

Postsecondary CTE programs are being asked to produce workforce-ready graduates in increasingly complex and rapidly evolving industries. However, many institutional structures still rely on traditional faculty and instructional roles designed primarily for content delivery rather than skill development and performance. This session explores how to redesign those roles into an integrated, workforce-aligned system where faculty, instructors, and staff function as workforce architects.
Grounded in applied practice and informed by learning science, this session demonstrates how effective workforce preparation requires intentional progression from exposure, to practice, to demonstrated competency in real-world contexts. Participants will examine how this progression can be operationalized through instructional design, cross-functional team structures, and employer engagement.
This approach is supported by measurable outcomes, including high licensure pass rates, strong employment placement, and sustained program growth, demonstrating the impact of aligning instructional design with workforce expectations.
This session is designed for CTE leaders, faculty, and workforce partners seeking to improve student outcomes while addressing capacity, workload, and sustainability challenges. Attendees will gain insight on how to redesign faculty, staff and instructional roles to support competency development, build integrated classrooms that align academic need with workforce engagement, and create systems that move beyond siloed functions.
Participants will be asked to actively engage in reflection of their own situations and experiences through a structured group activity, where they will identify a bottleneck in their own program and apply a guided framework to rethink roles, responsibilities, and learning design. Peer discussion and reflection will be incorporated to surface shared challenges and scalable solutions.
Attendees will leave with a practical outlook, and knowledge of what workforce architecture frameworks, role redesign planning, and a quick-start implementations are and how that can be immediately applied within their institution. This session moves beyond theory to provide clear, actionable strategies that strengthen both workforce outcomes and institutional capacity