The solution? Metropolitan College – a unique public-private partnership that dramatically increased retention among workers during the wee hours each night. Average tenure of a third-shift worker grew from eight weeks prior to the program’s launch to three years as of fall 2022.

The program also provided more than 22,000 students over the past 25 years the opportunity to earn a college degree 100% debt-free.

Metro College allows students at the University of Louisville or Jefferson Community and Technical College to work at Worldport, earning a weekly paycheck and payment of their tuition, academic bonuses and fee payment assistance. The program receives state support to fund up to 50% of tuition and fees. The company also provides academic bonuses that include semester and graduation bonuses. The program launched in the fall semester of 1998 as a partnership among UofL, JCTC, UPS, Louisville Metro Government and the commonwealth of Kentucky.

“Metropolitan College seemingly has no downside,” said UofL President Kim Schatzel. “Prior to my academic career, I spent 20 years in industry, so I see the value of Metro College across the board. The state of Kentucky, UPS, JCTC and UofL have created a national model of what a combined education-workforce-economic development initiative can and should be.”

“In addition to paying for college, Metro College provides a student with a livelihood while they are in college,” said Ty Handy, JCTC president. “That is crucial for many students who must support themselves either fully or partially while they are in school. And the added value of the career and academic guidance they receive cannot be underestimated.”

“For UPS, the success of Metro College has been integral to our ability to deliver what matters to our customers around the world,” said UPS President Jim Joseph. “In addition to the steady source of talent to help us run our Worldport operation, the program provides student-workers the opportunity to pursue their dreams debt-free, while also receiving competitive pay, benefits and work-life experience and guidance. Our community benefits by growing and enhancing the talent pool within the commonwealth. The program really is a win-win-win for all involved.” 

Thalia Almenares came to Louisville in 2016 from Cuba and began work at UPS in 2017. Through Metro College she started taking classes at JCTC before transferring to UofL where she graduated in May as a dental hygienist.

“UPS was the best bet for my dreams,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when they told (me) they were going to pay my tuition 100% in full. But also, with the help of the UPS team, I was able to overcome the language barrier and have a job to support my family while earning a great education. The program also provides you with a great work-life balance. I wasn’t sure if it was possible to be a student and work at the same time, but UPS opens that door.”

Another program benefit is the chance to learn leadership skills and to rise in the ranks while still enrolled in college. Just ask graduates Jeff Wafford (2003) and Donovan Neal (2019).

“Coming out of high school, I knew I couldn’t pay for college. I was actually planning to go into the military until a friend of mine told me about UPS two months before the semester started,” Donovan Neal said. “I began in August 2012 in the UPS hub as a package handler and eventually got a role as a supervisor in finance and accounting.”

He graduated from UofL with a degree in finance and today works in human resources for UPS.

Likewise, Jeff Wafford progressed through the ranks of the multinational shipping company. He enrolled in Metro College more than two decades ago and started as a package handler. Now director of public affairs, Wafford continues to tout Metro College. “Today, I not only have the chance to talk about it to our leaders here locally and throughout Kentucky but also to the states I cover, in the Virginias and the Carolinas. They all want to know, ‘What can we do in our states to have a program like this?’ ”

The rigors of overnight work – Metro College students work 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. about 15 hours per week – coupled with college enrollment can be daunting, but Metro College staff advise entering students to enroll as a parttime student to get adjusted to the new routine. And they provide advice on life skills that students may need throughout their time in college.

Yet Wafford notes that working overnight may not be as much of a problem as might be imagined.

“Twenty-three years ago, my then-college roommate and I were up at 3 o’clock in the morning, as college students sometimes are, and we saw this ad for Metro College,” he said. “We said, ‘We should do this. We’re up all night anyway. We have these loans we’re getting ready to take out, and we need some money.’ So the next day, we applied.

“I’ve talked about Metro College now for 23 years and hopefully, I’ll get to talk about it for the next 23 years,” Wafford said “Let’s keep this program going for the future of the commonwealth.”

For more information about Metro College visit metro-college.com.

The pilot, recommended in a report from the University of Louisville’s  Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky (CIK), housed in the School of Public Health and Information Sciences, would initially be limited to critical incident 911 calls from LMPD’s Fourth Division. It involves establishing:

• A Behavioral Health Hub, with health crisis interventionists integrated in the MetroSafe 911 call center. Call takers would direct certain Critical Incident calls to an interventionist, who would help further triage the crisis to determine whether it could be de-escalated over the phone, if the person in crisis would benefit from a mobile response, or if the scenario called for an LMPD response due to safety concerns. Their mission would be “to assist persons in crisis and first responders by providing empathy, connection, de-escalation and linkage to the right-sized care,” the report says.
• A mobile response unit consisting of trained crisis interventionists to “rapidly respond, effectively screen and assist persons in crisis in accessing the appropriate level of care.”
• A 24-hour “community respite center,” a fully staffed safe place where individuals can stay for up to 24 hours when connected by the mobile response team. There, qualified mental health and substance use professionals will provide evaluations and connect individuals to needed services and resources, beyond what the mobile response team can provide onsite.

The research team recommended the pilot be centered in LMPD’s Fourth Division because of its high number of what Metro terms Crisis Intervention Team-related events; an average of 11.63 events of this type occur each day.

“Our team has been grateful for the opportunity to partner with the community to build a better way of addressing a public health crisis,” said Susan Buchino, who co-directed the research. “Our research has allowed us to examine what other communities have done, while being intentional about listening to the unique needs of our own community. The one thing emphasized by other cities is that it is best to start small, learn from the community what’s working and what needs to change, and then refine the process before scaling it.” Buchino is assistant professor in UofL’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences and assistant director of the CIK.

Now that the report has been shared, Fischer said, UofL, Seven Counties Services and other partners will begin to work to implement the plan, with UofL’s stated goal of beginning the pilot in December 2021.

In announcing a nearly $5 million investment in deflection and diversion programs as part of the FY22 budget, Fischer noted that “some situations are best served by a social service response, particularly when dealing with people living with homelessness, mental health challenges or substance use.”

“By quadrupling our investment in violence prevention and capacity-building programs, including in deflection and diversion, we are acting on our shared goal of creating a safe city with fewer arrests and less incarceration for non-violent offenses,” Fischer said. “I appreciate the hard work of the university team to move us closer to that goal.”

Louisville Metro Government contracted with CIK to draft the report and implement the pilot, as part of a plan for reimagining public safety with an emphasis on the whole-of-government and whole-of-city approach, Fischer said.

In its Alternative Responder Model report recommending and outlining the pilot model, the UofL team acknowledged the national debate around public safety, and cites “a pattern in which law enforcement has become a default response in crisis calls, even when the crisis may be a civil issue or one best resolved by health care or social services.

“Even the officers themselves – in Louisville and elsewhere – admit they are asked to do too much, often without the best tools for serving the person in crisis, especially when it is a behavioral health need,” the report says.

The report is the result of seven months of study by CIK and a multidisciplinary team consisting of the Kentucky Department of Behavioral Health, Development and Intellectual Disabilities; Spalding’s School of Social Work; Seven Counties Services (SCS); and community members, charged with assessing the feasibility and development an alternative response model that appropriately meets the need of Louisville’s residents.

“As the region’s leading provider of mental health services, Seven Counties Services is well positioned for this community partnership to help our neighbors in crisis who need mental health treatment or other social services as opposed to a police response,” said Abby Drane, president and CEO of Seven Counties Services/Bellewood & Brooklawn. “We are hopeful that this deflection program will best serve our neighbors and aid in the effort to modernize public safety for the Louisville Metro area. This plan will provide a more streamlined path to critical services for those with a mental health or addiction crisis.”

Their work included a review of police deflection activities in other U.S. communities; a series of interviews and focus groups with community members, behavioral health providers, and Metro Government leaders, as well as observations of Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) responses to 911 calls that could potentially be deflected and activities in the MetroSafe 911 Call Center, and an extensive review of MetroSafe 911 data.

The team also engaged with a Community Advisory/Accountability Board, which has met routinely since April to provide oversight and recommendations to the team’s research and planning – an effort to enhance community ownership and sustainability for the new program.

The report stresses that continual evaluation of the program is key, and that expansion beyond the pilot phase should occur “in phases that allow researchers to evaluate implementation and outcome and identify areas of improvement and success.”

On Monday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer awarded Mog the city’s Joan Riehm Memorial Environmental Leadership Award, making him the eighth recipient of the honor.

Mog, named UofL’s first assistant provost for sustainability initiatives in 2009, said he was “tickled pink” by the award.

“What an incredible honor to follow in the footsteps of past recipients who I regard so highly as my own local sustainability heroes – terrific citizens and servants like Larry Owsley, Mike Mulheirn, Pamela Dumm, Tina Ward-Pugh and Tom Owen. Sadly, I came to Louisville too late to know Joan Riehm personally, but her impact on our community is undeniable. I am humbled to receive this award in memory of Joan. Let’s continue working together every day to cement the only legacy that would truly have mattered to her – a sustainable future for Louisville,” he said.

The award honors public service employees, volunteers or students who have made Louisville a clean, green and healthier place to live, work and play.

It was created after Riehm’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2008. Louisville’s first female deputy mayor, Riehm initiated Metro government’s inclusion in , a collaborative effort to improve sustainability whose members are four of Louisville’s largest public entities: UofL, Louisville Metro Government, Jefferson County Public Schools and Jefferson Community & Technical College.

“As deputy mayor, Joan Riehm was best known for her positive personality, practical strategy and an ability to build community collaboration toward ambitious goals,” said Brent Fryrear, director of Partnership for a Green City. “Justin embodies those characteristics of leadership as he promotes sustainability on campus and in the community. He also leads by example in the way he lives.”

Mog is an avid bicyclist who has never had a driver’s license and calls himself not only “car-free” but also “TV-free.” An urban-foraging vegetarian known to take “technology vacations,” he and his wife, Amanda Fuller, live in in Paristown Pointe where he also gardens and keeps bees. His mission in life “is to help people understand that sustainable solutions are not only fun and life-affirming, but they are all around us. We need to only change the way we perceive and respond to the daily and long-term challenges of life,” he said.

Past recipients of the award are citizen volunteer Mike Hayman; retired JCPS teacher Darleen Horton; Dumm, JCTC’s business manager; Ward-Pugh, former Metro councilwoman; Mulheirn, former JCPS director of facilities and environmental services; Owsley, former UofL vice president of business affairs; and Owen, UofL professor and archivist and a former Metro councilman.

Mog earned his BS in Environmental Studies & Geology at Oberlin College and an MS and PhD in Land Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Environmental Studies. His graduate research focused on assessing the sustainability of international rural development projects, and his studies took him to Ghana, Costa Rica and the southern Philippines as a Fulbright scholar in 2001. He continued this work from 2005-2008 when he lived with his wife in Paraguay working on sustainable rural development efforts with the U.S. Peace Corps and Plan Paraguay.

Check out the award ceremony below: