Leaders from Central New Mexico Community College, the University of New Mexico Taos and Eastern New Mexico University told the Legislative Finance Committee that the New Mexico Grow workforce allocation has funded thousands of short‑term trainings, subsidized internships and employer‑driven contract training — but they stressed consistency in funding and better data collection are needed to measure outcomes.

‘‘We have used the $5,000,000 from what we call HED 1. So far, we've used $7,000,000 from HED 2 for the GROW funds,’’ Tracy Hartzler, president of Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), told the committee. She said CNM and other independent community colleges have collectively used roughly $80,000,000 for workforce programs in the last four to five years and described the Grow funding as a ‘‘game changer’’ for paid work‑based learning.

Hartzler and other presenters said the program paid about 2,600 direct learner scholarships and supported more than 250 paid internships at CNM; CNM reported about 800 people had completed training under an initial $5 million allocation and that survey response rates approached 74 percent for that cohort. Hartzler said many learners who reported earnings from the training were making in the $40,000–$50,000 range, with higher earners in technical fields.

UNM Taos Chancellor Mary Gutierrez described local, employer‑driven training that used Grow funds to ramp up certified truck‑driver (CDL) courses, construction training, phlebotomy and medical assisting. ‘‘In CDL, we had 30 students who are all currently employed. We spent $58,000 of Grow money to make that happen,’’ Gutierrez said, noting lineworkers and CDL drivers can have family‑sustaining wages in the region.

James Johnson, representing Eastern New Mexico University, told the committee the program solved a major barrier for many students: unpaid internships that students could not afford. Eastern said it had used Grow funds to increase internship participation across diverse disciplines and is building the funding into a larger quality initiative tied to career readiness and employer partnerships.

Presenters emphasized employer contributions: Hartzler said employers typically match part of subsidized wages and provide mentoring, equipment and time. They also listed common program hurdles: late notice of allocations from the Higher Education Department (HED), time‑intensive data collection to capture post‑training wages, and the challenge of quickly scaling short‑window allocations during summer program cycles.

Why it matters: Lawmakers are weighing whether Grow funding should become a permanent, recurring program. Committee members asked for better and earlier data to judge return on investment and to avoid the administrative difficulty of fronting institutional funds before HED allocations are finalized.

CNM and its partners said they will seek permanent funding and that they are working on shared data models and cost frameworks to report outcomes more consistently to the legislature.

(Reporting note: dollar amounts and completion counts are presenter statements recorded in the committee transcript; some numbers are approximate.)