Santa Noeta Research
Applied research on workforce needs, program effectiveness, and the conditions that make learning transfer to real work. We study what is actually happening before we recommend what should happen next.
Director of Research
Dr. Vance joined the Santa Noeta Consortium after fifteen years in applied educational research, most recently as a senior research associate with a regional workforce development collaborative focused on healthcare and trades transitions. Her work centers on the gap between what training programs claim to do and what their graduates can actually demonstrate on the job.
She is direct about what research is for. It is not decoration for decisions that have already been made. It is the thing that tells you whether your decision was any good before you spend two years finding out the hard way.
“An elegant solution to the wrong problem is an expensive mistake. Show me the data first.”
Research Focus Areas
Active Work
FlyForward — Phase 1
A systematic needs assessment of the current ground and maintenance workforce at Santa Noeta Regional Airport. Documenting existing competencies, identifying gaps relative to zero-emission infrastructure requirements, and establishing baseline measures for evaluating FlyForward outcomes. Fieldwork ongoing.
FlyForward — Evaluation Design
Development of an evaluation framework for the FlyForward retraining curriculum, including transfer measures to be collected six and twelve months post-completion. Collaborative design with DPI and the Fuente Workforce Alliance. Framework in draft.
Recent Work
Human Resource Development Quarterly · 2025
A critique of completion-rate-dominant evaluation frameworks, with a proposed shift toward transfer measures collected at 6- and 12-month post-completion intervals.
Read more →Community College Journal of Research and Practice · 2024
Interviews with regional employers reveal consistent skepticism toward short-term credentials and a preference for portfolio-based evidence of applied competency.
Read more →Journal of Workforce Education and Development · 2024
A framework for systematic workforce needs assessment in aviation sectors undergoing infrastructure transition, with application to zero-emission ground operations.
Read more →“Research is not the thing that justifies what you were already going to do. It is the thing that tells you whether what you were going to do was worth doing.”
— Dr. Elena Vance, Director of Research, Santa Noeta Research
Fellows Program — Research Track →