Bolstering Workforce Pathways at City Colleges of Chicago
City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) and its Centers of Excellence model provide a unique and promising opportunity to blend the strategies of effective community college workforce training and best-in-class, stand-alone sectoral programs to help millions of Americans gain the skills needed to access livable wage jobs. PROMISE Center researchers are seeking to help City Colleges of Chicago strengthen this model by adapting and testing strategies from best-in-class sectoral programs. At the same time, we aim to bolster key aspects of CCC’s programming, including connections with regional industry representatives and employers, use of real-time labor market data to inform programming and student decision-making, and integration of work-based learning into training programs. Priorities for the long-term partnership include:
- Understanding the Centers of Excellence model and its current level of implementation across CCC campuses
- Examining quantitative data on student enrollments and outcomes to establish a baseline against which to measure improvements;
- Identifying opportunities to strengthen employer/industry engagement and broaden participation in work-based learning;
- Developing forward-looking tools and analyses that can provide real-time insights into Chicago’s evolving labor market; and
- Understanding and identifying opportunities to strengthen student supports and wraparound services.
The PROMISE Center will provide technical, implementation, and evaluation assistance to CCC to help develop and establish proof-of-concept for a model that, if shown to work, could be adapted for implementation across many more public-access institutions across the country.
The PROMISE Center works to develop, build, and measure the impact of innovations that can increase economic opportunity and mobility in the U.S. at scale. The PROMISE Center is directly supported by the AIR Equity Initiative, AIR’s $100+ million five-year investment to advance equity in several important areas: workforce development, education, public safety and policing, and health.
