Program Management and Career Pathways Colleagues,
In 2016, what do partnerships between adult basic skills programs and industries, corporations and local businesses look like? Do these provide opportunities for work advancement and for education advancement? Are they already part of a career pathways system, or could they be? If these collaborations are in place, what are the other elements needed to support them in a fully-functioning local career pathways system?
When I read about Career Pathways systems they are often described in the abstract, in terms of what industries, community colleges, and adult education programs should be doing. I am interested in learning about what they are doing.
I invite you, if your adult basic skills (including ESL/ESOL) program has a partnership with a company, industry, industry association or business sector that you believe benefits adult learners, to describe it here or send me a link to a description.
For example, from an article I read recently in the Bristol Press, I learned about a program in Bristol, Connecticut, the Adult Education Diploma and Certificate (AEDAC) program, a partnership between the local adult education program and a manufacturing company, Rowley Spring and Stamping. This program for unemployed or underemployed adults or high school seniors provides them with manufacturing job skills to meet the needs of area employers. It’s a high-intensity model, two and a half days a week for less than three months, and it results in participants learning a trade in a sector where there is an aging workforce, and presumably good employment opportunities.
The program teaches manufacturing basics. “In the classroom, students learn measuring, blueprint reading and other essential skills, as well as ‘soft skills’ including basic concepts such as the importance of arriving to work on time and focusing on the task at hand. They also receive hands-on training within a manufacturing environment on the types of machines they will encounter in the field.”
It is funded by the Connecticut Department of Labor, a Community Foundation and the City of Bristol. Two manufacturing associations and the Chamber of Commerce are partners, too.
Although this is a small-scale program – eight AEDAC students graduated in 2014, 14 graduated in 2015, and 15 are expected to graduate this spring – it appears to be a collaboration. The article, however, didn’t describe the program outcomes. Do students get a high school diploma or high school equivalency certificate? Do they get jobs? Is there a Bristol Career Pathways program in place that has career navigators at a career center, or elsewhere, where graduates can get advice on next steps in a manufacturing career pathway? What are the career pathways for manufacturing in Bristol or the surrounding area? I also wonder how this industry and adult basic skills partnership was put in place. How and why was it initiated? How did the funding partners get involved? Perhaps someone from Connecticut could answer these questions for us.
Is your program involved in a partnership with (an) employer(s)? If so, please tell us about it. Let’s see if we all can get “grounded” in what these partnerships look like, how they were developed, how they help adult learners and workers to get jobs and to advance, and what it takes to make partnerships work.
David J. Rosen
Djrosen123@gmail.com