Intersect With Earl July 2024

by Earl Buford on Jul 29, 2024

With the help of local partners that include OIC of South Florida and CareerSource South Florida and funding from the Truist Foundation’s Where it Starts Initiative, we have now formally kicked off our South Florida regional work under Build Better Careers. Launched in 2022, Build Better Careers is made possible by a $15.7 million grant from the Truist Foundation. The six-year, five-city initiative will help more than 6,000 adult learners from underserved communities connect with rewarding education-employment pathways in professions and industries historically unavailable to them within financial services and adjacent sectors.

Even as more companies begin to embrace a competency-based approach to hiring and promoting, a college degree goes a long way in demonstrating them (especially when academic programs are well aligned to workforce needs). Thankfully, more companies are partnering with colleges to establish CPL crosswalks, and not just for office workers. Walmart and McDonald’s are using proactive CPL programs to help workers translate their on-the-job experience and training into expedited pathways to credential completion.

With funding from a Lumina Foundation HBCU Adult Learner Initiative grant, CAEL is providing ongoing technical assistance and coaching to each of the program’s five participating institutions. Recently, our HBCU Adult Learner Initiative team completed a full-day Adult Learner Summit, hosted by Winston-Salem State University. Our experts led a review of CAEL’s ALLIES Framework and applying it in support of adult learner success according to the unique circumstances of each campus. The summit also focused on supporting CPL through a range of policy and program considerations. I want to recognize Monique Tuset, Alicia Myrick, Rafael Pasillas, and Gloria Mwase for making the event such a success.

Separately, Lumina Foundation recently shared some of the initiative’s highlights. We are grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this impact, which includes increased institutional capacity, strengthened data infrastructure, improved onboarding processes, increased adult student services, and a better understanding of adult learners.

Grant opportunity: The Department of Education's "Strengthening Community Colleges" RFP was released on July 18 and aims to enhance the capacity of community colleges to address the skills needs of employers and to support the economic development of their communities. The initiative focuses on creating sustainable career pathways, improving student outcomes, and fostering partnerships between community colleges and local industries. Priority consideration will be given to applicants that align their identified career pathway with relevant in-demand infrastructure sectors related to the administration’s Investing in America agenda. If you are interested in how CAEL can support an application or help build bridges to your employer base, please contact Christina Gaetano. Award ceilings are $5.7M, and applications are due Sep 24, 2024.

CAEL member mention: Maricopa Community Colleges District has helped make possible Intel’s first U.S. registered apprenticeship program for manufacturing facility technicians in Arizona. Additional partners include the Arizona Commerce Authority, the Phoenix Business and Workforce Development Board, the SEMI Foundation, and Fresh Start Women’s Foundation. Facility technician apprentices, who will be full-time Intel employees from the start, will receive a certificate as well as college credit when they complete the one-year program.