Initiatives

Boston University's new 'Launch Your Career: Job Search During a Pandemic' initiative is a self-paced Blackboard-based course designed to provide seniors, recent alumni, and interested juniors with career-search skills, tools for resiliency, finance and time management tips, resources for succeeding in the virtual world, and advice about connecting to BU alumni and others for mentoring, career development and potential internship opportunities. As the pandemic alters professional opportunities and learning experiences, and heightens student and young alumni concerns about their future, this initiative will connect students with timely resources to help shape and plan for their career.

Keep Exploring is an initiative designed to create connections, facilitate learning opportunities, and foster professional experiences among current Duke students and recent graduates. Originally a response to the impact of COVID-19 on the job market, the initiative has evolved into a long-term engagement plan, matching students with alumni and parent sponsors for professional opportunities in their areas of interest. Post-pandemic, the Keep Exploring initiative will continue connecting students to professional mentors, as well as begin to build a structure of financial support for unpaid work experiences.

The Career Alliance @ Georgia Tech is an initiative designed to ensure full and equal access to career readiness experiences for all Georgia Tech students.  This program augments existing efforts to prepare students for careers by providing focused support to students who have not received sustained career preparation support or have faced historical institutional barriers that hindered their full participation and preparation for success in today’s competitive job market. 

"Going to college" is more than just the aggregate of a student's experience in the classroom, and therefore official academic transcript records are an incomplete record of achievement. At Michigan State University, the co-curricular record is designed to allow students to share their college experiences and accomplishments with future employers, positioning students to compete for meaningful and rewarding jobs.

Achieve Career Excellence (ACE) is designed to make professional credentials accessible to students through building “career” bridges, while offering coaching, mentoring and counseling services. Over the past decade, demand for industry-recognized certifications among employers has greatly increased, and NOVA workforce has identified and examined in-demand validated credentials that will ensure students get hired. To alleviate the burden of cost, as students often can't afford to take those credentialing exams, ACE fills that need by subsidizing the exam fees required by professional certifications for qualified students. This will give students a leg up in the hiring process by ensuring they are both academically prepared and professionally credentialed as they enter the job market. NOVA will be committing over $1 million towards launching this effort to ensure that students are employment ready.

In partnership with CommonSpirit Health, Rio Salado College will design stackable, micro-credential pathways and short-term skills training to reduce unemployment, underemployment, and high turnover rates in frontline roles across seven geographic locations of the organization. These work-based learning opportunities will serve to attract and retain minority populations and primarily new-to-college/first generation adult learners. Long-term success will create social mobility by bridging new students and graduates with internship and career opportunities in healthcare.

The $10 million Beyond Completion Challenge partners with Taskforce institutions and provides vital funding to launch, test, and scale innovations that improve career and life opportunities after graduation for more students, especially for those who have faced the greatest barriers to success.

Fast Track will aim to address inequities in immediate career outcomes, or the time between graduation and being hired and assigned a starting salary. The initiative will benefit first-generation college graduates and members of underserved minority groups that experience income disparity in any academic discipline or career field. The initiative will also be opened to any interested student planning to graduate in majors other than Business, Engineering, Computer Science, Nursing or other career-specific majors. Fast Track success will include increasing the number of students who graduate with specific digital and people skills in-demand in the entry level employment marketplace.

Recognizing the growing demand for short-term credentials among employers and education consumers, the Texas Credentials for the Future initiative will facilitate the expansion and development of industry-recognized credentials offered by UT’s eight academic institutions. Recent college graduates, particularly those among minority communities, as well as workers without credentials beyond a high school diploma have faced unusually high unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This initiative is designed to bring credentialing opportunities to current students, recent alumni, and displaced workers, making them more competitive in this tight and evolving job market and enhancing their value to employers statewide.

Aggie Launch is designed to advance the promise of a college degree – a career utilizing that degree through full employment – for all undergraduates. UC Davis is home to many first-generation students and students of color, both of whom are disproportionately impacted by college graduate underemployment. Aggie Launch will work to correct this disparity by integrating career and professional experience into undergraduate life, engaging 100% of the UC Davis student body in experiential learning, meaningful mentorship, and early career search support to propel a successful launch into post-graduate employment.

The Employer Survey initiative seeks to improve job readiness among students and institutional engagement with employers across Minnesota by reviewing a wide array of employer data and making it easily available to students. The survey will take a cross-industry approach, focusing on diverse leadership representation and providing critical information on the COVID-19 job market. This data will be used in outreach efforts to students seeking employment and by career counselors at UMN, detailing the hiring needs, trends, and cycles of a variety of industries.

The Portland Internship Experience initiative provides undergraduate students with summer stipends to pursue internships with pre-selected internship sites, promoting career readiness for students while supporting local employers in the process. Access to internships, particularly unpaid work experiences, is often skewed, excluding students who cannot pay or need to work over the summer. The initiative addresses this disparity by funding student work in at-need organizations, providing a broad coalition of students with real-world job experience and employer connections that often prove key in finding post-graduate employment.

The University of Rochester is building a stronger career network among members of the University community to help students and graduates find internships and jobs. Focusing on key populations (i.e., BIPOC, First Generation, Graduate and professional students), the University is aiming to enhance integrated career education programs, reduce social capital and financial barriers for students, offer future of work skill development, and connect students with local organizations. These efforts will be supported by  the Together for Rochester (TFR) fundraising and engagement campaign, a special one-year initiative to make life better for the University of Rochester community.

Building upon UVU's existing efforts, the Big Den Initiative promotes intentional outreach and support for First-Generation, Adult Learners, and Latinx students to help improve retention and graduation rates.

Through targeted student outreach and retention and completion efforts—like summer bridge programs, purpose-first career development, digital literacy—the initiative aims to increase apprenticeship engagement among current students in the target population, as well as support the matriculation and graduation of more First-Generation, Adult Learner, and Latino students.

WakeWorks encompasses two innovative collaborations—WakeWorks Apprenticeship and WakeWorks Propel—to enable adult students of all ages to reap the benefits of skills-focused, community college applied degree programs. WakeWorks Apprenticeship provides students, including those from under-represented groups, the option to earn while they learn through apprenticeships, while WakeWorks Propel offers low-cost accelerated training programs that lead to professional credentials (certifications/licensures) to equip Wake County residents as they handle job transitions during the pandemic and beyond.