The Citizens Bank recently announced a new investment in Education Design Lab and the City University of New York (CUNY) colleges.
Education Design Lab (EDL) created its Community College Growth Engine (CCGE), a design accelerator led by Dr. Lisa Larson, in response to an urgent demand from community college leadership to deliver skills-focused, market-driven education as regions struggle to mitigate the growing skills gap. The CCGE helps community colleges lean into a future role as regional talent agents.
The Lab is a national non-profit that co-designs, prototypes, and tests education-to-workforce (E2W) models through a human-centered design process focused on understanding learners’ experiences, addressing equity gaps in higher education, and connecting new majority learners to economic mobility. The EDL’s innovative work aims to create a new class of credentials, called ‘micro-pathways,’ that help diverse students obtain careers in high-growth sectors and thrive in the local economy.
In order to achieve its goal, the Education Design Lab’s Community College Growth Engine has recently received $400,000 in funding from Citizens Financial Group, Inc., one of the United States’ oldest and largest financial institutions Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. The beneficiaries of the generous funding include the CUNY Community Colleges of LaGuardia, Borough of Manhattan, Kingsborough, and Queensborough. Each college was assigned the amount of $100,000.
Each of the participating CUNY Community Colleges now will be able to develop two to three additional micro-pathways in collaboration with local employers in high-growth industries that are aligned to regional labor market demand. Moreover, the project aims to fortify regional economic stability in New York City as well as other participating communities resulting in the benefit of local employers through an increasingly diversified workforce.
“We are enormously grateful for the support of Citizens to help cultivate new opportunities for communities in New York and around the country,” said Bill Hughes, President and CEO of Education Design Lab. “Community colleges are uniquely poised to be regional hubs for the kind of innovation and growth that will unlock economic mobility for learners and address growing skills gaps for employers. Only with the support of thoughtful and collaborative partners like Citizens can we continue to work alongside community colleges to expand programs like the Community College Growth Engine and redefine the relationship between the learner, the credentials, and their lifelong potential,” he said.
Through additional experimentation and documentation, the colleges will use Citizens’ funding to pilot one of five ‘strategic levels’ uncovered through the Lab’s work and identified as critical to the successful deployment of micro-pathways. This targeted research will generate important strategic playbooks and resources that can be broadly used by community colleges across the United States looking to develop micro-pathway programs and optimize their impact and efficiency.
This latest investment adds to a prior contribution of $400,000 to bring the program to Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and the Community College of Philadelphia. In addition, a new investment of 200,000 for the Community College of Rhode Island brings the total funding of EDL through the Citizens Community College Accelerator to $1 million.
“Now, more than ever, private, public, and non-profit sectors must come together to address the daunting shortage of skilled workers and widening opportunity divide. We recognize that community colleges play a critical role in meeting the workforce needs of the future. By investing in Education Design Lab to help them succeed, we are also investing in the economic viability and resilience of our communities,” said Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO of Citizens Financial Group.