Community Colleges are recognizing the importance of more deeply engaging their business partners. How can colleges more deeply engage employers as strategic partners? Engagement is more than attending annual business advisory committee meetings or providing input regarding curriculum…

Using seed capital from a US Department of Labor(DOL) grant, the Detroit GreenWorks Solutions (DGWS) is a community effort to invest in Detroit’s workforce and economic revitalization through the green economy. The next wave of industrial innovation and opportunity is here, and DGWS is playing a critical part helping local businesses fill a growing market opportunity in the green economy with skilled talent from local communities – Detroit jobs for Detroit workers. This report goes far beyond standard performance measures to both tell the story and quantify how the investment from DOL had impacts that go far beyond standard performance measures. In addition to looking at things like participant outcomes, the methodology also measured and quantified environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Over the past few years, CSW has been engaging in deep facilitation and partnership building work in Detroit. This report, published and edited by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund and authored by CSW’s Michael DiRamio and Tammy Coxen, tells the story of the diverse partnerships focused on creating pathways to careers in a range of industries and occupations of the growing green economy. It demonstrates the impressive results that new community-based partnerships have been able to achieve in the industrial heartland. These efforts have helped to place a large number of disadvantaged residents of Metro Detroit in careers, despite stiff competition for jobs in this region.

Only a small number of people actually follow a linear path to finding a job. For most, educational choices and career paths are complicated, fragmented, and circuitous. In most communities, information about local career opportunities and the education required to qualify for them is not organized and readily available. This paper describes a new approach to identifying, following, and obtaining quality careers. We envision a strong, integrated set of high tech and high touch tools that enable individuals to access and receive real-time, tailored information and supports to make truly informed decisions about career and learning opportunities.

It is time to start talking about alternative models for the One-Stop system. We posed a starting point for this discussion in this working concept paper, which explains how One-Stops can be transformed into places where work and learning intersect to help transitioning workers obtain needed skills, knowledge, and market-relevant credentials.

We developed this paper as part of a call for ideas on job creation from the University of California Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor & Employment…

CSW authored this report on behalf of the Commission on Community Action and Economic Opportunity, summarizing testimony from a series of statewide Poverty Forums and outlining an entrepreneurial approach to addressing economic challenges.

CSW developed the M-PaTH Learning History to help other communities, both in Michigan and beyond, prepare to address the complex and pressing needs of dislocated workers through strategic partnerships…

CSW and United Way Worldwide provide an overview of sector-based workforce partnerships and their value to a community, and makes suggestions for growing and sustaining these partnerships. For this report, CSW conducted a series of interviews with staff, funders, and community partners from 10 United Ways, all of which participated in the seven month readiness process and are involved in regional funder collaboratives with the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.

Co-authored by CSW’s Senior Fellow Keith Bird and Evelyn Ganzglass, Director of Workforce Development at the Center for Law and Social Policy, this report  highlights the disconnect between the nation’s postsecondary and education and training systems, underscoring the need to create a system that uses competency rather than seat-time as the standard measure of learning.

Skills2Compete Maryland (S2C Maryland) is a campaign aimed at increasing postsecondary success to strengthen the skills of Maryland’s workforce. The strategy requires aligning diverse public programs so that individuals are given the opportunity to complete a job-relevant vocational credential, an industry certification or academic preparation for a two- or four-year degree that will lead to a middle skill or better job…

A new report, researched and written by CSW and released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund, highlights the number of workers in Detroit who are challenged by limited basic skills. The report, Addressing Detroit’s Basic Skills Crisis, identifies several key issues around the need to expand access to services to improve basic skills.