Constructing Career Connections

The hub is an opportunity space that informs, connects and inspires new ways of thinking and shared ways of speaking across the intersection of individuals, industry and learning systems through career connected pathways.

• Students access C3 in order to inform how skills built through coursework support construction of their career pathway (Education and Career Action Plan); constructing career connections
• Community Colleges access C3 to collaborate with industry in order to co-construct socially just and inclusive language for course and job descriptions; constructing career connections
• Individuals access C3 in order to assess their skills and construct new ways of upskilling or industry credentialing as they reimagine a career pathway; constructing career connections
• Industry organizations access C3 in order to locate learning centers across the US that have aligned POS that build highly needed skills in their market and high student enrollment in those courses; constructing career connections

There is a lack of ecosystem connectivity providing jobseekers and employers access to wraparound services and support that reduce barriers to entry for those without previous work experience or a postsecondary degree. Student to counselor ratios in Arizona are nearly 900:1. This leaves many students without the support they need to navigate career choices and develop an educational plan to meet their career goals.  Individuals, especially students, need a resource that can empower them to take ownership of their educational and career paths. This project addresses the urgent need of increasing enrollment and persistence—particularly of high-need students—in pathways focused on preparing students for careers in STEM fields, including Computer Science and Cybersecurity (CS/Cy). Enrollment in STEM fields is threatened for several reasons: 1) most young people get little advice about education pathways to careers, and career possibilities; 2) few families understand the labor market and; 3) educators typically have little experience of contemporary high-growth industries and know little about labor market data and shifts in education and workforce. There is a pressing need to provide a resource for students, families and educators that promotes high demand pathways such as CS/Cy and empowers individuals to reimagine their occupational identity. 

Two critical barriers were identified by our community partners: 1) lack of resources and training for teachers/counselors with relevant, timely information about college and career pathways; 2) lack of real-time labor market data and industry information that can assist students in making informed pathway decisions 

C3, a framework of three components, increases students' college and career readiness and prepares young people for CS/Cy careers vital to our economy.

1) Pipeline AZ (PAZ)-  a dynamic digital platform hosting career resources. Teachers and Counselors are trained on use of a Career Connected Toolkit that includes access to PAZ. Teachers construct a series of CS/Cy awareness and exploration activities integrated into 10th grade course work in order for students to reimagine their professional identity in these careers. 

2) Near Peer Mentors - Students are supported in the 11th & 12th grades by a Community College Near Peer Mentor that models and guides success in dual enrollment courses and transitions to postsecondary programs and industry credentialing in CS/Cy. 

3) Co-Advising Framework: A team of co-advisors representing secondary/postsecondary and industry regularly connects, collaborates and communicates in order to meet real time needs in the pathway ecosystem and develop outreach activities for students and their families.    

C3 partners represent 24 public high schools and three community college systems with populations greater than 50% Free-and-Reduced-Lunch and may serve a majority-minority population. C3 ensures students, especially high-need students, have access to—and the ability to use— the PAZ platform in order to make sound educational decisions that will propel them to and through postsecondary education and a robust employment pathway.

A high-need student is defined as those children at risk of educational failure or in need of special assistance or support, such as children from low-income families, English learners and those children underrepresented in the CS/Cy career pathways including women, Blacks and Hispanics.

C3 is designed to take into account critical audience considerations of high-need students/families, such as translation and avoiding the use of education and postsecondary jargon.

Research shows that students often have little access to data, such as job growth and average wages, about career possibilities, even though this data can have a significant impact on students’ decision-making. Through frequency and variation of activities, C3 students are empowered to better manage and document their educational choices, meet the need for new skills as well as demonstrate skill attainment to potential employers.

PAZ as a digital platform is designed to have a collective impact in driving new models of collaboration to strengthen the workforce development pipeline. This centralized partnership strategically links all levels of talent including non-degree and degree pathways to existing opportunities while creating a career pipeline to training partners. For students, the platform provides tools and resources to help identify careers that match interests and determine which pathways best fit individual needs. For employers, the platform supports a more diverse talent pipeline while providing feedback from employers regarding high demand skills that educators use to align pathways with future needs.

The team is comprised of three members from the Partnership for Economic Innovation working on PAZ. The Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA) has three staff members on the C3 team and the technology and platform provider is represented by one team member. In total, the C3 team includes 7 members across three organizations.

PEI and CFA strive to be diverse not only in ethnicity, but also experience, talent and socio-economically. Our staff are representative of our community’s diversity. We believe in hiring the most qualified candidates for each position in the organization.  Our staff is diverse in gender and age, and represents a diversity of residence  which is important to our work in Arizona.  Both organization's Board of Directors is also diverse. The organizations continue to work toward a diverse representation of staff and Board Members.  

Combined, both boards are represented by:

19% Female

81% Men

6% African-American

19% Latino

75% White

The proposed solution is leveraging a five-year $4.1 million grant from the USDOE. The grant addresses the need to increase enrollment of high-need students in pathways focused on careers in Computer Science, with an emphasis on cybersecurity (CS/CY). The USDOE grant activities are creating a framework to address the problem of weak or non-existent college and career advising structures and strategies in K12 schools. The grant partners are developing:

1) a Career Connected Toolkit designed to effectively inform and guide students and families in making educational decisions with an emphasis on career pathways in CS/CY

2) a Co-Advising Framework, to include a Near Peer Mentoring model designed to provide high school students in CS/CY pathways with additional support for successful achievement and persistence.

The proposed solution for MIT Solve sits squarely in the Career Connected Toolkit for the USDOE grant and fills a significant gap in readily accessible career and educational pathways information. Teachers and counselors from 24 partner high schools will participate in professional development on the toolkit and the PipelineAZ platform adapted through the MIT Solve grant will be a cornerstone. The leveraging of this grant allows the Constructing Career Connections solution to be part of systemic change to college and career advising. The solution proposed in this application is pivotal to ensuring students, educators, and families have access to quality labor market data and a means to identify self-interests and the pathways that lead to careers aligned to those interests.

The platform is built using a modern technology stack, which includes: Cloud-Based, Mobile Responsive, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Restful APIs, and Continuous Integration.  

Pipeline AZ (PAZ) is designed to support Skills latticing -  Skills latticing uses multidimensional matching that standardizes skills terminology across multiple professional domains to dramatically increase the efficiency of the search match function and minimize self- and institutional-induced exclusions. The process takes vocabulary from one professional domain and converts it to relevant vocabulary in other domains to facilitate the horizontal job movement of job seekers. The matching algorithm considers how a job seeker’s skills footprint aligns with the job post skills footprint established by the employer. A score is registered which considers and weights  the skills, % of skills matched, the years of experience with that skill, past job titles that match, industry certifications, job title alias matching and other elimination points like zip code and state. Each candidate and each profile is mapped and matched with every job in Arizona, refreshed every night. 

AWS platform for delivery -  The solution is delivered through the suite of Amazon Web Services which provides the most comprehensive, fastest, modern, and secure cloud infrastructure in the world.

Pipeline AZ is an evolution of past platform instances, including a military skills translation platform used by the U.S. Reserve, the Department of Defense, and multiple corporate talent pipeline solutions. Awards received and success metrics include:

· 1st Universal Employment Solution for U.S. Reserve Component (1M)

· #1 Transition & Veteran Employment Program DoD History (all Seals)

• 252,121 documented hires (19-month)
• 1.4M job seekers and 26,321 employers (80% of Fortune 500)

· Awarded “Best of Breed” Technology Platform (Fed)

· #1 Military Skills Translator (Fed)

· 1st Army-wide Transition Solution (all Soldiers, spouses & components)

· #1 SkillBridge Demonstration (Joining Forces - IT Pilot)

C3 fills a critical need as a digital resource for career awareness that follows students through high school and post-secondary education and helps students make more informed, economical, and sustainable career choices by helping them better understand what they are interested in and why, what career opportunities are available in their region, and what skills, education, and training are required to pursue those professions. We believe that if more young people have better access to labor market information, they will make more informed decisions regarding educational and career opportunities.

Our logic model depicts how our multi-pronged approach will: 1) provide schools, students, and families the information and resources they need to make sound decisions about the opportunities in CS/Cy and the educational pathways necessary to obtain jobs in the field through the digital platform PipelineAZ; 2) how community colleges and high schools will work together to provide coherent and connected guidance to students through co-advising; and 3) how the approach will implement and test a near peer mentoring model designed to increase student outcomes.

We have learned through our initial pilot implementation of labor market information resources for educators that schools do not have relevant, timely career resources readily available, and most counselors and teachers do not have the capacity to develop materials or spend time learning about labor market data, availability of jobs, and aligned credentials to effectively guide students. Through focus groups we have conducted with high school students, we learned that students desire access to accurate information and activities that are relevant to their interests and experiences. High-need students do not often see themselves or their interests reflected in the dominant culture, school expectations or school staff - specifically in CS/Cy instructors. Providing the right information, at the right time, delivered in a format fitting to the audience, is critical to increasing interest in CS/Cy careers and subsequent enrollment in educational pathways. 

C3 seeks to expand our community partnership across 24 additional high schools during the 2021-2022 school year. The school expansion will yield the following five year outcomes in each critical component of C3:

1) Pipeline AZ- 120 new teacher users will increase their skills and knowledge on CS/Cy career pathways through training and integrating of real time labor market and career data in 10th grade core coursework exposing more than 7500 students to CS/Cy career awareness and exploration activities.

2) Co-Advising Team- 120 new members of the co-advising team representing education, policy-makers, and industry will increase collaboration by developing and implementing a plan for ongoing communication, hosting 2 career events per year and facilitate the near peer mentor program leading to increase high-needs student engagement in the CS/Cy pathway.

3) Near Peer Mentor Program - 480 high-needs students will be supported through regular career and advising activities and by 120 near peer mentors trained and prepared to support high-needs students in the program.

In five years, C3's outcomes include:

• Increased interest in and preparedness for CS/Cy pathways among high-need students.
• An increase in high-need students successfully graduating from high school
• High-need students succeed in college coursework, especially CS/Cy, in high school through increased dual enrollment courses that will propel them to college and career success.
• High-need students enter and succeed in postsecondary CS/Cy programs of study and industry certifications for entry level positions launching careers in in-demand STEM fields.

Cultural

Over the next year to five years, the need to more effectively serve the Hispanic, Native American and African American populations is increasing as Arizona grows and becomes more ethnically diverse. These opportunity groups require the support to connect to the career and workforce development ecosystem in ways to assist them in making sound career and educational decisions and navigate the complexities of educational institutions and the employment environment. The utilization of PAZ as a digital system to assist students and job seekers within these diverse groups allows them a user friendly way to take action and make decisions about their educational and career choices.

Financial 

Over the next year and beyond, additional resources are required to cover the costs for supporting career case managers as people proceed through the educational and career environment in navigating the ecosystem. These case managers can be shared through staff of the community colleges and government employment centers. Supporting the advisement and peer mentor advisement model is an urgent and emergent need as well.

Marketing

Over the next five years marketing assistance is needed to develop and support greater social media efforts to reach potential students and the underemployed. There is especially a need to advertise educational programs that are offered in fast track in on line formats modalities.

Technical

The need for additional cloud credits and virtual coaching is vital for  supporting career and educational advisement to students.

Cultural

Students and job seekers from disadvantaged groups i.e. Hispanics, Native American and African American people require additional support in understanding and navigating the educational and career opportunities. 

C3 is strategically targeting disadvantaged students through the partnership recruitment process. We continue to grow the school partnership base to reach large populations of disadvantaged students by applying the following three characteristics;

1) Comprehensive public high school

2) 50% or higher Free and Reduced Lunch student population

3) Course offerings include any college acceleration courses ie; dual enrollment, Career Technical Education

Integrating PAZ and the Career Connected Toolkit activities in 10th grade course work exposes a majority of students to CS/Cy career information as they continue to develop their occupational identity.
Financial

 More funding is needed from this C3 proposal to provide for resources to support more career counseling staff to assist students in navigating career and educational opportunities in the STEM fields.

Center for the Future of Arizona has a diverse fundraising plan that includes individual donors, corporate, foundation and government support. Current and past supporters of Arizona Pathways to Prosperity include the following: Arizona Governor’s Office, United States Department of Education and JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Marketing

Funding is needed to supply faculty, career counselors, students and their families with current Arizona based labor market information especially related to emerging technology fields. Counselors and faculty need support to teach job seekers the importance and relevancy of professional skills in addition to technical skills in the work place.

Pipeline AZ supports the ability to collect workforce data directly in the system through reported hires by case management users and from employer feedback. The C3 team would like to increase reporting capabilities to collect data and generate metrics in specific areas related to career pathways for students. Key data points that Pipeline AZ will begin to collect and report within the C3 implementation include:

-Student placement data into internships, apprenticeships, and other work-based learning activities.

-Student attainment data of non-degree credentials and post-secondary credits.

-Number of students with an individualized career and post-secondary plan.

-Population demographic profiles, reported at an aggregate level.

-Student job placement information i.e. where are students employed, by what company or organization and possible salary data of the student.

With a solid track record for moving innovation to implementation and policy to practice, CFA is uniquely positioned to co-lead this work and provide strategic direction, oversight and project management. For 17 years, CFA has worked with state agencies, hundreds of schools, and other partners to drive innovation and improvement across the education industry. CFA has deep expertise, credibility, and relationships in the areas of college and career pathways and workforce development. 

PEI provides deep expertise and leadership in aligning workforce demand to connect job-seekers, to career pathways and high-wage, high-demand STEM jobs. PEI has been leading the development and implementation of PAZ for the past 3 years. PEI will provide thought leadership, design input, and technical assistance throughout the project.

The solution team has extensive experience as K12 teachers, and administrators in organizations serving high needs students. The team also has experience in post-secondary systems particularly at community colleges. Several members of the team have deep understanding of the workforce development system through direct work experience.

PEI currently partners with organizations across education, Industry, government and the private sector. There is continuity between PEI and PAZ partnerships; PAZ has also built partnerships to increase the adoption and market awareness of the platform. PAZ has partnered with local area workforce boards, including AZ@WORK Maricopa County, workforce offices within local cities such as Tempe, Chandler, Wickenburg and Scottsdale. Local non-profits, faith based organizations and CBOs using PAZ for Case Management include: Dress for Success, Neighborhood Ministries, and Habitat for Humanity. Education and training partners include the Maricopa County Community College District, WestMEC, and Mesa Public Schools. Over 600 employers have created accounts to post jobs on PAZ; partnerships with regional and industry associations such as WESTMARC, The Arizona Tech Council and Local First AZ increase platform capacity in supporting industry specific efforts through exploration and employment awareness and employer support. PAZ has received funds from several partners, including the Maricopa Industrial Development Authority and the Arizona Community Foundation.

PEI received funding in 2017 to stand up PAZ through a three year, $5.8M grant that was provided by the Maricopa County Industrial Development Authority (MCIDA). MCIDA initiated PAZ to provide an online, technology-based job and career exploration platform, improving connectivity between students, job seekers and employers, using skills matching and mapped pathways from education to employment. Through partnerships with regional community colleges and universities, as well as non-profits, faith based organizations and CBOs, PAZ has been funded by the initial MCIDA grant as well as through ongoing annually renewed funds to provide workforce infrastructure; the investment by MCIDA has continued to provide a forum and actionable option for multi-stakeholder partnerships such as the team proposed within this application, C3, to increase statewide adoption and to identify innovative options for all community constituents to participate in a re-imagining of career awareness and skills attainment. Reinvestment in PAZ by MCIDA as well as a direct investment to increase capacity within the COVID-19 spurred employment crisis by the Arizona Community Foundation have allowed PAZ to offer services to partnering organizations at no cost. In partnership, PAZ has initiated white label instances of the core platform in a B2B implementation plan that will enable regions and institutions to leverage the expansion of the PAZ network and provide statewide options for students and job seekers to benefit from consolidated information on pathways to employment and enable direct interaction with industry and employers.

CFA has a diverse fundraising plan that includes individual donors, corporate, foundation and government support. Current and past supporters of Arizona Pathways to Prosperity include the following: Arizona Governor’s Office, United States Department of Education, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Arizona Community Foundation, Ellis Center for Educational Excellence, Rodel Foundation of Arizona, Maricopa County IDA, Salt River Project (SRP) and Arizona Public Service (APS).

PAZ has received grant funds from the Maricopa Industrial Development Authority and the Arizona Community Foundation to establish the platform and increase adoption across partnering institutions. In addition to ongoing investment from MCIDA, PAZ is preparing to offer specific solutions utilizing the PAZ platform and network as a market intermediary. White labeled versions of the system are being implemented now and will include several revenue streams that complement full adoption. 

Additionally, the model proposed in C3, as described in the theory of change portion of this application, describes the portability of the solution to alternate regions for secondary audiences; the PAZ platform as such is configurable and can be implemented to varying degrees in service of education, workforce or holistic support goals.

PAZ has received continued funding from the Maricopa Industrial Development Authority in 2020. Additional grants through the Arizona Community Foundation were made to facilitate PAZ's COVID-19 employment support and to increase the project's capacity to deliver virtual hiring events in partnership with regional stakeholders.

The proposed solution is leveraging a 5-year $4.1 million grant from the USDOE.  Seeking funding (grants) working with corporations, foundations and government agencies addressing the need to increase enrollment of high-need students in pathways focused on careers in CS, with an emphasis on Cy.  Leveraging of this grant allows the Constructing Career Connections solution to be part of systemic change to college and career advising. The solution proposed in this application is pivotal to ensuring students, educators, and families have access to quality labor market data  and a means to identify self-interests and the pathways that lead to careers aligned to those interests.  Proposals will be submitted in December 2020 with hopes of securing funding by July 2021.

The baseline costs for Pipeline AZ platform will not be assumed by C3; therefore, C3 is not responsible for licensing costs or annual support or maintenance within the platform. C3  plans to expend resources in the development expenses necessary to deliver a more customized user experience oriented toward secondary learners. C3 envisions  new entry points to the platform by  use of customized landing pages. To describe local labor market conditions, C3 proposes to license through a provider specific labor market information and deliver to regions within Arizona.

The C3 team comprises current full time staff across PEI and CFA; in support of current staff, C3 anticipates expenses in program support and professional development deployment.

Arizona State University and the Opportunities for Youth initiative estimate that youth ages 16-24 who were not working or in school during 2018 within Arizona at 13.2% or 115,300 youth statewide; the statewide estimates of 2020 opportunity youth vary widely, from 25%, or 1 in 4 youth in Phoenix metro area and 58.5% within the Hopi Nation, 12,808 youth. Targeted engagement with partners working to connect opportunity youth with careers and pathway awareness offers an important opportunity to expand partnering schools through investment in engagement with community partners and employers.

Barriers to scale include the following:

Cultural

The need to more effectively serve the Hispanic, Native American and African American populations is increasing as Arizona grows and becomes more ethnically diverse. These opportunity groups require the support to connect to the career and workforce development ecosystem in ways to assist them in making sound career and educational decisions and navigate the complexities of educational institutions and the employment environment. The utilization of PAZ as a digital system assists students and job seekers within these diverse groups in a user friendly way to take action and make decisions about their educational and career choices. Career case managers are also available to students and job seekers within the PAZ digital delivery system as an interpersonal service to assist people in navigating the career/educational and job placement systems.

Financial 

Additional resources are required to cover the costs for supporting career case managers as people proceed through the educational and career environment in navigating the ecosystem. These case managers can be shared through staff of the community colleges and government employment centers.

Marketing

Assistance is needed to develop and support greater social media efforts to reach potential students and the underemployed. There is especially a need to advertise educational programs that are offered in fast track in on line formats modalities with direct employment implications.

Technical

The need for additional cloud credits and virtual coaching is vital for  supporting career and educational advisement. This also supports industry awareness in apprenticeship and internship programs.

The C3 partnership goals align with the Educational Leadership Group described below which PEI and CFA participate in and assists in leading

Arizona Educational Leadership Group (ELG)

Formed in 2019, ELG membership is composed of 42 educators from across the state inclusive of the following entities: Arizona Department of Education, public schools, community colleges, and universities. 
Provide workforce innovation with the first statewide career exploration, training, and employment support solution for ALL students and job seekers, providing employers, of all sizes and industries, with the talent pipeline they need. The ELG group will support the connection of educational providers to opportunities with employers

 Goals include:

1. Analyzing the assets/gaps of the workforce development ecosystem
   

2. Develop and share recommendations to be communicated with the employer community to drive public policy in the state regarding career and workforce development.
   

3. Increasing  enrollment 
   

4. Creating faster track programs

5. Supporting one statewide solution utilizing PAZ.

 Partnering with the following organizations needs to occur to fully develop career pathways especially to meet the talent management needs of employers in short term, on line, and intermediate programs

A talent optimization solution designed to improve all aspects of the workforce ecosystem with aligning students/job seekers with employment. Pipeline AZ provides the data for measuring outcomes, impact, and an unprecedented ability to aggregate statewide talent supply.

Other Partners

Include the Arizona Department of Education (ADE), Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) and the Arizona Tech Council (AZTC), other main employers in healthcare,  manufacturing, construction and others. ADE represents all the public schools K-12 and adult education. MCCCD has over 190,000 students at ten colleges. The AZTC is a technology  trade association representing 800 IT employers.  Futures Inc. is a talent optimization software company and creator of Pipeline Arizona.

Employers as examples in an advisory capacity could include:

SRP, APS, Intel, Honeywell Aerospace, USAA, Banner Health, ON Semiconductor, Microchip Technology, Honor Health, Sundt Construction, Boeing, General Dynamics and others