Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL)
Education is a great leveler of systemic inequity in the workforce, yet the current system often fails those who need it most. Bay Path University will leverage its award-winning online learning platform – called SOUL (Social Online Universal Learning) - to launch a comprehensive initiative to propel women into fields where opportunity for economic mobility exists, yet gender and diversity disparity reign. A proven innovator in women’s education, Bay Path will radically redesign the education and career continuum in collaboration with industry partners as well as national workforce and education nonprofits. This initiative will eliminate barriers to entry into promising fields, beginning with development of a unique research-based pilot to launch women into cybersecurity careers, addressing workforce gaps where national needs are critical. The model will be scalable across industries and regions, paving the way for increased representation and accelerated advancement into leadership, ultimately increasing women’s power, influence, and pay equity.
The strong connection between race and its corollary, poverty, and the devastation of COVID is undeniable. In Hampden County (MA), where Bay Path University is located and will be a site of project work and which ranks bottom in the state for virtually every economic, health, and quality of life measure, the COVID death rate of 9.7% compares to a national rate of 2.9%. The pandemic is deepening the long-time inequities born by women and communities of color. During this crisis, our nation’s broken and inequitable economic model continues to provide windfall profits to top billionaires, primarily white men, while millions of women and low-wage workers are out of work with little support or no safety net. Women cannot afford to lose more ground, or more time. Future generations are at stake. We propose a transformative approach for low-income women to advance in careers and leadership roles in every sector of society, magnifying their influence to shape policies that benefit women and our country.
Bay Path University proposes a bold new model that explicitly dismantles barriers to entry and fast-tracks career advancement for disadvantaged women into critical sectors, is fueled by robust collaborations with employers and intermediaries invested in workforce development, and leverages a cutting edge approach to online learning called SOUL (Social Online Universal Learning).
Reimagining an education and career ecosystem, the University plays a central role as the hub, aligning curricula with employer needs and curating credit bearing training and experiential learning, so that women can affordably demonstrate the skills and experience for professional growth. Through the SOUL platform, online education will be delivered with wraparound supports, educator coaches, career and leadership development, and mentoring that prepare women for leadership roles. This project, initially focused on cybersecurity where diversity is lacking and gaps are widening, and implemented regionally in western Massachusetts, will be designed to scale to other sectors and regions.
This project intends to provide workforce development opportunities to diverse women who currently may be unemployed or underemployed and seeking avenues to financial sustainability.
Bay Path University’s undergraduate population of 1,700 students is diverse with a high level of need, reflecting the population demographics of nearby high-need cities and town where many students live. A women's university, the students served by this project are enrolled in the accelerated Social Onine Universal Learning (SOUL) model, delivered through the American Women's College at Bay Path University. These are typically transfer or older students seeking to jumpstart or advance their professional career while juggling family and job responsibilities, often at jobs with little opportunity for advancement. This student population is diverse with a high level of financial need, and we have designed the SOUL model explicitly to address the needs of working students balancing multiple responsibilities to pursue higher education and credentials that will help them advance to higher paying jobs in fulfilling careers, provide greater financial security for themselves and their families, and future generations. This design explicitly incorporates student feedback loops which are used in continuous improvement processes that are built into the model.
- Increase access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities for those entering the workforce, transitioning between jobs, or facing unemployment
Higher education institutions must build capacity to respond more nimbly to changing workforce demands, especially in response to the pandemic with low-income women disproportionately affected. Accelerating research-based strategies and partnerships with employers and others invested in workforce development, our approach will identify and dismantle systemic barriers to entry and advancement in professional careers for disadvantaged women, beginning with the cybersecurity industry. Vital to this work will be a commitment to inclusive strategies, working with employers to institute practices that will ensure women from a diversity of backgrounds have the opportunity to develop their voices, talents and experience.
- Conneticut
- Massachusetts
- Massachusetts
- Connecticut
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth
All four members of the Leadership Team are full time employees of Bay Path University.
A much larger team of full-time academic program directors and staff across Bay Path University will be available to support components of the project as needed. The Project Lead is Sandra J. Doran, President of Bay Path University, ensuring that the project has the highest institutional priority.
The University’s long-standing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion arises from its mission to make education accessible and inclusive, especially for disadvantaged women, and equip them for success in professional careers. Recognizing that students must be able to see themselves among faculty and staff, hiring diverse leaders has been a key strategic goal for several years. A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee reports directly to the new President signals the centrality of this work to her vision. The Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Committee addresses equity in teaching and learning practices. Finally, the SOUL (Social Online Universal Learning) model embraces this mission, as its raison d’etre is to reduce barriers to education for low-income women and women with disabilities. SOUL weaves together Universal Design for Learning, credit for prior learning, adaptive learning, virtual communities, career and leadership development, and mentoring, to ensure that BPU upholds its promise of social mobility.
- A new business model or process
Bay Path University is a nimble institution, nationally recognized as an innovator in women’s education. In alignment with its mission, the University proposes a bold new model that explicitly dismantles barriers to entry and fast-tracks career advancement for disadvantaged women into critical sectors, is fueled by robust collaborations with employers and intermediaries invested in workforce development, and leverages a cutting edge approach to online learning called SOUL (Social Online Universal Learning).
Reimagining an education and career ecosystem, the University plays a central role as the hub, aligning curricula with employer needs and curating credit bearing training and experiential learning, so that women can affordably demonstrate the skills and experience for professional growth. Through the SOUL platform, online education will be delivered with wraparound supports, educator coaches, career and leadership development, and mentoring that prepare women for leadership roles.
This project, initially focused on cybersecurity where diversity is lacking and gaps are widening, and implemented regionally in Massachusetts and northern Connecticut, will be designed to scale to other sectors and regions. A Career Readiness Center (CRC) will be created to conduct research into barriers to career advancement by sector, including employer hiring practices that preclude consideration of qualified applicants. The CRC will also provide assessment of competencies through simulations to demonstrate candidate job readiness. Impact will be demonstrated through increased pay equity, career advancement along a trajectory toward leadership roles, and the shift in employer hiring practices to make meaningful progress toward creating inclusive, diverse and equitable work environments for women.
Bay Path has developed a nationally recognized virtual ecosystem, Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL). The SOUL model, designed to be delivered cost-effectively at scale, is aimed at shortening time to completion and improving credential attainment, with a particular focus on reducing achievement gaps for low-income students and underrepresented minority students.
SOUL is comprised of six research-based, high impact practices, each of which contains a number of initiatives, structured workflows, and opportunities to collect evidence. Included in the six components is an innovative adaptive learning platform, developed as a customized solution incorporating RealizeIT™ digital courseware, using data, learning analytics and predictive modeling to create a dynamic and interactive customized learning environment for course delivery. It also includes intensive and proactive wraparound academic support and advising delivered by educator-coaches and online access to professional tutoring (Tutor.com). Another critical component of the SOUL model is online course design that incorporates Universal Design for Learning principles to accommodate all learning styles and integration of Open Educational Resources (OER) as a priority to reduce student textbook costs. Virtual Learning Communities offer online peer social support, opportunities for professional networking, and insight into the student’s desired career path. The final component of SOUL is faculty professional development which ensures on-going training and widespread adoption of SOUL strategies.
Bay Path University designed SOUL to mitigate known barriers that low-income and underrepresented minority students - populations served by the University in increasing proportions over the past twenty years - have historically faced in equitable access to higher education and resources to help them achieve a degree. A comprehensive on-boarding process, SOUL-Connect, orients new students to the learning environment, assesses learning gaps and learning style preferences, and assigns an Educator Coach who encourages, empowers and supports students throughout their educational journey. Data and predictive analytics and an adaptive learning platform create an interactive customized learning environment tailored to the learning needs of individual students, who are diverse in their levels of preparation, prior education and experience. Wrap-around academic and career support services, financial services, and social supports such as peer mentors and Virtual Learning Communities, with proactive outreach by Educator Coaches to potentially at-risk students, keeps online students engaged with targeted supports so they persist toward completion.
Demonstrated success with SOUL’s data-driven approach yields rates for retention (75%), course completion (93%), six-year graduation (64%), and student satisfaction (95%) that surpass national averages in the non-traditional, online space. Compared to national graduation rates which lag for women of color, our 6-year graduation rate does not vary significantly for adult students who identify as Hispanic (67.3%), African-American (61.3%) or White (66.4%).
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Big Data
- Crowdsourced Service / Social Networks
- Software and Mobile Applications
Bay Path University’s proposed solution will dramatically shift the role of higher education to being the hub of a lifelong learning ecosystem centered on women’s career advancement. Leveraging our innovative SOUL model and data-driven technologies, we will implement a uniquely learner-centered, inclusive, and scalable approach to delivering support that includes coaching, mentoring, and leadership development. Technology solutions from partners that map job requirements to skills training, deliver experiential and project-based learning based on employer needs, and match an individual’s interests to educational and career pathways, will fuel development of tailored talent pipelines. Building robust, evolving relationships with workforce boards, employers, community-based organizations, and workforce intermediaries in critical sectors, will align women’s education with high-mobility and high-influence occupations. We will develop a pipeline of women, focused on those populations with the greatest needs, design pathways around their needs and connect them to employment opportunities, while providing the mentorship and coaching to enable their advancement. By preparing women through holistic, well-rounded approaches that respond to industry needs, more women will graduate with skills and credentials to fast-track into leadership roles in critical sectors.
Piloting our new model in the field of cybersecurity, where there are currently upwards of 20,000 unfilled and well-paying positions in Massachusetts, allows us to leverage an immediate opportunity – the building of a Cyberrange Center in nearby Springfield - that has garnered local and state investments. Our goal is to pave a more affordable and supportive pathway to high-paying and challenging cybersecurity careers for low-income women, in alignment with regional and statewide economic development plans. Entry-level cyber positions typically require a college degree and one to two years of experience and/or expensive industry certifications. By assessing job-related competencies (NICE standards) via cloud-based cyber-range simulations, we will demonstrate participant career readiness for specific cyber jobs, including entry level positions. By gaining employer buy-in of this assessment process, we will accelerate the placement of well-prepared candidates earlier in the cyber career pathway, where employers are willing to pay for additional training, education and certifications to reduce barriers and increase inclusivity of diverse women into this critical sector.
- Women & Girls
- Low-Income
- Minorities & Previously Excluded Populations
- 20-40%
Year one focuses on project design, with cybersecurity serving as a pilot. We will solicit expertise from industry advisory committees, and launch the Career Readiness Center to begin establishing assessment and skill acquisition exercises identified by research with workforce development and employer partners. Benchmarks to meet within this first year include solidifying appropriate employer and workforce partnerships, documenting core elements, tools and resources, and cultivating the pipelines, experiential learning and mentorship opportunities essential to the model.
Year two specifically incorporates the launch of the Cyber Range Center in Springfield, MA, into our cybersecurity program to demonstrate the impact of work-based training. The project design team will also identify additional sectors ripe for the replication and scaling of the designed model starting with year three. In addition to tracking student progress through variables such as enrollment, academic achievement, persistence and completion, we will document students' interactions and experiences to inform continuous improvement, and incorporate feedback from advisory committees including employers, workforce development, and industry subject matter experts.
Robust employer, industry association, and workforce development partnerships are essential to successfully launching into multiple sectors over years four and five of the grant. We will document and track these relationships, noting how they contribute to program design and what forms of contact they have with the students. Employers will benefit from improved recruitment and retention of highly skilled employees. All of these findings will be documented and disseminated to help expand the reach of the model to scale impact to women nationally.
Bay Path University’s mission is to make education accessible and inclusive for disadvantaged women, and to equip them for success in professional careers. Our online SOUL model, the platform of our proposed ecosystem, reduces barriers to education for women, resulting in graduation rates at 50% higher than the national average for adult women.
We serve a diverse undergraduate population with a high level of need: 41% are first-generation, 43% are women of color, and 52% receive Pell grants, primarily from Massachusetts and northern Connecticut. The main campus is situated in western Massachusetts (Hampden County), with a satellite site in Sturbridge (Worcester County), and is located within the New England Knowledge Corridor, “an interstate partnership of regional economic development, planning, business, tourism, and educational institutions that work together to advance the region’s economic progress” (www.knowledgecorridor.org). Piloting this project in this region, which has pockets of extreme poverty, will benefit low-income women, like our own students, who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID19 pandemic. The University is financially sound, but we are a tuition-driven institution and enrollment revenues have decreased as students and families struggle with college affordability in the face of unprecedented job losses.
The primary barrier is securing additional financial resources to redesign our business model, build capacity to scale, expand employer and workforce intermediary partnerships, and conduct targeted outreach and marketing to attract low-income or career-transitioning women to fields like cybersecurity that lack diversity, but where there are high paying jobs and enormous opportunities for women.
To support students and families who are struggling financially, the University will hold tuition at the same level with no increases for the next academic year. To mitigate decreases in tuition revenues as a result of the pandemic, some cost-cutting measures have been implemented, but an increased scrutiny on retention efforts are anticipated to result in more students being able to remain enrolled. The University is committed to maintaining a balanced budget.
The University is actively pursuing grant competitions through federal and state funding, and corporate and private foundations, and individual donor contributions to support the work of this project over the next five years. The University’s current grant from the Strada Education Network for the project titled, “Closing the Gaps: Building Pathways for Adult Women in a Technology-Driven Workforce”, slated to conclude by December, 2021, will provide a portion of funding to advance this work in the field of cybersecurity, which includes partnership development, curriculum development, including for-credit and non-credit learning options and stackable credentials, project-based learning, internships and other experiential learning opportunities, scholarship support, and marketing/outreach to targeted populations of women who can benefit from our programs and approach.
Increasing economic mobility for disadvantaged women will be measured by increased enrollment into educational pathways, credential attainment and job placement or higher paying advancement in critical sectors. Important benchmarks include completion of stackable credentials and work-related experiences/opportunities within the course of study. Evidence of change starts with recording baseline employment data of students in current programs and at the time of entry into education/training pathways. Success in impacting student advancement will be measured by tracking experiential learning, job placement, wage increase, career advancement, and participation in leadership roles. Documenting and analyzing income levels before enrollment, during matriculation, and after graduation will be critical in monitoring women’s economic position and social mobility, as well as debt load. Input from employers will be gathered on their satisfaction with time to recruit, candidate pool and preparedness of participating students. Improved employment will have measurable ripple effects into the local economy.
- Nonprofit
Project success hinges upon a Bay Path University leadership team with deep experience in designing educational programs that overcome barriers for low-income women.
Sandra J. Doran, JD, President, will lead the project, spearheading strategic development, convening a steering committee of key partners and raising external support for scalability. A three-time college president, Doran has led both women’s and online institutions focused on student outcomes and success. Her experience includes serving as CEO of an educational technology company and as a National Policy Director for the New England Board of Higher Education. Doran’s career has been marked by developing disruptive methodologies in higher education, promoting dialogue among institutions, government entities, industry leaders and foundations, and increasing innovation, diversity, and accountability.
Amanda Gould, Vice President for Learning Innovation, Analytics & Technology, will serve as Project Director. Gould, the key architect of SOUL, has oversight of all undergraduate programs, and drives innovation with a student success team given rein to explore promising solutions to make online education more experiential, intentional, and effective.
Beverly Benson, Director of Information Technology & Security, develops for-credit and non-credit learning options, leadership development strategies, and mentorship for women in cybersecurity. She is Co-Chair of the Workforce Development Committee for The International Consortium for Minority Cybersecurity Professionals.
Thomas Loper, Ed.D., Associate Provost and Dean, will guide the Career Readiness Center, piloting assessment of cybersecurity-related skills. Loper was instrumental in launching undergraduate and graduate programs in cybersecurity, data science and leadership, and serves on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.
Regional Workforce Boards. Bay Path University has partnered with the MassHire Workforce Boards serving three of the four counties in western Massachusetts (Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire) to implement the following grants, focused on streamlining pathways to cybersecurity careers for women, aligned with regional economic development priorities and workforce development plans:
- Strada Education Network ($1.6 million grant), “Closing the Gaps: Building Pathways for Adult Women in a Technology-Driven Workforce”
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, ‘Cybersecurity Workforce Talent Solicitation’ ($250,000 grant ), “ Engaging Student Interns in Cybersecurity Audits with Smaller Supply Chain Companies to Develop Experience for Entry-Level Positions while Improving the Cybersecurity Ecosystem in Massachusetts.”
American Job Centers. These are organized as MassHire Career Centers, aligned with the catchment areas of the workforce boards. Bay Path University worked with the previously named One-Stop Center in Holyoke, MA, several years ago on a grant-funded project to offer a bridge to accelerated higher education for low-income adult women.
MassCyberCenter. This unique public agency, sited at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, serves as an adviser to the University to help advance a regional approach to cybersecurity education and workforce development.
Commonwealth Corporation. Also a grantee of the Strada Education Network, this quasi-public workforce development agency strengthens the skills of Massachusetts youth and adults by investing in innovative partnerships with industry, education and workforce organizations. The University provided support in the area of competency-based learning to their efforts to issue a Request for Proposals to Massachusetts organizations related to reeducating/upskilling incumbent healthcare workers.
This project intends to provide workforce development opportunities to diverse women who currently may be unemployed or underemployed and seeking avenues to financial sustainability. BPU can provide education and training opportunities through partnerships with the MassHire Career Centers by curating certifications/experiential learning with training providers/employers to funnel women into fields where they are currently underrepresented and providing the additional resources, supports and network that lead to program completion and, ideally, job placement.
State and federal funding currently exists for training and credit-bearing certifications. BPU can help to maximize the use of these dollars for educational advancement, as well as help students with donor-funded scholarships. Any revenue generated would be further invested into promoting these opportunities to more women through the MassHire Career Centers and Workforce Boards.
This would require dedicated staff time at BPU, Workforce Boards and Career Centers, but grants funds would support hiring a consultant or new staff position to coordinate a working model that ensures the population of unemployed or underemployed women who could benefit from these programs are provided access and help in navigating available funding options.
This new staff resource would ultimately aim to create methods to reach the target population resulting in enrollment of women into the training/certificate programs curated through BPU with the coordinated funding, ensure that the students are properly supported through the SOUL model with the additional tools and resources, including mentorship and coaching, as well as the work-based experiential learning components coordinated with employers that will help lead to employability.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
Bay Path University is renowned in Massachusetts as an innovative and agile institution, academic programs aligned with regional workforce needs, state-of-the art online model, and its mission to develop women as leaders in their professionals and communities. The COVID19 pandemic has negatively impacted our students, but it has also provided a unique opportunity to accelerate efforts already underway to leverage SOUL in reimagining a new model for higher education - one that will better, more flexibly and more affordably serve low-income undergraduate student populations, paving the way to educational and workforce readiness in fields where opportunities abound and higher-paying careers can change a family’s trajectory for generations.
Bay Path University actively seeks funding through grants from federal, state, corporate and foundation sources and donor contributions for solution development. However, to sustain the model, SOUL has been designed to reduce costs per student as it scales. For students enrolled in SOUL, we have been able to maintain level tuition ($400/credit) for a number of years, at a TOTAL cost of $48,000 to earn a baccalaureate degree, with no transfer credits. Still for many women this remains unaffordable. Through our new ecosystem, we will be able to curate and customize available learning options targeted to the knowledge, skills and experience required in a particular job by field, guide women to move more affordably and effectively along career pathways, and leverage all available financial resources for students, including investments from employers for their ongoing education, training and certifications, and professional development.
Revenue is generated through tuition, through student payments, and student loans, grants and scholarships.
Grant funds secured that provide direct support for this project include:
1. Strada Education Network. $1.6 million grant, awarded in February, 2019, for a 3-year project titled, “Closing the Gaps: Building Pathways for Adult Women in a Technology-Driven Workforce.” The grant will conclude in December, 2021, and $747,499 in grant funds remain dedicated to this project at this time.
Grant funds secured that provide indirect support for this project, but will strengthen institutional capacity to better and more affordably serve the entire student population:
2. U.S. Department of Education, Title III-Strengthening Institutions Program.
$2,197,898, awarded in September, 2019, for a 5-year project titled, “Learning for the 21st Century: Reshaping the Student Experience.”
To drive institutional reform around student engagement and support, the grant will support three initiaves:
1) Guided Pathways Framework through which guided pathways will be developed and validated; 4-year curriculum maps and outcomes will be confirmed; and instructional enhancement of milestone courses through career contextualization, high-impact practices, and adaptive learning will be undertaken.
2) Reframed Support will revitalize the continuum of support, including onboarding, enrollment, advising, goal setting, career exploration, and internships, establishing Pathway-defined on-ramps.
3) A robust integration of systems and technology, along with a Customer Relations Management system will streamline and facilitate communication, faculty and student interaction, and administrative functions through a
virtual “One-Stop” Center.
The grant will conclude in September, 2024.
Bay Path University is actively seeking grant funds through federal and state agencies, private and corporate foundation, and donor contributions to fund development of our proposed business model for an education and career ecosystem. This development work includes designing and building a new business model, building institutional capacity to scale, expanding partnerships with employers and workforce intermediaries and developing more effective ways to partner within our proposed education and career ecosystem, continuous improvement efforts to make delivery of educational and training programs more effective, accessible and affordable for students.
The University has developed a projected budget of $10 million over 5 years.
The following grant applications that will provide direct project support have been submitted to:
1. The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge. Submitted in September, 2020. Requested Amount: $10 million for a 5-year project titled, “SOUL: Redesigning an Education and Career Ecosystem to Advance Women.”
Ten finalists will each receive a $100,000 planning grant to revise and resubmit final proposals, with three finalists to each receive $10,000,000, with the remaining finalists considered to share an award of $10,000,000. Awards will be made prior to September, 2021.
2. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), Institutional Resilience and Expanded Postsecondary Opportunity (IREPO) Grants Program. Submitted in October, 2020. Requested Amount: $ 1,679,153 for a 2-year project titled, “Learning for the 21st Century: A More Affordable and Flexible Guided Pathways Approach.”
Estimated expenses for project development in 2021 are $2,210, 300.
This includes:
Personnel ($434,700)
Capacity Building, Design & Scale ($400,000)
Pipeline Development ($200,000)
Workbased Experiences Providers ($371,400)
Technology ($345,000)
Stipends - Employers and Students ($85,000)
Disability Accommodations ($100,000)
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning ($150,000)
Indirect Costs ($124,200)
Higher education institutions, particularly those that serve disadvantaged populations, must build capacity to respond more nimbly to changing workforce demands, especially in the face of a pandemic with huge job losses and low-income women disproportionately affected. Through research-based strategies and partnerships with employers and others invested in workforce development, our approach will identify and dismantle systemic barriers to entry and advancement in professional careers for women disadvantaged by income, race/ethnicity, or other factors, and fast-track them in critical sectors, beginning with the cybersecurity industry. Vital to this work will be a national call to action to commit to inclusive strategies, working with employers to institute practices that will ensure women from a diversity of backgrounds have the opportunity to develop their voices, talents and experience toward attaining leadership positions as decision-makers whose power and influence will shape policies and solutions that reflect the needs of women across our nation.
- Business model
- Product/service distribution
- Funding and revenue model
- Board members or advisors
- Marketing, media, and exposure
Support from a consultant or consulting group with expertise will be required to facilitate development of the infrastructure required for the University and a constellation of employer and workforce intermediary partners to effectively work together, and to build capacity to manage and sustain the model (financially and operationally) and its ecosystem of partnerships as it scales. The cybersecurity industry was selected to pilot the model because of its high-paying opportunities, yet underrepresentation of women, as well as Bay Path’s experience in developing and delivering online programs in cybersecurity. Program momentum has been furthered through partners across multiple sectors through our cybersecurity-focused grant from Strada Education Network. We seek national partners along the full education through career continuum who will serve both as advisors and participants in the ecosystem, and who can help us address the greatest obstacle anticipated – marketing, outreach and exposure to attract girls and women to cybersecurity.
The success of this project hinges on both the strong leadership team with the experience to move a project of this scope and magnitude forward, as well as a constellation of partners with the expertise to build and scale a creative and inclusive ecosystem for preparing women with the skills and experience employers need, paving the way to high paying careers and leadership roles for women.
A wide range of potential project partners with track records of identifying and dismantling systemic barriers to education, career entry and advancement have been approached and expressed their keen interest in the project and interest in partnering with Bay Path University to advance this work. Some examples are listed:
MassHire Workforce Boards and MassHire Career Centers. The University has secured commitment from the MassHire Hampden County Workforce Board and the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board to support this project, and we welcome the opportunity to partner with the Workforce Boards prioritized through this competition, two of which are in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the same regions we serve.
Cloud Range Cyber, LLC, Debbie Gordon, Founder and CEO; Nashville, TN 37212. Will pilot skills assessments translated from student learning and simulations in cybersecurity.
MassCyberCenter at Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, Stephanie Helm, Director. Will serve as an advisor to the project to advance the cybersecurity workforce ecosystem in Massachusetts.
Girls Inc. Based on their successful STEM program, will help build a pipeline of young women to cybersecurity.
Extreme Academy. Training, internship placement and job placement.
Executive Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations