Career Pathways Development

Below are examples of two different types of career pathways projects CORD staff is currently leading. One project takes a regional, multi-county, multi-sector approach. The other project focuses on a single sector in partnership with one community college and the communities it serves.

Southwestern Oklahoma Regional Career Pathways

CORD is working with the Southwest Oklahoma Impact Coalition (SOIC) on a regional career pathways plan for southwestern Oklahoma. SOIC is a collaboration of five universities and colleges and two planning districts and encompasses the twenty counties of southwestern Oklahoma. The focus of the project is to develop career pathway models for four targeted industries: manufacturing, healthcare, utilities, and simulations. The project’s overarching goal is to help build a larger, well-trained labor pool in the four sectors. Major project activities include:

• Developing and conducting industry-specific forums with industry CEOs to determine perceived workforce needs, both current and future.
• Developing and conducting career pathways visioning sessions with both educators and community service partners to share data from the industry sector forums and provide an overview of the career pathways process. Each group will identify ways to effectively and efficiently leverage each other’s resources to respond with programs and services that will meet the needs of the targeted sectors.
• Developing career maps to include career ladders and lattices. This will involve reviewing current course offerings, identifying gaps, and developing course titles and descriptions to address the gaps.
• Conducting career pathways leadership certification workshops for educators who will be involved in career pathways implementation.

Danville Community College Adult Career Pathways in Manufacturing

CORD is working with Danville Community College in Danville, Illinois, to develop Adult Career Pathways for the manufacturing industry sector. The college is seeking to meet the region’s labor pool and incumbent workforce needs either by offering new or expanded programs itself or by collaborating with other education-oriented, community, trade, or governmental organizations to do so.

CORD is guiding Danville through the Adult Career Pathways “advancement phase” which consists of local industry sector forums, community services partnering, advancement meetings, resource development, and positioning planning. In addition, the phase includes college leader, faculty, and staff professional development related to recruitment strategies and understanding of the value of contextualized learning. The result, an Adult Career Pathways Plan, will be presented and revised in collaboration with industry and community leaders to ensure proper alignment to the region’s workforce development, economic development, and quality-of-life goals.

CORD is working with numerous other communities on Adult Career Pathways issues and has developed the website www.adultcareerpathways.org to serve as a resource for community colleges interested in developing a sector-driven, sustainable model for workforce development.

For more information about CORD's Career Pathways technical assistance services, please email pathwaysprojects@cord.org.