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Leadership Community

NCI / Starved Rock Region

Educating, training, and preparing students for the globally competitive marketplace.

The North Central Regional Betterment Coalition came together as a community of residents from eight different counties (Bureau, Carroll, Jo Daviess, LaSalle, Lee, Ogle, Putnam, and Whiteside) that share a commitment to the children of their region to improve their potential for higher achievement in education and broader career success. With the support and involvement of the employer community, the Coalition led the creation of community-wide systems that incorporate multiple career pathways for students and new opportunities for employers to educate, train, and prepare students for the globally competitive marketplace. In 2022, Illinois Valley Community College became the community intermediary and worked with partners to refine the community’s goals.

Lead Intermediary Organization

Illinois Valley Community College

Contact

ivcc.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Community Organizing and Collective Impact
  • Employer Engagement
  • Expanding Pathways

Prioritized Focus Areas

  • Agriculture
  • Accounting and Finance
  • Human Services
  • Health Sciences
  • Manufacturing
  • Information Technology
  • Transportation and Logistics

Key Successes

  • Developed a strong infrastructure of employer engagement within eight counties
  • Embraced the collective impact strategy to organize large-scale town hall meetings to establish common regional objectives and outcomes
  • Surveyed Area Career Center high school students (1,600 participants) to identify career clusters emerging as key areas of interest
  • Obtained grant funding to hire a consultant to define and refine the pathways and college and career pathways endorsements in collaboration with secondary and post-secondary schools

2-Year Goals

  • Refine career pathways to provide a clear vision for students while meeting regional demand
  • Develop additional dual credit opportunities for students in core areas
  • Increase the number of adults with a post-secondary credential by 15% (from 22.2% to 26.7%) by 2024
  • Revisit the regional PaCE model with area junior high and high schools and industry partners. In FY24, IVCC, in partnership with the IVCC Foundation office, will offer one free class in a pathway /program of study to up to 10 enrolled students who earned the Illinois College and Career Pathway endorsement
  • Implement the college’s credit for the prior learning model in partnership with CAEL
  • Partner with local agencies to identify, recruit, and support economically disadvantaged adults, African American and Latinx students to apply credit for prior learning and life experience

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Network Organizers: Advance Illinois, Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University, and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission