The Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program will expand its efforts to train and prepare aspiring and current community college leaders thanks to a new $3.2 million grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation announced this week.
Aspen’s grant award is part of a five-year, $350 million investment by JPMorgan Chase to equip individuals with the skills they need to succeed in high-demand and emerging industries such as information technology, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
The “New Skills at Work” program’s significant support of community colleges and other non-traditional career pathways is part of the bank’s efforts to align education and job training with employer and industry needs in order to boost economic opportunity and career mobility, particularly for underserved groups.
“It’s good to see JPMorgan Chase validate community colleges as both a driver of the economy in local communities, but also a stepping stone for social mobility for Americans,” said Linda Perlstein, associate director of Aspen’s College Excellence Program. “That really aligns with what we’ve tried to do with the College Excellence Program.”
Current initiatives under the College Excellence Program support community colleges in their work to meet the needs of their local economies in a way that also meets the needs of their students from diverse backgrounds, Perlstein said. The $3.2 million grant funding will be used to launch the Aspen New Presidents Institute, and to enhance existing support for the Aspen Presidential Fellowship for Community College Excellence – now in its third year.
The Aspen Presidential Fellowship is a 10-month long professional development program for aspiring community college leaders that includes three week-long residential seminars, a mentoring component and a capstone project on student success. Since the program’s inception, the program has successfully placed 32 presidents at institutions that collectively serve nearly 500,000 students.
By design, two-thirds of presidential fellows are women – which is double that of current female community college presidents, Perlstein said. In addition, 37 percent of fellows are people of color compared to the current 29 percent of sitting community college leaders.
