SU Partners with City School District and Businesses to Implement Work Readiness Program

Syracuse -- Syracuse University’s WorkKeys® Center and SU Gear Up will work collaboratively with the Syracuse City School District, CNY Works, Partners for Education & Business, Inc., MACNY, MDA, Journey to Jobs, and the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce to ensure that graduates from the Syracuse City School District are prepared for jobs by implementing the Work Ready career preparation model. The model will encompass career exploration, skill building, validation, work-based learning, and credentialing in the form of the SU Certificate of Workplace Competency.
Tom Hadlick, executive director of the WorkKeys® Center at Syracuse University, explained the statistics behind the initiative. “According to the National Center on Public Policy and Higher Education, only 68 out of every 100 ninth graders who started school this year will graduate on time; of those, 40 will enroll directly in college; of those, only 27 will be enrolled the following year, and of those, only 18 will earn an associate degree in three years or a bachelor's degree in six years. Eighty-two out of every 100 will not make it,” said Hadlick. “Our nation cannot sustain its current standard of living under those conditions, particularly in the face of fierce global competition for the best jobs and the best pay.” Hadlick said that the government and community leaders and educators cannot afford to wait for long-term educational reform to take hold. “We need short term solutions addressing the concerns of business and industry. The Partnership for a Work-Ready Syracuse has taken a major step forward to improve our community’s global competitiveness.”
In the spirit of SU’s Scholarship in Action, this partnership is creating a new way for the University to forge alliances with business and education to develop and implement innovative school reform methods in the SCSD. The strategy is also in alignment with what many studies are calling for — a redoubling of the efforts needed to overcome the myriad of barriers faced by students and the urban districts in which they are being taught. A recent John Hopkins report identified far too many school districts as “dropout factories.”
The partnership hit the ground running with the robust SU Gear Up grants (more than $13M) already delivering career exploration and skill development to a cohort of 3,500 students in the district. These strategies are helping students make the connection between what they are studying and what they will need in the real world through exposure to contextual curriculum. The business leadership has endorsed this model as a direction for education reform in our region.
This new partnership is a result of last year’s Journey to Jobs Summit on workforce development in the region, which is facing a labor shortage and a shrinking population.
The WorkKeys® Center offers a complete spectrum of job analysis, skill assessment, instructional support and training services for employers, job seekers, and students, revolving around the well-known "WorkKeys® System" developed by American College Testing (ACT). The Center is housed at University College of Syracuse University. For more information, contact Tom Hadlick, executive director, or Andrea German-Willis, assistant director at 315-443-5241 or via email at workkeys@uc.syr.edu.

University College of Syracuse University
Thomas Hadlick
Executive Director, WorkKeys Center
700 University Ave.
Syracuse, NY 13244

Syracuse University is a private, diverse higher education institution dedicated to faculty excellence and scholarly distinction, attracting and supporting enterprising students and a close interaction and engagement with the world—locally, nationally and globally.

This release was published on openPR.