this month, Harvard Workforce Project (HPoW) has released a new book published by Harvard Education Press highlighting MGCCC as one of five exemplary community colleges contributing to regional economic growth and opportunity.

Through five case studies of community colleges from Mississippi to Ohio to Arizona, the book America’s Hidden Economic Engine: How Community Colleges Can Drive Shared Prosperity explores how leading community colleges We are exploring ways to design and implement new solutions to both challenges. Create new avenues of opportunity that meet a critical need in the U.S. economy and bring opportunities to diverse learners.

MGCCC is a leader in workforce training in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, partnering with 32 companies to train more than 11,000 graduates. With 60 additional career and technical options leading to qualifications and degrees, MGCCC is the college of choice for approximately 23,000 local students annually.

“It was a great honor to be part of this project. The Gulf Coast has been in the workforce training business for many years and has an excellent track record of producing top-notch students and trainees,” said MGCCC Chairman Mary. Dr. S. Graham stated, “The University remains committed to our industry partners and strives to find innovative ways to expand the economy through education and training.”

In addition to MGCCC, four other colleges—Northern Virginia Community College, Lorain County Community College in Ohio, Pima Community College in Arizona, and San Jacinto Community College in Texas—each serve very different learners. , meet a variety of local labor needs, but all practices were implemented to address the needs of the local economy and promote new opportunities for equitable growth. Promising practices detailed in the book include developing innovative and externally facing leadership teams, focusing on attracting companies to the community and helping new businesses build and grow; This includes building flexible programs according to where employees are located, creating career advice, and more. Above all, it is essential for all educational pathways.

“The institutions profiled in this book demonstrate the enormous potential of community colleges as engines of local economic growth, serving those who are often left behind by so-called ‘traditional’ higher education. But often two-year institutions lack the resources to do so effectively and struggle with the need to be everything for everyone,” said a senior adviser at HpoW. says Robert Schwartz, co-editor of the book. “The findings of this book are not only for community college leaders seeking to accelerate economic growth in their region, but also recognize the critical importance of funding community colleges as engines of growth and prosperity. We hope it will be an inspiration and motivation for our state leaders as well.”

The project is under the leadership of Robert Schwartz and Rachel Lipson, co-founders and founding directors of Projects on Workforce and co-editors of the book, with case authors Haley Glatter and Annalisa・Launched in 2021 with the support of Sorrells, Furman Haynes and Rachel Boroditsky. , Saxy Chawla. The Harvard Workforce Project is a joint project of the Malcolm He Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work project, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Support for this project came from private foundations and the Capital One Foundation. To find out more about this book, or to order a copy, see More Information. here.