This article reports on four synthesis findings from the Credentials to Careers (C2C) initiative -- a consortium of seven community colleges working to create and implement innovative programs to train or retrain unemployed and displaced workers for STEM, advanced manufacturing and health-care-related careers. These are 1) collaborating with…

This Special Report outlines state-level policy components that help ensure work-based learning opportunities for high school students are well-coordinated, broadly accessible, aligned to state or regional workforce demands, and of high quality.

This study synthesizes lessons learned about the promising role of "career navigators" at community colleges to aid students in the transitions through disjunctures in their careers. Career navigators are student support personnel who follow students from recruitment, through their studies or training programs, to job placement. Findings…

Students in K-12 schools benefit from career counseling as a means to improve their readiness for academic and career success. This quantitative study explored the career counseling self-efficacy of 143 practicing middle school counselors using the Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale-Modified and a subscale of the School Counselor Self-Efficacy…

Far too often, today's college students find themselves wandering through their academic experiences, choosing from a dizzying array of majors, courses, and out-of-classroom learning experiences. And while this smorgasbord of options is often portrayed as beneficial to the student experience, more than a decade of research suggests that too many…

This report shows how state leaders are using technological advances to improve the use of data in five critical areas: (1) Helping economic and workforce developers, businesses, and colleges to reduce the high costs resulting from uninformed education and workforce decisions; (2) Assisting college leaders in making program-related decisions that…

Middle school is a natural time for students to learn about careers and develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork through career exploration activities. This report from the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) examines different approaches to supporting career exploration in middle school and…

Community colleges often are catalysts for economic and workforce development in localities with high unemployment or large numbers of dislocated workers. Increasingly, dislocated workers--individuals who have experienced job loss due to occupational closings, reduced workforces, or severe local economic downturns--are enrolling in educational and…

To have a meaningful, fulfilling career in the 21st century workplace, students need technical and academic skills as well as the ability to think and work collaboratively with others. Career education must begin in middle school or earlier to allow students time to develop the aptitudes, skills and attitudes necessary to develop an awareness of…

The Job Decision Factors Survey used policy capturing to measure the influence of 7 factors on job decisions. Data from 400 undergraduate students at a large university, 88% 18-25 years of age, 12% 25-65 years of age, 82% female, 54% White, 21% Asian, 10% Black, 10% Hispanic, 1% American Indian, were included in a regression analysis. Hypothesis…

Teachers, counselors, administrators, and university personnel from five States participated in the conference whose purpose was to analyze their changing roles in emerging career education programs. Special emphasis was placed on Virginia's rapidly developing programs of career education. Norman Gysbers spoke on "Critical Issues in Career…

An attempt by two Petersburg schools (a college and high school) to develop career awareness among students in grades 1 through 7 in the area of business. (SN)

For years administrators at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, in Richmond, Virginia, had a hunch that students were not taking full advantage of the college's advising services. Still, they were disappointed two years ago, when the Community College Survey of Student Engagement revealed that their students rarely used career services and…

A project continued to improve and update the career resources in the Northside Junior High School Regional Resource Center in Virginia. Purchases included 25 computer programs, 4 sets of printed materials, 15 videotapes, and 28 books. Twelve school systems visited the center. Counselors, teachers, students, and parents evaluated the resources.…

This document contains abstracts from 28 exemplary vocational guidance and counseling projects funded in Virginia during the 1980-81 school year. Of the projects included, nine are designed to increase vocational guidance and counseling for adults, ten are developed to increase vocational guidance and counseling services for handicapped persons,…