Dear partners and innovators, 

As community colleges scramble to reinvent themselves in the face of continued enrollment declines — which one president describes as a "code-red moment" — we bring your attention to the latest op-ed by Lab Founder + CEO Kathleen deLaski: Micro-pathways: An urgent gateway for community college transformation.

As deLaski notes, 22 of the leading community colleges and systems, supported by 13 national and regional funders, have embraced the Community College Growth Engine Fund, a cohort-style funding and design collaborative to co-design a new class of credentials with regional employers alongside faculty and (l)earners. The first cohort of nine colleges, which began work in 2020, already has produced 30 micro-pathways … and 3,000+ (l)earners have completed.

The work has not been easy, but it has been focused via a facilitated, fast-paced, human-centered design process. Along the way, we realized micro-pathway design was becoming a gateway to institutional transformation. 

Here’s just one example from Seattle Colleges, which have used the Fund to deeply engage a dozen new local employers and leverage $300,000 in scholarships and job guarantees. 

Chancellor Shouan Pan: “We see the micro-pathway as a highly visible example of innovative, equity-driven practices for our institution. … The impact has been so tremendous, not only for students, but for us to be a solution to the worker shortage, and also really helping people to see there is hope.”

• Big Idea to Sustainable Models: Designing for Action with Your Community (see the slide deck)

• Centering Racial Equity in the Skills-based Ecosystem of the Future, featuring Lab President Bill Hughes (pictured second from right). This quote from Bill was a popular tweet: "When changing systems we must put the human at the center of the solutions."