Community partnerships are crucial for extending institutional reach, expertise, and capacity to attract and support students onto and through pathways to social and economic mobility. Strong community partnerships can help colleges better align programs with workforce needs, create meaningful career opportunities for students, and support students to persist and complete credentials that lead to good jobs and wages.
Building on ATD’s experience helping colleges create and sustain strong partnerships in diverse geographic and programmatic areas and leveraging the lessons learned from ATD’s early community vibrancy work, this webinar will provide a framework for designing, implementing and monitoring successful collective impact partnerships. Colleges will learn about strategies to develop realistic roles and responsibilities for themselves aligned with their vision, mission and institutional strengths; assess the effectiveness of current partnerships in relation to those factors; identify gaps where strategic partnerships can improve outcomes; and learn about effective and evidence-based structures, policies and practices that support the development of shared goals and mutual benefits; common language, definitions and metrics; clear roles and responsibilities; and systematic data sharing and feedback loops that demonstrate community impact. Participants will also consider opportunities to strengthen internal partnership engagement at their own institutions to amplify community impact.
The session will feature 1-2 ATD network colleges with selected community partners sharing their perspectives on building and sustaining strong partnerships, including lessons learned and approaches that other institutions can adapt to their own local context.