With a generous $250,000 investment from JPMorgan Chase, Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) launched the Career Pathways Impact Project (CPIP) this past year.
CPIP seeks to equip traditionally underserved students with the tangible skills required to navigate the labor market, workplace culture, and develop a better understanding of career pathways.
“JPMorgan Chase recognizes that too many people are left out of the opportunities to understand how the world of work is structured, or unsure for how maximize their potential in it,” said Abby Marquand, Program Officer, JPMorgan Chase. “Bunker Hill Community College is helping to solve this problem by driving equity in opportunity, and positioning students, through the CPIP, to become more agile and opportunistic for how to approach specific jobs and future careers. We excited to be joined by the team from Harvard in supporting this important work.”
The newly developed Ethnographies of Work (EoW) curriculum is being integrated into a pilot of courses at BHCC with a goal of offering an ethnographic and sociological approach to career development. These skills will be even more important to prepare BHCC students to be competitive during the pandemic-induced downturn.
“We are so grateful to JPMorgan Chase for their support,” said BHCC President Pam Eddinger. “The Ethnographies of Work framework advances the social mobility and equity for our students.”
With support from the Harvard Project on Workforce, three graduate fellows from Harvard’s business and policy programs worked at BHCC this summer to accelerate the career pathways agenda. The Harvard team focused on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ career planning and post-graduation job opportunities, and how this might shift the college’s career preparedness strategies. Working with BHCC’s CPIP Career Navigator, Denise Mytko, the fellows collated findings from interviews with students, faculty, staff and employers to help guide BHCC’s future career offerings, including tools that facilitate career planning in a remote service delivery model. This work will guide the CPIP program to provide integrated career guidance to more BHCC students and additional BHCC programs. Ethnographies of Work originated at Guttmann Community College (CUNY) as a year-long social science course and adapted for community colleges and high schools.