Monday, December 8, 2014

$2.725m CCC Grant Opportunity for Coding and Soft Skills!




In support of the White House Information Technology (IT) Initiative aimed at giving more American workers the skills they need to successfully compete for high-paying IT jobs and diversify the pipeline for IT talent, the Division of Workforce and Economic Development Division of the California Community Colleges is pleased to announce $2.725M in available grant opportunities as part of its InnovationMaker grant series. This competitive grant opportunity will build community college capacity to respond to the acute industry need for software coding and programming skills as well as workplace “soft” skills.

“Employers across California have voiced significant frustration that there are inadequate or undependable talent pools in these fields,” said Van Ton-Quinlivan, Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development at the Chancellor’s Office. “Given the vital role community colleges play in our regional economies, InnovationMaker grants aim to improve training efforts that can reliably deliver on the skill sets needed by employers to hire and create more jobs.” All colleges and districts are eligible to apply.

2014-15 Request for Applications
Industry-Driven Regional Collaboratives --
Acute Need for Coding/Programming Bootcamp and Embedded Soft Skills (14-326) Grant

It is the intent of the Legislature that industry-driven regional collaboratives (IDRC) perform services as participants of regional networks. IDRC provide a stable and flexible response mechanism for the identification of training priorities and to focus resources on intensive projects for competitive and new and emerging industry sector technologies.

In addition to standard individual IDRC applications, this IDRC RFA seeks multi-college proposals for meeting the following acute labor needs:
  • A bundled sequence of short certificates approach to developing software coding/programming skills that would enable the students/participants to enter into and compete for jobs in the broad occupational ladder of data science, user interface (UI) visualization, and/or the multitude of programming languages much in demand by employers. 
  • An approach to embedding employer-advised soft skills into existing CTE curriculum/programs, including work-based learning coursework, in order to answer the pervasive call by employers to improve these competencies amongst graduates. The proposal must have a mechanism for the employer to evaluate/badge demonstrated soft skill competencies. 
Funding shall not be limited per project, but shall be based on the merit and reasonable cost for the anticipated outcomes and performance of the project. Employer match is required.

Letters of Interest must be completed and submitted electronically by Monday, December 22, 2014.

Application materials and more information can be found here..

More on the Chancellor’s Office work to improve California’s workforce skills can be found at DoingWhatMATTERs.cccco.edu.

Regards,
Van Ton-Quinlivan, Vice Chancellor
Workforce & Economic Development Division
Chancellor’s Office, California Community Colleges



Follow me on Twitter @WorkforceVan.

Find Jobs & Economy tips at http://doingwhatmatters.cccco.edu/.

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