You've seen industry partnerships from the company perspective. Now let's look at the workforce system—the infrastructure that connects education to employment.
This issue is for anyone who hasn't considered workforce boards, apprenticeships, or career services as partnership opportunities. It's for researchers who write about "workforce development" in proposals without understanding the actual system, and faculty whose broader impacts could benefit from connections to employers and career pathways.
The key insight: there's an entire workforce development infrastructure—mostly invisible to faculty—that's hungry for academic partnerships and can dramatically strengthen your broader impacts.
You're designing broader impacts for a proposal. You write about "preparing students for the workforce" and "developing the STEM pipeline."
But what does that actually mean in practice? Where do students go after they leave your program? Who hires them? What skills do employers actually need? What barriers do people face in accessing these careers?
If you can't answer these questions specifically for your field and region, you're describing aspirations, not partnerships.
The workforce system has several components most faculty don't know about:
Workforce Development Boards. Every region has one—required by federal law. They coordinate training, track demand, and connect education to employment. They're required to partner with higher education.
One-Stop Career Centers (American Job Centers). Physical locations where job seekers access services. They serve populations faculty rarely see—career changers, displaced workers, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals.
Sector partnerships. Employer-led coalitions in specific industries (healthcare, manufacturing, IT) that identify skill needs and influence training programs.
Apprenticeship programs. Earn-and-learn models that combine employment with structured training. Expanding well beyond traditional trades.
Career services. At your institution and at employment agencies. They connect trained people to employers.
The mistake faculty make: treating "workforce" as a buzzword rather than engaging the actual infrastructure that makes employment happen.
