West Valley College is asking local employers to come to campus Thursday morning as it starts building a network of businesses willing to take on its students as interns, job shadows and workplace visitors.
The Valued Employers Partnership Launch begins at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 8 in the college's Learning Resource Commons, according to the college's events calendar. Businesses, nonprofits, public agencies and industry leaders are all on the invitation list.
Organizers say the session will cover ways companies can connect with students, including internships, job shadows, workplace visits and career panels. Employers are also being asked to share what they are seeing in workforce trends and hiring needs.
Part of a national pilot
The event grows out of a selection the Saratoga campus announced in July. West Valley was one of six community colleges in the country chosen for a work-based learning cohort run by New America's Future of Work & Innovation Economy initiative and the Association of Community College Trustees' Center for Policy & Practice. The initiative also has backing from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The other five schools are City Colleges of Chicago, East Central College in Missouri, Forsyth Technical Community College in North Carolina, Santa Fe College in Florida and SUNY Broome Community College in New York.
Through the cohort, the college said it will get technical help, strategic planning support and funding. Each school completes a self-study of its current internship, apprenticeship and clinical placement programs, then writes an action plan for expanding them using a toolkit built by New America and ACCT.