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The center keeps ºÚÁÏרÇø and its partners ahead of workforce changes by monitoring, synthesizing and translating research into actionable insights. It also conducts and supports the applied, locally grounded research that national data cannot provide.

Strategic Objectives:

1. ºÚÁÏרÇø leadership, faculty and partners are consistently equipped with current, actionable intelligence on workforce trends and their implications for both the College and the region.
2. The center is recognized as a credible contributor to applied, locally grounded knowledge on regional workforce conditions, social determinants of work and student outcomes.
3. The center operates within a network of internal and external research partners that expands its capacity to generate and disseminate knowledge beyond what a small team could produce alone.
4. Equity is embedded in the center's research agenda — the disproportionate impact of workforce disruption on at-risk populations is documented, named and connected to institutional response.

The center ensures that ºÚÁÏרÇø learners — traditional and nontraditional students, workers, and faculty — have the skills, knowledge, and experiences needed to thrive in the evolving labor market. Faculty are the primary point of connection between the Center’s work and the students and workers it ultimately serves; supporting their capacity to teach future-of-work skills is the Center’s most direct lever for student impact.

Strategic Objectives:

1. Faculty are equipped and supported to integrate future-of-work skills — including AI literacy, digital fluency, and applied learning design — into their teaching and curriculum.
2. ºÚÁÏרÇø learners have access to learning experiences that connect classroom instruction to the real demands of an evolving labor market, including work-based, experiential, and applied learning opportunities.
3. The broader ºÚÁÏרÇø community — administrators, staff, and institutional leadership — understands the urgency of future-of-work skill demands and is engaged in the institutional response.
4. Flexible, stackable learning options are available for students, workers and career changers who need to build new skills or transition to growing fields.

The center's community and economic impact is realized through its other pillars. When research informs institutional decisions, when faculty bring updated skills and knowledge into the classroom, and when policy advocacy creates more equitable conditions for workers and learners, the result is graduates who are better prepared to secure meaningful, well-paying work in the regional economy. The center's role is to ensure that ºÚÁÏרÇø remains connected to the regional context its graduates are entering. 

Strategic Objectives:

1. ºÚÁÏרÇø graduates are better prepared to secure work in the regional economy as a result of center-supported programs, research and partnerships.
2. Underrepresented learners have equitable access to the skills, networks and opportunities that connect them to quality employment in growing regional sectors.
3. The center is established as a trusted regional convener — a platform where employers, educators, policymakers and community members engage on future-of-work issues and build the relationships that translate into opportunity for ºÚÁÏרÇø students and workers.
4. The center's research, programming and convenings strengthen ºÚÁÏרÇø's existing regional relationships by contributing insight and intelligence that those partnerships can act on — without duplicating or displacing the College's established employer and community engagement functions.

The center advances ºÚÁÏרÇø's role as a policy-informed institution, where decisions about AI, workforce preparation and student opportunity are grounded in evidence. In addition, ºÚÁÏרÇø contributes to the regional and statewide conversations that shape the conditions its students navigate. That contribution begins internally, where the center serves as a resource for leadership navigating future-facing strategy and extends outward as its credibility and research capacity grow.

Strategic Objectives:

1. ºÚÁÏרÇø leadership has access to timely, evidence-based guidance on internal policy questions related to AI use, work-based learning, credit/noncredit alignment, lifelong learning and the social determinants of work.
2. Policy recommendations developed or supported by the center are grounded in the lived experiences of students and workers, not only institutional or employer perspectives.
3. The center is positioned as a credible contributor to regional and statewide policy conversations on workforce and education — a voice that carries institutional standing and research-informed authority.
4. ºÚÁÏרÇø's policy decisions reflect an understanding of how AI, automation and changing work arrangements are affecting the populations the College serves.

View our collected research resources from around the globe on the topic of "work" and the "future of work."

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