The Northeast Resiliency Consortium (NRC) is a partnership led by Passaic County Community College in partnership with Achieving the Dream and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and funded by a Round Three U.S. Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant. The NRC is made up of seven Northeast community colleges addressing what resiliency means in times of crisis, change, and challenge. The NRC also includes Bunker Hill (MA), Kingsborough and LaGuardia (NY), Housatonic and Capital (CT), and Atlantic Cape (NJ) community colleges—all of which have responded and adapted to economic stressors, local crises, and large-scale natural disasters in the past five years like Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, and the Boston Marathon bombings.
Focusing training in the sectors that form the infrastructure of a community—energy, healthcare, and information technology—the NRC sought to create a highly skilled and resilient workforce using accelerated learning, industry-recognized credentials, innovative employer partnerships, new technologies, and robust support services to help students succeed. In order to meet these goals, the NRC has equipped community college instructors and staff to develop new courses, career pathways, and enriched sustainable opportunities with the Resiliency Competency Model. The NRC and its stakeholders started by defining resiliency as an individual’s persistent development and application of knowledge, skills, and resources that effectively help one adapt to change and overcome adversity.
For more information on the NRC and the Resiliency Competency Model, the NRC is excited to work with TCI to share the brief: Creating Resiliency and Pathways to Opportunity.
Paul J. Casey is the Director, Northeast Resiliency Consortium Center for Continuing Education & Workforce Development, Passaic County Community College