While some community colleges are focused on issues associated with older adults who have already retired, others have begun to seize the opportunity to prepare the over-50 population as a new workforce resource. Community colleges are well positioned to help boomers refresh and update existing credentials and skills, prepare for career changes, and enhance overall employability. Community colleges can build on their strong external links with local leaders in business, government, education and the nonprofit sector to better understand labor market shortages, identify training and education needs, and advance flexible job tracts that fit people 50+.

The Community College Encore Career Grants reward community colleges that are reaching out to boomers in new ways with innovative messages, strategies, and schedules. Offerings could be in different venues – both on and off campus – and delivered wholly or partially via distance education. There is, of course, no one right way for all campuses or communities. Instead, Encore Career Grants reward many forms of innovation, including, for example:

• accelerated teacher preparation programs that prepare older adults to become K-12 teachers in high-need subject areas like reading, math, and science;
• new flexible, compressed certificate, degree and transfer programs in such areas as early childhood education, social work, allied health, gerontology, and nonprofit management;
• new curricula designed to update career credentials of practitioners - nurses, social workers, teachers - who want to reenter the labor market or move to a new role in their field;
• creative, collaborative marketing campaigns geared to 50+ adults that are run by community colleges and their partners;
• partnerships with nonprofit organizations to help boomers transition from the private sector into jobs as executives, financial managers, and program directors in the nonprofit sector;
• targeted outreach to prepare under-represented and low income 50+ adults for new careers in education, environment, health care and social services.