Our Focus Areas

City Colleges of Chicago offers students a rich landscape of community colleges and programs to choose from, and it’s critical that Black, Latinx and low-income students are welcomed into environments where they can thrive. When institutions account for equity—when they are intentional about creating conditions that support students from a variety of backgrounds—students feel supported and outcomes improve.

Student success depends on their ability to overcome various hurdles—academic, personal, and financial—in their pursuit of degrees and credentials. Academic supports are necessary but not enough—they need to be offered in concert with professional supports and mental health and wellbeing supports so that students are able to persist through school, earn a degree and start a career.

Moving students along educational pathways and into good jobs requires coordination and collaboration between the educational institutions that serve them and employers, community non-profits, and researchers who all have different roles to play to support student success. Bridges supports organizations that bring these different players to the table and promote transparency between education institutions and employers so that students are better able to access good jobs that advance their careers.