The Lowell Sun
LOWELL — Middlesex Community College, in conjunction with Bristol Community College, has been awarded a grant to promote entrepreneurship and workforce development through capacity building at two technical colleges in Morocco.
Through the grant, Middlesex and Bristol are partnering with Ecole Normale Supériere de l’Enseignment Technique of Rabat, and Ecole Normale Supériere de l’Enseignment Technique of Mohammedia to implement the Linkages for Entrepreneurship Achievement Project, or LEAP.
The LEAP partnership will engage in building the capacity of faculty at the Moroccan technical colleges to teach students the critical components of entrepreneurial and enterprise development. In addition, the partnership will create an educational framework that will deliver high-quality, experiential learning opportunities to strengthen the capacity of students and local citizens to launch and operate their own businesses.
The partners will also collaborate to increase the capacity of the technical colleges to do extension and outreach activities.
The grant for LEAP is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, through Higher Education for Development, or HED, and is one of nine partnerships created under the Broader Middle East and North Africa-U.S. Community College Initiative. Together, the nine international partnerships have been awarded about $3,800,000.
The partnerships are seeking to improve workforce skills
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through new higher-education efforts that will increase entrepreneurship opportunities and youth employment. The partnerships span five countries and involve community and technical colleges from eight states in the United States.
Middlesex and Bristol community colleges will design a curriculum framework based on learning outcomes related to entrepreneurship education. This framework then will guide the strengthening of existing curricula and development of new modules, courses and workshops based on international best practices, within the context of the regions served by the Moroccan technical colleges.
“The educational framework will contain two entrepreneurship certificates — one designed for students graduating with a diploma from a technical university and another for students graduating from the bachelor’s program,” said Judith Hogan, MCC dean of Business, Education and Public Service and director of the LEAP project.
“The opportunity to develop new programs in Morocco is very important to our faculty and students,” Hogan added. “Being immersed in the culture and business environment in this region is the best way to learn about the global economy. No textbook can duplicate this in-depth knowledge.”
Gary Bittner, USAID division chief of Higher Education, Workforce Development and Training, shared his appreciation for the partnerships’ efforts in the key area of local workforce development.
“These community-based partnerships are focused on institutional reform that adapts or creates new curricula, transfers science and technology, and applies entrepreneurial skills for employment,” he said. “They have the potential to model systemwide reform by advancing higher-education policies, programs and operations that are relevant to employment, entrepreneurship and the needs of the productive sectors in society.”
“The ambitious work plans and accomplishments of the U.S. community and technical colleges and the higher-education institutions in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region drew the attention and support of USAID,” said Tully Cornick, HED executive director. “Their activities are fulfilling important capacity-building needs. I am confident that these partnerships will make major contributions to strengthening workforce development across the Middle East and North Africa.”
The American people, through USAID, have provided economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for nearly 50 years. For more information, visitwww.usaid.gov.
HED mobilizes the expertise and resources of the higher-education community to address global development challenges. HED manages a competitive awards process to access expertise with the higher-education community in coordination with the American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU).
For more information about HED, go towww.hedprogram.org.
For more information on this Middlesex initiative, contact Hogan athoganj@middlesex.mass.edu, or Lynn Simonds, senior communications specialist for Higher Education for Development atlsimonds@hedprogram.org.
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