Year Up partners with FSCJ to get low-income students into the corporate workplace

Times-Union

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2014-12-03/story/year-partners-fscj-get-low-income-students-corporate-workplace

By Drew Dixon

When college students come from a lower-income background, the deck is often stacked against them in graduating to the corporate world. Many simply don’t understand the culture, let alone what to wear in job interviews or in the workplace.

A nonprofit program is teaming up with Florida State College at Jacksonville to help create a pipeline for some of those students to corporate America.

Year Up, based in Boston and operating in about a dozen cities, will begin the program Jan. 8 with an office at FSCJ’s downtown campus. But efforts are well underway to recruit more businesses to participate in the program.

“Our goal is to connect low-income individuals in need of an opportunity to businesses that need to hire skilled talent,” said Raphael Rosenblatt, director of partnerships for Year Up. “It’s a pipeline for entry-level talent for companies and it’s also an opportunity for low-income individuals to move into a professional career.”

Rosenblatt said Year Up already has commitments from companies in Jacksonville such as Bank of America, Citi, State Street and Ally. A launch event Wednesday evening at the River Club atop the Wells Fargo building downtown is designed to recruit more companies to participate.

Ultimately, Rosenblatt said Year Up’s objective would include about 10 companies locally to help the first cohort of students already selected to participate in the Jacksonville program. FSCJ has about 40 students on the list.

FSCJ held a strategic planning day in May that developed a plan to make the college relevant to the business community. But FSCJ President Cynthia Bioteau said businesses told college officials that they needed to provide more internships for students.

“If they don’t know the soft skills, if they don’t understand that they have to show up at the workplace on time, five days a week, drug-free and work as a team, then they really aren’t that valuable of an employee,” Bioteau said. “We needed to work more closely with businesses in the greater Jacksonville area to establish more internships while our students are in school.”

Bioteau acknowledged that college campuses normally are a rich resource for interns, and the Year Up program goes far beyond arranging visits to see how a business works.

“These are the students who need extra support, extra counseling, extra mentoring that we as a college of 57,000 students aren’t always able to give our students,” Bioteau said. “They are given so much more hands-on support through this program than the college normally does.”

The first round of the program at the beginning of 2015 will focus on students 18 to 24 years old who are eligible for financial aid and seeking a business degree, Bioteau said. Then next fall, the focus will be on students in the information-technology curriculum.

The track record for Year Up, according to their records, shows an 85 percent success rate of students who entered the program, interned and then got full-time jobs within four months of completing it. About 2,100 young adults have been helped by the program each year since it was initiated in 2000. The jobs they land usually draw an average pay of about $15 per hour.

While Year Up helps companies find qualified students who become employees, the businesses also help Year Up.

“Companies pay us for the interns,” Rosenblatt said. “The only thing FSCJ provides is the office space. … Our revenue comes from the corporate partners that we work with.

“Each intern that we send to a corporation, that corporation will invest back in our operation upwards to nearly $25,000. They make that investment in the intern and that provides them the opportunity to try before you buy,” Rosenblatt said.

Bioteau said the corporate support for Year Up permits minimal financial investment from the college. But the payoff for the students in the program could be huge.

“As we mark our success rate, we not only look at do you graduate with a certificate or degree, but are you employed within six months,” Bioteau said. “Those match beautifully with the outcomes that Year Up is looking for as well.”

Drew Dixon: (904) 359-4098