Columbia
Area Career Center’s vision is to:
- Empower individuals to achieve career and academic success
- Be vital to the educational and economic growth of our community
- Be a national leader in career and technical education
This vision
helps to support the current effort by Boone County to become a Certified Work
Ready Community. The Certified Work Ready Program (CWRP) is
a volunteer initiative in which businesses agree to actively recognize and
recruit potential employees with National Career Readiness Credentials. As of
July 2013, Boone County was designated as a county “In-Progress”.
The National Career Readiness Certificate
(NCRC) is an evidence-based credential that certifies essential skills
needed for workplace success. It was developed and issued by ACT, an independent not-for-profit that
provides a broad range of assessment and research in the areas of education and
workplace development. The NCRC testing covers three of the foundational WorkKeys assessments, a system
developed by ACT that is the gold standard in workplace assessment used by
thousands of companies throughout the world. The NCRC documents the important
workplace skills of Reading for
Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating of Information.
Boone
County’s Certified Work Ready Community Steering Committee has two years to
attract 111 businesses to participate in the program to attain full
certification.
For an
up-to-date list and to learn more about how CWRC could benefit your company,
visit http://workreadycommunities.org/MO/019 . It takes just moments to sign
up as a company in support of recognizing the NCRC. More than 1,145 employers
in Missouri currently support the NCRC.
Soon the Columbia
Area Career Center will be a testing center for junior and senior high school
students, who are part of the “Emerging Workforce” category. The students who take
the NCRC will find out their “career readiness” level (bronze, silver, gold, or
platinum) and would have a credential that may distinguish them in a job
applicant pool. Adults who are 18 years and older are able to test in Columbia
at the Missouri Career Center, a division of Workforce Development, on Vandiver
Drive.
In order for
the program to succeed, employers and employees have to buy in. The career
center’s mission is to prepare today’s learners for tomorrow’s careers.
Students can document these skills by taking the NCRC test and having this
portable credential that documents their skill level. As more employers sign
on, the recognition and importance of this credential in this region will
become evident.
Jasper
county is the first certified work ready community in Missouri. Thirty four
counties are participating in the program.
To find out
more about NCRC, click here.
