A Canadian philanthropist who launched a career apprenticeship program in Kingston, Ontario is branching out to try a similar pilot program locally to get Central New York college grads working immediately upon graduation. Alan Rottenberg began the Canadian Career Apprenticeship Initiative at Queens University after he noticed how difficult it was for young people to find jobs.
“I just observed empirically my sons and their friends who were arts graduates struggling to get their careers going and I just couldn’t understand why these young wonderful men and women weren’t being hired. And I though there must be another way and I suggested the concept of an apprenticeship.”
The local program is called the Career Apprenticeship Initiative in Central New York and is partnering with employers to get 10 recent grads working. They are guaranteed employment for one-year and the program pays four months worth of wages totaling $7,500 per participant. Centerstate CEO’s Senior VP Dave Mankiewicz says they’re asking employers to be more open-minded, beyond the traditional qualifications when screening job candidates.
“…Somebody with a couple years of experience and somebody that might have more technical degrees. We’d want them to try to start looking at students who had arts, humanities, social studies types of backgrounds and to bring those in.”
Participating colleges in The Career Apprenticeship Initiative in Central New York include Syracuse University, LeMoyne College and SUNY Oswego. More than 150 college graduates have benefitted from the program in Canada, and about 90 percent of them have continued working for the same employer. Kingston Economic Development Corporation CEO Donna Gillespie is also credited with introducing Rottenberg to Centerstate to launch the pilot program here.
