City Colleges of Chicago Announces the Launch of the Nation’s Premier Community College Pathway to an Engineering Degree

City Colleges of Chicago Announces the Launch of the Nation’s Premier Community College Pathway to an Engineering Degree

CHICAGO — Building off a successful track record of preparing Chicagoans for further engineering education and careers, City Colleges of Chicago announces it will create the nation’s premier community college pathway to an engineering degree. To advance this goal, City Colleges officials unveiled an expanded Engineering Access Alliance partnership with top-ranked University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering and the launch of the City Colleges of Chicago School of Engineering.

“City Colleges offers Chicagoans a high-quality, affordable, and accessible engineering education with a pathway to Illinois’ top-ranked engineering bachelor’s degree program,” said Chancellor Juan Salgado, City Colleges of Chicago. “Now many more diverse and talented Chicagoans can pursue sought-after engineering careers that can transform their lives and our communities.”

The City Colleges of Chicago School of Engineering will launch its unique engineering program model in the fall of 2025, growing from Wilbur Wright College to two additional colleges, Harold Washington College and Harry S Truman College. In the subsequent fall of 2026, it is expected that two more City Colleges will be added to the School of Engineering: Olive-Harvey College and Richard J. Daley College, for a total of five colleges offering the program.

Under the School of Engineering, students will take courses in a cohort-model and will benefit from the many opportunities made possible by the Engineering Access Alliance partnership. With this announcement, City Colleges has also set a bold goal of supporting 2,030 students in earning their associate in science in engineering degree and going on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in engineering by 2030.

The expanded Engineering Access Alliance partnership with top-five-ranked University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering will lead to the upward mobility that comes with a well-paying, in-demand career in engineering. The benefits of the newly-expanded partnership include: guaranteed admission to Illinois engineering majors, including Computer Science; concurrent enrollment, meaning students can take select classes at U. of I. while at City Colleges and pay the City Colleges tuition rate; early exploration of different engineering majors; academic and professional advising at both U. of I. and City Colleges; summer engagement at Illinois and City Colleges, including: paid summer internship, research opportunities, a bridge program to build math and chemistry skills, the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering program; consideration for scholarships upon successful transfer; and a Cohort model creates a positive student learning experience.

University of Illinois Urbana Champaign recognized the potential pipeline of diverse, talented, and prepared community college students early on—officially partnering with Wright College in 2015 to offer guaranteed admission to students. City Colleges has intentionally grown this work over the last six years. In 2018, Chancellor Salgado invited Dr. Doris Espiritu, head of engineering at Wright College, to join him at the 50K Coalition, an alliance of preeminent diversity engineering organizations focused on a bold national goal: to produce 50,000 diverse engineering graduates annually by 2025.

Dr. Espiritu used the Wright College-U. of. I. Engineering pathway pilot data to propose a successful National Science Foundation grant submission that started a Bridges to Engineering program to help prepare underrepresented students for the rigors of math-heavy engineering classes. After winning the $1.7 million National Science Foundation grant, Dr. Espiritu was able to exponentially grow the engineering program from nine students in the 2015 pilot, to 25 students before receiving the grant in 2018, to more than 600 students today. More than 60 percent of students are Latine or Black students and 23 percent are women.

A report by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that: of nearly 1.7 million prime-age engineering workers in the United States in 2019, just 9 percent were Latine and 5 percent were Black. Meanwhile, over the last year, the Chicagoland region saw 946 job postings for computer engineers at a median salary of $134,900. Similarly, there are 645 average annual openings for civil engineers at a median salary of $99,427 and 450 average annual openings for mechanical engineers at a median salary of $101,881.

Dr. Doris Espiritu, senior advisor to the provost and dean of the Center of Excellence in Engineering and Computer Science, who built the engineering program at Wright College and is overseeing the expansion, said: “We are thankful for the opportunity to co-create this pipeline of diverse engineering students that will go out into the world and build, protect, and fix our communities. Our students are talented and fearless. We are also grateful to The Grainger College of Engineering for recognizing their talent and creating our new partnership.”

The partnership with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign allows for concurrent enrollment in select courses and guaranteed transfer to one of the following majors at the top-ranked bachelor’s degree program: Aerospace Engineering, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Bioengineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Science + Bioengineering, Computer Science + Physics, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, Environmental Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, Physics, and Systems Engineering and Design. Chemical Engineering is also offered through a separate pathway.

A student looking to enroll in the program can take one of several paths in, including direct admission from high school, admission via a college bridge program at City Colleges School of Engineering, or admission after taking STEM courses at City Colleges. To express interest in the program and sign up for an informational session, go to: www.ccc.edu/Engineering.

City Colleges of Chicago is the city’s most accessible higher education engine of socioeconomic mobility and racial equity—empowering all Chicagoans to take part in building a stronger and more just city. Learn more about City Colleges of Chicago at www.ccc.edu or call 773-COLLEGE.


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