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American Association of Community Colleges

About Plus 50 Initiative

The Need

The 78 million baby boomers currently reaching retirement age represent a tremendous resource to the nation in terms of experience, skills, and leadership. To remain vital, the U.S. must fully leverage this population and help them to continue to lead engaged and purposeful lives. Thankfully, four out of five people over 50 say they will work in retirement — either full-time or part-time — some for personal fulfillment, others out of necessity. Baby boomers envision their retirement years as a melding of work, leisure, and self-improvement, but 62 percent wish they were better prepared for it.

The Plus 50 Initiative

The Plus 50 Initiative is conducted by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) to benchmark and showcase the most current and innovative programs at community colleges to engage the 50+ learner. Through the AACC Plus 50 Initiative community colleges will create or expand campus programs to engage the 50+ population in learning; training or re-training programs; and volunteer, civic, or service activities.

Community colleges participate in the three-year grant program in learning teams. Demonstration Colleges are launching new programs for students in the 50 + population with the help of seed grants. They are aided with valuable expertise from five Mentor Colleges that already have established programs for students over the age of 50.

Participating Community Colleges

Demonstration Colleges receiving grants are:

Mentor colleges receiving grants are:

Expansion

In 2009, the AACC Plus 50 Initiative announced expansion to include more community colleges. Reflecting changing economic circumstances for many older workers who thought they were poised for retirement but now must remain on the job, the new expansion focuses specifically on the Initiative’s training, retraining and career development area. The expansion pairs existing and more experienced Plus 50 colleges with dozens more community colleges that now become “affiliates” of the Plus 50 Initiative.

Learning Partners – Affiliates:

Other colleges participating in the expansion of AACC’s Plus 50 Initiative:

Century College will be a Learning Partner for 9 Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., community colleges:

Western Dakota Technical Institute in Rapid City, S.D. will host a conference for community colleges near National Parks to form partnerships and disseminate lessons learned from their program working with the National Park Service to train plus 50 adults to serve as seasonal rangers and interpretive guides.

Three Plus 50 Initiative community colleges in Washington ‐ Clark College, Clover Park Technical College and Community Colleges of Spokane ‐ will host a regional conference involving community colleges from the surrounding Washington and Oregon area.

Webinars

Also as part of the expansion in 2009 the AACC Plus 50 Initiative will host a series of six webinars open to all community colleges.

Funding for the Initiative

The initiative is funded with a $3.2 million dollar grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies (www.atlanticphilanthropies.org).