PACE
The Program Prepares Students for Career Success By Andrea Kennedy
n January 2020, UMass Boston launched the innovative Professional Apprenticeship and Career Experience (PACE) program, a bold initiative to supercharge students’ professional prospects. One year in—even conducted remotely—it’s a game changer for students and their on-campus employers. The PACE program employs paid, long-term, on-campus apprenticeships as a means of giving students a competitive boost in the job market after graduation. As early as freshman year, students apply for PACE positions in the field they aspire to join, working with faculty and staff supervisors who act as mentors. Over months or years of increasing responsibility, students amass career-specific experiences of value to outside employers. “In our 2,300 employees, we have a treasure trove of expertise across a huge range of professions, right here on campus,” says UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “PACE allows our students to tap that expertise in a structured, guided way that I think will be transformative for them.” The program, created with a visionary $2.25 million gift from Ralph and Janice James, launched with 12 apprenticeship positions and has doubled that number each semester. Today, 51 students are in the program, working in apprenticeships ranging from information-security analyst to sustainability research associate. Each cohort also completes an eight-week, one-credit PACE Success course focused on career exploration, workplace-readiness, and personal-branding skills like résumé writing. “We have an engaged group of 44 supervisors, many of whom have participated more than one semester. We have gotten overwhelmingly positive evaluations from students about the experience and the course as well,” says PACE Program Manager Amy Weinstein. “The program is on a great trajectory and that’s really exciting.”
“I think we’re going to look back ten years from now,” says founding donor Ralph James, “and see this program as a model for other schools.”
The relationship between students and mentors is central to the success of the program. Prabin Tamang ’20 calls the PACE experience “priceless” and parlayed it into a system administrator job with Draper, a Cambridge engineering innovation company. His mentor, Senior Information Security Specialist Alison Murray says, “We were interested in the PACE program because we knew it would be valuable for everybody. It would be helpful to our department, and it would help a student experience real-world security scenarios.” As it matures, PACE will help apprentices expand their professional networks and develop the connections they need to find external internships, co-ops, and jobs. “I think we’re going to look back ten years from now,” says founding donor Ralph James, “and see this program as a model for other schools.”
UMass Boston Spring 2021
■
17
