On Thursday, August 17, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten and U.S. Under Secretary James Kvaal will continue the Unlocking Pathways Summit series in Madison, Wisconsin, with a visit to Madison Area Technical College, to promote state partnerships between school, industry, and community organizations in support of career-connected learning. This visit, joined by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Unlocking Career Success efforts to create high-quality career pathways to help young Americans pursue jobs in today’s in-demand fields and be prepared for careers of the future.

This summit is co-hosted by the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and Jobs for the Future. The event will bring together approximately 200 state-team participants from 13 states, prominent speakers at the vanguard of pathways work, and partners who are positioned to help state teams carry the work forward. States will work to create or expand education-to-workforce systems that are necessary to respond to shifting state economies and to leverage historic federal investments made by the Biden-Harris Administration.

At the summit, the semi-finalists for the Career Z Challenge will be announced. The challenge is a competition designed to identify local education agencies interested in creating or enhancing work-based learning (WBL) opportunities and building collaborative ecosystems of educators, employers, industries, and community stakeholders to engage students across grades 9-12 in meaningful career exploration, development, and preparation. The 81 semi-finalists represent 34 states collectively serving more than 1.5 million students.

This is the third of four convenings in the Unlocking Pathways summit series in partnership with the national education and workforce development organization Jobs for the Future (JFF). The series of education-workforce convenings is designed to support state teams and to highlight workforce priorities and opportunities for young people that are growing due to recent federal investments, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act.

As part of their visit to Madison, Deputy Secretary Marten and Under Secretary Kvaal will also visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday to learn about its work to increase equitable access to higher education. They will hear from administrators and students on the importance of a research-practice partnership to tackle important issues in higher education and student experience in youth apprenticeship programs. They will tour the Student Success Through Applied Research Lab (SSTAR) to engage in issues related to college opportunity and student access.

The Thursday summit is open to press. If you are interested in covering this event, please RSVP to PressRSVP@ed.gov.