SAC Joins Google for Hispanic Student Readiness Program

San Antonio College has become an academic partner in the Grow with Google HSI Career Readiness Program. The initiative will help Latino students at more than 20 Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) prepare for the workforce through digital skills training and career workshops. Through a $2 million investment in the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) association, Grow with Google will train 200,000 Latino students by 2025.

Latino workers face systemic barriers to economic opportunity, including a lack of access to digital skills training. More than 80 percent of U.S. employers require digital skills, but 55 percent of Latinos have little to no digital skills training. Latinos are also overrepresented in jobs that are at the highest risk of elimination due to automation, furthering the need to offer enhanced training for an increasingly digital economy.

Alongside its partners, Google’s latest commitments aim to increase economic mobility in the Latino community by furthering access to the training and digital skills needed to obtain an in-demand job.

“San Antonio College is happy and proud to receive the HACU Grow with Google Grant,” said SAC President Dr. Robert Vela.  “The funding will enable us to support career readiness initiatives that can impact the economic mobility of our students. Combined with ongoing career and first-year experience programming, this investment in our students will provide learning and career pathways to help our students succeed in their chosen fields of study and in their future careers.”

In addition to SAC, three other colleges in the Alamo Colleges District have also been selected for the program – St. Philip’s College, Northeast Lakeview College and Palo Alto College.

Grow with Google was started in 2017 to help Americans grow their skills, careers, and businesses. It provides free training, tools, and expertise to help small business owners, veterans and military families, jobseekers and students, educators, startups, and developers. Since Grow with Google’s inception, it has helped more than 7 million Americans develop new skills. Grow with Google has a network of more than 8,000 partner organizations such as libraries, schools, small business development centers, chambers of commerce, workforce development boards and nonprofits to help people coast-to-coast.

 –SAC–