Director of Quad Cities Career Connections announced

Ryan Bobst has been named the Director of the Quad Cities Career Connections, a partnership between Black Hawk College, Eastern Iowa Community College, Western Illinois University, Quad Cities Community Foundation and United Way of the Quad City Area.

This partnership's goal is to match volunteers from all sectors with at-risk students to give them real-world experiences that show the importance of staying in school. Volunteers will give classroom presentations, workplace tours and other interactive learning opportunities that take the concepts in the classroom (e.g., writing and math) and show how they are necessary to gain and keep employment.

Quad Cities Career Connections is one of the ways Achieve Quad Cities is working to increase the graduation rate. This partnership is an example of the cutting-edge work Achieve is doing because it brings together non-traditional partners and capitalizes on already-existing resources to wrap support services around students to encourage them to graduate from high school and think about their future, specifically to plan for college or post-high school training.

Achieve recently won an international award from United Way Worldwide for creating community-wide change in education. Learn more at http://www.unitedway.org/pages/united-way-common-good-awards.

About Ryan Bobst, MSW, LMSW

Ryan has professional experience in community planning, organizing and program development and currently serves as an Adjunct Instructor through the University of Iowa's School of Social Work. Ryan received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Bachelor of Arts in Social Work and Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Iowa in 2009. Ryan received his Master's in Social Work from the University of Iowa in 2011.

About Achieve Quad Cities

Achieve Quad Cities is a community-wide, cross-sector partnership with the goal to increase the high school graduation rate in our community led by United Way of the Quad Cities Area and the Quad Cities Community Foundation. The collaboration has developed mentoring and career exploration opportunities in schools and has now moved toward collecting regional data to guide and align the most effective, efficient strategies to keep students in school. Learn more at www.achieveqc.org.