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D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Wednesday announced the creation of a new pipeline program for graduates of two historically Black universities in the District to help them forge career paths in local government.
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The pipeline program, which will be available next year to graduating seniors of Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia, is intended to be mutually beneficial: The college graduates can springboard into a role in public service, while D.C. seeks to attract new talent, especially at a time the administration has struggled to fill certain rank-and-file vacancies.
“What we learned is people come to D.C., they come to universities like Howard and UDC — and Johns Hopkins for that matter — because they want to be part of public service,” Bowser said, speaking at the Bloomberg CityLab conference at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center, in the old Newseum building. “They have a change-the-world mind-set. … And we want people to know they don’t have to move away, they don’t have to work for a think tank, they don’t have to work for the feds. They can do that in local government.”
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Available to students graduating with bachelor’s degrees, the program will offer a one-year apprenticeship — a full-time position — to 25 eligible students at each university, who will also be able to take a professional development course offered by the D.C. Department of Employment Services.
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Bowser described the new HBCU pipeline program in the context of trying to attract and retain not only new residents — as part of her “comeback” plan for D.C. — but also new D.C. employees.
Her administration has struggled with retention issues across agencies and at multiple levels, as Bowser has had to appoint new deputy mayors for economic development and for public safety and a new police chief, among other top roles, over the past year due to turnover or resignations amid scandal. Among the rank-and-file, D.C. has been struggling to fill critical roles ranging from police officers to social workers to 911 call takers, though the mishap-plagued 911 call center has made progress with vacancies recently.
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Social workers will be among the positions available for the apprenticeship, along with many others across numerous agencies. Unique Morris-Hughes, director of the employment services agency, said in an interview that city officials wanted to be strategic about which positions to include in the program, including information technology jobs where employees of color may be underrepresented. Other positions will include support jobs in human resources, Medicaid billing, business analytics and contracting, Morris-Hughes said, and she expects to bring in more D.C. agencies before the program launches and begins taking applications, which she expected to happen in January.
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“We were really thoughtful and strategic about how can we meet the demand of the labor market,” she said. “And how do we create access and opportunities for groups of students who come from communities where there’s not traditional representation?”
Like IT workers, Morris-Hughes said, social workers are in high demand in D.C., where multiple city programs, including housing vouchers, depend on the availability of them to provide support to D.C. residents facing housing instability. “There is a need for social workers. But there’s also an opportunity for these graduates, many of them who come from similar lived experiences and from similar communities, to serve their very own communities.”
Graduates who complete the program successfully will have the opportunity to receive a salary bump and remain in their jobs, Morris-Hughes said.
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Bowser’s talk at Bloomberg CityLab largely focused on revitalizing downtown after the pandemic hollowed out the city core and as workers, federal and others, have been slow to return to many still-half-vacant office buildings — challenges Bowser addressed in a brief interview with Washington Post reporter Michael Brice-Saddler.
“This is what every mayor knows, is that we’re not going to go back to 2019, so our downtowns won’t be exactly the same,” Bowser said. “Hybrid work is likely here to stay. And so what we have done in our economic development strategy is certainly focus and set some pretty big goals for the downtown.”
One is to attract 15,000 new residents downtown, in part by converting vacant office buildings into housing, Bowser said. In July, the Downtown Business Improvement District noted approximately 18 conversion projects were in the works, and Bowser said Wednesday there are now 22. The city is expected to roll out a Downtown Action Plan later this fall describing a broader vision to attract both residents and commercial opportunities while creating more open public spaces.
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