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This Spring, uAspire continued its innovative partnership with CivicCapstone, through which we placed 4 community college students to serve as fellows in uAspire’s California policy team to provide input on our policy agenda informed by their research and experiences, as well as go to Sacramento to participate in an advocacy day in which fellows pitched bills to the California Senate and Assembly.

What is CivicCapstone?

CivicCapstone is an organization that pairs community college students with policy-focused or philanthropic non-profits to participate in a semester-long consulting engagement. CivicCapstone recreates the work-based capstone model typically found in Master's in Public Administration and other graduate programs for community college students. This provides community college students with hands-on learning experience and networking opportunities that are otherwise inaccessible at the junior college level. The program prepares students for future internships and involves them in the world of public policy to ensure a plethora of diverse student voices remain heard at various levels of government. uAspire is proud to be a founding partner in this program and will continue to use the program to introduce our student participants to a host of coalition partners, including NextGen Policy, Coalition for California Welfare Rights Organizations, and the Student Senate for California Community Colleges in future cohorts.

CivicCapstone was founded by Nathaniel Stephen, a former community college student who transferred to the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Reflecting on his time at community college, Nathaniel recognizes how important it is for students to gain work experience even at community college, as it enables them to be competitive in the job market for future internships, fellowships, and full-time roles. Community college students are often overlooked by employers in favor of those who attended a four-year university, leaving many without work experience before they transfer. CivicCapstone bridges this gap as an innovative program to prepare community college students for what comes next in their careers. The program, run by Nathaniel, sources both semester-long clients and handles the application process to admit community college students.