Make It Center

Overview

The Make It Center provides the ultimate hands-on career exploration experience, exposing guests to career pathways they may never have considered before. The Make It Center will inform, inspire, and engage students and members of our community, through collaborative partnerships and highly engaging experiences, to discover career pathways that merge purpose and strengths and lead to well-paying and in-demand jobs.

With a vision to end poverty and champion a future in which all of our community members thrive, the Make It Center will invite our entire community to deepen their engagement with career exploration, collaborate around the evolving workforce needs, and build strong foundations for upward mobility. The Make It Center is deepening the collaboration between ACC and the Make It Movement as one of the educational and training partners for Central Texans who want to explore, discover, and get connected to the careers that are fueling growth in Central Texas.

Accomplishments

The Make It Center is currently in the soft-launch phase and will officially open to the public by fall 2023. Several accomplishments have been made related to student success leading up to and throughout the soft launch. The space has ongoing construction and AV installation but began hosting programs and events by appointments and requests in March 2023. Since that time, the Make It Center has hosted:

• 9 events
• 9 meet & greet/Make It Center overview sessions
• 20 tours/meetings/consultations
• Several informal pop in tours

Upcoming events/programs include:

• Visual Communications Spring Portfolio Show on 5/11
• Culinary/Hospitality/Tourism tour on 5/2
• Exercise Stars Awards Celebration on 5/5
• Campbell Elementary School tour on 5/15
• Aspen Institute’s Opportunity Youth Forum site visit on 5/22
• ARAMA board meeting on 5/24
• Summer camp experiences kicking off in June via partnerships with Girl Scouts of Central Texas, Upward Bound, VIL Camp, ACC High School Career programs

Impact

While the impact of the Make It Center has not yet been formally evaluated since it is not fully operational, early indicators of success and impact include:

• 30 event requests submitted since March 1, 2023
• Successfully hosted Junior Achievement’s Finance Park week-long program which brought over 225 middle and high school students and 50 industry volunteers into the Make it Center to learn about careers and financial literacy
• Hosted a careers in tech sales panel discussion for 35 STEM Explorer students
• Partnered with Community and Public Relations to host 150 students for career-related exploration as part of Adulting 101
• Received requests for use of the Make It Center by internal and external stakeholders such as ACC’s Visual Communications Department, Bloomberg Associates, UT College of Education, Aspen Institute, Elgin ISD fall 2023 field trip requests, ACC’s College and High School Relations, Girl Scouts of Central Texas, ARMA, and more

Next Steps

The next steps for the Make It Center are to become fully operational and work toward a general public opening in fall 2023. This includes completing AV installation, procuring remaining equipment, continuing space set-up, website development, implementing guest check-in system, and procuring supplies for all programmatic and project offerings. A ribbon-cutting to announce and celebrate the Center is scheduled for May 18, 2023.