Community colleges will be at the center of an initiative Chicago is launching to address a troubling skills gap and “rebuild and re-imagine” the city’s educational system, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced in December. City Colleges of Chicago’s new “College to Careers” program will create partnerships with local corporations and organizations to prepare city residents for jobs in high-growth industries such as health care, transportation, logistics and information technology.

Emanuel said he is charging “community colleges with a new mission, to train the workforce of today for the jobs of tomorrow, to give our students the ability to achieve a middle-class standard of living, [and] to provide our companies with the skilled workers they need.”

A major piece of the program will draw on industry to help design new community college programs, City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Cheryl Hyman said. Employees and retirees from major local businesses will work with faculty to help write curriculum on an ongoing basis.

Initially, the program will focus on developing a more industry-ready curriculum in the health care, transportation and distribution fields, then add information technology, business, manufacturing, culinary and tourism, Hyman said.

Starting in the fall of 2012, Malcolm X College, a community college on Chicago’s West Side, will take advantage of that campus’ proximity to the Illinois Medical District and build upon its growing allied health programs. Olive-Harvey College, on the South Side, will train students in transportation logistics with the help of delivery giant UPS, Canadian National Railway and AAR, a commercial aviation company. In some cases, corporations will make employees available to teach courses.

AAR, one of the first companies to sign on the mayor’s initiative, will begin working with Olive-Harvey College this month to map out the nuts and bolts of the curriculum its employees will help develop, says Cheryle Jackson, vice president of government affairs and corporate development.