Our City Colleges of Chicago brand is more than just a logo or tagline. Our brand is our promise to our students, faculty, and staff — and the communities we serve. It’s the platform by which we tell and demonstrate our unique story of lifting communities and changing lives. As Illinois’ largest community college system, and founded as the people’s college, serving and shaping the community is in our DNA.

Brand architecture is the structure of your brand and how each part relates to the whole. The architecture for City Colleges reflects that of a sub-brand system. Inclusive of a high degree of connectivity in terms of what each college stands for and how they work together, while also providing opportunity for each to have its own distinct character and tone.

The City Colleges of Chicago system is made up of seven colleges. This model demonstrates that each is one and the same — the City Colleges system is not a separate entity, it’s the combination of all seven colleges.

When we boil down what we stand for to its simplest form, it comes down to two ideas: Lift communities. Change lives. This is what we make real for those who study, teach, and work at City Colleges of Chicago.

The combination of these ideas also serves as the most fundamental driver of everything we do. Our brand truth articulates our core purpose and serves as the highest-level touchstone for staying on brand.

City Colleges delivers on our truth by transforming existing expectations about what’s possible at a community college. We take the community college stigma head-on and defy it in everything we do — always conveying that City Colleges is truly home to a different kind of community college.

Being aware of these transformations, and the value they turn into, can help us be intentional about how we do everything — from the programming and culture we build, to the classroom experience we create, to the ways we support and show up for our students and each other.

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Community college was born of the idea that those in local communities who are yearning to learn should be able to acquire the higher-education foundation needed to find a career or pave their way to a four-year institution — and a future beyond it.

City Colleges of Chicago stands as an example of what’s possible when we shine the beacon light of equity, opportunity, and prosperity into neighborhoods of great promise.

We do this by empowering students of any age — within those communities, around the city, and around the globe — to achieve what they aim to achieve. Which is why we must believe in, invest in, and commit to always doing the two things we are uniquely designed for: Lift communities. Change lives.