The Center for Economic and Workforce Development (CEWD) at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) is currently working on a workforce development project that contains innovative teaching tools that proved successful in overcoming issues of academic isolation facing the student body. The CUNY Young Adult Program (CYAP) is a partnership of three City University of New York (CUNY) colleges--LaGuardia Community College (lead organization), KCC's CEWD and New York City College of Technology (City Tech)--that have worked together on several workforce development projects. The existing partnership already serves the priority target population of out-of-school youth, provides vocational training in the program's two priority sectors (construction trades and health), combines all the desired program elements (i.e., career planning, work readiness, GED preparation, and post-secondary occupational training), and already encompasses other priorities of importance to the Department of Labor (i.e., green components, collaboration, leveraged resources, support from a broad range of business and community-based organizations, and service within environmental justice zones). Among the CEWD recruits are some of the estimated 12,000 disconnected young adults residing in New York City. The current cohort is comprised of 25 students who are completing the 12-week Food Service Operations program. The current training cohort (as of May 1, 2010) at CEWD saw a comprehensive infusion of social networking in the program. CEWD is building institutional respect for social networking in an educational setting by connecting students, faculty, and external mentors. In this article, the authors first provide a glance at one of these networks, www.cunyive.ning.com, as it is currently used by CEWD and then explain how social networking sites such as this can provide the right blend of familiarity and professional appearance to put students at ease with its content yet make them professionally accountable for their online persona. (Contains 2 figures.)