Career Pathways Conference Help Sophomores Prepare for Junior Year

November 22, 2018

Linda Provost with The Duncan Banner

Featured speaker, Joe Paquette from the Express Employment Speakers Bureau, touched on several core parts of getting and keeping a job. Source: Linda Provost/The Duncan Banner

“You know why adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow? Because they are looking for ideas!” joked comedian Paula Poundstone. Thankfully Duncan youth won’t have to resort to such tactics as several area organizations banded together to give them a sneak peak at around 6 careers. On Nov. 13, Duncan Area Economic Development Foundation, Duncan High School, Red River Technology Center, Cameron University and South Central Oklahoma Workforce Board, worked to highlight careers for the future workforce. Approximately 250 Duncan High School sophomore students got to hear speakers from five areas — healthcare, manufacturing, education, business and communication.

Also featured speaker, Joe Paquette from the Express Employment Speakers Bureau, discussed in demand occupations and employability skills needed to get and keep a job.

Lesa Hefner, Pathways to Future Careers Internship Instructor/Coordinator, said this group of students was chosen because the real world was calling.

“We identified sophomores because in the spring sophomores will have the first opportunity to really choose things like concurrent-enrollment classes at Cameron, or they can choose to come to Red River as a jr. and then the ‘Pathways to Future Careers Internship’ program is available to jrs if they are on track,” she said. “They are going to be pre-enrolling in the spring so if they already have in their mind kind of what career they want to go towards then they can go ahead and start making choices to pursue that career.”

Hefner said students already were working on the iCAP ( Individual Career Assessment Plan ) which is a career planning guide and these sessions just feeds into it because it’s helping them to choose that career pathway. Even if it isn’t the right career path for them it has narrowed the field.

“That’s one of the wonderful things — even if they choose something and then say, ‘ No, this is not what I want to do’” she said. “That’s a win to me because they have not wasted time or money going to college in a career pathway that ends up they really don’t like.”

This also happens during the Internship program which Hefner oversees and has had students find they really didn’t like a career in practice rather than just theory.

Hefner said she was excited that all these different organizations took time to help students and were not being competitive over where they went — they just want them to be successful.

Jacob Johnson, industrial coordinator for RRTC, agreed with her that it was about letting the students make good choices for themselves.

“These sophomores are just a few months away from being able to determine what their future is — and they are very young to have to make that decision” he said. “So we are trying to put enough in front of them so they can see if they want to go straight into the workforce, or if they want to come to Red River and pick a trade or if they want to jump in and go straight to concurrent-enrollment with Cameron University. We wanted to give them all the options that they have … so they can can go on and be successful in their career.”

Highlighting several areas which where in the area was also important in hopefully keeping students home and not having a ‘brain drain.’

“Trying to cover all the areas of industry in our area was very important. We hope that we are growing our own workforce here through these students,” Johnson said, “A lot of people forget that the purpose of graduating high school is to move on and get a job.”

Johnson said the break out sessions showed the students what kind of jobs they could get or what kind of education they would need to further their career.

He also said he was surprised how many students already at this age had a plan with a diverse idea of future jobs so he thinks the session was on the right track.