CAST Colleges Community is making the case for San Antonio’s employers to companion with its excessive colleges.
Recognized for its emphasis on work-based expertise, CAST has seven colleges throughout the town every with completely different profession and trade focuses. On Tuesday, CAST gathered native employers at CPS Power headquarters for its second “Profession-Connecting Summit,” in hopes of drawing in additional hands-on studying alternatives for college students.
“We try to create a motion to rework what college is like,” mentioned Jeanne Russell, govt director and founding father of CAST. “Individuals usually ask, like, ‘What’s the particular sauce of CAST?’… It’s the partnerships now we have with trade, and it’s these alternatives for younger folks, notably those that could not in any other case know what the excessive demand, excessive wage jobs are in our neighborhood.”
Every CAST college has been created in partnership with a neighborhood college district and with enter from related trade voices, shaping curriculum, internships alternatives and figuring out which certifications are provided.
At CAST Med in San Antonio Impartial College District, for instance, highschool college students can get medical assistant, phlebotomy or biotechnician assistant certifications.
CAST STEM at Southwest ISD focuses on engineering, enterprise and drone operations, providing an affiliate diploma in enterprise administration and drone licenses for college students.
All of CAST’s excessive colleges observe the identical “career-connecting” roadmap: deal with pathway exploring in ninth grade, adopted by networking the following yr, internship and mentoring by junior yr and ending with a practicum or pre-apprenticeship earlier than commencement.
For the roadmap to work, nevertheless, CAST wants employers keen to take an opportunity on highschool college students. The objective, CAST officers mentioned, is to make corporations see the general public schooling system as the biggest workforce improvement system within the area.
A method for employers to attach with college students is create a “lengthy interview” course of, mentioned Lisa Lewis, chief administrative officer at CPS and board trustee for CAST.
The method begins with giving college students some publicity to profession fields they may not have recognized existed. CPS shouldn’t be at all times the “sexiest employer,” Lewis mentioned, and the general public can’t at all times see what profession paths can be found outdoors of electricians or customer support.
For Lewis, it’s vital college students know that fields like accounting, human assets and cybersecurity are additionally obtainable at workplaces like hers.
“Introducing college students to these alternatives which might be proper right here in their very own yard… after which additionally letting that scholar get publicity to what their alternatives may be broadly — that’s the lengthy interview,” she mentioned.
This course of has labored already with present CAST college students and alumni.
Sophia Camacho, 16, is a junior at CAST Tech in San Antonio ISD. The varsity’s pathways embody person expertise, entrepreneurship and cybersecurity.
Over the summer season, Campos accomplished an internship with an e-commerce firm. She was unsure about it at first, however she ended up having fun with it, studying the way to learn analytics and gross sales figures, and getting to make use of her inventive expertise.
“if I didn’t have that internship, I might have by no means instructed myself that, I wish to do e-commerce, I wish to do enterprise, I wish to be an entrepreneur and I can see myself doing that,” she mentioned. “I used to be there.”
The San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter companions with the CAST Lead campus in East Central ISD, a college with pathways in agribusiness, hospitality and enterprise. College students on the hospitality pathway undergo internship packages with the resort, studying a number of sides of the resort enterprise.
Zach Medina, human assets supervisor for the resort, mentioned the corporate has already employed 4 full-time staff out of that program.
“We actually wish to type of dive in and deal with the scholars as staff,” Medina mentioned. “That’s a variety of publicity that you simply’re in a position to present.”
Changing interns to full-time staff is also in an employer’s finest curiosity since research present 75% of the interns who get employed on full time are nonetheless on the job after one yr, in comparison with 53% of different staff.
Firms eager about offering mentorship and hands-on studying experiences to college students can contact this system coordinators for every campus
“The thought is that we’re exposing college students to each school and profession whereas they’re with us, after which they’re leaving us having skilled the true world,” Russell mentioned.
