College and Career Awareness

The Harding Place YMCA’s Hispanic Achievers program takes a unique approach to motivate Latino students to achieve their educational and vocational goals. Through its Vocational Orientation Program, Hispanic Achievers offers middle-grades students opportunities to explore career options while interacting with mentors. On Saturday mornings, students attend six-week “career clusters,” which are taught by a Hispanic professional from the community and a college student from nearby Belmont University (a “co-mentor”). Clusters include engineering/technology, health, computer science, business, law, communications and government. The popular communications cluster is run by a Puerto Rican newscaster who works for a local television station. The program has also invited professionals in the fields of social services, law enforcement, music, and aviation to give presentations.

In the clusters, mentors share their experience in the field and reasons for choosing their particular career. They also talk about what it is like to do their job, explain the skills and requirements needed, and how much one might expect to earn. They discuss in detail the courses students will need to take and which universities offer good programs for the specific career. In many cases students also visit the mentor’s place of work. Once students complete the curriculum in a given cluster, they rotate to another cluster that is of interest to them, thus participating in several clusters throughout the year and learning about a variety of career options. Program director Josias Arteaga notes, “Our goal is to show the young people that Hispanics can succeed professionally and that success takes a lot of hard work.” Arteaga also emphasizes that because each cluster runs for several weeks, students and the cluster mentors have time to build trust.

Eugene Lang, founder of the I Have a Dream program, launched the Lang Youth Medical Program in 2003 out of concern over the low number of minorities entering science careers. Every year a new cohort of 12 to 16 seventh graders enter this rigorous program, which continues through twelfth grade. The students, who live in New York City’s Washington Heights, are selected for their commitment to enter the medical field. Students meet on Saturdays in classrooms at Columbia University Medical Center and the Mailman School of Public Health and interact with pre-dental and pre-medical students from the University and over 75 volunteers from New York Presbyterian Hospital. As part of the program, a neurosurgeon recently gave a lecture about brain function and students also had the opportunity to watch a heart surgeon perform a research operation on a mouse. Hands-on experiences for students include working in the pathology lab and learning how to keep organs healthy. Students use this knowledge to give presentations at the local elementary schools, using organ samples as visual aids.

In addition to attending Saturday classes and a four-week health careers camp, ninth-grade students can also volunteer at the hospital after school, completing chores in the operating room and other tasks. In the summer before their sophomore year, they will perform an internship in a career area of their choice. Erin Roy, the program coordinator, explains that though most students enter the program with the dream of becoming a doctor, program staff take time to inform them of the many careers possible in the medical field. After a recent lecture a student happily told Roy, “I am going to be a perfusionist when I grow up,” indicating his interest in becoming the professional who operates the heart-and-lung machine during surgery—a career option that most of his school peers will never know exists.

Funded by the state to increase college attendance of low income, minority students, the College Reach Out Program (CROP) at Florida International University (FIU) helps at-risk students in the Miami area to prepare for college attendance. Its most popular offering is a four-week summer camp that focuses on academic preparation and provides participants with an elective course credit on their public school transcripts. CROP runs both a high school and a middle school camp, each geared towards the specific course work students will face in the fall. The middle school program takes place at FIU, giving students an opportunity to become familiar with a local college campus. Sophia Santiesteban, director of pre-college programs at FIU, explains, “Something as simple as eating in the campus cafeteria with college students is a big inspiration for our young students. It helps them really picture themselves attending college.”

During the last week of the program, students focus on career explorations. To research a specific career, students work in mixed-age teams, gathering detailed information about their chosen field, including salary ranges and the skills required to perform the job. Students must also research the steps they would need to take to enter the career, such as the high school classes they must take, the college coursework required, and any additional graduate work they would need to complete. During this week, students also learn how to create a PowerPoint slideshow, give a formal presentation as a group, and dress for a presentation. In the actual presentation, each group shares what they have learned with the larger group so that every student gains access to each group’s findings.