Technical programs and apprenticeships give students early peeks at possible careers.
Last summer, Elexia Wynn headed to work each day as a computer machinist at Wabtec Graham-White’s offices in Salem.
She put in 40-hour weeks, brought home thousands of dollars in pay, broke gender barriers and completed highly technical procedures — even though she was only 18 and a recent graduate of Cave Spring High School.
Wynn was able to step into a skilled position at such an early age because of the know-how she acquired at Burton Center for Arts & Technology during her years of mechatronics study — and because of a high school apprenticeship program recently begun in Roanoke County that allowed her to spend her senior year learning the ropes at Graham-White.
Today, she studies mechatronics at Virginia Western Community College, while working part-time making transportation components. She dreams of one day creating lifelike robotic prosthetic limbs.
“It’s a really neat program,” says Wynn of her years at Burton and her apprenticeship. “I tell every high school kid it’s a very, very good opportunity…. It opens doors for you and maybe helps you get another cool job in the future.”
Where technical programs and trade schools were once seen as a track for low-achieving students, today there’s a growing awareness that courses in engineering, cybersecurity and marketing can give even the most ambitious high schoolers a leg up on their journey to college and career.
There’s a new appreciation, too, for classes in such fields as medical technician, welding, culinary arts and the automotive industry, where good-paying, skilled jobs are available to students not interested in accruing college debt.
“We are preparing students for the real world,” says Kathleen Duncan, principal at Roanoke City’s Roanoke Technical Education Center. “It used to be you had to go to college and try things on to see if you liked your major. Now that opportunity is available at the high school level.”
School systems across the Roanoke Valley — from Franklin County’s Career & Technology Center to the Botetourt Technical Education Center, from Roanoke City’s ROTEC and Roanoke County’s Burton Center — offer more, and more varied, technical education classes than ever. Many Virginia Western classes are available to high schoolers through Dual Enrollment programs, as well.
Virginia Western — the bulk of whose offerings focus on workplace- and skills-based education — is experiencing an expansion of its own with the opening of a $30 million STEM building and the launching of a new agriculture associates degree in 2019, as well as a $6 million renovation and tripling of teaching kitchens on its culinary arts campus in 2018.
Also on the rise are work-based learning opportunities at area businesses and institutions. It was Western Virginia Water Authority who first approached Roanoke County about starting a high school apprenticeship in 2017. In 2019, the third class of high school students began their training at the Water Authority, bringing the total number of apprentices that have participated in the program to 15.
Twenty-three students currently take part in Roanoke County’s Student Registered Apprenticeship program, working for 10 companies, including mechanical and electrical contracting firm G.J. Hopkins, Canatal Steel USA, Integer (making medical devices), security company Medeco and marketing firm Minuteman Press.
“The apprenticeship program is one of the more rewarding things I’ve ever done,” says Roanoke County’s Director of Career and Technical Education Jason Suhr. “I feel like I’m working on some of the grand problems facing us as a society — trying to fill workforce needs, keeping people out of collegiate debt, helping students find their passion.”
Carilion Clinic, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Radford University Carilion offer thousands of opportunities for hands-on learning, from outreach programs for elementary students held at the West End Community Center and Grandin Court Elementary School, to Lunch and Learns focused on diversity and inclusion targeted to medical and health professional students and staff, to more than 6,000 clinical, internship and shadowing rotations offered to students across the health care professions.
“The goal of many of these programs is to expose underserved students to different health professions, different STEM careers,” says Karen Eley Sanders, associate vice provost for college access and chief diversity officer at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.
“We want to prepare the next generation of medical professionals and we want them to stay in their communities.”
One offering is the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine Health Professions Enrichment Program in which 150 high school sophomores and juniors from Roanoke, Salem — even as far as Martinsville and Bedford — participate in three Saturday sessions, then apply to a four-day overnight summer camp at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where they are immersed in STEM-H education and tips for college preparedness.
Roanoke City Schools also partner with Carilion, offering nursing and emergency medical technician students opportunities to job shadow and intern at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, says Duncan.
“Kids love these opportunities. It sparks them in a different way. They’re able to touch and they’re able to do and they’re able to see the relevance of their education.”
School and business leaders emphasize it’s not only students who benefit from these opportunities.
“Ultimately, we’re serving the community,” says Dan Harrington, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Carilion Clinic and Vice Dean at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. “Whether these students become physicians, medical assistants or technicians, we’re encouraging people to go into medicine and to be able to serve the public.”
One of the biggest obstacles to even more students participating in career-focused education is parents’ outdated view of what today’s technical classroom truly looks like, educators say.
“If a parent walks in and has a preconceived idea of what manufacturing is all about,” cautions Roanoke County’s Suhr, “and they think only about the grimy, poorly-lit manufacturing facilities of yesteryear, then they’re missing out, because there’s a lot of manufacturing that is clean as a whistle and exciting to be part of.”
Each skills certification earned (2,100 certifications were issued at ROTEC last year alone), every apprenticeship completed, chips away at that mentality.
“Career and Technical Education has changed completely in the last five to six years,” says ROTEC’s Duncan. “There’s something for every student now.”
