More than 2,000 area eighth-graders will flood East Mississippi Community College’s Communiversity next week as the FORGE Your Path Career Expo returns for a fifth year.
From operating heavy machine simulators to laying bricks and finishing concrete, students will explore different skilled trade careers as they learn from area professionals.
“It’s really just telling them to explore and to understand that there are options out there,” FORGE Executive Director Melinda Lowe told The Dispatch. “We’re showing them multiple pathways, however they see themselves down the line. We’re just trying to plant seeds, so that more communication and more conversation can take place.”
The expo kicks off Tuesday at 5 p.m. with a “Business After Hours” event for local business leaders, community members and industry partners to preview the expo and network with each other. Then Wednesday and Thursday, students will begin the expo with a safety talk starting at 8 a.m. both days.
Founded in 2018 with the goal of bringing more attention to careers in construction, FORGE stands for Family Organizations Recruiting Great Employees, representing its five founding companies: Graham Roofing, APAC, West Brothers Construction, Burns Dirt Construction and McCrary-West Construction.
Christee Holbrook, president for Graham Roofing, said the idea for the first career expo came the same year when she and two other team members visited a statewide career expo for students in Jackson.
“We noticed that a lot of the kids in our area weren’t there because it’s such a long way,” she said. “So we went to the event planners and (asked them), ‘How can we get this same type of expo in our area?’”
Once the Communiversity was secured as the venue and vendors were set – in only about six weeks – the first expo went off without a hitch. There were less than 1,000 students to participate that year, and they were only from the Golden Triangle, Holbrook said.
Next week’s expo is expected to draw 2,200 students from nine counties, including Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee. Instead of occupying only one wing of the facility like it did in 2018, this year the expo will encompass the entire Communiversity, inside and out.
The idea is to introduce students to the different career options available to skilled laborers as they’re beginning to think about their high school schedules.
“We want all of them to see that there are very respectable skilled trade careers available to them no matter what path they choose and really no matter when they choose it,” said West Brothers Construction General Manager Rob Winklepleck, who also helped organize the first career expo.
With so many different activities, students get a depth of experience practicing their construction skills, not to mention working with cutting edge technology. Burns Dirt Construction Vice President of Operations Nic Parish said it’s the first time some of the students experience anything related to construction.
“You’re going to a group of kids that never held a hammer to now they have played with concrete. They’ve run a remote control demo saw. They’ve climbed on a bulldozer,” he said. “It’s something they probably never would have dreamed of. … They’ve gotten to see a bunch of stuff they didn’t know existed.”
As students learn about new careers, businesses participating in the expo also get a look at the next generation of workers. It gives the companies a chance to market the industry to future potential employees, Holbrook said.
“If we don’t, as an industry we’re going to continue having labor issues,” she said. “Not only do we want to get people into our industry, we are also trying to hold our industry to higher standards and get really good quality people that want to work.”
Even if students aren’t interested in a construction career, the expo is still a positive learning experience, Lowe said.
“Really everything that they’re looking at and learning about is just life skills,” she said. “It may be something that piques their interest to have a better understanding about, so as they get older and they have to hire an electrician or plumber or carpenter, they have a little more knowledge about it.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
