Eighth graders in north Mississippi will soon get to sample from a host of potential career pathways.
Next month, there will be a place in Mississippi where more than 7,000 eighth graders will have the chance to try out a flight simulation from the Columbus Air Force Base, manipulate a medical robot, sit in the cockpit of a 747 and spend time exploring career options and talking with professionals from local industries from public affairs to manufacturing.
The Mississippi educational nonprofit CREATE Foundation’s “Imagine the Possibilities” expo will be at Bancorp South Arena and Conference Center in Tupelo Oct. 4-6. Local industries will host exhibits and activities designed to educate eighth graders about possible career paths.
This is the second year the foundation and its primary sponsor, Toyota Wellspring Education Fund, has put on the expo, CREATE Director of Communications Albine Bennett said. Last year’s expo was open to about 3,200 students from only a handful of the 17 counties the foundation serves.
This year, Bennett said, the expo has expanded. Now kids from all 17 counties — including Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay — can attend.
“This is real learning with real professionals and careers to help real students understand their connection to real careers in real life,” said Larry Anderson, a foundation consultant and one of the coordinators of the expo. “It’s very pragmatic.”
The students will have two hours and 15 minutes to tour the exhibits. They’ll have the opportunity to chat with professionals from 18 career pathways — which include everything from health sciences, government and public administration to engineering and manufacturing. It will also include careers that require two-year degrees or technical training,Bennett said.
“We are not just limiting it to a four-year degree, or what we call formal education,” she said. “These days, factories are not the same. You have to be skilled. So we want to make sure we cover all the basics, not just a couple that would be relevant to … a university education.”
The expo targets eighth graders in order to get them thinking about a possible career they could work toward academically while simultaneously showing them the practical applications of what they learn in school.
With all those students, though, Bennett said the expo needs more volunteers. With about 1,000 slots over the three-day expo, only a third of them are filled. She needs several hundred more volunteers from the area to fill the rest — to register students, show kids and teachers where to go, make announcements, hand out gift bags, and more.
At last year’s expo, students interacted with law enforcement, held a tarantula and worked with a medical robot, Anderson said. Even representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Huntsville, Alabama, attended last year to show the students science experiments.
This year, even more exhibitors will be on-hand to talk about more careers and industries and offer suggestions and experiences to curious students. They’re encouraged to become “mentors for a minute,” Bennett and Anderson said, taking time to talk to students who express interest in their careers.
One of the new career paths to be represented this year is the Columbus Air Force Base, which is setting up multiple exhibits for eight different pathways — an unheard of number, Anderson said. Most industries and companies that attend only focus on one or two career pathways. The base will have an exhibit for pathways from medical sciences to communication technology, Anderson said. And of course, CAFB will have a presence in the aerospace pathway.
“The many conversations that we’ve had with them … they have emphasized to me directly, when I would go down to the air base, they would look straight at me and they would say, ‘You need to understand we are all in’,” Anderson said.
In fact, the base is bringing a simulator for students to try out, along with a trainer from a T-38 fighter jet.
“I think they realize, even though recruiting is not their role, how important this is to give you people a vision of a future that will allow them … to serve their country,” Anderson said. “In addition, they can get their education covered and paid for.”
CAFB’s exhibits, like all the exhibits, must be interactive, Anderson said.
“If it’s just static, something to go look at, we’re not interested,” he said. “Because eighth graders want to get their hands on something. They want to do something.”
For more information on the expo, go to createfoundation.com. Those wishing to volunteer can do so online at createfoundation.com/career-expo.
“These kids get to play with the tools that these people use on a daily routine in their profession,” Bennett said. “They get to touch things, they get to make things, they get to talk to professionals who are in those careers every day.”
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