Lowndes County students are already starting to reap the benefits of a career coaching program, which aims to provide job training education to students.
That program is now seeking local businesses to pitch in with internships and apprenticeships.
Columbus High School Career Coach Jim Sutherland presented the idea and other updates about the program to the Columbus Rotary Club Tuesday at Lion Hills Center.
“That’s what we want,” Sutherland said. “If we can get apprenticeships, after-school internships or something even during the summer between junior and senior year or sophomore and junior, these kids can go and work somewhere and get an idea of ‘this is what I want to do.’ I’m hoping that we get that ability with local businesses.”
The program was started in 2022 by Three Rivers, a nonprofit founded in 1971 in Pontotoc to promote social and economic development throughout the state.
Sutherland told Rotarians the program, which started in October at CHS, has already begun integrating students into job shadowing at local schools and even includes the county coroner Greg Merchant, who is allowing a student at CHS to shadow him at work.
“I have one student who is going to be working with Mr. Merchant because she wants to be a forensic pathologist,” Sutherland said. “Greg is going to work with her just to give her ideas about what it takes to get to that.”
The program helps students by providing field trip opportunities, workshops in career technical training and presentations to students interested in improving their prospects after high school to get jobs or even better understand what they want to do in college, Sutherland said.
Funding for the program came from American Rescue Plan Act appropriations to the state with $8 million being dedicated to career coach programs through Accelerate Mississippi, a workforce development agency based in Jackson. Of that, $4.7 million was allocated to Three Rivers.
Three Rivers began hiring and assigning career coaches in October and now has 108 coaches in 51 countries throughout the state, including Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay County.
The program itself is available to all grade levels at the high school. It includes career interest assessments so students can get an idea of what they want to do after college, resume writing and scholarship application workshops, and career counseling for students needing help to determine what to do after graduation.
“We want to help these kids to be able to write a resume that makes sense and have an email address that isn’t hotbaby16 or something like that,” he said. “This is job training and we also work to plan, develop and implement strategies for them.”
Through its efforts, Sutherland and other career coaches throughout Lowndes County have conducted 640 career exploration surveys, hosted 12 guest speakers from local businesses during school meetings and assemblies and facilitated 10 job applications submitted from students to work in local industries.
“A few applied for Mississippi Steel Processing because they were looking for some people. In fact, we did a visit out there,” Sutherland said. “Some students are going to Burns Dirt, Graham Roofing is another.”
As part of that job training, Sutherland and other coaches take students to tour local colleges like East Mississippi Community College, Mississippi University for Women and Mississippi State University. They also take students to local industry players like Yokohama, Paccar and Aurora Flight Sciences so students understand there are more options than just going to college and getting a degree.
Sutherland said by showing students all of the local opportunities they can take advantage of here, it also helps to keep students in the state when they enter the job market.
“These are pretty much most of the different areas we try to target with them,” he said. “You see advanced manufacturing, energy, health care information technology, you’ve got so much going on in this state right now.”
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