GYEDC seeks easy transition to college for high school students
Yuma County educational leaders spoke at Wednesday’s quarterly Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation luncheon on their work to create a “seamless” experience for students from high school through college.
“I want our students to walk out of an AWC class, walk across the hall and sit down in a UofA class,” said Daniel Corr, president of Arizona Western College. “There should be no decision point between high school and college, AWC and a university. We want to blur those lines so it is in fact a seamless pathway, a flowing river.”
Tanya Hodges, who manages the University of Arizona’s Yuma Academic Learning Center, said the effort is geared toward graduating students with the skills local employers of the present and future will be looking for in their new hires.
“Our students are excited. They want to work out of the box, they want to be innovative; let’s make sure we’re not boxing them in. Because you don’t know, when you’re hiring these students, you say the job requirements are this, this and this. But they might be bringing to you items that aren’t even on your list,” she said.
The process begins at the high school level, where C. Kevin Imes is the superintendent of the Southwest Technical Education Dis-
trict of Yuma, or STEDY. The district is in its second year of holding career and technical education courses on local high school campuses and at AWC.
STEDY offers instruction and certifications in fields including automotive maintenance, culinary arts and nursing. It is launching a coding curriculum in the fall, which Imes said “is going to look a little bit different,” with the code used to manipulate robots and other objects, not just sitting there on the screen.
But Imes said some of the jobs employers are expecting by 2025 could have brand-new names and descriptions, citing an article from Fast Company magazine.
“I’m not sure what a microbial balancer is, or a corporate disorganizer. But a digital detox specialist sounds pretty good. And I didn’t make these up, I really didn’t. The point is there will be jobs out there tomorrow, for which they don’t exist today,” he said.
Corr said he had a similar experience shortly after starting his AWC job last fall, when he was told the college had won a $6 million informatics grant from the federal government: “Two comments — that’s incredible, and what the hell is informatics?”
Hodges provided the definition a few minutes later, saying it is “the study and practice of creating, storing, providing and sharing information.” The grant, co-written with UA, will fund a course of study beginning at the community college level with instruction in coding, networking and other basics, and moving to upper-level instruction in their chosen area of concentration.
Courses will begin this fall in borrowed space at San Luis Middle School, and a new building under construction there could be finished in time for the spring 2018 semester.
Hodges said schools at all levels are looking for ways to partner with local businesses for internships or projects, like the one UA Yuma’s first batch of senior engineering students won an honorable mention for at a university competition.
They used drones to pollinate date trees, which increased production by 30 percent, she said. “We are going to be looking for more of those types of projects, whether it’s engineering, whether it’s in computer science, whether it’s in ag, whether it’s in business. We just brought a fully accredited business program to Yuma,” she said.
Corr said campuses also need partnerships to help prepare students for college life in general. Forty-three percent of Yuma County high school grads go on to AWC, the highest proportion in the state.
They form a unique student body at AWC which presents its own challenges and opportunities, Corr said. The community college has the highest percentages in the state of students under 25, part-time students (80 percent) and first-generation college students (66 percent).
“Fully two out of three of our students are the first in their family to go to college. Now this has profound impact on our community in a very positive way, but also puts a huge impetus on us as a college because when you’re a first-generation student, you don’t know what you don’t know,” Corr said.
Local programs such as Ready Now Yuma are making great strides toward preparing high school students for college, and coordination between all levels of learning is helping to turn out graduates more highly qualified for careers with major employers, including those looking to relocate or expand their presence here, GYEDC President Julie Engel said.
“It gives us an advantage. It’s been a fantastic year for new jobs in this area, we’ll be sharing more as we go along, but I just can’t say enough about the changes we’ve seen,” she said.