Retool internships, Rogers educators say

Director: 360 work hours too much

ROGERS — Administrators in the Rogers School District are revising a high school course to get more students interested in exploring career fields.

Internship, a course available only to seniors, allows students to leave school early to participate in supervised work experiences. The course didn’t attract enough students to be offered this school year. Dawn Stewart, the district’s director of career and technical education, blamed that on the 360 hours of work that students must complete.

“That length of time is a challenge. That’s a barrier,” Stewart said.

Stewart and Lance Arbuckle, the principal of Rogers New Technology High School, are redesigning the course with more flexibility. The new internship course would be piloted at New Technology High School next fall if the School Board approves it.

Stewart and Arbuckle envision a course that’s a mix of internships and classroom instruction. Students would spend their classroom time reflecting on their internship experiences and figuring out what kind of internship they want to pursue next.

“It’s designed to help kids know ‘is this what I really want to do with my life?’” Arbuckle said.

The course would be available to juniors as well as seniors, Arbuckle said. They could take it for one or two years.

The district’s Course Review Committee will consider the redesigned program at its meeting Wednesday. If the committee approves the changes, the program will be presented to the School Board for approval next month, Stewart said.

New Technology offers a career investigations course for juniors and seniors. It requires students to pick two career fields that interest them and learn everything they can about those careers, but Arbuckle said there is no internship component to it.

The subject of internships came up during a meeting of district officials Wednesday on the topic of career and technical education. It was attended by more than a dozen people from the district, the business community and other educational institutions.

Tom Woodruff, a marketing teacher at Rogers High School, said it’s important for the district to draw on the talents of the surrounding business community.

“We can teach frameworks and book knowledge, but our students need a little bit more than that,” he said. “I’m not sure we’re taking advantage of our business community to teach some of those finer points.”

Steve Cox, vice president of economic development at the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, pledged to help connect the schools with businesses willing to host student interns.

Mike Harvey, chief operating officer of the private nonprofit Northwest Arkansas Council, gave a presentation on the growth of various job sectors in Northwest Arkansas. In the most recent annual employer survey, 54 percent of employers in the area said they have problems recruiting workers to fill open positions. That was the first time in the survey’s history that number surpassed 50 percent, Harvey said.

“We’re already seeing the community wake up to this issue,” he said.

Meanwhile, the workforce is getting older and many workers are approaching retirement age. About 20 percent of public-school teachers are at least 55 years old, Harvey said.

He said that of all the jobs available in the region, only a quarter to a third of them require education beyond high school.

Sixty-two students from Rogers High School and Rogers Heritage High School attended Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale last fall and received career training. Those classes are available to high school students at no cost, said Stephanie Trolinger, director of the Secondary Career Center at the institute.

“I think a lot more students are realizing they can get a jump-start on a career at a much younger age,” she said.