More than 100 students participated in a hands-on career fair event on Monday in Ninilchik. The event was organized by the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District, or KPEDD, and aimed to connect students at small, rural schools to post-graduate opportunities.
It’s just after 11 a.m. when a classroom in Ninilchik erupts with the sound of about two dozen students tearing into plastic packages of sheep eyes.
After some minutes of laborious cutting, pairs of students successfully extract what looks like a fleshy, grey golf ball. They’re quick to describe the smell and search for the gelatinous material inside.
At the front of the room, Spencer Toft hunches over his own sheep eye, trimming it with scissors and guiding the group.
“Everybody see that little nub on the back?” he asks. “So that’s your optic nerve. That’s what translates all of that stimuli that’s coming in your eye.”
Toft is the education coordinator for the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Area Health Education Scholars Program. He’s just one industry professional who converged on the K-12 school in Ninilchik for a hands-on career day event called the Student to Career Launchpad.
Organized by KPEDD, the event brought together more than 110 students from nine of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s small schools. Students came from as far north as Nikiski, to as far south as Razdolna to participate.
Cassidi Cameron is KPEDD’s executive director. She says her team’s been planning the event since last October, with the goal of bringing resources to students who might not otherwise get them.
“Part of the core of this program, and this concept, is to reach out to our rural, small community schools and the students that are there that don't typically have capacity or resources or the opportunity to go to the large career fairs up in Anchorage or in Kenai,” she said.
While signing in Monday morning, students were given a golden lanyard with the words “We are … Alaska’s future!” printed on them. and the chance to pick which workshops they wanted to attend. Each focused on a specific industry: there was one each for renewable energy, maritime, health care and natural resources. Here’s Cameron again.
“We started kind of just sketching out what it would look like and what are viable career options for Alaskans and for students here and it just kind of started to take shape.”
Cameron says bringing the students hands-on opportunities was important.
“We didn't want to have a row of 20 booths for people to just go around and get a pen or a piece of paper and talk to somebody,” she said. “We wanted people to be engaged and kind of having an opportunity to be hands on and have an experience.”
Cameron says the maritime workshop was the most popular. Students practiced tying nautical knots and did team building exercises. While next door in the renewable energy workshop, students wielded thermal imaging cameras. Colleen Fisk is the education coordinator for the Renewable Energy Alaska Project.
“Fisk: “Since we're thinking about electricity, where does most of our electricity come from here on the Kenai Peninsula?” Fisk asks.
“HEA?” a student responds.
“So Homer Electric Association is the organization that provides it for us. That's great. And then they – “ Fisk continues.
“Gas?” another student cuts in.
“Yes, natural gas,” Fisk says.
Across the hall in the sheep eye dissection workshop, Toft, had similar thoughts about how to engage students.
“They spend a lot of time typically being talked at, right?” he said. “And so our goal is to get them involved in the actual learning, and have them experience what we're trying to teach them, rather than just telling them about it.”
Toft’s workshop is geared toward students interested in health care. He says sheep eyes are similar to human eyes.
“Sheep eyes are actually very similar to human eyes in overall form and function,” he said. “It's a fun activity to get the students involved, see what – maybe if they're interested in human anatomy, or see if that stuff grosses them out.”
Ninilchik tenth grader Judeaya Mobley was one of the students who participated in the dissection workshop.
“Basically, we started off by just, like, getting muscle off of a sheep's eyeball, and then after that, we cut it in half to separate the back part and the front part of the eye, and then we took turns dissecting both sides of it,” he said.
Mobley says he signed up for the workshop because he’s interested in pursuing a career in health care after he graduates, maybe as an emergency medical technician or surgeon. He says the activity didn’t make him squeamish, but the smells gave him a headache.
“I've just always wanted to pursue a medical career,” he said. “I think I could do pretty good at it, and it's just always called to me.”
Cameron, who used to live in Seldovia and whose kids now attend Ninilchik, says she’s measuring the event’s success in a few ways. She says she’ll be happy if an activity inspires even one student to take the next step down a career path that interests them.
“Ideally, it would be great if conversation started to happen with the principals, the counselors when they're getting ready to register for the next session of classes, if there's something here that interests them pursuing something in that way,” she said.
KPEDD and its partners – including Kenai Peninsula College, the Department of Jobs and Workforce Development, the Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward and the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s college and career staff – will bring the same event to Seldovia's Susan B. English School in the future.
