Student career pathways are critical to our state’s economic success as Minnesota continues to see record low unemployment and high job vacancies. Panel members on our recent Workforce Wednesday gave an overview of their program opportunities and highlighted promising practices for hiring and retaining Minnesota’s future workforce.

Tammy Biery – Executive Director, Career Solutions

CareerONE is for 14-17-year-olds in St. Cloud and Stearns County. They work for 20 days and are graded on work quality and quantity. The youth focus on career exploration activities as well as building a resume. They also take part in teambuilding activities to practice the experience of starting a job – which always includes building new relationships and figuring out how to work together. We partner with CentraCare primarily for work-based activities at the hospital where they do lawn care maintenance, as well as visit other nonprofits in the community to do painting or staining jobs. We give them a debit card and based on their daily performance, they receive a stipend, and we teach them how to use that money on the debit card so they’re financially prepared. We’ve also started different career tracks in the health care, manufacturing, construction and early childhood education fields, and students receive college credits based on those areas of study.

Burke Murphy – Workforce Lead, Red Wing Ignite

Red Wing Ignite spearheaded a youth skills training program back in 2019 which is sponsored by the Department of Labor and Industry. We’ve formed a countywide collaboration built around applied learning environments that get kids out of the classroom and working with a coalition of Red Wing area manufacturers who were facing a tsunami of retirements and no one to replace them. The Red Wing area alone has around 4,000 people who work in advanced manufacturing for a variety of different companies, but the local students weren’t aware of all the different work opportunities available. We formed student cohorts and provided access, exposure and opportunity to careers and occupations in advanced manufacturing. Students learned a lot of about themselves and it gave them a sense of pride once they learned about these globally competitive companies right in their own backyard.

Wanda Kraemer – Education Manager, Career Connected Learning Resource Training & Solutions

We’re one of nine Minnesota Service Cooperatives established to support schools, cities and counties. We act as service providers for school districts in helping to develop these programs and right now we’re working on developing this link between businesses and schools – with a goal of helping students develop better ideas for what they want to do for their future and helping businesses gain their future workforce through that development. This summer we have our teacher externship program, which is a paid experience for our teachers who spend three to five days at businesses where they then work with us to create a lesson plan that they can take and share with their students to give them a more real-world experience.

Bruce Bergeson – Director, Minnesota River Valley CTE Collaborative

The Minnesota River Valley CTE Collaborative is born out of need, but it’s been the great collaborations of our school districts and our partners that have really made it a success and created opportunities for students. Our thoughts are if we can get students on career pathways early it’s a much more efficient way for students to find the job that fits them down the road. We now offer 14 courses throughout the year in areas like nursing assistants, carpentry skills, power line technicians, and welding principles. Every one of our classes has an employability component so students know how to secure a job and know how to keep a job once they are hired. They have job shadow opportunities where they connect with businesses and can see what’s happening on the inside of the buildings they drive by every day.

View a recording of June’s session and other past sessions, plus find related resources you can download and use, on the Workforce Wednesday page on CareerForceMN.com.