Career & technical education programs make a difference for area students, businesses

Kyle Karkowski works with precision on luxury BMWs at Driver’s Village, a sprawling automobile mega center that sells 22 brands of vehicles in Cicero. His skills and confidence as a master technician offer a stunning contrast to his younger life as an uninspired teen-ager, when he struggled to sit at a desk and questioned the real-world relevance of nearly every class in high school.

Now 26 years old, Karkowski credits his mother for nudging him onto a different path in high school: a two-year automotive technology program at the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison Board of Cooperative Educational Services (OCM BOCES). Karkowski admits his initial reluctance and “green” mechanical skills, but he slowly developed a passion for it. He loved his three-week internship at Volkswagen, another Driver’s Village dealership.

Before long, Karkowski was packing his bags for a two-year technical college in Cleveland. He hunkered down. His top-notch grades and nearly perfect attendance landed him a coveted spot in an advanced program for BMW. Now he’s a master technician with another title: service team leader.

“It jump-started my career when I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he says of OCM BOCES. 

Karkowski exemplifies a path to success that is becoming more relevant in a changing economy. With an aging population and a mounting demand for skilled workers in industries such as health care, computer programming, and manufacturing, the consensus is clear: Students who participate in modern-day vocational programs, including the Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs at OCM BOCES, are acquiring college- and career-ready skills that can ultimately lead to jobs in high-demand, high-paying fields.

Unlike the vocational classes of previous generations, today’s CTE programs are academically rigorous. Students learn industry specific skills and also earn college credits — as many as 22 in a single program at OCM BOCES. They have to pass four Regents exams, meet all the graduation requirements of their home districts, and take one of 13 state-approved technical assessments related to their program. A passing grade on that test results in an industry-recognized credential — a CTE endorsement — affixed to their high-school diploma.

P-TECH

In Syracuse, Auburn, and 31 other districts and BOCES across New York state, a comparable program called P-TECH operates on a similar principle. The program, which launched in 2013, stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High School. It is a six-year program that combines high school, college, and career training for students who are academically or economically at risk. Students in the state-funded program earn an associate degree — for free — and are primed for the job market because of their training, college-level work, and access to internships. Interest in P-TECH is booming among business leaders across the state. According to the On Board news magazine, a publication of the New York State School Boards Association, the number of participating businesses in P-TECH had surged to 431 by November 2017.

“Programs like CTE and P-TECH are an obvious win-win for our students, our business leaders and our communities,” OCM BOCES District Superintendent Dr. Jody Manning says. “Business leaders want an educated, skilled and trained workforce to sustain their long-term success. Students learn best — and are more engaged in their learning — when they work on relevant, authentic projects. Communities thrive when local businesses, the fuel for the local economy, are flourishing.” 

Embedded CTE programs

In 2013, the same year P-TECH was born, administrators at OCM BOCES added an original twist to its own CTE programs. They worked with local businesses and organizational leaders to physically move programs out of high schools and into local businesses. Called “embedded” CTE programs, the growing list of program sites includes:

• WCNY Studios: High-school students take a two-year media- marketing communications class within the walls of the WCNY public-broadcasting studios in downtown Syracuse.

• Upstate Medical University: High-school students interested in health-related fields can take a two-year physical therapy & rehabilitative professions program or a one-year new vision medical professions program based in a campus building.

• Driver’s Village: Auto-technology students work on-site for two years at this popular automobile dealership in Cicero. The program is an Automotive Service Excellence program certified by the National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF).

• Madden & Associates Physical Therapy: Students in the two-year physical therapy & rehabilitative professions program are based at this Cortland business.

• Cortland Community Head Start: Students in the two-year early childhood education program work with children on-site and in all aspects of the school.

The benefits of an embedded CTE program are many. Instead of being isolated in a high-school classroom, students learn from “a community of experts” that includes OCM BOCES teachers, local college professors, and the on-site professional staff, says OCM BOCES Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Colleen Viggiano.

Students are exposed to a plethora of industry-specific equipment and resources that public-school districts could not typically afford, from the high-end video equipment housed inside a full-scale broadcast studio to the costly medical equipment needed for physical-therapy practices and other medical offices, she says.

Another benefit lies in the up-to-date content of the courses. OCM BOCES meets regularly with a committee of community leaders, a CTE Advisory Committee, to make sure all levels of CTE instruction align with the needs of local employers.

“You might say our CTE instruction is as real as it gets,” Viggiano says. “Businesses are actually taking part in educating their incoming workforce with the skills they need. And of course, what better way to teach students the necessary skills than to immerse them in that environment?”

The newest CTE program at SUNY Upstate Medical University is meant to launch motivated students into the health-care arena, a booming field. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in health-care occupations is projected to grow 18 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all other occupations, adding about 2.3 million new jobs in that decade.

From the university’s standpoint, a partnership with OCM BOCES is invaluable and reflects the powerful effectiveness of experiential learning, says Katherine Beissner, PT, Ph.D., dean of the College of Health Professions at Upstate Medical.

“Experiential learning is the wave of the future,” Beissner says, “and learning in context is the most important aspect of real-world opportunities like this.” 

WCNY President and CEO Robert Daino says he has long supported having students work and learn at his business because it is uplifting and motivating for employees as well. At every possible opportunity, he says, he encourages fellow business leaders to do the same. 

“Today, the students are hungrily learning from us,” Daino says. “Tomorrow, they will be leading companies and making ideas realities.”                                  

Jackie Wiegand is marketing coordinator at OCM BOCES. Contact her at jwiegand@ocmboces