High school students who are pondering their next steps for college, training, or career—and their parents and family members who are wondering how best to support them—are invited to attend VSAC’s 2024 College and Career Pathways events, taking place over the next six weeks at various locations around the state.
The free events include four weekday programs during March and April for students, coordinated with their high schools and held at various college locations across the state, and a Saturday event on March 23 at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington for both students and parents. Workshops offer guidance for students on choosing a career path that matches their interests, with pointers for students and their families on navigating the admissions processes, standardized tests, paying for college and career training programs, and more.
Interactive career guidance for high school students
Nearly 2,000 students from 38 high schools across Vermont are already registered to attend one of four weekday events, to be held at Landmark College in Brattleboro, Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, VTSU-Lyndon in Lyndonville, and VTSU-Castleton in Castleton. These half-day events are aimed at ninth, tenth and eleventh graders.
Kathi Terami, Executive Director of Careers CLiC and a longtime College & Career Pathways event partner, presents “Career Search: Finding the Right Fit” at all four weekday events. “I get really inspired by rooms full of young people when we talk about careers,” says Terami. “I love that VSAC does this.”
The student session isn’t based around giving advice, she explains; instead, it’s an interactive workshop designed around helping students figure out what their interests are and helping them match those interests with job opportunities.
Terami starts the 45-minute workshop by having the students pull out their phones and take a 3- to 5-minute interest assessment, called the RIASEC Test. The multiple-choice questionnaire presents respondents with various job-related tasks—such as laying tile, conducting biological research, or running a store—and asks them to rate each one on a five-point like-or-dislike scale. At the end, respondents get a personalized score, called a Holland Code, that describes the types of jobs that would be the best fit.
For the second part of the workshop, Terami’s co-presenters—economists from the Vermont Department of Labor—show students how to use their Holland Code to find in-demand jobs listed on the Vermont Department of Labor website and on the McClure Foundation’s “most promising career pathways” list. They also show students how to research potential salaries and educational requirements for job titles that interest them.
“Instead of giving them advice, we’re giving them access to all the information they need to research and explore,” says Terami. “Our message is, ‘Make sure you inform yourself along your career journey.’”
Other workshops high school students may choose to attend cover the non-degree pathways, college search, admissions process, paying for education, taking a gap year, and more. Registration for these weekday events is through participating high schools, so families should check with their schools to see if they are registered to attend. See more details at vsac.org/ccp.
For students, parents and guardians: Join the free event on Saturday, March 23rd
Students who are not registered through their school for one of the weekday events, or students (and their parents/guardians!) who may want to get more info, are encouraged to attend VSAC’s College and Career Pathways free public event on Saturday, March 23, 2024. Families can join in-person at the UVM Davis Center or online via Zoom to take part in live workshops, discover free resources, and connect with local experts to help prepare for education or training after high school. The in-person program runs from 1 pm to 5 pm, with a Resource Fair, and from 2 pm to 5 pm for the online version. Registration is open! Find out how to sign up at vsac.org/ccp.
Families are also invited to join UVM the morning of the event for an admissions information session, student panel, and student-led tour. Info sessions and tours will be offered at 9:30 am and 11 am. Interested families must register separately for the UVM tours/sessions at www.uvm.edu/visit.
At the Saturday afternoon event, attendees will be able to choose from 12 workshops, covering how to choose, apply to, and pay for education after high school; test prep tips from a professional tutor; short-term training opportunities for in-demand jobs; postsecondary options for students who learn differently, and more.
Terami from Careers CLiC will present a workshop for parents and guardians, called “Supporting Your Teen’s Career Search.” She based the presentation on dozens of interviews with college admissions officers, employers, recent high school students and parents, in which she asked: “what advice was most helpful to you as you chose your career, or what do you wish people had told you?”
“We saw a lot of patterns in the responses. The consistency surprised us,” says Terami.
Some key recommendations that came out of that process: “First, we encourage families to come to terms with the fact that their students may want to pursue different goals than the ones they may have envisioned for them. We also encourage parents and guardians to support the ‘it takes a village’ concept when it comes to career advice,” says Terami, who refers to her own children—now 21 and 17—as real-life examples.
“With my kids, I felt like I had all the advice they needed, but oftentimes they didn’t want any advice from their mom. That’s really common,” says Terami. “We encourage families not to be offended by that, and to think about other ways they can be supportive. For example, I encouraged my daughter to have lunch with her friends’ moms to talk about their jobs. That really helped her, and gave her the distance she wanted from her own parents.”
Renee Soutiere, who has been a key logistical partner for the College & Career Pathways event for several years, plans to attend the event at UVM this year with her son, who is a high school sophomore. As the Senior Conference Coordinator for the University of Vermont, Soutiere has observed the conference from the sidelines for the past two years and hopes that this year it can help her son jump-start his thoughts about his future.
“The conference offers so many great workshop topics, both at a high level and into the specifics of writing the essay and applying for financial aid. We may do it this year and next year,” she says.
“He dreams of being a professional hockey player,” she says with a smile. While hockey will continue to be a big part of his life—the family is sandwiching the conference in between tournaments—“it’s time for him to start thinking about other career options too. Just in case the hockey thing doesn’t work out,” she chuckles.
For more information about the College & Career Pathways event series, visit the VSAC website at vsac.org/ccp. Questions? Call 877-961-4369 or e-mail us at collegepathways@vsac.org.
College & Career Pathways is funded by VSAC; Vermont State GEAR UP, a federally funded program; and the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation.
This story is produced by Vermont Student Assistance Corp., created by the Vermont Legislature in 1965 as a public nonprofit agency, to advocate for Vermont students and their families to ensure that they achieve their education goals. Our vision is to create opportunities for all Vermont students, but particularly for those—of any age—who believe that the doors to higher education are closed to them. We begin by helping families save for education with Vermont’s state-sponsored 529 savings program. To help Vermonters plan and pay for college or career training, our counselors work with students in nearly every Vermont middle school and high school, and again as adults. Our grant and scholarship programs attract national recognition, and our loan programs and loan forgiveness programs are saving Vermont families thousands of dollars in interest. Visit vsac.org to learn more.
