County, Chamber, GCC team to reach "middle majority"

They’re “the middle majority.” Students who are talented enough to make a good living, but aren’t suited to attending a university.
Too often they don’t get the advice they need to find the place where they can thrive and where the community needs them to be to maintain a high quality of life for everyone.
Pam Frederick, an Orange County resident who is Germanna Community College’s Dean of Student Services, says the Virginia Community College System’s Career Coach program, launched four years ago, is geared to give these students the guidance critical to making good decisions in choosing career paths.
The Career Coach program is a statewide project that places jobs-oriented counselors in high schools. There they can begin working with students as early as ninth grade, testing them and talking to them about their interests and getting to know them over an extended period of time.
“Career coaches are focused solely on the concept of career guidance,” Frederick said. “They’re not working on behavioral issues and SOL testing. They have the time to actually sit down and have the “What do you want to do with your life talk with the student.”
“Some kids,” Frederick said, “think they’re either going to Harvard or nothing. They just think college is something unattainable for them. They don’t really know what the options are. They need someone to say, ‘sit down.’”
Sometimes a relatively quick, painless and inexpensive community college certification program is all it takes to get some students who don’t want to spend four years in college on the path to earning a good living, doing something they enjoy.
That’s why the Orange County Chamber of Commerce has joined with Germanna, the Orange County Office of Economic Development and local businesses in promoting an effort to raise money to hire a Career Coach for Orange County High School.
“We’re 100 percent behind establishing a Career Coach program at OCHS,” said Chamber Executive Director Barbara Bannar.
“We have reviewed the program and its results in other localities and feel that it would give a much needed edge to students who are looking for alternatives to four-year college programs,” she said.
“Generally, guidance departments do not have the additional staffing needed to work with individual students who plan to enter the workforce directly after graduation,” Bannar said. “This program would assist those students. It is also beneficial to our local businesses, as the Career Coach could focus on courses which would enable a student to prepare for specific local employment. It is a win-win program for businesses and students.”
Doug Rogers, a Lake of the Woods resident who serves both on Germanna’s Local College Board and on the Chamber board, is spearheading the fundraising effort.
Today, he said, providing high school students with help in finding the right career path is more important than ever.
“It’s not that choices are limited,” Rogers said. “It’s that there are a multitude of opportunities, and kids are just not aware of all the things they can do.”
He said he’s concerned about those who are “falling through the cracks—not getting the complete range of career counseling. In my opinion, if you have a high school education with no other certification and training, your livelihood and income are extremely limited in today’s economy.”
The Career Coach program, Rogers said, “gives the ones who may not know what they want to do more guidance in selecting a career, either at a two- or four-year school.”
“Not to knock the school system too much,” Rogers said, “because they are overloaded, but sometimes they focus too much on four-year schools instead of certification.”
Germanna’s Frederick said one of the things an OCHS Career Coach would do is arrange “shadow ops” during which students would be allowed to observe people in various jobs to see if they might like them.
She said hiring a Career Coach would be a relatively small investment for local businesses, considering the potential payoff.
“We need to raise $36,000 a year, which would cover the position, supplies, travel, training, everything,” Frederick said. “We’re trying to sustain it for at least three years. Doug is asking people to make three-year commitments. You don’t want to put someone in there and have to yank them back out because the money ran out.”
To donate, please contact: Barbara Bannar, Orange County Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 146, 103 N. Madison Rd., Orange, VA 22960.