The first of many discussion panels took place on Tuesday, August 1 at the Carbon County Administration Building to discuss the development of the Career Pathways program in Carbon. The program is geared towards high school aged students that are given the opportunity to actually start taking career driven courses before they graduate from high school.

Those in attendance were Pinnacle Principal, Roberta Hardy, Price City Mayor, Joe Piccaclo, new Carbon School Superintendent, Lane Hatch, Carbon County Commissioner, Jake Mellor, USU-Eastern Chancellor, Joe Peterson, USU-Eastern Vice Chancellor, Gary Straquadine and discussion was moderated by Mark Holyoak, CEO Castleview Hospital.

USU-Eastern is a crucial part of the Career Pathways program through their different con-current enrollment courses offered to high school students. “Con-current enrollment is a perfect tool to work with a population in an area like Castle Country, like Southeastern Utah to get them considering these skills that constitute shortages in businesses like the hospital and other regional enterprises and so con-current enrollment especially on the CTE side is an important, very important tool,” explained Chancellor, Joe Peterson. The college is in the early stages of creating STACK Technology degrees to assist in the job growth within our community.

Studies has shown that the current generation of college and high school graduates will change their career at least seven times in their lifetime. “So, to come out of high school already taking some classes that’s starting down a very productive path and I think it helps them a lot. One of the things that we talk about in education is you don’t want to force them to make a life decision that’s going to hang over them forever because they have chosen this one path. But one of the things we always want to remember is that education is about learning how to learn. Learn something new, learn something different and if they can learn how to do this, well I can learn how to do this too. That’s a huge part of the value that I see,” stated new Carbon School Superintendent, Lance Hatch.

There is still lots of planning and creating outline of program to get it off the ground, part of that is taking some ideas to the Utah State Education Board. “We notified the board that we would be coming to them with several recommendations, simply so that perhaps in the future some of these pathways could began sooner and that some of these college credits that they are earning in high school would be able to count towards their high school credit,” said Commissioner Jake Mellor. “Previously in the school district Gary Straquadine and I have noticed that some changes could be made as far down as seventh and eighth grade. Simply to help people in high school have the math to be advance far enough, in the math area that they could be taking some of these classes as a senior.” Administrators agree the biggest obstacle at this point is math courses due to the high school’s requirement in meeting the common core. Students meeting the common core do not have what they need to take on the college level math courses. The panel will work together in writing a letter to the Utah State Education Board as to what they feel would work for students in our community in hopes that some flexibility will be allowed.

Further panel discussions on Career Pathways will be held and the public is welcomed to attend.