ASU partners with local high school for career day


Tolleson High School Career Exploration Day

Current ASU students and staff who attended Tolleson High School spoke at the career event. Pictured from left to right are: Enrique Borges, senior program coordinator; Erandi Hernandez, GEAR UP tutor and success coach; Nayeli Rodriguez, Access ASU tour guide; and sophomore Alan Serrano.

|

Arizona State University and Tolleson High School partnered to present an interactive Career Exploration Day on April 14, and the event aimed to introduce more than 400 high school juniors to career and professional development opportunities that will help prepare them for success.

During the daylong event, Tolleson students engaged in career exploration workshops covering a range of topics, including interviewing and elevator pitches, preparing resumes, money habits and more. In addition to a resource fair, current ASU students and staff who attended Tolleson hared reflections and insights from their high school to college and career journeys.

"We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with Tolleson High School in this innovative way," said Vanessa Ruiz, ASU's deputy vice president of educational outreach. “At ASU, we're all about collaborating with school districts that prioritize their students' college and career readiness education, setting them up to thrive beyond high school, regardless of their background or situation. This collaboration is a natural fit."

Justyss Strickland, a junior at Tolleson High School and an aspiring psychology and pre-law major, said the program helped her and her peers to better understand the pathways to college majors and careers that interest them. She described the Career Exploration Day as a chance to “take further steps into our careers and what we want to do.”

Strickland and her classmate, Emmanuel Jimenez, noted that the resume-writing workshop was their favorite experience of the day. Jimenez recalled feeling uneasy when he applied for his first job without a resume.

“Luckily, I got the job, but I would have been a lot more secure if I’d had a resume or knew how to make one,” Jimenez said.

After high school, Jimenez said he looks forward to attending college and studying engineering because “I like math for starters, and I like creating things, and engineering’s a good way to do that.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker will hold 12 jobs in their lifetime, many of which did not exist just a few years ago, so events like this one allow students to discover careers and industries that match their interests and passions in ways they may not have considered before.

“Employers are realizing the importance of building a talent pipeline with students while they are still in high school,” said Tolleson High School Principal Felipe S. Mandurraga. “It's amazing to see the shift towards investing in the future workforce, and it is especially rewarding to partner with ASU to provide our students the opportunity to explore different career paths that align with their passions and interests."

More Arts, humanities and education

 

Palo Verde Blooms

Building the future: Architect and educator Renée Cheng named senior vice provost, dean of Herberger Institute

Renée Cheng is no stranger to Arizona.Her first tenure-track position, in 1996, was as an assistant professor of architecture at…

Woman dressed as a wtich holds a black cat and looks at a jack-o-lantern.

Honors faculty member explains the significance of witches and Halloween

Scary witch or seductive witch, bad witch or good witch. No matter which witch, they’re all a favorite part of the Halloween…

Brush painting titled "Hopeless." Four women (three standing, one kneeling) crying outside the closed gates of a school, on the first day Afghan girls were denied entry under the Taliban regime.

The brush is mightier: One man’s mission to rescue art from the Taliban

Amid the horrors of war, survival needs often eclipse all else. But for Dr. Mohammad Yousof Asefi, a practicing physician and…