What is the role of Greater Ozarks Centers for Advanced Professional Studies – GO CAPS – in developing and retaining local talent?
We’ve talked a lot with the businesses involved about how we can best support them in keeping these connections with GO CAPS students. How can we make sure that this student – after they have worked with you and decided they are going to go to Missouri S&T for four years – how do we make sure your (human resources) team keeps that connection so she feels compelled to come back and work for you?
Now, in the second year, how many districts, employers and students are you working with?
We are working with 13 school districts right now. Last year, we had 170-plus employers work with us in some way or another. A company can get as involved as they want to be and still have a touchpoint.
We also had our teacher externship through the summer. Last year, we had 31 teachers and this year we had 79. That’s more than double. We had 42 businesses host teachers this summer.
We are up to 181 students this year. Last year, we had 105 and Monett started with 14. This year, we have 181 and Monett has 37. They are an affiliate; they run their own strands in Monett because of the distance.
What are the lessons learned in year one?
The best thing was knowing nearly 25 percent of our students were able to enter the summer doing something with a business. That’s amazing. We had students working full-time internships. We had students extending their experiences with some of the hospitals and some going full-time into the workforce. To know that they were so excited about what they had learned that they actually wanted to go on their own time said to me we have really hit on something here.
About 50 percent of our students said they had changed their mind from when they entered the program. Some made a small pivot; some were really large. We see that as a huge win. We want them to have that time in high school to sort out the options, get their hands dirty and experience things.
What feedback have you gotten from employers?
One area of streamlining this year are project areas students took on. Fleshing out some of those projects. What does it look like? What are the company’s expectations for project close-out? We really need to define that this year.
What’s next for GO CAPS?
We often talk about making sure we are true to our mission to connect students to their real world experiences. We want to do that with a lot of students, but we don’t want to sacrifice quality. When we’ve talked about growth, we’ve said, “Could we grow to 1,000 students?” Probably, but we don’t want to build a model around that at the expense of quality.
We also want to drive that engagement between education and business, so how do we do that in a way that’s broad scale? Even if we grow to 1,000 students, that’s will still only be 1,000 in the 60,000 or so [students] in our immediate area. We are working on having a broader impact on that talent pipeline. One area will be expanding teacher externships.
Lindsay Haymes is the vice president of workforce development and executive director of GO CAPS for the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce. She can be reached at lindsay@springfieldchamber.com.
