Welcome to Mile Markers, a twice-a-month newsletter about rural higher education.

This week, I found myself in the basement of a hospital learning about the sterilization of surgical equipment, gazing up at a towering combine in a shop at a John Deere dealership and listening to a kid roaring like a lion while they worked on speech therapy at a pediatric clinic.

That’s because more than 150 high school advisers from across Missouri were participating in industry tours as part of training from the national nonprofit, rootEd Alliance, that supports them. And I got to tag along, visiting various job sites around Warrensburg, Missouri. 

Some of my favorite moments were watching the gears turn in these advisers’ heads as they listened to managers share what high school students should know about their jobs. For example, every nurse and radiation therapist in oncology emphasized that their jobs were not always sad ones. They felt grateful to see their same patients week after week, to get to know them and their families on a personal level and to be a source of brightness in their days. They talked about how they were a part of a team and rarely worked alone. Meanwhile, the advisers nodded their heads and appeared to think about what this would mean for their students as they plan life post graduation.

But these tours, which ranged across agriculture, health care, public safety and aviation and military tracks, were more than just opportunities to gather information. The hope was that the advisers would consider bringing similar hands-on experiences to their students across rural Missouri, according to Nicole Snider, regional director for rootEd Missouri.

“[They can] take this back and translate it for their own region: What do I have locally that offers similar types of careers or opportunities for my students, and how can I replicate a certain type of visit?” Snider said. “It opens the door for them a little bit more to do some more digging on their own.”

This focus on hands-on experiences like industry tours and job shadowing is part of a shift that rootEd has noticed on a national level. The nonprofit asks the advisers to track student activities throughout the year, and a recent analysis of that data –  alongside student survey responses – showed that students with hands-on career experiences were nearly 10% more likely to report high certainty about their post-graduation plans than students who only participated in things like career fairs or guest speakers.

Because of this, rootEd has been focusing more on building relationships between high schools and employers in their communities. 

But as many of you know, adding more tasks to advisers’ and counselors’ already full plates is not often an option. Here’s how it works with rootEd.

In Missouri, rootEd collaborates with the state education department, Ozarks Technical Community College and Missouri Chamber of Commerce to train dedicated career advisers who meet with every senior in their high school. This often looks like help filling out scholarship and college applications, but it’s increasingly meant sharing work experiences with students to help them identify next steps after high school. For example, Janine Castillo at Hume High School recently organized a trip to Ellet Memorial Hospital where students got to try their hand at a few different medical scenarios.

Susan Rupert, who advises between 60 and 70 seniors at Lathrop High School, said these job experiences are so vital to students knowing what they want to do. If they think they want to be a veterinarian, for example, they need to do more than hold a cat, she said.

For many of these advisers, this work is personal. Both Rupert and Castillo are now working at high schools where they graduated. Another adviser, Tasha Ortiz, said she thinks about her upbringing on a dairy farm in southern Missouri and how much guidance she wished she had as a first-generation college student. 

These stories aren’t unique to Missouri, either. When I was getting started in this role, I talked to Sarah Ligas, who leads Advise TN, a state-run program in Tennessee that places career advisers in high schools. She talked about how many advisers were once teachers, but some were retired police chiefs or other public servants who cared about the future of kids in their communities. This program also noted that the likelihood of college enrollment increased especially for rural students, by 6.4%, when working with Advise TN advisers.

Both these programs, while different in funding and model, seem to have similar messages: There is value in investing in rural students with dedicated advisers who can help them navigate life after high school.

We also saw some examples of how employers are stepping up to support students in their community. For example, if a student wants to participate in the John Deere TECH program, they need to have a dealership like Ag-Power sign off as their “sponsor,” meaning the student is promising to complete work experience there. 

While the terms of this sponsorship differ dealer to dealer, Ag-Power offers their students a starter tool chest worth $4,000. As long as they work for Ag-Power for three years, they can keep that chest. As tuition reimbursement, Ag-Power also offers bonuses in $2,000 payments each year they work post-graduation until it totals $10,000.

Still, only a handful of Ag-Power’s employees have gone through that John Deere-specific program, largely because the nearest colleges that offer it are in Kansas and Nebraska.

Other employers like The Pediatric Place offered internship and volunteer opportunities for students in high school through college and graduate school, building years-long relationships with students.

Brittany Hendrick, marketing manager at The Pediatric Place, said staff will travel from as far as Springfield (an hour and a half from the Clinton location) because they want to work somewhere that offers all the various pediatric disciplines in one place. But she said she wishes more people realized the opportunities already existing in rural places where they live.

“I really wish that people knew they did not have to go to the city to have a good paying job,“ she said. “There are opportunities out there. You just have to look.”

I often look forward to what Chris Breitmeyer has to say in his monthly updates for the Rural Community College Alliance, but I especially enjoyed reading his newsletter this week. Here’s a snippet, and you can sign up here if you haven’t already:

“Our responsibility is much broader than preparing students for their first day of work. We prepare them for careers that will evolve, industries that will change, and communities that depend upon educated citizens as much as skilled employees.”

This spotlight on Western Nevada College similarly shared how rural community colleges have a unique advantage in their tendency to be quick to collaborate with local communities.

And this story from Open Campus partner WUNC caught my attention because it highlighted how the cooperative extension in North Carolina continues to make an impact despite federal funding cuts. I’m interested in following these “digital agricultural innovation hubs,” which Brianna Atkinson mentions at the end of the story as a way the state is looking to connect farmers with the latest agricultural technologies.

Have reading recommendations? I’d love to hear them. You can share them in our new community space here or send me an email.

_______________________________

_______________________________

I’m trying something different for the newsletter: sharing opportunities to get involved, volunteer or participate in community with others. Have an opportunity you want to share? Send me an email.

Native Forward is looking for volunteers and mentors!

Are you passionate about supporting the next generation of Native leaders? Native Forward, the largest provider of direct scholarships to Native Students,  is seeking dedicated volunteers and mentors.

Whether you're reviewing scholarship applications as a reader or guiding a scholar as a mentor, Native Forward would love to add more people to the community invested in the success of Native students across the country. 

Reach out to Christa at [email protected] to get involved.

Thanks for reading and loving rural.

Talk soon,

Emily

To sponsor a future newsletter, please email [email protected]. Support our work with a donation to Open Campus. You can also help by sharing this newsletter with your friends. They can sign up for their own copy here.