1,200 zebras navigate their futures in Lincoln!  Lincoln High School students map out their career, academic and financial pathways at the CareerGPS Career Exploration Event

There are career fairs, and then there’s CareerGPS.

Make no mistake—LEED supports career exploration activities in all shapes and sizes.

However, CareerGPS is an interactive career exploration event that utilizes a pre-event Career Exploration Activity, interactive exhibits by regional employers and a talk-show format panel presentation with industry experts, to:

• Engage and educate high school students about careers and post-secondary training and education opportunities in critical industries from Capital region employers, colleges, and training providers
• Provide students with a better understanding of the necessary skills, training requirements, and educational pathways for their field of interest.
• Prepare students to make an informed decision about their future.

Think of it as a high octane career fair...with a huge impact.

Over 1,200 Lincoln High School—home of the zebras--students mapped out their career, academic and financial pathways during the May 11th Career GPS Career Exploration Event, produced by LEED-Linking Education and Economic Development, in partnership with Western Placer Unified School District, Placer County Office of Education, Lincoln High School and presented by the Golden Sierra Workforce Investment Board.

Through interactive exhibits and engaging presentations, students were provided the opportunity to navigate career opportunities available through the distinct career pathways in a variety of industry sectors. More

Capital Region students earn top honors at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair

The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), the world’s largest international pre-college science competition, provides an annual forum for more than 1,600 high school students from over 50 countries, regions, and territories to showcase their independent research. The Intel ISEF is the premiere global science competition for students in grades 9–12.

At the recent Intel International Science & Engineering Fair held in San Jose, several Capital region students earned awards and recognition for their projects.

Shyamal Buch of Vista Del Lago High School in Folsom placed first in the Engineering and Transportation Category of the Intel Grand Awards. He also placed Best Overall in Engineering and Transportation in the Intel “Best of Category” Awards, earning him a $3,000 cash prize, a $5,000 scholarship and a $1,000 grant each for his high school and the Fair. He also won the the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance / The Lemelson Foundation special award.

Madeline Sides from Davis High School placed 4th in the Microbiology category earning a $500 cash prize. She also received the American Society for Microbiology special award.
Angela Yeung, also from Davis High School, placed 3rd in the Engineering: Electrical and Mechanical category. She received a $1,000 cash prize.

In the team competition, Anshum Sood, Naman Gupta & Anuhya Ghorakavi of Folsom High School took the 4th place award, earning them each a $500 cash prize.

The team of Rohit Talreja & Mark Rupasinghe of Folsom High School also took part in the week-long event and had the privilege of meeting other students from all over the world.  Talreja is also enrolled in Folsom High School's Project Lead The Way program.

Major sponsors included Intel, The Professional Engineers in California Government (PECG), The California Association of Professional Scientists (CAPS) and Liberty Mutual for making it all possible.

Read more and view a related video

For more information about the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, please visit http://www.srsefair.org/


Jobs, Innovation Agenda Headline Cap to Cap Program
By David Butler
CEO, LEED – Linking Education and Economic Development

Regional collaboration has become a critical competitive edge for the six county Sacramento region, particularly when identifying funding and policy objectives to advance the region’s economic and civic goals.

The Capital Region’s penchant for collaboration was on display in our nation’s capital April 17-21 when 300 private and public sector leaders united in Washington DC as part of the Sacramento Metro Chamber’s 40th Capitol-to-Capitol program. The issues of jobs and innovation topped the Cap to Cap agenda, which sought to ensure the Sacramento region has the appropriate regulatory climate and the financial and human capital necessary to become the nations’ leader in clean energy technology.

Employers and education leaders likewise united as members of the Workforce Development and Education team to support a core set of national and regional issues necessary to enable job creation and advance the region’s innovation agenda. Led by Phil Garcia of Sacramento State University and Marj Dickinson of UC Davis, the team included several LEED board members, including Leroy Tripette of Intel, Dave Gordon of the Sacramento County Office of Education, Gayle Garbolino-Mojica of the Placer County Office of Education, Tony Monetti of the Roseville Joint Union High School District and Dan Throgmorton of the Los Rios Community College District.

LEED volunteer leaders leveraged the 2010 Cap to Cap program to build support for one of the top priorities in our 2010-12 strategic plan, the establishment of the Capital Region Career Academy Initiative. Effective high school career academies are a proven education reform strategy to increase graduation rates, enhance academic achievement, and prepare students for success in the workplace and in post secondary education.

Since February, LEED has assembled a coalition of 23 K-12 and high school districts and county offices of education from throughout the six county region to prepare a $5 million grant application to the US Dept. of Education’s Investment in Innovation (I:3) fund, $650 million nationally competitive program intended to take proven education strategies to scale. As a result of Cap to Cap, all five members of the Sacramento region’s Congressional delegation (Representatives Herger, Lungren, Matsui, McClintock and Thompson) have signed on in support of LEED’s I:3 application, joined by dozens of regional employers, civic, economic development and community interests.

The Capital Regional Career Academy Initiative will bring additional dollars, expertise and efficiencies through a region-wide system of support to local districts and high schools in the areas of curriculum, professional development, organizational coaching, business and civic engagement and technology development. A regional system of support will help ensure that rigorous and relevant career academies at our region’s high schools are effective, sustainable and aligned with critical workforce needs and economic objectives, like energy, health care/bio sciences, and public service.

“Done right,” noted Intel’s Leroy Tripette, who serves as LEED’s vice chair, “a regional network of high school career academies will enable the Capital Region’s employers and our region’s young people to compete and to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy.”

As is often the case in Washington, DC, Cap to Cap took place within a back drop of partisan rancor between political parties and Congress and the White House on issues like health care reform, the deficit and financial reform. While always in the background, these disagreements over national issues rarely inhibit our region’s civic leadership and congressional delegation from uniting around a core set of priorities.

The development of the region’s Clean Energy Technology industry was at the top of the agenda, which included a policy forum at the Mayflower Hotel showcasing the strategies necessary to position the region competitively in clean energy, including the establishment of the Smart-Grid Center, a partnership between Sacramento State, SMUD, Los Rios and others to integrate information technology with utilities to reduce energy consumption. At the annual Leadership Luncheon in the Cannon Caucus Room, Congresswoman Doris Matsui hosted Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, formerly director of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, who discussed the administration’s intent to fund an Energy Efficiency Research Hub. In his remarks, Chu complemented the Metro Chamber and the Cap to Cap delegation for collaborating effectively to position itself competitively for such initiatives.

A full range of issues dominated the Workforce Development and Education team’s agenda, including:

• Support for budget priorities to advance STEM education, including reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act to support STEM education in K-12 and post secondary institutions;

• Support reauthorization of ESEA to increase district and school site flexibility while maintaining standards for accountability and encourage STEM education and career academies;

• Support reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act to maintain employer majorities on local workforce investment boards and expands the use of WIA funds to support a broader segment workers and youth;
• A set of specific appropriations requests, including:
-$3 million to UC Davis for its viticulture research facility;
-$460,000 to Sacramento State for its Veterans’ Service Center, and
-$1.2 million to Sacramento state for classroom technology upgrades.

As an indication of the effectiveness of the Cap to Cap program to its advance regional objectives, prior to departure, the Los Rios Community College District announced the Federal Aviation Administration's approval to establish an Air Traffic Controller training program at Sacramento City College, one of only a handful in the nation. Noted Brice Harris, Los Rios Chancellor and LEED board member, “There is always strength in numbers and Cap to Cap is critical to our ability to compete and succeed in advancing our region’s economic interests.”

By James Beckwith
CEO, Five Star Bank
Board Chair, LEED – Linking Education and Economic Development

Given the current state budget crisis, there has been a great deal of discussion about the importance of ample and consistent funding for public education.  Not only is this issue debated in the newspapers and the halls of the legislature but also among civic groups concerned about the quality of our communities and employers, who, in addition to being concerned about community, are also concerned about the quality of our workforce.

However, as with most organizations, success in public education is not simply about the money...it is where we choose to invest the dollars we have, including what conditions and restrictions that are placed on those dollars by both the state and federal governments.  Success in public education is also about how we as a state and as a community prioritize our work and align our dollars and activities toward a strategic purpose.

There are many obstacles that inhibit effective change at the state level, including structural silos, overlapping and inconsistent objectives and misaligned funding.  Between the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Secretary of Education, the state Board of Education and the Legislature, which annually adds regulatory requirements and establishes funding limits, incentives and restrictions, it is easy to understand why generating change, enacting long lasting improvement and realizing efficiencies is difficult at best.

Add to this complicated organizational structure even more state level silos, the California Community College system, the California State University system, the University of California, the Department of Labor and the state Workforce Investment Board, which, when not aligned, further impairs California’s ability to prepare high school graduates for success in post secondary education and the world of work.

All of these organizations have disparate and sometimes conflicting set of objectives, agendas and constituencies.  Even with ample and consistent funding, systemic changes must be implemented that allow for greater flexibility at the regional, district and school site level to allow communities to prepare our young people for success in a complex, competitive world. 

Business people know this.  To succeed in an increasingly complex and competitive economy, businesses are decentralizing decision making, providing teams of employees with greater ability to innovate and collaborate.  In a complex state like California and in a complex system like public education, the answer is not more top down decision making but more freedom and flexibility guided by a consistent set of objectives and defined results.

The work that employers, educators and civic leaders are undertaking in the Sacramento region can be a worthwhile model for state level decision makers and other regions around California.

Under the banner of LEED - Linking Education and Economic Development, key employers, education leaders and civic partners are working to better align education programs, activities and funding to meet critical regional workforce needs and economic objectives, while supporting students' success in school and ultimately in the workplace.

Working with the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency and others, LEED helped develop a regional workforce forecast to identify future demand in over 750 occupations in the six county Sacramento region, including average earnings, necessary skills and education requirements.  This forecast was merged with the supply of post secondary programs in the region and placed on a single website called CareerGPS.com.  CareerGPS.com is a valuable resource to students and job seekers to help them "navigate their futures" and is an essential resource to educators who seek to develop curriculum and programs that are relevant to future economic opportunities.

LEED is also working with employer and education partners to support and develop academically rigorous and relevant programs for middle school and high school students in Science Technology Engineering and Math as well as in Career and Technical Education.  In partnership with Intel, GenCorp, Chevron, Teichert, SMUD and other employers, LEED has helped bring Project Lead the Way to over two dozen middle and high schools in the Sacramento region, serving thousands of students annually.

LEED is also embarking on a strategy to support career academies in high schools throughout the Sacramento region - academically rigorous programs that not only prepare students for future careers but have been proven to improve academic achievement, increase graduation, enhance post secondary success and even increase lifelong earnings.  The New San Juan High School in Citrus Heights, which boasts five career pathways in Hospitality/Culinary Arts, Construction Technology, Transportation, Media and Engineering/Design, Construction, is one of dozens of programs in districts throughout the Sacramento region that the employer and education leaders at LEED hope to support and to replicate.

Collaboration, innovation and aligning resources toward a strategic purpose is the recipe for success for any organization and community in the complex and competitive landscape of the 21st Century.  State leaders must provide ample and consistent funding for public education but they must also provide greater freedom and incentive for regions and districts to collaborate and innovate.  Follow our LEED.

James Beckwith is CEO of Five Star Bank, Chair of the LEED Board of Directors and a member of the board of Valley Vision and the Sacramento Metro Chamber.