For high school students looking to explore their career interests and develop real-world skills, Strongsville High School’s Career Exploration Program (CEP) provides students with those opportunities.
The program features specific courses to develop career skills, incorporates field trips to local businesses and organizations and includes internship and shadowing opportunities.
“We realize the importance and responsibility of providing a solid foundation for our students, as it relates to preparing them for life after high school,” says Dan Foust, communications coordinator for Strongsville City Schools. “Learning about the skills needed for different careers and industries and providing insight to the depth of these careers gives them a distinct advantage when entering the workforce.”
The students involved in CEP are selected during the second semester of their sophomore year and then continue in the program through their junior and senior years.
“We want our students to learn the durable skills that are going to help them be productive and successful citizens in the communities they will eventually live in,” Foust says. “We also want them to understand and be able to experience the many career opportunities that are available to them.”
Strongsville City Schools envisions creating additional opportunities not only at the high school level, but also for middle and elementary school students.
Building Blocks for Success
Devon Doskocz, a 2023 graduate of Strongsville High School and alumna of the program, says CEP not only built her confidence and provided her with a better outlook on life, it also earned her an internship at Great Lakes Construction Co. (GLCC).
For the first semester of her senior year, Doskocz attended her internship at GLCC for three hours two times a week, where she completed various rotations in the company’s departments, visited jobsites and learned more about the construction industry.
“I’m going into construction management, and I never would have had that opportunity before graduating high school without the program,” Doskocz says. “I became a lot more confident in myself, and I also created bonds with people in the class.”
She notes that the program also buoyed her self-assurance when it came to speaking up in front of people and participating in meetings at GLCC.
“The program helped me realize the real world isn’t as scary as people make it seem and gave me a further understanding of what life actually is,” Doskocz says. “It encouraged me to take every chance I could get to learn new things and showed me I can do bigger and better things.”
Because of the experience she gained in the class, Doskocz plans to attend Tri-C’s construction management program for two years, and next summer, she will become a paid co-op at GLCC.
