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Academy Programs are “Edge” Above the Rest

By July 2, 2009January 16th, 2019No Comments

Career academies give high school students college credit, insight on careers

–by Tom Garland, Kirkwood News Service

Lisa Digman, a teacher at Jefferson High School, laughed when asked if it was hard to get her students to participate in her classes, “There are kids who are sick who come in just to be in this class.”

Digman doesn’t teach shop, gym, or moderate lunch hours. Surprisingly enough, she teaches advanced college credit courses at the high school level.

“[Students] say they’re the hardest classes they have to take while they’re up here and I think it’s harder than a lot of their AP course work. But I think [students] really, really enjoy it,” Digman explained.

Presently, there are over 30,000 high school students taking college credit courses across the state of Iowa. Kirkwood Community College has been working diligently to raise that number with their Career Edge Academy programs.

Career Edge Academies are career-focused, college credit courses, like the ones Lisa Digman teaches at Jefferson, targeted towards high school students.

Using a wide range of sophisticated technologies that give students an “in the field” experience, the programs are available to all students with permission from their high school district.

The courses offer hands-on scholastic and technical preparation to provide relevant skills for today’s workforce. Kirkwood’s Executive Director of Secondary Programs, Dave Bunting, believes they’re doing just that and more.

“The whole purpose is to help students make more informed decisions,” Bunting said, “We’re also trying to get students to realize that what they take in high school really matters. Every one of our 17 Career Academies should help a student try and decide what they take in high school.”
The program has received a significant response from surrounding area high schools.

Clay Stoffer, guidance counselor at Prairie High School, claims that the program has been beneficial in ways other than just gaining students an edge on college credit.

“I think it can help students find a major, but it can do just the opposite too,” Stoffer said, “Maybe they take a few courses in an area and find out that it isn’t what they want to do. I’d much rather a student find that out now, than after paying a few semesters worth of tuition at college.”

These programs also come at zero cost to the students. This, along with abundant success stories, could be the reason Kirkwood has seen an increase of 935 (39.9%) students enrolled in the program in just the past year. There is also such a diverse spectrum of courses available, ranging from Auto Collision to Heath Sciences, that most students find themselves comfortably fitting into at least one.

One Career Edge Academies program, Project Lead the Way, which focuses on engineering has seen a boom of enrollment from zero to 750 in just two short years.

Career Edge Academies also expand far beyond the greater Cedar Rapids area. Work is nearly completed on the Jones Regional Education Center in Monticello. The Kirkwood Community College board of trustees approved the sale of more than $6 million in bonds to fund the construction of the 30,000-square-foot-building.

Located near the intersection of Highway 151 and County Road X-44 on the southeast edge of Monticello, the center sits on eight acres of land donated by the Lloyd and Joyce Welter family. The center will include a regional Career Academy program with eight school districts sharing career, technical and core curriculum classes.
The progress a community can achieve from offering Career Edge Academy courses is not only noticeable on the transcripts of their youth, but apparent even in the fundamental nature in which they learn.

“It’s not just a teacher standing there lecturing to them. It’s two-thirds hands on projects. It’s a totally different kind of class than what any of them are used to,” Digman said.