Senior Career Road Trip finds success with students

Hilary Wimmer, MRHS DECA Officers, High School of Business students and a team of dedicated MRHS staff organized and hosted a Senior Career Road Trip event on 3/14. They received a lot of positive feedback from seniors and the industry partners who participated.

Details in the invite sent to business and industry folks inviting them to be a career speaker at Mountain Range High School on Friday, March 14th, 2025. "We would love to have you share your background, the path you took to get to your career, an overview of your job, the highlights of your job, what types of people excel in this career, and what advice you have for students pursuing this career path."

Speakers were grouped with a panel of one to four speakers from the same industry. They had an adult facilitator (teacher/counselor) with them. They asked each of the career speakers to Provide 4-5 slides with the following info:
Introduce yourself, your current role, your employer, and your industry.

1. Discuss your career journey (How did you get to your current position? Feel free to include other jobs or positions you held before this role.
2. What education/training did you receive?
3. What do you enjoy most about your current career?
4. What advice do you have for students investigating future careers in your industry?
5. Answer student questions
6. Please feel free to bring business cards, handouts, etc.

Student feedback shared:

• Not to make rash decisions about you career
• I learned that both speakers really took their time to think and contemplate about what I want to be doing
• Don’t take the first option
• Learned that’s it’s important to take your time and figure out what you’d really like to do with your life
• I learned that the best thing to do is network and explore every opportunity you can.
• Both speakers advised to take things slow as you never know what going to happen in the future and you dont want to out yourself in a position where your unhappy
• go for a career you can enjoy doing for a long period of time, and try to keep learning new things
• It was very interesting to be able to take this practice, it is impressive how a career can completely change your life and make you a better person in all aspects.
• something about business
• It was a wonderful class, it was impressive to know what the life of a soldier is like.
• I learned a lot of good things, but I need to study more.
• networking is key
• I learned a lot about business
• One of my speakers went to CSU which is where i’m going and she told me a lot about what her major did for her and her college experience.
• It's okay to not end up where you thought you would
• learn about image, good presentation
• You can take different career paths in order to obtain an education degree.
• Building your network helps with opportunities and to use the resources and opportunities around you to help in your career.
• That if you work at base you start your retirement plan.
• Something I learned is path of education can open up many opportunities, being science, art, music, etc.. All of the path to learn for the education and gov can provide many perks especially for retirement plans
• Networking is SUPER important and your knowledge will get you offers, but who you know is very essential to be successful. Having good work ethic is also very crucial to being successful, because if you don’t work hard, it won’t show in your success.
• There is an Apprenticeship Directory where you can see available apprenticeships.
• There are numerous paths you can take for an education career. One of the jobs available for high schoolers is before and after school programs to get experience working with students and understanding the process.
• Dogs tracking missing people
• The amount of different programs you can join
• That park rangers go through a lot in their work. Not just enforcing rules.
• You can go into an entry level fire job with no certs and they will have school provided for you
• It’s always changing
• Be prepared for your job environment to change, IT is always changing and you need to adapt if you want to stay up with the market
• To make a lot of connections
• The amount of jobs and opportunities you’ll have being in tech
• I learned that park rangers are very involved with their community and volunteer in many projects related to their residential area.
• I learned that the process to becoming a firefighter is less tedious than i initially thought.
• Taking the risk. Even though this may not be my passion, they explained failing to success very well and it was awesome to hear that message.
• How close we are to fusion energy
• How close we are to fusion and fission energy.
• We're very close to achieving commercial fusion reactors
• I learned there are different branches in ranger
• How you can switch trades if you want to and it’s pretty easy . You also can get your college paid for by your trades.
• The diversity of the work of firefighters

Special thanks to the Mountain Range High School community for submitting this Five Star Story.

This story exemplifies our ELEVATE Focus Area: Diverse Learning. Sharing stories of how students receive engaging learning experiences and the focused-attention they need through appropriate student-to-staff ratios and varied programming.