Career Empowerment Program for Black Students

For many minority students in the Fox Valley, there is not much of a drive towards getting a successful career in student's future. Many factors contribute to this, but perhaps one of the most impactful is a lack of knowledge given to students on what a successful career could potentially look and feel like. Many opportunities are missed by undergraduate students because they have no knowledge into what a local company does or what it feels like to work for them. That is something the Manager-in-Training (MiT) Program is providing for students.

Manager-in-Training (MiT) is a workforce development program that serves as an extension of the ACE Program, in which we provide students with the knowledge of available career paths and the basic skills needed to get started in these fields. The MiT program in particular focuses on providing students from grades 11 and 12, as well as undergraduate college students, the opportunity to do a job-shadow experience with a professional company in the Fox Valley for a week. The program aims to provide students with practical hands-on experience at an actual company, as well as to give students additional contacts in their network to help them in their job search.

Last June, PCI launched a pilot test of the program. We chose two African American undergraduate college students of academic excellence and had them visit SECURA Insurance in Appleton for a week-long job shadow program. These students got to interact with managers from both the IT and business departments of SECURA Insurance, and both have reported learning many new skills and qualities from their time there. Reception to the overall program was positive on both the sides of our students, and the perspective of SECURA, who partnered with us to provide the job-shadowing experience. The students were behaved, they learned a lot, had very little struggles, and feel confident in potentially persuing a career either with SECURA or in a similar field.

We are looking forward to expanding the program to include more students and more organizations. Sometime next year, we are looking to promote MiT as a beneficial addition to ACE Program and have more students sign on for job shadowing.

Links:

• our main website