By Ajer Qureshi | Program Manager
At Pointters Community Initiatives, we are continuing our support for black and minority students in the Fox Valley region through our Academic Career Empowerment program, a series of hands-on workshops that inspire youths with many potential career fields in the Fox Valley region as well as provide them with foundational skills they can take to their upcoming dream career.
As of the writing of this report, we have already hosted ACE for Fall of 2024 in two locations (Oshkosh and Appleton) and are currently in preparation to host our ACE program in Menasha. In our previous workshops, we have brought in a new partner to give students a look at the field of construction and some of the unique tools used in the field. We also introduced a new workshop to teach students the basics of generative AI, a new technology that is going to enhance a lot of upcoming career fields. As found in our surveys post-program, our AI workshop needs some extra work to be more engaging with our students. We found that part of our struggles with the AI workshop is how we had a hard time finding a professional experienced enough to lead a workshop as it's not common enough in Wisconsin. Plus, a lack of formal education on generative AI also led to us struggling to find an engaging way to teach the concept to students.
For PCI, ACE is evolving to be more than simply just a workshop day to learn about careers. We are currently speaking with schools to kickstart a new version of ACE called ACE Mentoring, a program that will bring Pointters employees directly to schools to partner with counseling services. Our goals would be to not only provide career assistance to minority students, but to also collect intake assessments to help students who need mental health support be provided with a mental health professional to help. We are set to pilot the program sometime early next year.
ACE is still proving to be a successful initiative for PCI, and we are continuing to try and help it to grow and provide the best support it can for minority students across the Fox Valley.
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