VCC Magazine Winter 2018

Bridging Schools and Businesses in the City of Winchester and Frederick County

By Dr. Brenda D. Long

In the Northern Shenandoah Valley, the business community is reaping the benefits of having a forward-thinking economic development authority (EDA). A board of appointed business and community leaders guides the EDA, along with four full-time staff who carry out its initiatives. Their goal is to connect the business and education sectors through open lines of communication—a process that has proven key to workforce initiatives and local growth. Among these corporate citizens is Josh Phelps, himself a former Career Technical Education student who devoted plenty of time in high school to agricultural education courses. He went on to graduate from Virginia Tech, and now, as president of Winchester Metals continues to follow his passion of helping grow the workforce, in part by hosting business tours at his company for area students and teachers for the Career Pathway program. Business tours bring CTE students and teachers from the City of Winchester and Frederick County Schools (four high schools and four middle schools) to nearby companies that open their doors for a day to give these potential future employees a closer look at the opportunities available within the community. Around 400 students participate each year. The program allows students to experience a professional work environment while learning about the company and the expectations of managers. It encourages discussion of how classroom skills are applied to real-world situations. This is beneficial to both the students and their teachers, who take the information about what employers are seeking to craft relevant and important lessons to teach in their CTE classes. Mr. Phelps also designed and developed The Widget Cup™. The Widget Cup™ is a design-build competition for CTE student teams from the four area high schools where they encounter real-world situations and exercise skills necessary for them to succeed in the workforce. The students are given a project, have a limited amount of time to work on a design, including estimating materials and executing the build and then have to market their creation to the judges. Before the competition officially begins, a volunteer committee, composed of business community volunteers and chaired by the current EDA business coordinator, asks local business or non-profits to name particular needs in their respective organizations that can be met by having CTE students design and build a tool or item. Past projects include workbenches in a facility for physically challenged adults, bookshelves for a children’s museum (three-sided just for fun), and moveable coat cabinets used by volunteer sorters and stackers for a facility that serves underprivileged students. The Widget Cup opens once the project is chosen and the materials are procured and gathered.

Each area school may send one team, and each team is made up of six to eight students. On the day of the competition, teams receive a sealed envelope with the details of the project. (Up until then, the only people who know about it are the planning committee and client who nominated the project.) The parameters are limited to the dimensions and critical functions of the product, so that each team may develop their own unique solution. Teams have one hour to design and three hours to build. A panel of judges

watches, listens, and scores each team throughout this process. Students may field technical questions about design and building techniques to a group of local professionals who have volunteered as resource persons in the competition. There are safety monitors at each workstation, and a live video feed from the shop allows spectators such as teachers, parents, business representatives, and other students to watch each step of the process as teams apply skills they have learned in their CTE classes. About thirtyminutes into the build phase, a wild card item is thrown in for the teams to incorporate in their final product, prompting them to adapt and innovate as they would when such last-minute changes occur in the workplace. Afterwards, the projects are taken to the auditorium where each team, having assigned some of its members to audio-visual duties, presents their product as though to a real client or investor. The judges award only one winner with a trophy and prize money and are also available to give feedback to the students as needed. There is no second place for TheWidget Cup™. The Widget Cup™ is funded entirely by donations, and is run by the committee, the EDA, and volunteers. Since its inception, businesses have flocked to the competition to find new recruits. It creates a dynamic space where business representatives can meet and interact with students, and where students can showcase their skills. Indeed, many of them have landed summer jobs or even received permanent job offers by the end of the day when they leave the competition venue. These are just some of the ways we are closing the gap between education and industry in the city ofWinchester and Frederick County, and we are eager to see this same level of partnership fostered elsewhere across the Commonwealth. Dr. Brenda D. Long, Executive Director, Virginia Association for Career and Technical Education. V

V irginia C apitol C onnections , W inter 2018

14