Jennifer Walker, a CTE teacher at the school for the past eight years, has taken over the role of Career Development Coordinator (CDC), hoping to provide relevant internships and lectures from guest speakers in order to prepare students for potential careers after graduation.
The Career Development Coordinator serves as the head of the Career Information Center (CIC), providing employment resources for students and coordinating college visits.
Walker taught Network Engineering and served on the staff of Chapel Hill High School’s Academy of Information Technology before assuming the new role at the start of this school year. Jeffrey Gates is filling Walker’s former teaching position.
Walker says her favorite part of teaching CTE courses was being able to provide students with what she describes as “work-based learning,” which is a major responsibility of the CDC.
“In addition to loving what I taught, I also really enjoyed connecting students to businesses and outside opportunities,” Walker said. “When the [CIC Director] position opened here, I thought it would allow me to serve all the CTE students, as well as the whole student body. This position gives me more students to impact and to really focus on providing these opportunities to any [interested] students.”
The CIC also works closely with counseling in order to help students follow the right path for them. Walker hopes to tailor students’ future career and educational goals with their own interests.
“I want to look at the bigger picture for a student, what their interests are, and what they think their future holds,” Walker said. “For some students, that will involve college, and for others it won’t … In either case, [the CIC] is a good place to get resources, but counselors are also very involved in that as well.”
The CTE programs help to steer students toward careers they might pursue after high school or college; the CIC works closely with CTE teachers to organize these opportunities for students.
One of Walker’s first big projects as the CIC Director has been working with the Culinary Department in coordinating the upcoming student-staffed food trucks as work-based learning for the culinary students.
The food truck project has faced numerous challenges, including obtaining necessary permits and certifications, performing necessary repairs and securing health inspections.
“It was my hope that possibly the food truck would be operational for use by semester two. However, that is not looking feasible right now. Currently, my fingers are crossed for the debut of the food truck at TigerFest,” culinary instructor Clarence Dillard said. “However, a lot of this is now in the hands of the Health Department and the forthcoming inspections our kitchen lab will need to undergo.”
Walker says that her role in work-based learning has now shifted to doing more behind-the-scenes work.
“As the Career Development Coordinator, I do a lot of work with all of the CTE teachers, and really, I’m just a support system to them for anything that has to do work-based learning,” Walker said. “While the culinary teachers are definitely spearheading everything, I’m there as a support person to handle a lot of the back-end work, organizing spreadsheets and menu items. I want the teachers to be able to teach—I’ll take care of the rest.”
Walker is unsure whether she will eventually go back to teaching.
“I loved teaching, but I also feel really happy here,” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what I’ll do in the future, but I hope that I will be here [in the CIC] for a while.”
Walker hopes to help many students find success, whether in the classroom or in other places, as well as in the future, regardless of what path they choose to take.
“My favorite part of teaching was any time a student found success,” Walker said. “That can be anything from something in the classroom, to a competition to something that they do outside of the classroom. When I see a student find success, that is the highlight of any day, and I think that carries over to this position as well, because I can help them find success, even after they have graduated.”
