Community Stakeholders met recently at NMSU to find ways they could work together to improve graduation rates across New Mexico.
Business Leaders in Las Cruces say showing students different careers and letting them know the steps to get them at a young age can help motivate students to stay in school. Troy Tudor, Interim CEO and President of the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce says more businesses need to help provide some of this classroom- career readiness support.
“I think we can do a better job of giving kids opportunities to do internships,” Tudor said. “Or to see what a career would be like in a specific industry that we do have in the community, and what that would career would look like. I think we need to be a little more proactive about bringing them in and keeping those resources here.”
Tudor says the community as a whole also needs to focus on economic development to make sure those students can find a job.
“Even when we get the education side of things right,” Tudor said. “And we produce great quality students, where do they go in our community. Because on the workforce side, we don’t have a lot of economic development, expansion of our economic base, and so what happens is we train this great talent, and they leave and go to another community, and we export our energy and our investment in the youth of tomorrow for the benefit of another community.”
Business and Education leaders also discussed the need for more workforce training at in high school. Rosa De La Torre-Burmeister, Director of Career and Student Success at Dona Ana Community College says when students come see her out of high school they don’t know some basic skills.
“They don’t know how to write a resume,” De La Torre-Burmeister said. “They don’t know how to apply, they don’t know how to search. They know how to Google, but they don’t know what they are googling for, so one of the things that we do is we sit down one on one and we showcase that, how to use that.”
Carrie Hamblen, President and CEO of the Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce says students should learn these essential skills while still in high school.
“So many of them are either able or really have to start working while they are in high school,” Hamblen said. “And so having these basic skills of being able to talk to people, understanding computers, understanding math and adding and subtracting, but also just getting the bigger picture of their role as an employee, is super critical to try to instill at the high school level.”
Hamblen says the skills will also be useful for students whose education may end with a high school diploma.
“We need to not look at workforce development as whatever you get after you get a college degree,” Hamblen said. “We need to look at workforce development from 16 on. We need to start looking at whatever fields those students can start working in. If they like doing auto mechanics, if they like doing cosmetology, if they like working in the food industry that are jobs that normally don’t require a college education. We still need to really support that, by providing opportunities for them to be the best employees they can be.”
