St. Paul district unveils Career Pathways Center, where students will check out high-demand career fields

St. Paul Public Schools is opening a new career center next week on the St. Paul College campus, where students from district high schools can take courses in high-demand fields, earning industry certifications and competing for internships.

The new Career Pathways Center is taking over the college’s old and mostly empty College Learning Center, on the southwest corner of the campus.

The career center will open Tuesday with 150 students and 16 courses, three of which will be held on the main college campus and one at St. Catherine University.

The district is moving to block scheduling for all high schools this fall, which will enable students from several schools to learn together at the career center. Superintendent Joe Gothard said that will give the district enough students to offer more careers courses.

“We think it’ll take off,” he said.

The center is the next step for a district that in Gothard’s five years has emphasized career exploration, with special counselors in the high schools and new software where students as early as preschool create personal learning plans.

Some school districts have separate career academies where students spend their entire school day. Gothard preferred a model that maintains the connection to students’ home schools, where they can participate in extracurriculars.

“I think high school identity is important,” he said.

Juniors and seniors will take morning classes and eat lunch at their home high schools, then ride buses to the career center for the afternoon. Each high school will continue to offer its own career-focused courses.

3M is supporting the center with a $5 million gift over five years, part of its $50 million racial equity and social justice initiative announced in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Courses are being offered in four general fields: human services, science and medical, business and communications, and innovative and emerging technologies.

“These are areas for us at 3M that are extremely relevant, especially when we think about what the future of work will look like,” Michael Stroik, the company’s vice president of community relations, said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday.

NEW STUDENTS

Zhara Christopher, a Highland Park senior who needs just two classes this year after the district reduced the minimum credits needed to graduate, is taking introductory classes in engineering and health care. Having taken International Baccalaureate courses, where most of her peers were white, she’s been happy to see the district emphasize racial diversity at the career center.

“It’s really catered to one certain group of people,” she said of Highland’s IB program. “With the Career Pathway Center, it’s for everyone.”

Everlyn Balvoa, also a Highland senior, was uninterested in her home high school’s careers courses, which focused on agriculture.

“It’s kind of old school,” she said.

Through the new career center, she plans to start in the Certified Nursing Assistant program next week, offered on the St. Kate’s campus.

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Angel Ponce, a Highland senior who builds computers in his free time, is taking introductory courses in engineering and computer hardware. He’s looking forward to meeting people at the career center who have the same interests.

He also expects the center’s courses to get deeper into the content, describing the traditional high schools’ careers courses as “super basic.”

LOW-TECH CLASSROOMS

Gothard said the classes will be general enough that they can apply toward a variety of college and career paths.

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Some students will go on to college. Others will go from high school to the workforce, perhaps with an industry certification in construction and design.

With the exception of the nursing classes at St. Kate’s and carpentry and a couple of others at St. Paul College, the courses will be taught in nondescript classrooms inside the career center with no specialized equipment.

Miriam Shuros, program manager of the Career Pathways Center, said many career academies elsewhere are “shiny,” with impressive equipment.

“Two years later, that equipment is obsolete,” she said, “and there’s just no way to fund that.”