Holly Santero, Reporter
@SanteroCourant
Throughout their high school careers, students are often asked questions about plans for their futures. Whether the inquiry is centered on possible colleges or careers, many still struggle to provide an answer. On Wednesday, March 18 from 7-9pm at NCHS, students can potentially find an answer to that question at Career Night, a biennial event run by the Parent Faculty Association.
The widely popular event, which is open to all grades, aims to increase students’ awareness of possible career choices through meeting different business professionals. “There are 24 different rooms with 3 or 4 experts in the field in each room,” Ms. Carroll of the College and Career Center said. “We represent almost any career field you can think of. There’s everything from fashion and interior design to cybersecurity, medicine and research.”
Other industries that will be represented include architecture, business, digital, education, engineering, politics, publishing, sports and theater. Each student can attend two of the 40-minute sessions and preview who will be speaking by clicking here.
This year, the PFA wanted to focus on strengthening the event. “Because this is NCHS’ 7th Career Night and it has become such a strong, well-attended event, we decided to focus our efforts on enhancing a couple of areas,” PFA Co-Chair of Career Night, Chhaya Dagli, said. “We wanted to ensure that the students were involved and engaged and the professions and speakers represented at Career Night were reflective of the growing NCHS curriculum and students’ interests.”
To increase student involvement the PFA turned to students to help with promoting Career Night. “To engage the students more, we worked with Jennifer Sinski (Film and Photography teacher) and Roman Cebulski (Technology Education teacher) to see if their students would be able to help promote Career Night,” Ms. Dagli said. Instead of previous years’ endorsement videos submitted by various well-known business figures, students in Ms. Sinski’s
Documentary Film class decided to take on the task of creating promotional videos instead.
“In groups, my Documentary Film class was assigned to do a video with one of three Career Night speakers: Dave Checketts, Tom O’Dea or Jane Beils,” Ms. Sinski said. “We wanted to make a connection between students coming to Career Night and Career Night itself by promoting it with the voice of the students instead of the administration or the PFA.”
The administration still remains involved in Career Night, encouraging students to attend. “Students should really attend for the overall takeaway. It is a really good opportunity to talk to professionals, ask questions, and explore things students think they’re interested in,” principal Dr. Leduc said. “You can go online and look up a career or read about it, but nothing provides the quality of information that a person who’s living with that job can give.”
For more information on this year’s Career Night, you can visit the PFA’s 2015 Career Night website here.
