Ep. 9: Gail Cruikshank: Bridging Education and Industry for Future Careers

Get ready to uncover the secrets of integrating real-world industry insights into education with Gail Cruikshank from the Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation (GSDC). Ever wondered how local businesses and schools can team up to better prepare students for future careers? This episode promises to enlighten you on the transformative power of such partnerships. Gail, the Talent Director at GSDC, shares her experience in fostering economic development across Stearns, Benton, and northern Sherburne counties. From the Employer Advisory Council's efforts to align educational curriculums with workforce needs to the EPIC initiative's hands-on career exploration opportunities, Gail reveals the strategies driving student preparedness and career awareness in the St Cloud area.

Join us as we highlight the EPIC initiative's focus on meaningful student-employer interactions, featuring real success stories like a student's unexpected passion shift from health sciences to welding. Discover the potential for mentorship opportunities and the importance of relationships in education. Gail also discusses future plans for EPIC, including specialized industry sessions for students and externships for educators, ensuring that both students and teachers benefit from real-world industry insights. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the impact of community partnerships on making education more relevant and impactful. Don't miss out on these valuable insights and inspiring stories!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The 742 CoffeeCast is your ultimate destination for insightful conversations, thought-provoking ideas and innovative strategies in St Cloud Area School District. Your host is Director of Community Engagement and Communications, Tammy DeLand. Grab a cup of coffee and join us. So good morning. We are so glad to have with us today Gail Kirkshank from Greater St Cloud Development Corporation. Welcome, and so glad to have you here on a rainy summer day. Good morning.

Speaker 2: 0:37

So excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Yeah, I'm wondering if you might start by talking about GSDC and your role there. If we could start there, that'd be great.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Okay, absolutely Love talking to you about GSDC. Gsdc is a small nonprofit focused on economic development for the region, and region for us is defined by Stearns, benton and the northern half of Sherbourne County, and my role as talent director was a position that was added back in 2014 because our investors really felt strongly that there should be someone focused on everything workforce, be that connector, be that collaborator between anything from our business community to our educators, to our job seekers and any community partners, and so my role was born, and I was lucky enough to be selected for that role and have been there ever since, so just celebrated my 10-year anniversary.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Oh, congratulations. That's wonderful, and so tell me a little bit about what the connection is with St Cloud Area Schools, because we have this great partnership. But how did that come to be and how does it work now?

Speaker 2: 1:50

Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:52

District 742 and GSDC have been strong partners since the actually the inception of GSDC.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Previous Superintendent Jett was on our board of directors, and this district has always been very, very engaged in what's happening in the community and how can we make it better together.

Speaker 2: 2:09

So what has evolved from that was Superintendent Putnam and I started conversation about her desire to get our employer's voice much more involved in how we are preparing kids for the future, and so we actually created together an employer advisory council that was made up of my employers that I thought would be the most engaged.

Speaker 2: 2:33

We wanted to cover all of the industry types that we have here in St Cloud, so all voices were represented, and then Superintendent Putnam gathered the right educators that she wanted in the room from your team to be able to have quality, just honest, open conversation about what are we missing in our curriculum, what could we maybe do different, how can we engage our employers more effectively. And it has just blossomed over the years. It started in 2019, right before COVID hit, and so, but we kept it going during COVID, virtually, and now we're back in person and just continuing to dive into what's missing and how can we be better, and obviously with that ultimate goal of, you know, making our students ready, work ready and hopefully keeping a good number of them right here in central Minnesota, you know, helping support all of our businesses here.

Speaker 1: 3:23

And that really is an important gap to fill. You said what was missing in the curriculum, or even awareness. When we used to talk about college preparedness, career was left out, and now those two things are married together and that intentionality seems to be a part of the really powerful thing. Can you give an example of how you see that gap being filled?

Speaker 2: 3:49

Well, I think, just from the work we've done with the advisory, through our EPIC initiative, through helping be more intentional, with giving kids an opportunity to know more about the businesses in our local community Again, I think a lot of times nobody knows what's right in your backyard, you know I think maybe there's some misperceptions about what certain companies do and what they don't do and just allowing students the opportunity to really understand who's here and who might be able to help them with that career choice. And it doesn't mean they have to work here, but they still can have a mentor here or a contact person just to answer questions about their interest, their career interest, so they can know that when they graduate here they have a plan that makes sense, that they feel comfortable with, that's aligned with their skill sets and their passions.

Speaker 1: 4:40

And you mentioned Epic. I wanted to talk about Epic because that is an incredible community effort really, and so, yeah, I want to give you the opportunity to talk about how that came to be, that, what the brainchild originally was, and how it's grown where it is now, because it's pretty darn impressive.

Speaker 2: 5:01

EPIC stands for Exploring Potential Interests and Careers and it is a community collaborative. That really started in 2018 when a variety of business and community partners and educators got together and wanted to figure out how do we provide more in-depth career exploration for our future workforce. And we modeled it loosely after an initiative up in Brainerd called Bridges Academy, which has been going on for many, many years, and we brought that idea back and really looked to see what made sense for this region and so we put together our first ever Epic Day, which was in 2019. And we had 2,400 students from about 15 area high schools 10th grade students come and really experience all of the different career possibilities following the Minnesota Department of Education career wheel.

Speaker 2: 5:56

What our model is a little bit different is we actually have our business partners creating those activities and interactions and experiences. So it's not education in our case, it's in partnership with education, but it's our local business partners. They understand the work the most. They really want to engage with our students and our educators. They actually create hands-on activities, so a student will come, they get to spend two hours roaming throughout the St Cloud Technical and Community College, which is a great host facility, and we also partner with St Cloud State and St Ben's, st John's, so all careers are represented during this day and in planning, and so the students really get that chance to see what a career might look like. Because, again, many students only know what they know from their parents, caring adults, neighbors, relatives, that sort of thing, and so we just want to make sure that student has that experience to be able to say I have, you know, had a vast exploration and I have now honed in on this career.

Speaker 1: 7:03

I want to kind of laser in on one of the things you said, and that's that this is an interactive experience. I wonder if you can talk about that, because one image that I had when I first heard about Epic all those years ago is oh, we're going to busload a bunch of high schoolers in and they're going to walk around and it's going to be like the old fashioned career fair, where you stop and you look at literature, right, that is not what this is.

Speaker 2: 7:28

No, not at all. It is not a job fair whatsoever. That is not what this is. No, not at all. It is not a job fair whatsoever. In fact, employers cannot talk about jobs unless a student obviously asks about employment. That's certainly fine, but it is where our business partners maybe they compete out in the business world, but on this day they're all working together to showcase health care, manufacturing, construction, business finance, whatever their expertise might be that they can then share with students.

Speaker 2: 8:00

And so it is not about come work for me, it is about this industry. This is the type of career that you could experience and these are the type of things you might do. As those students have more questions, they can just dig deeper. As far as you know, what is the education that's needed or what type of skills do you look for, and that sort of thing. So it really helps that student unfold what it could look like, to help them make that decision. Because, again, we all know the internet tells us a lot of things, but it doesn't get down into the details about what a career really truly is day to day.

Speaker 1: 8:35

And that exploration, you have to be exposed to something first. Right, like you said, you can buzz the Internet or even read about it elsewhere, but until you're really exposed to something, you're not going to be very likely to explore what those possibilities are. So I think that's one of the unique things.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Well, and I think the way we have this set up is it is so open and inviting that students can maybe explore things that they wouldn't have normally thought to explore. Maybe it's that little challenge that one of their friends posts to them to go hey, let's go check out this area. I don't know anything about it, but I hear they've got some fun activities. Well, now they're exposed to something they've never, ever been exposed to before.

Speaker 1: 9:18

So you went from 2,400 high school students and now this is a thing, this is an actual community event from many different school districts. How has it grown? Where are you at now?

Speaker 2: 9:35

Our last event, we had a max of 4,500 students coming to the college, each having a two-hour segment. So it's not that we have 4,500 students in the building at one time, but it still does definitely fill the hallways. And we've had from 24 area schools, and now we're to the point where we're getting more requests than what we can house, and so great problem, but we need to figure out what's next and what's futuristically possible. Really, what we're trying to do is also, if there's schools that are not within our central Minnesota, pairing them up with other communities that are doing something like this or encouraging them to do an event in their community.

Speaker 2: 10:18

We have created an epic playbook that we share with whomever might want to know that. They could then have some startup guidelines to help them, so you're not recreating things from scratch and be able to maybe entertain something in their community. The other thing we've been talking with DEED and folks at the state to say is there a possibility that this could be in, you know, futuristically, funding come to each of the communities so they could each do their own however they see fit. So some of the things are still in the works, but we know that we have hit a max at SCTCC because we want. We are first and foremost focused on making sure that student has a good experience Quality experience, yes, quality experience, not necessarily let's see how big we can get it.

Speaker 2: 11:02

And even our employers, they want to have that quality conversation. They can't truly tell a student about an industry if there's way too many there at one time. So we do spread them all out. We have a great busing system. St Cloud Technical and Community College is a wonderful partner that coordinates all that for us, so we are very lucky to have that facility to host this.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Has Epic been around long enough now that you actually can start to see student outcomes?

Speaker 2: 11:30

We can and we're starting to really dig into how can we do that more effectively. Right now our biggest outcomes are testimonials from our students, which is great and we want to continue to build on that. But we want to try and dig into the data to see if we can truly see those numbers and things like that. Are there more students staying in our region post-graduation? What type of careers are they going into? That sort of thing. So we're working with our local labor market analyst. He's obviously got all of the ins to numbers and trying to figure out how we can capture some of that. So that's a work in progress.

Speaker 2: 12:10

But in the meantime we really lean into those testimonials, both from the students, the educators that come along with their chaperones that come with for each school district, and then also our employers in the community. If they've made connection to a student following EPIC, they're sharing that with us, so we can then again know that we're making a difference. I do feel that we have made a tremendous amount of progress in just allowing students to have a wide understanding of the careers available to them before they make that decision, so not just jumping to those. I want to do this because my mom does this or that sort of thing and really getting an understanding of what's out there. So we definitely have opportunity to still dive into that. But at least we're starting to see this now, because our first event was in 2019.

Speaker 1: 13:04

It's been six years, so that's long enough to hear the success stories, right? Do you want to share one?

Speaker 2: 13:09

or two of those. Sure, absolutely One of our favorite ones was from a couple of years ago. A student was thinking she was planning to go into a health career. She went to Epic, you know, wanting to learn more about all the different types of careers in health sciences. And then actually one of her friends kind of challenged her a little bit to say, hey, let's go look at some of these other careers, let's go look in manufacturing and construction and things like that. And so they went to those and this individual was just so enthralled and passionate about welding because there is a welding station where you can make this little epic statue and she did that. She excelled at the welds and her new career was born. She left there saying I am going into welding. And now she is currently employed by a local employer and absolutely loving her job.

Speaker 1: 14:05

That is such a great story. She should be the poster girl, right?

Speaker 2: 14:10

Yeah, yes, we have used her in some of our promotional pieces just because it is a really compelling story. But then there's others that'll say I was going to go here, and now I'm here and others have said this just solidified that I definitely want a career in this. Sure.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Affirmation yes, that I'm making the right choice.

Speaker 2: 14:32

We do surveys after each of our events and we continually get over a 95% rating that it either helped solidify or, you know, get them in the right direction as to where they want to pursue further. Because, coming as a 10th grade student, you still have two years in high school to be able to maybe change some of those classes, make some connections to other folks so you can be more prepared and then ready to go either post-secondary or into the workforce, wherever you want to go.

Speaker 1: 15:03

And I think that making those connections in education, we talk an awful lot about relationships because it's key to learning, right it is. And so I wonder and again, maybe this is farther down the timeline, but I wonder about mentorships, I wonder about that opportunity. Is that one of the outcomes that you see from Epic?

Speaker 2: 15:27

It is definitely happening in an organic sense right now. To give you an idea, for our Epic Day events, we have over 200 different employers giving their day to planning and being there and obviously the prep that goes into it beforehand. And then we've got 200 other volunteers that are just coming to say I'll just hope for the day, just tell me where you need me. So think of all those potential interactions that they get. You know, as we mentioned, this event isn't a job fair, but it's also a great opportunity to start connecting and networking.

Speaker 2: 15:57

So, those can lead to mentorship.

Speaker 2: 16:00

One of the initiatives that GSDC is really passionate about is mentorship.

Speaker 2: 16:05

We hear it all the time, both from students all the way through the workforce. So some of our local businesses have some very quality mentorship programs and they're just doing really well, and it supports retention of talent, growth of talent, all of those things. But then some people would like to do it but they just don't have the bandwidth to do it. So GSDC is going to work on some programs that we can house and just have people connect to them as resources, but also for the student piece. My dream would be for every student to have a mentor in one way, shape or form, and I know that's a very lofty goal and you just look at your district and it's like how in the world would you do that, gail? But you know that's what we're working towards and, again, if we can help those connections, that's something that we definitely want to do, because we hear over and over from the students, again from that survey, that it means more to them to hear directly from somebody in the business than their teacher, their parent, their caring adult.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Yeah, there's a lot of power in there. There is.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Yeah, they trust them just because, again, they're an expert and they're not somebody that's going to, you know, try and sway them one way or the other, because that is their industry. So they will honestly share all the details of it.

Speaker 1: 17:20

That's interesting. Listening to you, it sounds like there's also this element of trust that I wouldn't necessarily think about. But yeah, this is my field and so I'm invested in, you know, meeting quality people. Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:36

That's interesting, well, and another nice element is on our EPIC website we have a resource called EPIC Connect, which allows both our educators and our students to connect with employers in our community. So if a teacher wants to bring in a subject matter expert, or if they just want to ask them a question, or if a student wants to connect to somebody in an industry and the educator just doesn't have that connection yet, they can reach out and find one, and those folks are more than willing to just do whatever that student's looking for. Maybe it's just ask a question, or maybe it's come on site and job shadow a little bit, whatever the need might be. That's what we're trying to build are those connections, and some will grow into really structured mentorship and some will just be that connector, which is awesome as well, because all we want to do is make sure students are able to make an educated decision as to their career that's best fit for their skill sets and their passions.

Speaker 1: 18:35

This is such big work. It certainly doesn't come without its challenges, right, right? So could you talk just a little bit about those challenges and what we can do to partner to overcome them?

Speaker 2: 18:48

Absolutely. Collaboration is one of the most enlightening and rewarding things to be a part of, but it also is a lot of work and really the reason if you want to do it right, you have to make sure you have all of the voices represented. So even as we developed our EPIC work, it was important for us to say do we have the right people at the table making decisions for our kids? And so we have educators of secondary schools, we have post-secondary educators, we have business, we have community partners. So hopefully we're hitting all avenues.

Speaker 2: 19:24

We've actually talked about maybe having a student or two as an advisory to this committee, knowing their schedule might not work for regular meetings, but making sure we're having that student voice as well to make sure that we're creating something that is appropriate and desired by them and helpful to them. I think that, like I said, it's getting those people together, taking the time to listen and understand everybody's perspective, because everybody brings something different to the table and they have different goals and aspirations. So it's working together to kind of get to that common goal and understanding that okay, maybe we can't get to Gail's goal yet because that maybe is future, but we focus on Tammy's goal here right now, and then eventually we can get to Gail's goal yet, because that may be his future, but we focus on Tammy's goal here right now and then eventually we can get to Gail's goal.

Speaker 2: 20:11

So it's weighing that out and working through that At GSDC you have added a position right to help with that challenge. Epic has added that I want to clarify.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Oh, epic. Yes, Okay, it is a.

Speaker 2: 20:25

You know, epic started and remains as a community collaborative.

Speaker 2: 20:28

So when Epic has grown now to such great capacity and with so much more potential, the community really supported us hiring a full-time Epic coordinator.

Speaker 2: 20:40

So all of Epic initiatives are funded through local businesses here, which is fabulous, and also a little bit of grants that we do receive along the way. So the EPIC coordinator, emily Davis, she's in place. She is just knocking it out of the park. She does office in our GSDC offices because we do act as the fiscal host for EPIC, but it is all funded through our local community, which is so very exciting to see the commitment and the intentionality that we need to keep this growing and to have her be that sole focus has just made it more impressionable and intentional that it's not okay.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Do I call Gail? Do I call this person? Do I call this person? Now, she is our point person and we all here are here to support her, because it's not a one person show, but she is our leader and it's really exciting to see where we can go. She did a little bit of this work in Southern Minnesota before she relocated up to Central Minnesota, so we are beyond blessed to have her because she has enough work, knowledge and passion to really lead this to the next level.

Speaker 1: 21:50

You gave me the perfect segue.

Speaker 2: 21:52

What is next for Epic?

Speaker 1: 21:54

right. We've grown leaps and bounds. We've seen amazing things happen, some great success stories. What's the future hold?

Speaker 2: 22:01

Well, there's a lot of future ideas going through a lot of people's heads, primarily Emily's, but also, you know what that allows after a student attends Epic Day, if say they are very interested in learning more about health sciences, they can attend a two-hour session focused specifically on health sciences, led by our local business leaders in that industry. So that kind of helps them dive a little bit deeper. So that is something that we're going to roll out, so we will have one for each of the industry clusters. Again, just to again of the relationships. So even some of the events that we do where we bring students to a business site or bring employers into the school districts just to be able to help educate on career exploration. We will continue to do things like Epic for Influencers in some way, shape or form, just to be able to provide those caring adults, parents an opportunity to learn about those careers, Because, again, we need our parents to learn these careers and support these as well to be that number one cheerleader for their students.

Speaker 1: 23:38

You and I were talking offline a little bit when you brought up the parents. I also wanted to mention something you and I were talking about that I guess I wasn't as aware of, and that's how educators can benefit from this relationship as well, and you were talking about externships. Can you explain what you mean by that and what an opportunity for an educator might look like?

Speaker 2: 24:02

We all are better when we continue to learn. We're lifelong learners, or we hope everybody is, and so that's the goal. Yes, so one of the opportunities for our educators is they can connect with our business folks through an externship and and that can mean a variety of things, you know. It can be a one day, it can be a summer long thing, it can be whatever each party wants to do, but it allows them to dive deeper into industry to then be able to better help their students. So I actually had the opportunity to help coordinate two of those this summer, one in the area of finance and one in the area of just counseling and just general business, and so allowing me to connect that educator with four to five different people in our community that can share from their perspective.

Speaker 2: 24:54

What do students need? How do I learn more about finance? I mean, now that finance is a required class for all of the students, those teachers want to make sure that they have all of the latest and greatest information on how they can effectively teach that class. So that is something that GSDC is always very open to helping collaborate with. Being an investor-based organization, we have those connections to majority of our business folks and if we can't, we can find it with our other partners, like the Chamber of Commerce and our economic development groups that we partner with. So it just, I mean we are again here to help those educators also learn more about industry. It just helps them in the classroom and it helps them, you know, grow their career as well robust academically.

Speaker 1: 25:51

that classroom then becomes because, right, the teacher is diving and developing on a different level. So then that comes back to the classroom. That is an amazing piece of this that I wasn't aware of, so thanks for sharing that. That's great.

Speaker 2: 26:02

Well, and I think a lot of times the teachers think that they have their curriculum they need to cover and they want to stick to that. But again, this could make your job a little bit easier. You bring in a community partner for 10 minutes, a full section on our class day, and it brings that perspective. Like we hear from our students that attend Epic, they so much prefer to learn from somebody in the industry, and not that they don't value their teacher, they don't value their parents' opinion, they don't value what they hear and read on the internet, but to hear somebody that's in that field give them the down and dirty about what is that career? What would I be doing? What education do I need? What know, what skill sets are the most important? So then they can make a decision that is best for themselves, you know. So students aren't going to school for something. They come out and they're like, oh, I don't like this and I just spent four years or two years or whatever of my time learning that industry.

Speaker 2: 27:04

So that's powerful it is, and I think we're starting to see students really take more ownership to really learning, doing all that investigative work, if nothing else, just to make sure they're understanding their career and also, you know, weighing the balances of each and every option they might want to consider and then what makes most sense for the education to do that career. You know it's not about I want to go to this college mom, it's I want to be this and this is best taught at this institution or maybe directly right into the workforce through hands-on learning. You know many of our employers will pay for education of those new hires.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Continuing Yep, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Yeah Well, gail, I can't thank you enough for being here today. This was really fun and it's actually something. Coffeecast hasn't been around that long, but it's this topic. Our partnership with JSDC and, in particular, epic, has really been at the top of our wish list, so I'm really glad you came today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 28:12

You are so welcome.

Speaker 1: 28:14

We have a gift for you today. Look at it.

Speaker 2: 28:16

Oh, I love it. Coffeecast. Yes, it will be prime on my desk, thank you.

Speaker 1: 28:22

Thank you. Talk soon. Okay, do you have a great podcast idea? Submit your idea to communications at isd742.org. And thank you for listening to 742 CoffeeCast, the best place to stay informed and be inspired by St Cloud Area School District. Thank you.