The welding technologies program is one of three Clark College programs to receive certification as Career Launch partnerships.
Clark College recently received certification of three new Career Launch programs at the college.
The programs join six other Career Launch at the college. Career Launch is a Washington state program that provides students with opportunities to “earn as they learn” through partnerships between public educational institutions and local employers that provide meaningful, high-quality, and paid on-the-job experience as well as classroom learning.
a partnership with PeaceHealth to provide students with paid work experience as they earn a Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) degree in Cybersecurity.
a partnership with Madden Fabrication to provide students with paid work experience as they earn a degree in Associate in Applied Technology (AAT) degree in Welding Technologies.
an AAT in Mechanical Instrumentation (part of the Mechatronics program) in partnership with SEH America, Silicon Forest Electronics, Analog Devices, Inc., and Kyocera International, Inc.;
Founded in 1933, Clark College provides residents of Southwest Washington with affordable, high-quality academic and technical education. It is a public community college offering more than 100 degree and certificate programs, including bachelor’s and associate degrees; professional certificates; high school diplomas and GED preparation; and non-credit community and continuing education. Clark serves a wide range of students including high school students, displaced workers, veterans, parents, non-native English speakers, and mature learners. Approximately three-quarters of its students are in the first generation of their families to attend college.
About Career Launch
Career Launch is a program of Career Connect Washington (CCW), an organization founded to bring industry and education together to provide pathways for young people to succeed in college and career. There are already 10,000 students enrolled in Career Launch programs, including Registered Apprenticeships. The recently passed 2021-2023 biennial budget provides additional resources for Career Connect Washington to reach more young people, especially those furthest from opportunity, at a time when they are so impacted by COVID-19.
Governor visits Clark College
Governor Inslee speaks with Vickei Hrdina, SW WA Career Connection Director. Background left to right: Clark College President Dr. Karin Edwards and Land Survey student Sadie Deshong.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee visited Clark College on April 30 to announce the state has certified two current Clark programs as Career Launch programs. The endorsement will provide students with opportunities to “earn as they learn” as Clark partners with local employers to provide students with meaningful, paid, on-the-job experience in their chosen industry.
A partnership with MacKay Sposito to provide students with paid work experience as they earn an Associate in Applied Science (AAS) degree in Surveying & Geomatics
“This is a great opportunity for students at Clark College,” says Dr. Karin Edwards President of Clark College. “Working strategically with our industry partners, we can help develop the talent pipeline that will allow local companies to grow and will provide outstanding opportunities for our students to succeed.”
Clark now has six Career Launch programs; three more are in development. Career Launch programs are a win-win for everyone. They create opportunities for students to get real-life paid work experience, complete their education and be successful in their chosen field. Career Launch helps our business partners fill the workforce pipeline with skilled, experienced employees.
The two programs join the college’s already-existing Career Launch partnerships:
AAT in Mechanical Instrumentation (part of the Mechatronics program) in partnership with SEH America, Silicon Forest Electronics, Analog Devices, Inc., and Kyocera International, Inc.
AAT in HiTECC Automotive in partnership with Dick Hannah Dealerships
Associate in Science – Transfer Track 2 (AST2) in Engineering in partnership with SEH America
Clark’s proposed Career Launch programs in cybersecurity and welding technologies are pending review by the Career Launch Endorsement Review Committee.
Armetta Burney, Interim Dean of Workforce Professional and Technical Education and STEM, said, “At Clark College, we understand the value and importance of building relationships with our local industry partners. These relationships play a critical role in the growth and development of our students as they obtain the career and academic training they need to prepare them for their next step after graduation. Our goal is to develop Career Launch Endorsements across the many degree programs that we offer to include CTE, AA transfer and our BAS programs.”
Benefits of Career Launch programs
During his visit, the governor met students in the two new programs.
Then he led a roundtable discussion about the benefits of Career Launch programs. Joining in the discussion were President Karin Edwards; Clark College Trustee Chair Rekah Strong; Armetta Burney, Interim Dean of Workforce Professional and Technical Education and STEM; Erielle Lamb, Clark Surveying & Geomatics instructor; Alison Dolder, Professional Baking & Pastry Arts Management instructor; Vickei Hrdina, Executive Director, Career Connect Southwest, Career Readiness & STEM Initiatives; and industry partners and three students.
Baking students (left to right) Jasmyn Trujillo and Paola Ibanez present Gov. Inslee with baked goods and a sample of a takeaway box created by cuisine instructor Earl Frederick celebrating Black history in honor of the new proclamation of Juneteenth designation as a holiday in Washington state.
Geared for working adults, Clark’s Surveying & Geomatics program currently offers remote classes Monday through Thursday evenings with in-person, on-campus classes on Saturdays. About one-third of the program’s students already have a bachelor’s degree and are making a career change. Many are juggling a full-time job with full-time school. Going forward, students will benefit from being paid for their hands-on work opportunities with program partners—helping both them and their families.
Tim Kent, the program’s coordinator, says, “It’s a grand opportunity for this to be a state-supported program that will benefit our ability to train up-and-coming survey professionals.”
Left to right: Prof. Tim Kent; Carla Meritt, adjunct instructor and Survey Director at MacKay Sposito ; Prof. Tina Barsotti, faculty; Sadie Deshong, land survey student; and Erielle Lamb, instructor and Lead Surveyor for Gifford Pinchot
Partner input
Josh Svenhard, Eurobake owner with Baking Professor Alison Dolder
Industry partner Tim Schauer, past president and board of director chair of MacKay Sposito, said, “Without this program, we’d be training people ourselves—and that’s difficult and expensive.”
He noted that these are family-wage jobs and said MacKay Sposito pays licensed land surveyors $125,000 in its Federal Way office.
Industry partner Joshua Svenhard, Eurobake President, emphasized the benefits of the partnership with Clark College: “If I invest in the community in this way, it benefits the students, the college, Eurobake—and my industry.”
Schauer of MacKay Sposito noted that because jobs are changing quickly, “the connection between community colleges and industry leaders is key.”
Dr. Karin Edwards with Tim Schauer, MacKay Sposito president
Governor Inslee focused on the important role of community colleges in their communities: “Community colleges are the best bang for your buck. And they’re the point of entry for entry for any program you want to pursue. It opens up all those doors.”
Looking around the room he added, “These are dream factories here.”
Vaccination Visit
Gov. Inslee, center, meets with the organizers of a free COVID-19 vaccine clinic, left to right, Sarah Thorsen, Program Specialist in Allied Health; Cammie Pavesic, WPEA; Courtney Braddock, Fiscal Analyst.
Governor Inslee also visited a vaccination clinic being held the same day, also in the STEM Building. The clinic was conducted in conjunction with Rite Aid Pharmacies, WPEA, and AHE. It was open to Clark College employees, their families, and students. During the day, 179 individuals received the Pfizer vaccine for free.
Vaccinations are an important step in the process of returning to on-campus operations. The college has announced it will be offering more than 500 classes with on-campus components in fall term—roughly one-third of its total class offerings for that term.
The college will host another vaccination clinic in May so that participants can receive their second vaccine dose. Future clinics are under discussion.
About Career Launch
Career Launch is a program of Career Connect Washington (CCW), an organization founded to bring industry and education together to provide pathways for young people to succeed in college and career. There are already 10,000 students enrolled in Career Launch programs, including Registered Apprenticeships. The recently passed 2021-2023 biennial budget provides additional resources for Career Connect Washington to reach more young people, especially those furthest from opportunity, at a time when they are so impacted by COVID-19.
Clark College student Nick Gibson, left, interviews Shannon Chasteen during his internship with Oregon Public Radio. Photo courtesy of Nick Gibson.
Clark College sophomore Nick Gibson successfully pursued two hands-on community journalism opportunities over the summer. The experience he gained will enhance his job as editor-in-chief of Clark’s student news magazine, The Indy,for the 2020-21 academic year.
Gibson’s second summer project was being selected by Oregon Public Broadcasting to participate in National Public Radio’s Next Generation Radio Project for outstanding college journalists. Now in its 20th year, NPR Next Gen selects emerging journalists who are either still in school or recently graduated and provides them with five days of training to produce a radio news piece.
Clark journalism professor and Indy adviser Beth Slovic encouraged Gibson to apply to Next Gen. Gibson applied, but was doubtful that a community college student would be selected.
“I didn’t believe I had any chance of getting this NPR fellowship experience,” he says. “I don’t have access to the equipment or the training that these big institutions have.”
“I like to think The Indy lets students follow their interest,” Slovic says. “I knew radio was Nick’s primary interest. I’m proud of the work Nick did with the project. I think it was great preparation for his work at The Indy, and I know he’s super-energized to share his enthusiasm for telling people’s stories with the rest of the staff.”
Despite his initial concerns, Gibson was encouraged that another community college journalist, Kanani Cortez from Portland Community College, also was selected to participate in his Next Generation cohort.
Gibson’s NPR project told the COVID-19 story of Shannon Chasteen, chef de cuisine for Portland’5 Centers for the Arts. When the pandemic shut down restaurants and event venues, Chasteen was furloughed indefinitely. Looking for something productive to do with her time off, Chasteen began volunteering to cook at Blanchet House, a nonprofit organization that feeds and houses people in need in downtown Portland.
When Gibson went to Blanchet House to interview Chasteen, she was nervous. She had never been interviewed before.
“It was really about making Shannon comfortable,” Gibson says. “It’s a non-narrated piece so I had to rely on Shannon to tell her story.”
His next challenge was to edit his 45-minute interview down to a four-minute story. OPB provided journalists, editors, and illustrators to support Gibson and the other Next Gen journalists. He was given a short lesson in editing with Adobe Edition software. He had only five days to complete the project: interview, audio editing, taking photos, and writing the print story.
Gibson says he appreciates the network and support provided by the 600 journalists who have participated in the Next Gen project over the past 20 years. They often share internship and job opportunities across the U.S.
Finding his niche—and his passion
Nick Gibson. Photo courtesy of Nick Gibson.
Gibson’s original career plan was not journalism, but psychology. After graduating from high school in Montrose, Colorado in 2016, he received a full-ride scholarship to Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, about an hour from home. Settling into his new city and the university campus, he started his classes. Whether it was the coursework, the school, or the timing—or a combination—it didn’t take long for Gibson to realize it wasn’t a good fit. After his first term, he took a break from school, but he stayed in Grand Junction for about a year working and getting involved in the community.
He found purpose, connection, and perhaps even his passion when he started volunteering at 100.3 KWSI-LP, a fledgling community radio station. In sharp contrast to how his university classes had felt, radio clicked for him. First, he helped paint the studio and set the antennae. After the station’s engineer taught him to work the radio equipment, Gibson hosted a music show, and then a League of Women Voters program. He did stories on ballot issues and teen suicide.
Gibson explains, “Volunteering at the community radio station was a life-changing experience. I realized I was having fun and decided to get into audio storytelling.”
He says, “I’ve always worked best by doing. I think journalism is a lot like cooking. It’s best to be in the kitchen, doing it every day. I’ve always been hands-on, getting to know my community, getting to know how to work the board.”
His success at his volunteer gig at the radio station led him down a new career path as an audio journalist. He relocated to Vancouver and moved into his aunt’s home to save money. After he learned about Clark College’s journalism program, he established Washington residency, which made school more affordable. Eventually, he moved into his own apartment down the street from campus.
The resiliency of students: Learning to pivot and seek help
Gibson was ready to try college again, but he didn’t want to repeat the negative experience he’d had in Colorado. Recognizing he needed to develop coping tools to help him be successful in navigating the challenges of college, he sought therapy. One of the tools he developed in therapy was practicing mindfulness.
“It changed my life,” Gibson says. “It helped get me to a place to be able to go back to school.”
Three years after his high school graduation, he started attending Clark College in fall of 2019.
Gibson, 22, says, “I understand I’m a couple of steps behind some people I graduated high school with.” Then he adds, “But there is no timeline.”
Pursuing a journalism career
Nick Gibson taking photos as part of his Oregon Public Radio story. Photo courtesy of Nick Gibson
His first quarter at Clark, he took Journalism 101 taught by Beth Slovic “because I knew I wanted to pursue journalism.”
The next term, he joined The Indy staff. On his first day, he produced an audio story about the faculty strike.
Gibson says, “I wanted to bring my experience at the radio station. As editor-in-chief, that’s one of my goals—to diversify The Indy’s content. With a digital format, you must have engaging content that people want to stay with. Beth (Slovic) is there guiding you. She’s an advisor in the best sense. It’s student-run.”
Slovic agrees. “I don’t control what they do. I give them instruction and assignments in class, but I ensure my assignments don’t bleed over into their stories for The Indy.”
Clark’s journalism program teaches students to report and write, but also to produce multimedia stories, including audio and video.
“Entry-level journalists today are expected to do it all, so I give students the freedom and the tools to experiment with a lot of different story formats,” Slovic says. “Students like Nick, who come to Clark with radio experience, can take it as far as they want. We have had training in podcasting in past quarters in that class, and our newsroom includes podcasting equipment and dedicated space for recording.”
She says learning to pitch stories is a key focus during class for The Indy.
“Students collaborate over Zoom, phone, Slack, Canvas to share story ideas. As part of the class, they’re required to write story pitches. The editors—Nick and his staff—evaluate the pitches and make assignments. We have new students joining the class every quarter, so not a lot of experience pitching. That’s one of the things we practice the most.”
Gibson says he is grateful for his Clark instructors: “Professors at Clark are so engaged and passionate about their subjects, and they’re in the field doing research. I think they really care about their students. They understand the circumstances of their students who are working or are parents.”
At the end of NPR’s Next Gen production week, Gibson and the other journalists were asked to write a reflection piece. Gibson wrote about the value of community college journalists and community colleges in general. Read Gibson’s reflection here.
“[C]ommunity college students are a valuable part of this industry and should be recognized as such,” he wrote in his reflection. “Those students are often working with limited funding and limited access to equipment while juggling other responsibilities like parenting or a part-time job. When those students are overlooked it leads to a lack of diversity in newsrooms, which in turn leads to underserved and under-covered communities.”
Gibson says, “When you talk about community college students, you’re talking about lower-income, many POC [people of color], first-generation college students. I love my peers. I want them all to go on to do great things.”
Meanwhile, Gibson is planning for his own great things. After he graduates from Clark, he plans to transfer to WSU Pullman and continue pursuing his journalism education at the Edward R. Murrow School of Journalism and Northwest Public Broadcasting.
When your internship is in the middle of a pandemic
Sofiya Saakyan wears safety gear during her internship at Eurobake. Photo courtesy of Sofiya Saakyan.
When Sofiya Saakyan, a student in Clark College’s Professional Baking and Pastry Arts program, called Baron Patisserie in early April to check on her planned spring quarter internship there, the bakery was closed indefinitely due to COVID-19. The owner told her he wasn’t sure when the bakery could open again—or when Saakyan could fulfill her internship.
Saakyan is one of nine students graduating in June with an Associate in Applied Technology degree in Clark’s Professional Baking and Pastry Arts program. The program’s final requirement is to complete a five-week industry internship during spring term. Students work 24 hours a week gaining real-world experience before they graduate. Students cannot graduate without completing an internship.
Department Head Alison Dolder had arranged student internships in bakeries, patisseries, and chocolatiers in Vancouver and Portland. When COVID-19 restrictions shut down most food operations, Dolder had to act quickly to secure new internships for Saakyan and the other students. Because of the COVID-19 shutdown, all internships were pushed to the second half of the quarter while the department figured things out.
That’s when Dolder called Josh Svenhard, co-owner and Vice President Operations at Eurobake.
Coming up with a Plan B, in a hurry
Eurobake, a Portland wholesale baker, remained operating as an essential business during the COVID-19 shutdown. Svenhard is a member of Clark’s Professional Baking & Pastry Arts Advisory Committee. This is the first quarter Eurobake has provided internship opportunities for Clark students.
“I think we’re a perfect fit,” Svenhard said. “We can bring in students during COVID-19 because we’re not a retail bakery with customers, so students aren’t being exposed to the public. It’s important for a business to give back to its own industry, as well as the community.”
Dolder offered all nine of the students the option of an internship at Eurobake, which is near Portland International Airport.
“We left it up to the students to do what’s best for their families,” Dolder said.
Six of the nine Clark students chose to complete an internship at Eurobake spring quarter. One student chose not to do the internship at this time due to family reasons. Two other students had been laid off from their jobs and couldn’t afford to travel to Portland for the internship. Those three students are waiting for an opportunity to do an internship in Vancouver during summer term, when COVID-19 rules allow more bakeries to open.
Two students per week are scheduled to work at Eurobake. The bakery operates from 3:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., providing ample opportunity to work around the students’ schedules. It allows students to maintain their other jobs.
Dolder said, “Eurobake is rotating our students through their bakery for their internship and is providing hands-on learning following proper social-distancing protocol. It’s a great opportunity for our students. Some want to finish the program and be available to be hired when everything opens up.”
To accommodate students, Dolder said the baking program is not taking its standard break between spring and summer term to allow students to finish their internships, even if they started later in the quarter.
Safety first
Working in a wholesale bakery during a global pandemic is no different from working in a bakery pre-COVID-19, Svenhard said. Eurobake’s follows strict safety protocol. “The baking industry has become one of the most careful,” he said. “Food safety starts with washing your hands and ends when the product gets into the packing in an unadulterated form. The industry has evolved to require handwashing, not touching your face, wearing hairnets and gloves. These things are common practice every day in a bakery. We can show student interns how these safety measures can be used to safely operate a business.”
Svenhard said, “We want to ensure the Clark students aren’t just working at Eurobake, but also learning. We’re working with only two Clark students at a time so we can give them individual attention.”
Dolder said, “It takes time to train students. Bakeries that accept students for internships are training students for the way their business operates, their product line.”
Svenhard explained the importance of students getting hands-on experience: “They’re learning to use their skills. Learning the repetition and how to become efficient with your movement is a key part in baking, or any manufacturing business. To make hundreds of uniform products. To develop a rhythm.”
He added, “The real-world bakery experience is production at speed, keeping up with line and the crew. Teaching students about food safety, R & D [research & development] projects we’re working on. We have a cake department, a bread department, and a pastry line. Students are operating different kinds of machinery in each department.”
Eurobake staff also talks with interns about the business side of operating a bakery. They work with their interns to do a cost analysis on what to charge for each product in order to make a profit.
There’s always summer
Dolder told her students who chose to intern at Eurobake that she would contact the other shops where they had planned internships before COVID-19 shut everything down, to see if they will allow Clark students to do internships in the summer after more businesses can open.
Dolder and the program’s other instructors have worked to build relationships with local bakeries. In previous years, Clark baking students have completed internships at highly respected Portland restaurants and retail bakeries including Papa Haydn, St. Honore Patisserie, and Fleur de Lis Bakery and Cafe.
Dolder said, “The best outcome is if we get a student interning at a bakery or shop where they want to be, and then they get hired. It happens quite a bit.”
Sofiya’s Story
During a class Zoom meeting after COVID-19 pushed the pause button on baking internships, Dolder told students about the new internship opportunities at Eurobake. Sofiya Saakyan chose to start the internship as soon as possible so she could graduate from Clark and start working in her chosen field. She works three eight-hour days at Eurobake. One of her favorite tasks is at Eurobake is braiding sweet raisin bread.
“You get to practice it a lot,” Saakyan said. “We make hundreds of loaves. There are multiple people making it on the same bench.”
She said her classes at Clark prepared her for her internship.
“I built confidence in my classes at Clark,” Saakyan said. “You learn good skills and get to practice so you can be confident that you know how to do certain things and not be afraid of many challenges.”
Saakyan grew up in Ukraine, where she learned home baking from her mother. Her family immigrated to Vancouver five years ago when she was 15. She graduated from Fort Vancouver High School, where she spent three years in that school’s baking program.
Saakyan said she hopes to land a baking job that allows her to stay in Vancouver.
“I’m very thankful for the internship,” she said. “I thank my advisor and Eurobake, who took me in. The opportunities—and the internship opportunities—at Clark College are awesome.”
Those opportunities haven’t ended: With Dolder’s help, Saakyan has landed a summer internship at the Vancouver-based Baron Patisserie, where she had originally planned to intern during spring term.
Saakyan offered advice to future baking students: “Make sure you love what you do. When you’re a baker and you love baking, I think people can taste that.”
Clark College student works her dream job
Jeni Banceu now reporting for the Columbian Newspaper (photo courtesy of Annika Larman)
If you read the Columbian, you may see a familiar byline: that of Clark College student Jeni Banceu. As reported in that newspaper, she is the first Clark College student to work at the Columbian as a paid news intern.
The newly endowed Dee Anne Finken internship is a partnership between the Columbian, Clark College, and Clark College Foundation. It is named for Clark’s former journalism professor, who served as academic advisor to the college’s student news publication, The Independent, before retiring in 2018. Her successor, Beth Slovic, organized the campaign and raised money to create the paid internship for the summer.
“We liked Jeni’s can-do attitude and maturity, and her story about the homeless person living in the RV [published in The Independent in June 2018] was in my opinion a great read for a beginning journalist,” Columbian Editor Craig Brown wrote in an email.
Banceu’s stories are regularly appearing in the Columbian. “I feel so lucky to have been chosen for the Dee Ann FInken Internship,” she said. “I look forward to writing as much as I can and gaining new skills. I also look forward to getting to know our amazing local journalists.”
Banceu will return to Clark College in fall quarter serving as editor-in-chief of The Independent (nicknamed “The Indy”).
Also kudos to The Independent for its most recent journalism award.
The news magazine and website won first place in the “sweeps” category of the annual contest hosted by the Pacific Northwest Association of Journalism Educators. That means individual Indy journalists won first, second, and third place more than did students from any other Oregon or Washington college that entered.
The Indy is recognized as a top community college news publication in the nation, having received numerous regional and national awards.
Summer Jobs, Lifelong Success
Clark College hosts numerous job fairs at its main campus each year, all of them open to the public.
Clark College hosts its second annual Summer Job and Internship Fair from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4, in the Gaiser Student Center. The event is designed to help job-seekers find summer internship and employment opportunities with Portland- and Vancouver-area employers.
New this year, the college is partnering with the Vancouver Housing Authority (VHA) to co-sponsor the fair. According to VHA Community Involvement and Employment Manager Bridgette Farnbulleh, the VHA has organized its own summer job fair for the past two years, but was eager to join forces with the Clark College.
Clark College’s job fairs draw dozens of employers and hundreds of job-seekers.
“We wanted to connect with Clark College because of the educational aspect,” Farnbulleh said. “We wanted our youth to be on a college campus, and to understand that the kind of job you get is closely connected to the education you get. We’re trying to break the cycle, to make sure that just because they may have grown up in poverty doesn’t mean they have to live in second-generation poverty themselves.”
“I’m looking forward to this year’s job fair,” said Sarah Weinberger, Employer Relations and Job Developer at Clark College. “We have already doubled the number of registered employers from last year, and the collaboration with the VHA will make our event even stronger. Previously, the Summer Job and Internship Fair was held in May, but many employers had already hired for a June start date by that point. We are now holding the event in March because it’s when students need to start planning for summer employment.”
Positions offered at the fair may be full-time, part-time and in the case of internships, they may be paid or unpaid. There will also be a mock interview room set up to help job seekers prepare for real-life interviews.
The Summer Job & Internship Fair is sponsored by Clark College Career Services and the Vancouver Housing Authority. The event’s Gold Level sponsor is LaborWorks. Some of the employers who will be at the event are Boys & Girls Club of Southwest Washington, Entercom Portland, Firestone Pacific Foods, LOWE’S, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, Trackers Earth, and YWCA Clark County. There are over 30 registered employers currently, with room for more. The event is open to any company or organization offering internships or summer employment, but space is limited so interested employers should act quickly to register.
A list of participating employers is available on the Career Center’s Pinterest page.
The event is free and open to the public. Clark College is located at 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver, Wash. Driving directions and parking maps are available at www.clark.edu/maps.
If you need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event, you should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP), or visit Gaiser Hall room 137, as soon as possible.
Elizabeth Christopher contributed to this article.
Photos: Clark College archives/Jenny Shadley
Banking on Student Success
Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s president in Oregon and Southwest Washington, and Monique Barton, senior VP of corporate social responsibility, at the bank’s offices in Portland. In July, they presented a $15,000 gift for Clark College’s Volunteer & Service-Learning program.
Bank of America has donated $15,000 to Clark College’s Volunteer & Service-Learning program to prepare more than 1,000 students with valuable on-the-job training. The funding will assist with community partnerships and program expenses.
The Volunteer & Service-Learning program places students in more than 100 community nonprofits and governmental organizations, including American Red Cross, Boys and Girls Clubs, Columbia Springs, Habitat Store, and Hazel Dell Community Garden. Students receive experience that promotes their personal growth and contributes to their understanding of course material.
For example, Clark students have volunteered to build homes with Evergreen Habitat for Humanity; students taking Spanish have read bilingual versions of children’s books at local elementary schools as a service-learning component of their classes. These experiences not only enrich the students’ education, they can give students the real-world work experience that can lead to paying jobs.
The Bank of America grant will boost the resources for such major events as Career Days, which needs more than 100 volunteers to operate successfully. It will also allow the program to offer more service-learning opportunities; elevate awareness of career- and service-learning; and finalize new relationships with local businesses. Additionally, Bank of America employees will volunteer their own time to participate in Career Days and to educate students about personal finance.
Clark College President Robert K. Knight said the college’s primary goal is to improve the rate of post-secondary completion. “As a result of the alignment with Bank of America, Clark anticipates students will receive high-quality work history experiences—particularly for students with little or no previous work experience—through service learning and community engagement experiences, and opportunities for civic and community engagement, career exploration, life and soft-skill development,” he said.
“Providing grants to local nonprofit organizations that support career readiness is part of Bank of America’s broader effort to help create economically vibrant communities,” said Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s president in Oregon and Southwest Washington. “As part of that, we’re proud to support Clark College’s Career Service-Learning Program, which helps prepare college students to enter the workforce and, in turn, support our local economy.”
Clark’s Career Services department, which oversees the Volunteer & Service-Learning program, has a history of aligning college classroom learning with current community needs; promoting personal growth of college students through reflection about self, society and the future; combining experiential with academic instruction to focus on critical thinking and civic responsibility; and organizing on- and off-campus events that provide quality service opportunities for Clark College students, faculty and staff.
