Many factors can influence a student’s future, such as extracurricular activities, test scores, individual goals and more. For students in Westerville, one of these lesser-known factors goes by the name of Anne Baldwin.
Baldwin is a career tech and college readiness coordinator for Westerville City Schools. This role first came into existence seven years ago as a result of a grant from the state of Ohio’s Straight A Fund in 2014. One of Baldwin’s roles is to support the development and growth of the three career pathways for students in the district, which are engineering, business logistics and health. She also works with College Credit Plus, collaborates with a career center liaison and supports the school counselor team of grades six through 12.
“I don’t directly advise students. I work with our staff to provide those career pathway options, and I work with our school counselors advising students around those pathways,” Baldwin says. “So, my role is really to connect business and industry with our curriculum teams to develop the classes (so) that we’re providing experiences in our classrooms that help students practice the skills and knowledge that they would need, and also provide the opportunity to do some career exploration.”
Westerville City Schools requires a course on literacy skills and career exploration in just sixth grade. Those students can complete a career cluster inventory to gauge their interest in different career areas. In seventh grade, all students take an engineering and design course and a medical detective course. They have the opportunity to take other exploratory courses that year as well.
The hope is that by the time the students reach high school, they have a clear idea of their interests and can choose to continue learning about a certain career path throughout high school.
“For each pathway, there’s a series of high school courses that a student could potentially take all four years of high school,” Baldwin says, “and they can start as soon as their freshman year.”
Students can gain college credit through College Credit Plus which is embedded in the pathways. Health pathway students, for example, actually enroll in Columbus State Community College courses that they take at their high school to earn college credit.
Kendel Seabury, a 2020 graduate of Westerville Central High School, is currently a Columbus State student. In high school, Seabury took the health pathway and graduated with 37 college credits. She plans to transfer to The Ohio State University to study nursing after completing two years at Columbus State.
Seabury has worked at Nationwide Children’s Hospital since she was a senior in high school. She even earned a clinical lab certification through the health pathway in high school. Without the pathway program and Baldwin, Seabury would likely not have had these opportunities.
“I work in a hospital lab, and I have for over a year now. I’m 19 years old and not everyone gets to do that,” she says. “I think it’s just really cool that in high school we got the opportunity to do things that really set us up for success in life, but also in college. … I’m making so much money as a college student working in a hospital and it’s really, really cool.”
Seabury says that every interaction she’s had with Baldwin has been a positive one – and it’s clear that Baldwin cares about the success of her students.
Due to the pandemic, current health pathway students have not been able to access hospital experiences as much as Seabury and previous health pathway graduates, but Baldwin says that they have been able to do practice labs, such as drawing blood out of practice phlebotomy arms, instead.
Alex Borger, a 2020 Westerville North grad, completed the engineering pathway. Borger now attends Bowling Green State University and is studying architecture.
“I joined engineering because I thought I liked making houses and just making or designing stuff,” he says, “but I found out … that’s actually architecture, which is helpful because civil engineering, architecture, made me realize that.”
Like Borger, Eric Glasgow attended Westerville North on the engineering pathway and now studies architecture. Glasgow is enrolled at Kent State University. He says that because of his experience in the engineering pathway he now feels he is more familiar with the language, basic equations and norms that will give him a distinct advantage in a competitive field.
“What I share with students all the time,” she says, “is this: ‘This is your opportunity to explore, and things will change a lot, but we want to make sure that you have a path that you’re following and that you have the resources to know, when you want to change that path, where you can go with it.’”
Helen Widman is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@ cityscenemediagroup.com.
