Middle schoolers from Yuma, Wellton and Parker visited Arizona Western College Thursday for the Talent Search program's career festival.
Talent Search is a TRIO program, meaning it's one of the eight Education Department programs aimed at assisting disadvantaged students with services and outreach. And it specifically identifies and assists disadvantaged students from grades 6-12 who have the potential to succeed in higher education.
In Yuma and La Paz, Talent Search currently serves 583 students in 10 schools. These are typically students who would be first generation college students or who come from low income backgrounds.
"Every week, we're at the schools," said Lisa Dresden, Talent Search program manager. "At the schools, we do an after school program. We might be researching careers, researching colleges, but we do it in a fun way. So we bring little games and activities and stuff so that they stay after school to participate."
Field trips are another perk of the program, and Thursday's career festival was one of them. It brought students from Fourth Avenue Junior High, Gila Vista Junior High, Wellton Elementary, Wallace Elementary and Le Pera Elementary to AWC's Yuma campus.
Dresden noted that they make an effort for students to have at least one field trip to AWC specifically, but this was actually the second one for this school year. On the previous trip, the kids experienced a tour of the Yuma campus. With no need for additional touring, Thursday's focus was just career exploration — and fun.
"The intention is for them to learn and have fun, obviously," Talent Search Academic Success Advisor Saray Duran said. "We have different tables. We have painting for them to learn about the arts. We have a legos for them to learn about the engineering as they do get to create different figures. We do have the potting station where they get to create a little plant and take home as a example of stuff they could do in agriculture.
"We also have the operation game to represent something they could potentially do in the future in the medical field. and then we have the modern languages — so this is a Spanish professor here on campus and she's here to play games with the students to also learn about the the different languages they can pursue in the future. All while having fun and playing games."
And to make the day even more of a treat, there were snow cones and popcorn, too.
Reporting for this article is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
