What & Why
The Pathfinder program for high school students is a career planning and college readiness program that seeks to boost the career prospects and educational achievement of high school students in marginalized communities. These underserved students face persistent educational inequity and economic insecurity due to economic, linguistic, cultural, and technological barriers – inequity that has been further exacerbated by the multifaceted detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being and development of underserved youth, especially high school students.
Purpose
The Pathfinder program accomplishes four main goals:
How
Through a combination of group projects, individual mentoring, and expert-led workshops on career fields and postsecondary education, the Pathfinder program helps students in marginalized communities build personalized roadmaps towards high-income careers.
Guide Self-Discovery
The program guides students through their own self-discovery process by providing them with psychological/values surveys and career aptitude tests that help narrate possible professional options based on their interests, inclinations, and abilities.
Meet Industry Experts
Students then learn about a variety of growth fields, such as bioscience, pharmacology, education, law and government, medicine, engineering, and more, from industry experts. In addition to group workshops led by these professionals, the students also get the chance to talk with them one-on-one and build relationships.
Access to Extended Networks
These interactions with industry professionals – learning about their fields, hearing their personal stories, and directly networking with them – not only provides the students with specific and detailed examples and models that they can appreciate and relate to, but also provides the students with access to extended networks that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.
2022 Summer & Fall Program with
Brockton High Students
Summer Intensive Career Exploration Workshop on various career paths:
The summer intensive (August 1 to August 12, 2022) consisted of seminars and mentoring sessions at the facilities of University of Massachusetts Boston, with various industry professionals as guest speakers to talk to and mentor the participating students.
Kellie M. Jones, Director of Bilingual Education, Brockton Public School
Linda Champion, Attorney, Adjunct Professor of Law at New England Law, Commissioner for the City of Boston’s Municipal Lobbying Compliance Commission
Dr. Luis Williams, Bioscientist, Executive Director and Head of Cell Biology Q-State Biosciences
Dr. Luke Glowacki, Anthropologist,/ Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, Faculty Associate in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University
Spencer Nam, Managing Partner at KSV Global)
Dave Wedge, Journalist, New York Times bestselling author, former reporter for the Boston Herald
Hailey Choi, Associate Professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science
Carolyn Hall, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science
Michael Todorsky, Director of Budget and Operations Manager of International Partnerships at University of Massachusetts Boston
Farrah Nivrose, Brockton High School Alumni, Freshman at Boston College
Fall College Readiness and Career Research Workshops
Students meet for 3 hours each week for 10 weeks, from September 17th to November 19th. Students go through a guided self-discovery process to better understand their own strengths and affinities and then learn from industry experts in a variety of growth fields to inspire them to more deeply explore their career possibilities. Then, with the guidance of individual mentors and industry professionals, students reverse engineer their personal roadmaps to work out how they can successfully enter their chosen fields, what kind of college programs they will need, and how they can get into said college programs. They also collaborate with other students on extended group research projects in their specific area of interest, culminating in a formal presentation. Seniors also prepare their college applications with guidance from college admissions professionals as well as their individual mentors.
Our Stories
“I want to become a doctor in OBGYN. During this program, I am trying to learn more [about careers]. I am trying to do my best. When I hear Dr. Luis, I get more emotional and more excited about the career [options] … he says everybody can do it!”
Andrea Valladares
Brockton High School Senior
“My favorite part of the program is definitely the business [lecture]. I learned about the business industry, economics, finance, and some majors that if I want to be a businessman I should take. I want to say it was a good and great and amazing time I’ve spent, these [past] two weeks. I didn’t regret anything at all.”
Gremitch Balan
Brockton High School Senior
“I want to be a nurse. My inspiration was when my auntie had cancer. She never liked hospitals, [but] the way the nurse treated her made her feel confident about going to the hospital. If I didn’t participate in the program, I would never be able to visit Boston College, UMass Boston and Bridgewater State [University].”
Elitiana Agonseca
Brockton High School Senior
Joselyn Carvalho
Pathfinder Mentor
Alice Cho
Pathfinder Mentor
“My favorite part of the program has to be the group sessions that we have lunch and after the [career workshops] in the morning. It gives [the kids] a more personal experience and kind of one-on-one conversation of what they actually want to have in a career – of drawing that ‘self-portrait,’ figuring out who you are, your values as a person, and then [mapping] that to a career … Oh, and I would definitely come back. I like youth organizations [and] just being part of that process [for them]. I wish I had it when I was younger.”
