More than 2,000 area eighth-graders will flock to the East Mississippi Community College community next week for the FORGE Your Path Career Expo, now in its fifth year.
From operating heavy equipment simulators to laying bricks and finishing concrete, students explore careers in a variety of skilled trades while learning from local experts.
Melinda Rowe
“It’s really just telling them to explore and understand that they have options,” FORGE executive director Melinda Rowe told The Dispatch. “We’re showing them multiple paths, but ultimately they’re looking at themselves. We’re just planting seeds so that we can communicate more and have more conversations.” That’s just what I’m trying to do.
The expo begins Tuesday at 5 p.m. with a “Business After Hours” event for local business leaders, community members, and industry partners to preview the expo and network with each other. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, students will kick off the expo with safety talks starting at 8 a.m. both days.
Founded in 2018 with the goal of bringing more attention to careers in the construction industry, FORGE stands for Family Organizations Recruiting Great Employees and is comprised of five founding companies: Graham Roofing, APAC, West Brothers Construction, and Burns Dirt Construction. , McCrary-West Construction).
Christie Holbrook, president of Graham Roofing, said the idea for the first career expo came the same year she and two other team members visited a statewide student career expo in Jackson. Ta.
Christie Holbrook
“I realized that a lot of the kids in our area don’t come there because it’s so far away,” she said. “So we went to event planners and asked, ‘How can we do this same type of expo in our area?'”
Once the venue and vendors were set and the community was secured, the first expo went off without a hitch in just about six weeks. Less than 1,000 students participated that year, Holbrook said, and only those from the Golden Triangle.
Next week’s fair is expected to draw 2,200 students from nine counties, including Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxbee. Rather than occupying just one wing of the facility like in 2018, this year’s expo will encompass the interior and exterior of the entire community.
The goal is to introduce students who are starting to plan their high school schedules to the various career options available to skilled workers.
rob winklepleck
“We want them all to understand that whatever path they choose, and when they actually choose it, there is a very respectable skilled trade career. said Rob Winklepleck, West Brothers Construction General Manager, who also helped organize the initial construction. career expo.
Through so many different activities, students gain in-depth experience working with cutting-edge technology as well as practicing construction skills. Nick Parrish, vice president of operations for Burns Dart Construction, said some of the students are experiencing something related to construction for the first time.
nick parrish
“You’ll go to a group of kids who have never held a hammer and are now playing on concrete. They’ve run a remote-controlled demo saw. They’ve climbed into a bulldozer.” he said. “It’s something they probably never dreamed of. … They got to see a lot of things they didn’t know existed.”
While students learn about new careers, companies attending the expo can also focus on the next generation of workers. This gives companies an opportunity to market the industry to potential future employees, Holbrook said.
“If we don’t do that, we’re going to continue to have labor problems as an industry,” she says. “We not only want to attract talent to our industry, but we also hold our industry to a higher standard and strive to attract really high-quality talent who want to work.”
Even if students aren’t interested in a career in construction, Rowe said the expo can be a positive learning experience.
“Really, everything they’re seeing and learning is just life skills,” she said. “It might be something that’s interesting to them that they want to understand more deeply, so as they get older and have to hire an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter, they gain knowledge about it. You will get it little by little.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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