Program Helps Start Students on Early Career Path

Pat Widders is on a mission to “hook” high school students by tapping into their interests, whether it’s working on a car or babysitting. He believes those interests can be made into a career.

Widders is the director of Western Arkansas Technical Center, a program that allows high school students in their junior and senior year to attend college to receive credit toward a degree. There are nine technical programs offered for the students to choose from, including graphic design, computer-aided drafting and design, and early childhood education.

WATC helps students explore certain careers, and for those who know exactly what they want to do with their life, it helps them start earning college credit.

“Many of our students earn up to 40 college credit hours before they walk across the stage to receive their high school diploma,” Widders said. “We’re working with one young gentleman now whose ambition is to have his associate degree before he finishes high school.”

Many students will earn proficiency or technical certificates while in high school and then get a job doing that skill while they go to college to either earn a degree in that skill or work toward something else.

“That’s what we try to stress to our students,” Widders said. “Let’s gain the skills, let’s gain the knowledge so that you can go out and find a job in your chosen career field.”

There are 20 different area high schools that participate in WATC. Since it’s inception in 1998, students have earned more than 20,000 credit hours. There are 400 students enrolled in WATC, which is up 10 percent from last year. They’ve grown so much that they’re having to look at offering morning classes as well as the traditional afternoon classes, Widders said. Students can either go to high school in the morning and then to college in the afternoon or vice versa.

Widders said one of the program’s main goals is to help students make a more informed career decision while in high school. They are given career assessment tests, guest speakers are brought in, and they also go to the job sites to see jobs in person.

Because the Arkansas Department of Workforce Education and public schools that participate in it pay for the program, it is free for high school students to take classes. So for a high school student to get in the program and change majors isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he said.

“They’re gaining information that’s going to help them make more of a career decision,” Widders said. “It doesn’t cost them any money and doesn’t cost them any time. They’re just going to contribute to the economic development to this region and to Arkansas a lot sooner if they can figure it out sooner, and that’s what WATC is all about.”

Widders said that many instructors say that companies like the younger students because they’ve grown up in the technological age and also because they’ve learned some skills while in high school. Companies then hire them part-time and pay the students’ tuition so they can continue to learn more skills to apply to their career. Companies actually invest in education of the students, he said.

WATC isn’t just for the C-average student like many may think, Widders said. There’s a mixture of different types of students.

“I’ve had kids that had a 33 on their ACT, and, boy, they know exactly where it is that they’re going,” Widders said. “I’ve also got some with a 33, and they haven’t got a clue. That’s what we’re here for, to help them figure it out.”