It was an EPIC day, thanks to Career Transitions and its career conference for 600 middle and high school students. The event was held Wednesday at the Agri-food Hub and Trade Centre.
EPIC Day is geared primarily toward students in Grades 9 and 10, but is open to any student who is looking for an opportunity to explore possible career pathways.
In small groups, students spend 20 minutes each with five unique exhibitors. Each Exploration Zone features one occupation related to agriculture and environment, trades, healthcare, STEM plus a “wildcard” occupation.
Each of the 50 exhibitors showcase a specific occupation and engage the students with hands-on activities, demonstrations and discussion in order to provide insights into their world of work.
Some of the activities at the event included participants attending to a “cardiac arrest” with a rural family physician and identifying insects with an entomologist.
Career Transitions Executive Director Judy Stolk-Ingram says this year marks the 14th year for the annual event. “The whole idea of the day is to help students explore occupations, careers and industries in southwestern Alberta.”
Ultimately, Stolk-Ingram explains, students in Grades 9 and 10 don’t know a lot about the world of work, yet. With the interactive and informative explorations, students can “get a quick sense whether that is an occupation they might want to do some further research on.”
There’s also over 20 businesses out in the community that host tours of their businesses during EPIC Day.
“This is a huge community project. At Career Transitions we do what we can to help students learn about the world of work, but we could do nothing without the amazing business and industry partners involved,” adds Stolk-Ingram.
Career Transitions is a charitable organization with a mandate to deliver career exploration events and programs to almost 70 schools in southwestern Alberta.
(Photo by Stan Ashbee)
