Cedar Rapids schools look to Waterloo for college and career model

WATERLOO — Kiyana Burt was going to drop out of high school before she found the Waterloo Career Center, where students explore their future and gain real-life experience.

“I came here and it gave me a reason to get out of bed every morning,” said Burt, a senior at West High School in the Waterloo Community School District. “It made school so enjoyable. I don’t know where I’d be without the Waterloo Career Center. I found my passion here.”

The Waterloo center, opened in 2016, has helped bolster attendance and save students money by allowing them to earn college credits while in high school. The Cedar Rapids Community School District is looking to it as a model for starting it own programs.

School leaders say Cedar Rapids students will graduate better prepared for high-wage, high-skill and in-demand careers because of academies and pathways soon to be coming to three high schools. The district is preparing to launch freshman programs at Jefferson, Kennedy and Washington for the 2025-26 school year. The following year — in 2026-27 — the district will extend the programs to sophomores, juniors and seniors.

The change comes with renovations to the three schools. Larson Construction was hired last month to consult in the design, construction and completion of the work.

At the Waterloo Career Center, students split their time between the center and their home high schools where they continue traditional classes. The Cedar Rapids school district, however, would like to integrate college and career learning into the high schools themselves instead of students traveling off-campus for those experiences.

The goal is to have themes of the academies offered in Cedar Rapids schools identified by June 3, said Adam Zimmermann, executive director of innovation for the Cedar Rapids Community School District, during a school board meeting last month.

In a survey from the Cedar Rapids Community School District that drew over 9,000 community responses, respondents were able to choose what career path the district should expand. The top pick was construction trades, with 75 percent of respondents. The second was health sciences, with 66 percent. This was followed by computer and data sciences, automotive services, metals, fabrication and welding, and agriculture, food sciences and natural resources, among others.

Cedar Rapids school board President Cindy Garlock — who with other Cedar Rapids school officials toured the Waterloo Career Center earlier this month — said it makes sense to start with what interests the community.

Garlock said the “best advice” the officials received in Waterloo was to “start small.”

“Make sure you’re doing it well, and then expand,” she said.

Garlock said she was amazed after walking through the doors of the Waterloo Career Center. “I felt very much like I was in a place of business. It was very professional, very adult. … You walk through the classrooms and see how engaged students are.”

Preparing future teachers

The Waterloo Career Center made Burt’s dream of becoming an art teacher an “attainable goal,” she said. Already, she has student taught at a Waterloo elementary school and middle school and is a teacher’s assistant at the center.

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She’s taken classes like “Intro to Diverse Learners,” where she learned how to teach students with different abilities.

“I know what it’s like to be seen as different,” Burt said. “I want my future students to know it’s OK to be different, it’s OK to not be like everyone else. I want to give them a safe place.”

She plans to graduate from the University of Northern Iowa in three years instead of four because of the concurrent college credit she’s earned at Hawkeye Community College through the Career Center.

“People ask me, ‘Why do you want to do a low-paying job that’s relatively not safe right now?’ I don’t view success as the amount of money I earn. I view my success as the potential impact I can make on my students,” Burt said.

Tammy Kinnetz, the K-12 teacher prep educator at the Career Center, said the program gives students confidence and a reason to come to school.

“They’re excited to explore or confirm in their heart what they’ve always wanted to do,” Kinnetz said. “We have students now 16 and 17 years old going into the classroom and doing their first field experience. There’s a lot of kids that don’t get that until their second year of college.”

Before coming to the Career Center, Kinnetz taught at Expo High School, the alternative high school in the Waterloo district, for 15 years. When Kinnetz began teaching the teacher prep program, she asked administrators how truthful she could be.

“I almost try to give them an out,” Kinnetz said. “I give them the good, the bad and the ugly. I give them a well-rounded picture. I think the kids that do come into teaching have known it all along.”

Communities like Cedar Rapids exploring adding college and career programming to their schools should “just do it,” Kinnetz said.

“We’ve got to teach our kids how to survive outside of the four walls of the classroom,” she said.

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‘What education should be’

Since the Waterloo Career Center opened, the program has grown from two to 15 career pathways, and four more are being added this fall. Grow Cedar Valley, a regional economic development organization, has been integral in helping the district identify local career fields that will need employees eight to 10 years from now, said center Director Amy Miehe said.

Some of the career paths offered include:

“When we first designed this, students came out here because they wanted to be a photographer, for example,” Miehe said. “What we have found is the benefit to kids over time mixing classes to build a profile for their career. You want to be a chef? Not only do you take culinary classes, but we offer hospitality, business and all the classes that make sense to help build your path.”

Students take on average six classes at the Career Center before they graduate. Students who attend the center save an average of $210 per hour of college-credit at Hawkeye Community College. Almost 80 percent of students earn “A” and “B” grades, and 95.5 percent of students earn A’s, B’s or C’s.

“Our goal ultimately is get a kid in so they have the opportunity for a work-based learning placement by the time they’re a senior. They’re out in a business applying skills they’ve learned here. It’s what education should be today,” Miehe said.

Much of the equipment needed for the programs is purchased under the Perkins Act, a federal law that provides $13.9 million annually to Iowa public school districts and community colleges to improve career and technical education, according to the Iowa Department of Education.

Students in the Waterloo school district begin exploring career paths as early as kindergarten with Xello, a college and career readiness software. In middle school, students have eight-week exploratory classes that capture some of the different programs at the Career Center.

“It builds excitement,” Miehe said.

About one-third of high school students in the Waterloo district are also enrolled in the Career Center, where Miehe said there are “minimal behavior issues” because “students are here because they choose to be here.”

The student body at the Career Center reflects the socioeconomic and racial demographics of the school district, Miehe said. About 60 percent are white, 17 percent are Black, almost 12 percent are Hispanic and 3 percent are Asian.

About 60 percent of the classes are college credit. Other classes also offer industry certification. For example, students in graphic design can get certified in Adobe software products such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

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Graphic design taught by an industry professional

Senior Shelby Mathenia, 17, began taking classes at the Career Center her sophomore year of high school. She initially started in a culinary class because she wanted to learn how to cook for herself.

Her true interest, though, is graphic design. She’s taught by digital graphics teacher Todd Kern, who was a senior designer with the clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch and assisted in the development of the Hollister line of clothing, he said.

“Teaching is a calling,” Kern said. “I would be sitting in meetings at Abercrombie & Fitch and thought this would be a cool lesson to show young kids. Everything from my professional experience I bring into the classroom.”

He’s the students’ “art director” and they’re his “designers,” he said.

“The thing about this building is they get a taste of it,” Kern said. “A student might love this, and then go into video and audio production. Some kids might get into character game design and take virtual reality development and computer coding. Then if they’re going to be a video game designer, they can take a statistics class. It’s all integrated.”

In Kern’s class, students design T-shirts, posters, graphics for stickers or magnets — with many of the designs made for community events.

He said students have asked to show up on snow days when school is canceled and even in the summer in the weeks leading up to the first day of school.

“These folks walk out of here with an incredible portfolio. They know how to use the software, they have certifications and they have professional experience,” Kern said.

“I can go anywhere and know what I’m doing,” Mathenia said of what she has learned in the classes. “I’m more likely to get hired since I already have the certifications.”

Without the Career Center, Mathenia said she could see herself working at a grocery store or retail after high school — not her passion. “Once I figured out I could take classes I actually like, I just ran with it,” she said.

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Sustainable construction

When Matt McCulley graduated from Montezuma High School, he felt directionless. He enrolled in Hawkeye Community College to study police science, but dropped out.

“I wasn’t ready to keep continuing school. I was wasting my money,” he said.

Working at Home Depot made McCulley realize he was interested in the construction field, and he again went back to Hawkeye for that program.

But McCulley — now the sustainable construction instructor at the Waterloo Career Center — wonders how much easier finding his career path would have been had he had a program like this when he was in high school.

After working as a foreman for a local construction company, McCulley applied for a job teaching at the Career Center, something he “always thought could be an option.” He watches students work through their frustration to get to their “ah-ha” moment, when they realize a project is finally starting to come together.

“People don’t realize there are so many jobs related to construction: building roads, streetlights, houses — everything was touched by a construction worker at some point,” McCulley said.

McCulley’s classes begin by him teaching tool safety and having students earn their OSHA cards — a training program to teach workers how to recognize and avoid hazards. “We spend a good month and a half going over the most dangerous power tools and how to operate them,” McCulley said.

From there, students build their first project — a sawhorse that is a small, sturdy frame that supports a board or plank for sawing. Next, they work on a 4-foot by 2-foot wall that eventually turns into a doghouse. Finally, they build a shed that helps them better understand scale and how to build while working on a ladder, for example.

“The idea is to get as many tools in there as possible,” he said.

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Emergency medical service

Senior Wesley Evans, 18, is studying emergency medical services. Although it’s not the profession he intends to pursue, he thinks the medical knowledge will help him as a wildlife biologist someday.

Evans is going to Brigham Young University in Utah this fall. He eventually hopes to travel to remote areas of the world — where it would be “good to have some medical skills” — and study animals.

Evans hopes to use his skills as an emergency medical technician in college, earning money while working in a field with a national shortage of qualified professionals. Already, Evans has done clinical shifts in the emergency room, shadowing a nurse and gaining experience on how she assessed a patient and helped take vitals and place electrodes to monitor the heart.

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Brian Hahn, the EMS and health instructor, said four of his students who graduated last year already are working on an ambulance staff. Some of them are going to school to become paramedics, which requires an associate degree.

While at the Waterloo Career Center, students get experience riding on an ambulance. “They don’t get to pick and choose if it’s a bad call,” Hahn said. “They’re seeing everything, and they have to have the emotional maturity to handle that.”

Hahn, who has 30 years of experience as in EMS, said he tells students stories of his time on the job and is a listening ear if they experience something traumatic in the field. Hahn also provides resources to students — including the Career Center’s on-site student counselor — if they want to talk to a professional.

“Until they’ve actually experienced it, they’re not going to know how they’re going to react. It’s the first time they’ve seen something traumatic and emotional like this,” he said.

Getting experience at the center can “solidify” for a lot of students their chosen field.

Building the Waterloo Career Center

The programs available at the Waterloo Career Center would not be possible without the robust facilities to support them.

The nursing program resembles a hospital ward, equipped with medical supplies and patient beds with lifelike patient simulators to provide realistic training scenarios.

The EMS class has the back of an ambulance in the middle of the classroom to simulate a real-life emergency. Students practice triage and loading and unloading a patient from the ambulance.

The sustainable construction classes take place in a large warehouse with garage doors that allow materials to easily be taken in and out of the building. The sheds are built indoors, allowing students to continue learning through all types of weather.

The culinary program has an industrial kitchen where students can take ProStart, a career and technical education program through the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation to teach culinary skills and restaurant management principles, as well as communication, teamwork, professionalism and time management skills.

Larson Construction — hired by the Cedar Rapids school board — also was the general contractor on the Waterloo Career Center project.

Travis Schwartz, project manager with Larson Construction, said the firm also consulted with the Waterloo Career Center on what construction and manufacturing industries would desire in employees as those programs were launched at the center.

“We are seeing a lot of students come out of the Waterloo Career Center go into the trades — electrical, mechanical plumbing and carpentry — and start their own businesses,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said that there is space in the Cedar Rapids high schools to create the facilities their college and career education classes will need.

“We’re engaging young people in the trades and professional skills they need to determine what they truly enjoy doing,” Schwartz said.

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