Nearly 800 students from 22 high schools across the Greater Bay Area attended the 2011 Bay Area Construction Career Awareness Day, hosted by Skanska USA Civil West. Students had an opportunity to explore construction post-secondary education and career paths and related hands-on activities at over 40 exhibits.

New to CCAD this year was an orientation assembly that incorporated information on construction careers, and was presented by students from Chico State’s AGC student chapter, Josh Payne and Sy Harrell. Also new were two Skanska-sponsored demonstrations. The first was a series of safety stations that had students learning about construction safety related issues (and careers) from heat illness prevention to power tool safety, and second, Skanska held a live concrete pump demonstration that was a big hit with the students.

Meanwhile, AGC of California Construction Education Foundation (CEF) Director Erin Volk along with John Dunn, member of the AGC CEF Board of Directors, and Stephanie Ercolini, Director of Western Region for the ACE Mentor Program of America, will give a presentation at the Education for Careers – Pathways to Success Conference taking place Feb. 13-15 at the Sacramento Convention Center.

This annual statewide conference is very well attended by CTE and ROP educators, school career counselors and administrators and the focus is on keeping CTE in the forefront of education and sharing best CTE practices/tools and model programs; especially in times of shrinking resources. The presentation the three were selected to give will address the new AGC CEF/ACE Mentor partnership as a model for more effectively moving students from the classroom to the construction workforce pipeline by sharing resources and streamlining workforce development efforts. 

For more information or to attend the event, contact AGC at www.agc-ca.org.

In other AGC news, the Teichert Foundation has awarded the Construction Education Foundation a $7,500 grant for 2012.

The grant will help further the AGC CEF and ACE Mentor partnership, connecting AGC student chapters with ACE Mentor kids, and will also help fund professional development and training opportunities for AGC student chapters. This is the first successful grant application by the AGC CEF & ACE Mentor partnership, and it is another example of how the partnership is rapidly becoming a model for effectively moving students from the classroom to the construction workforce. 

For more information on the AGC CEF, contact Erin Volk at (916) 371-2422.