Bridget Stewart, Executive Director of the Oyster Ridge BOCES, spoke with SVI Media following a job fair held November 12 at Kemmerer High School.

(0:00) Bridget Stewart joining us on SVI Radio today. Bridget is with the BOCES in southern Lincoln (0:05) County and helped organize a very successful career fair at Kemmerer Junior Senior High School. (0:11) Bridget, first off, tell us if you could just summarize what happened here today (0:14) at Kemmerer Junior Senior High.

So today we had a career day. So we had all the students (0:20) essentially pick their top 10 careers and then we went and found professionals to fit those (0:28) careers. And then we had them come in and so the students got to pick their careers.

They went to (0:33) nine different sessions and they got to learn everything from welding to author, just the whole (0:40) gamut. We had over 100 professionals come in today to share what they do with the students and it (0:45) was very good. That’s fantastic.

One of my favorite presentations was the broadcasting, (0:49) of course. I’m a little biased, but no, over 100 presenters. That’s a lot of coordination.

That’s (0:55) a lot of work behind the scenes to get all that set up. Why is it so important for you to do this, (0:59) considering all the work that goes into it? I think it’s very important for our students to (1:04) have the opportunity to figure out what they want to do while they’re in high school. (1:09) And even if that’s going to a session and learning, I don’t want to do that.

I think (1:14) that’s just as important as going to a session and being like, wow, I really want to be a (1:19) photographer or I really want to go into broadcasting. I think it’s just good for (1:23) them to explore their options and figure out what’s out there. Well, Bridget, appreciate your (1:28) time.

Appreciate you putting this on. Do you have a success story from today or maybe something that (1:33) you saw that you thought, yeah, I’m glad we did it because of that. I just, the kids are so (1:38) appreciative of this.

They really, it’s a lot of information in one day. So by the end of the day, (1:44) they’re a little overwhelmed, but we have students that have done this a couple of years ago. We try (1:50) to do it every other year.

And those students that are out in the real world now, they are (1:55) very thankful that they had this opportunity. So while it might not have sunk in for all those kids (1:59) today, I know that they’ll be thankful for it eventually. That’s Bridget Stewart with the (2:03) BOCES in Southern Lincoln County and wrapping up the career day at Kemmerer Junior Senior High School.