As a life-long Albionite and a parent who’d like to see his children have the option of building their lives here, I’ve long been interested in rural development. It’s no secret that rural communities have long been in decline – the population of Boone County peaked at 14,738 in 1930 but had dropped to only 5,315 by 2015.
Retaining young people has long been a focus of rural development – I read a report once that said despite all the agricultural commodities rural counties produce, young people are their leading export. And I’ve observed that many of our high school kids think they can live anywhere they want after college – except here.
So efforts to engage our youth are an important part of rural revitalization efforts. A few years ago my wife Lori and I even co-taught a semester-long seminar on rural issues at UNL – it was amazing how little students there knew about rural areas, but heartening to see how interested they were in learning more. More recently I’ve been fortunate to participate in the UNL Extension Service’s Connecting The Dots program, a program that brings high school freshmen and sophomores together with a variety of community members so the students can learn more about the careers available right here.
According to the Extension Service’s website, “Connecting The Dots facilitates growth and development of our rural communities through increased connections between youth and community leaders. Youth gain an understanding of the opportunities within their own communities and the importance of the choices they make in high school.”
Extension educator Jill Goedeken told me that of the youth who participate in this program (and there’ve been 30 sessions so far this year),
- 96% understand their opportunities to go to college in Nebraska, an increase of 20% before attending the program.
- 83% agreed that they prioritized their career options, an increase of 33% before attending the program.
- 91% have thought about how to pay for college
- 81% learned how to act professionally
- 77% say Connecting The Dots has helped them identify things they are good at and explore future career options.
Careers are divided into 6 general areas – Business, Agriculture, Communications, Technical Sciences, Human Sciences and Health Sciences. These areas are then subdivided into 16 more specific categories and adults from this area who work in these fields provide information to students about their particular area of expertise. Each adult is provided with files listing specific careers available in Nebraska. The adults go over these with the students, noting the amount of education needed and salary ranges for these careers. This way students learn not only about careers but have a chance to talk with actual employers.
The event was held in the Boone County Event Center and local Extension educator Sonya Glup told me that 9th and 10th grade students from all schools within about an hour’s drive of Albion were invited to attend (Boone Central has a program called Career Academies so they didn’t participate). And a lot of students were there. I represented careers in the Arts, and offered the students information about 53 careers available in the arts here in rural Nebraska.
This was the second year I represented the Arts and both times I had about a dozen students talk to me about career opportunities in that field. All were kids trying to get a better handle on a career path. And as Jill’s statistics show, this program is a big help to them in making good choices and building successful careers, including right here in rural Nebraska.