Teachers tour tech sites to help students make connections for the future

GOLETA, Calif. - Teachers from Carpinteria High School were learning about jobs in technology today with plans to bring back information to students about a career path in the future.
Not all of the jobs of the future require a computer, mathematics or engineering degree. 

 Some can be learned from a starting position with in a company and for those working at Curvature with a duel-track including college, there's also tuition assistance.

Curvature General Manager Sachi Thompson said she often looks for employees who are the right fit and have the right work ethic plus a willingness to learn. "So a lot of my guys will start as an entry level roll, blowing out equipment on the dock  just getting the dust off of it, working the floor," she said. "Then they graduate up."

On the walk through, the technical manager Justin Hallstrom said to get a job, your back ground could be building home equipment. "Whether it is for gaming or home usage in general or knowing how to slot a memory stick in or what a CPU does or what a hard drive is."

"The South Coast Chamber of Commerce CEO Kristin Miller said there are many new and growing tech companies on the South Coast.   "There's great career opportunities right here at home." The goal is to have the teachers encourage local students to tap into their full potential in the years ahead.
Miller said,  "if we can expose  them to a wide variety of opportunities including high tech  that's a great way to support our local economy as well as supporting our youth."

Part of the presentation explained to the teachers that the can go back to their students who are 16 and 17-years old and say in the years ahead  they can walk through the doors of some of the companies and have a well paid job event while they are in college.   

The tech companies also have a relationship that could help each other with qualified workers or to keep them in the area if there's downsizing. The teachers learned the on going need for companies to access a qualified workforce for the future. Thompson said,  "I look for people that have a lot of grit and a lot of talent inside and they want to make a difference. They have something to prove and they are kind of like a clay that we get to mold."

Carpinteria High Assistant Principal Kirsten Neumann said, "we want the students to be connected to the community and we want them to feel like they have a future here even if they are not going to go a traditional route they have all the capability to build a future for themselves in places like this."

In addition to Curvature, the teachers also toured the UC Santa Barbara Nanofab department and Agilent in Carpinteria.