Upward Bound High School Students Attend Career Expo
By Jody Record, Campus Journal Editor
August 8, 2007
On a recent blisteringly hot summer day, when you’d expect to find high
school students at the beach or lounging around a swimming pool somewhere,
a group of teens opted instead to spend the time exploring possibilities for
their futures.
More than 70 kids from New Hampshire enrolled in Upward Bound at UNH attended
the program’s 5th career expo to learn about jobs that require a college
degree. The students met for three half-hour sessions with any of the 14 presenters
of their choosing.
“This process helps Upward Bound students discover career paths and
shows them some of the varied careers available,” said Dan Gordon, director
of Upward Bound since 1990.
Upward Bound is a federally funded program for low-income students that helps
them gain the necessary tools to go to, and be successful in, college. It’s
part of the Department of Education’s TRIO Programs, which include Veteran's
Upward Bound, Talent Search, Student Support Services, the Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate
Program, and Upward Bound Math and Science.
The residential summer program brings 75 students to UNH for six weeks ;here
they take classes in literature and composition, math, natural sciences, success
studies, the arts, Spanish and other areas as well as attend seminars, workshops,
group dynamics training sessions and individual and group counseling.
“This is a really good opportunity,” said Kayleigh, a 17-year-old
senior from Milton who attended last year’s summer session as well. “I
wouldn’t have known anything about some of these fields without talking
to people here.”
She came to this career expo with an interest in architecture and spent one
of her sessions at the table with Michelle Shields, an architectural designer
who has her own company in Kittery, Maine. Shields signed on for the forum
in part, she said, because she wants kids to believe they can do anything.
Her mother was a landscape architect at a time when the field was predominately
male.
“And when she was in college, she was the only woman in the program.
I wasn’t raised with restrictive thinking,” Shields said, adding
she wants students today to have that same freedom when it comes to career
choices.
Other presenters at the career sessions included the Rev. Jean Bass, acting
director of United Campus Ministry and the Waysmeet Center; William Conk, vice-president
of Doctors Without Borders and director of UNH housing; Jamie Marie Cournane,
a marine biologist with the Ocean Process Analysis Lab, Caroline Ganley, district
outreach director for U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter; John Grossman, publisher,
Back Channel Press; Mohamed Hamcha, senior network engineer, Enterasys Networks,
Inc.; Jeff Holt, mechanical engineer, Osram Sylvania; Tim Horan, software engineer,
Liberty Mutual; Rich Newman, insurance specialist, Hub International Insurance;
Katie Paine, president and CEO, KDPaine and Partners; Diane Proulx, nurse,
The Family Place, Concord Hospital; Tim Stone, vice president, StoneHill Environmental,
Inc.; and Kourosh Zarringhalam, mathematician, UNH math department.
Upward Bound has been offered at the university since 1966 and is one of more
than 700 such programs in the country. UNH Upward Bound is 100 percent funded
by the Department of Education through a competitive grant competition every
four years. As one of only two Upward Bound projects in New Hampshire, UNH
Upward Bound serves 91 students in six high schools located in southern and
eastern New Hampshire.
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