More than 1,500 middle and high school students recently came together for a special STEM Expo held at Chico State. Myron Curtis, the region’s ICT-Digital Media Deputy Sector Navigator helped in the planning of this outreach event and was impressed with the turnout.
“There were over a thousand attendees who engaged in visiting booths for job interviews and career exploration with industry reps from all over the State, but most were from the Far North,” Curtis said.
The event was sponsored by growTECH, a partnership between tech and entrepreneur industry leaders and supporting community organizations in the Chico/Northern California area. Websites of growTECH partner companies scrolled on a large monitor throughout the event, and students received handouts with information about current job openings.
Participants earned “swag” by completing four different challenges, including a scavenger hunt, hacker challenge and a photo booth activity.
The most popular of these was the Kahoot game where students competed against each other in a live, digital media game of trivia based on local growTECH companies. Students searched company websites to come up with the answers.
“They had to identify key soft skills and educational levels needed for various job types represented at participating companies,” Curtis said. “They also had to figure out the size of staff and operational scale of the companies based on the description of key clients.”
Curtis also provided funding and assisted with Butte College’s Explorers Fair in the fall. More than 400 attendees from surrounding middle schools participated in hands-on exploration of career education opportunities from Robotics, Programming, Network Support and more.
For information about upcoming events in the North/Far North Region, contact Myron Curtis at curtismy@butte.edu.