Center on Education and Work’s Careers Conference Inspires, Encourages Educators
February 10, 2013
Keynote speakers Annie Mais and Ray Ricafort
Like hundreds of others attending last week’s Center on Education and Work’s 27th annual Careers Conference, Dave Keane was looking for a little inspiration.
Keane, the principal of the senior public high school in Fort Dodge, Iowa, found it in the first few hours after the conference kicked off on the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 29. In a seminar hosted by Tena Madison, the assistant director for technology services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Keane learned how to use social media to get word out about his school’s accomplishments.
“Our school has a lot to offer, but we don’t do a lot to market ourselves,” Keane said. “We need to do a better job to get our message out to our community, and this could be a great way to do that.”
According to conference director Carol Edds, inspiration was a major theme at the two-day event, hosted at the Concourse Hotel & Governor’s Club in downtown Madison.
Caroline Dowd-Higgins, author of This is Not the Career I Ordered, discussed essential survival strategies for a rapidly changing jobs marketplace.
“With more than 120 seminars, workshops and roundtables, there’s all sorts of opportunities for attendees to get exposure to new ideas,” Edds said. “Educators and career professionals are facing so many challenges these days, and this conference is a great place for them to find answers, seek out best practices, and talk with peers and experts about programs and topics of interest to them.”
Embracing the theme of inspiration, Annie Mais and Ray Ricafort of the PBS documentary television show “Roadtrip Nation,” in which young people travel around the globe seeking out interviews with people who have found their dream careers, urged those in attendance during their opening keynote address to encourage high school and college students to live their dreams.
“It’s pretty common thing to get out of school and still not know what you’re going to do,” Mais said. “People tend to see life as a linear path, but that’s not always the case. I always push young people to find out what drives them and to take that into account along with the more practical considerations that go into finding a career.”
Attendees of the Careers Conference engaged in a roundtable discussion
Ricafort, who co-hosted one season of the show and now, along with Mais assists in the direction of an educational program based upon the TV show that engages more than 120,000 students nationally, said talking with people who had found their dream jobs had taught him that there are many routes to finding a fulfilling career.
“A lot of students love basketball, but they’re not all going to be professional athletes,” Ricafort said. “But through their own efforts, they find out there’s a lot of ways to be around the game. There are managers, coaches, people who work in the stadium, architects who design stadiums – there’s a whole world around the sport they love. They find out there’s a lot of ways to hold onto what they love and to stay involved in something that interests them.”
Keane, the principal from Iowa, said the Roadtrip staffers’ message hit home.
“They were inspiring – this whole conference is always inspiring,” Keane said. “I’ve attended for the last 12 years, and I’m always able to take something back and do something with it. Our school’s advisory program evolved after coming here one year. In fact, we’re doing all sorts of things in our school that we brought back from this conference.”
For more information on the conference, and for video recordings of the keynote speakers from this year’s event, visit www.cew.wisc.edu/careersconf.
Photos by Julie Raasch.
