PPBEA’s Fall 2024 Career Pathways Summit

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Provided by the Pikes Peak Business & Education Alliance (PPBEA) through their Pathways Pulse newsletter.

PPBEA, in partnership with regional Career & Technical Education (CTE) leaders, and postsecondary and industry partners, hosted over 250 attendees at the inaugural Regional Career Pathways Summit on October 29th. The primary purpose of the Summit is to bring business and education stakeholders together into a meaningful and repeatable framework for action. The primary, intended impact of this twice-annual Summit event is to bring into balance the knowledge, skills and experience of students emerging from area high schools with a path for early employment into the high-demand occupations in our community that are in desperate need of a talent solution. Our community needs thousands of new nurses and healthcare professionals. Our community needs thousands of new skilled trades professionals, technologists, and engineers to support advanced manufacturers and construction services. Our community needs thousands of new information technology and information security professionals. We have not and are not graduating enough high school students to fill nearly enough of these high-demand, solid middle-class jobs that lead to economic prosperity for all.

With support from area CTE leaders, PPBEA curated some very important talent pipeline data that was revealed at the October 29th Summit. The data provided in the Career Pathway Enrollment v LMI Data Infographics highlights the chronic shortfall of students engaged in secondary CTE pathway education versus the open jobs reported.

A quote from a recent interview with Mike Rowe, the “Dirty Jobs” star, demonstrates where we are related to this problem. “We’re dealing with alarming math … For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two will replace them.”

“I got a call a few months ago from a company building four nuclear-powered submarines for the U.S. Navy. They need to hire 100,000 tradespeople in the next nine years. This guy called me and said, ‘Can you help? … Do you know where they are?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do, they’re in the eighth grade.’ We have to start now, because we’re racing the math and the math never loses.”

For the sake of our students and for the economic vitality of our region, we need to take immediate, organized and thoughtful action to remedy this imbalance. The first steps to move the needle in the right direction include having education systems and parents prioritize CTE pathway curriculum and PPBEA career-connected learning (CCL) for students. And, businesses with chronically unfilled jobs need to lean into the PPBEA system to provide CCL and mentorship opportunities so they can compete for the attention of 8th graders!

Monumental Impact is a Community Education Partner with PPBEA and able to provide students in our programs access to the rich set of career-connected learning opportunities. Reach out to Jeanette Breton if your student is interested in exploring these opportunities.

Reese’s MITEE Reflections

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Hi, I’m Reese! I am a senior in high school and a MITEE* veteran. I have been on the Bearbotics FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Team 19541 for the past three seasons, currently the Circuit Sharks under The MITEE Network. My experience in this program was a huge part of finding out what I want to do in life. For me, it helped me see the many ways technology could become a career path.

I originally found out about this program about three years ago when I was a freshman. I had heard about it through a friend and thought it sounded fun! Robotics was always something that had seemed really cool to me, and I wanted to give it my best shot. In my first year, we formed three robotics teams, and we were all new to the FTC program, so we all had a lot of learning to do! Something I didn’t know at the time was the large number of leadership opportunities this would end up giving me. I was most often a lead programmer, directing my team’s workflow and making sure we had enough time for both work and fun, but I was also able to lead some projects while I did an internship for MITEE!

As I mentioned earlier, these internships helped me and my fellow students develop skills during the robotics season and transition them to real-world projects and careers. For example, we toured a lot of tech-related companies, hosted classes and clinics for our community, and developed our own products and projects! Over the years, I taught programming through LEGO Robotics, designed and managed an escape room, and worked with our marketing team to promote our presence in the community.

This unique program has not only shaped my life, but it has presented me with a number of interesting career opportunities. My main area of focus while I was on the robotics team was programming and computer science, and I now plan to major in computer science while I study at Utah State University. The digital world has a lot of applications, and it can be used in everything from websites to video games to data storage. My main goal with studying computer science is to work in the world of video game development and software development.

Now, MITEE’s identity is changing a bit from the Bearbotics team I worked with. There’s a new generation of student innovators ready to rock the world! Today, each team is working together to forge their own unique path based on their career interests. These teams are working hard to make their mark with their own ideas and goals. I look forward to seeing what they will accomplish in the future!

*About MITEE

MITEE is an acronym for Monumental Impact for Technology, Engineering and Entrepreneurship which represents Monumental Impact’s programs and community of students and adults.  The MITEE Network comprises  three FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams: (1) 19541 Circuit Sharks; (2) 19970 The 3rd Turtle; and (3) 20771 Bionic Badgers. In addition to competitions, these teams offer their own set of products, services and events to the community, operating in a manner similar to an engineering firm.

Students Elevate Their Tech Game

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Thank you to Stephanie Gonzales, a freelance writer for Lewis Palmer School District 38 (D38), for her article on Monumental Impact’s Engineering Firm Experiences offered to D38 students through a collaborative partnership with D38. Under the Engineering Firm Experience the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) program is a competitive “sports of the mind” where students have “Go to Market” industry-like experiences as they prepare to compete, both in their robot’s capabilities and their business engineering portfolio.

Interns Able to Visit Local Makerspaces

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Monumental Impact took on five high school students as interns at the beginning of the summer of 2021, with four focused on engineering one on journalism. Each engineering intern was tasked with coming up with and designing a product, service, or event content by the end of the summer.

At the beginning of the summer, Monumental Impact went to four different makerspaces to inspire the interns, show them real workspaces in the engineering and design fields, and give them the opportunity to learn from experts in these fields. We visited Pikes Peak Makerspace, the Manitou Art Center, Library 21c at Chapel Hills, and the ConcealFab corporation.

At each location, staff members generously gave us a tour of the facility. Our interns were able to speak directly with makers about their own experiences and knowledge and also their individual projects in order to receive advice from the experts!

Pikes Peak Makerspace

The first makerspace Monumental Impact visited was the Pikes Peak Makerspace in Colorado Springs. This organization is a non-profit that provides classes and equipment for its members to create just about anything they come up with!

Makers took us on a tour of the facility and showed us what they were making before sitting down with our interns to discuss their ideas. Our interns received some great information and constructive criticism!

“The advice they gave was kind of just going for it. You’ll never know if it’ll work until you try it. They also talked about how they’ve experienced lots of failures and how failure is a good building block, so instead of thinking of it as a setback, it’s something you can do correctly in the future. Just talking about that really helped me understand that the kit didn’t have to work out the first time,” said Bailey Gargasz.

Thank you to Pikes Peak Makerspace for welcoming our interns into their facility and teaching them more about the design and creation process!

Manitou Art Center

MITEE visited the Manitou Art Center next, and it was amazing! The art center is a non-profit that is home to just about every artistic field you can think of: everything from ceramics to metal-working to making textiles or electronics. 

Three artists who create their work at the art center presented some of their artwork to us, discussing everything from their creation process to how they find inspiration for their art to marketing. Our interns learned a ton about the design process from those at the makerspace.

Artists are able to rent out spaces to create their art, and the art center’s equipment is also available to the public! Manitou Art Center has partnered with the Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) to allow cardholders to access the makerspace during open hours, so it is an amazing place to learn or foster new artistic talents.

During our tour, it was inspiring to see all of the different artistic fields with beautiful creations scattered throughout. Our interns loved seeing an art-focused makerspace, and are excited to approach their projects with creativity and a new lens!

Library 21c

For our third visit to makerspaces in the region, Monumental Impact went to Library 21C!

During our tour, we saw all of the equipment open to PPLD cardholders: 3D printers, wood engravers, a dark room, a video and music studio, computers with the full Adobe suite, and more!

We had a ton of fun touring the library and working on our projects in one of the conference rooms. Thank you, Library 21c, for hosting us!

ConcealFab Corporation

For our final visit to a makerspace for the semester, we went to the ConcealFab Corporation in Colorado Springs!

In this facility, our interns were able to see the production process of small cell concealments for hybrid spectrum radios and antennas. The final product is sleek, and the company’s goal is to both help the customers achieve faster site approval and improve wireless network performance. 

It was incredible to tour through the various stages of production, with Carl Tompson, the Vice President of Engineering, as our tour guide. The tour made our interns think about options for producing their own products on a larger scale.

William “Doc” Pounds, Executive Vice President – Technical Fellow, spoke with our interns about his experience in the engineering field. With 40 years of experience in conceptual and electro-mechanical design, he was an amazing resource for our interns.

“I really liked ConcealFab with Doc. Doc was awesome, he was super nice and he also showed us a bunch of cool stuff, it was really interesting,” said Bailey Gargasz.

Thank you to ConcealFab for helping to inspire our interns to take their products as far as possible!

Building Our Social Enterprise

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We are ready to build our foundation as a social enterprise. Are there high school students out there in the Tri-Lakes area interested in joining us on the journey? Do you want to help us with engineering and / or technology products, services or event content? There are no definitive books or surefire nonprofit business models for what we envision as our offerings, but we are okay with this.  Since every student is different and the fields of technology and engineering are broad and diverse, we expect over the years our offerings will be different, broad and diverse. Our internships will provide industry experiences as we define, refine, make and deliver offerings. We look forward to helping spark interests and increase awareness of career opportunities in these fields.

Our intent as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is to be a social enterprise[1].  We would prefer to diversify our funding options and provide opportunities for students to gain industry experience of bringing products, services and events to market as engineers and technologists. As a nonprofit, we can be entrepreneurial.  We can sell products and services, but our income must go back into our mission.  Our mission is to enable student interests and skills in engineering and technology.  Thus we should focus our products or services to be engineering and / or technology-centered to align with our mission.

As with any business we should also set income goals that align with this social enterprise intent. This year we have set non-zero goals for any products, services or event income that we are able to achieve together.

This summer we will be building a foundation in both our development lifecycle and our offerings. The process will span a year across multiple internships for one product to complete one cycle.  After working the product through the process, students will gain a deep understanding of the roles, process and types of businesses that are involved in bringing an engineering and technology-focused product to market. Exciting times for those coming on board this summer for the journey!

We are starting this summer in Stage 1 of our development lifecycle. In our first two weeks we will brainstorm and collaborate together on what products, services or event content we have an interest in designing and prototyping.  What types of products will we design, prototype, sell? How do we plan to deliver? Who is our target audience of these products? Which way will we choose to manufacture them later in the year?  We will also explore whether we could provide services? What can we offer with our skills?  

We don’t plan to work in isolation and will look at opportunities to broaden our experience. For instance, to get a lay of the industry in Stage 1 we intend to visit with inventors and businesses that deliver products or provide services, large and small.  

On November 20th, 2021, Monumental Impact intends to host a MITEE[2] Exhibition. This event will provide an opportunity for students to showcase projects they have been working on and for supported programs to share their latest creations.  During our brainstorm some students may come up with a project that will focus on entertaining community members at the exhibition.  To add to the fun, we may choose to host activities in which both adults and students can participate such as a DonkeyCar Rally and Colorado Combat Robotics.  The Exhibition will provide an opportunity for some fun, market offerings and inspire others to love engineering and technology as we do!

If you are a high school student in the area interested in engineering and technology, we’d love to have you on our team. Monumental Impact is looking forward to seeing what we come up with together!

More information on applying to our internships can be found here.

Summer Internship Schedule

We know summer schedules can be hectic. Some may have jobs that are helping them with funds while others have family vacation obligations. We have proposed the following 2-7-2 schedule for our summer internships. The work schedule will include a 2-week focused time of 3-4 hours a day as a team at the beginning and end of the internship while we have a 7-week flex period in-between where team members are working remotely. A key to this schedule will be the first work week of June 1st where we work together to define our projects and business expectations.

[1] More about social enterprises can be found in our previous article, How is Monumental Impact a Social Enterprise?.

[2] MITEE stands for Monumental Impact for Technology, Engineering and Entrepreneurship.

Ready to enable student experiences

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Core to our mission is to enable student experiences. We now have a space, but how does that impact enabling student experiences, especially in a time of COVID? Well, it impacts our ability to have a home base to enable different types of student experiences even with COVID. We will use our space for: small team competition activities; training before a rotation of desktop equipment to a student’s home and; internships with home-based businesses.

What type of student experiences? With two of our industry areas of technology and engineering we are currently focused on enabling student experiences with fabrication and design capabilities. These two areas can be enabled with some out of the box thinking even with the restrictions of COVID.

For fabrication experiences we will start with 3D Printing and CNC router equipment (examples shown). Supplies include plastic filament, aluminum, lexan, router bits, Dewalt 611 router for these types of experiences.

The design area covers many different disciplines of engineering and graphics, even programming and entrepreneurial marketing. To provide design experiences you need high-end graphics PCs with software licenses for the discipline of interest such as mechanical, electrical, programming and graphics. By providing the equipment and supplies needed for these experiences, students interested in these areas are enabled to explore these career pathways.

We look forward to enabling students interested in learning design-to-fabrication techniques with desktop tools and supplies even with COVID. We also look forward to enabling small team activities for the Bearbotics that is still competing this season during COVID.

With these types of student experiences available to students interested in these fields, we will have enabled them in their journey even during COVID. With a will there’s a way to enable. We just need to think outside of the box. Will you help us enable these student experiences?


Grateful for Our Community of Support

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We are very grateful for our Community of Support we have received this year.  Since our founding in January 2020 we have made much progress.  We could not have done it without all those mentioned below.  It does take a village!

Grateful for Our Space

We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Lewis Palmer School District (D38) on bringing in work-based experiences in technology, engineering and entrepreneurship industries.  With this collaboration is the offer of space in the Grace Best Education Facility, the East Rooms.  We could see this in our vision and welcomed the opportunity to bring Bearbotics into this shared space to provide them a home, a Bear Cave.  Thank you, D38 and Bearbotics, for your collaboration and shared space!

Making It a Home

One of the first things we were able to do with the help of the Bearbotics team was to make the space a home for both of us.  A Painting Party was hosted over a weekend in October.  We received credits and donations from both Home Depot and Ace Hardware that provided us with enough paint to provide a fresh look for all the rooms.  Thank you, Coach Hinkle, for coordinating and planning the event!  Thank you, Home Depot and Ace Hardware, for the paint and supplies!  Thank you to the Bearbotics team, Coaches, Mentors and parents for your time and painting to give the space a fresh look!

The Conversion

But first was to convert this space into a viable option for tools like 3D printers, mills, CNCs and high-end tech for engineering design, graphic design and machine learning.  All with minimum effort and low cost as it is to be a temporary space.  We had a plan for the space, but very limited money.  This is where Matt Middleton, as a Coach to the Bearbotics, but more importantly an expert and manager of construction projects with FlintCo, stepped in to help pull resources together to the changes needed. We are thankful for Colorado Doorways’ donation of a door and frame to offer us a pass thru between the two main areas.  We are thankful for ICI for making an opening and installing the door frame.  We are thankful for Encore Electric for installing power in the workroom and installing EXIT signs to light the way to safety in case of emergency.  Thank you, Matt Middleton, FlintCo, Colorado Doorways, ICI and Encore Electric!!

Furnishing and Equipping the Space

A donation of tables came from Pikes Peak Makerspace with a purchase of chairs from a church provided us the capabilities for meetings and table space to work.  With donations from Techno Chaos like 3D printers, refrigerator, monitors and gadgets the space started to look like a technology workspace with the capabilities for team meetings in-person or remote.  We appreciate all the custom built-ins, mounting of whiteboards, mounting of monitors and a bulletin board by Bearbotics Coach Hinkle.  We know many of the mentors and Coach Middleton were involved in much of this with Coach Hinkle.  Thank you, Techno Chaos, Pikes Peak Makerspace and the Bearbotics Coaches and Mentors, for getting the space furnished and usable for us all!

And how do you expect to support engineering, technology and entrepreneurship without some tech-enablement such as the internet!  Simple Computer Repair in Monument has been readying the space with cable for internet capabilities.  They have been working closely with Force Broadband to offer us internet capabilities for businesses that want to use the space for their projects and for internships.  Thank you, Simple Computer Repair and Force Broadband!  

There is still much to do in equipping the space for engineering and technology projects.  Our goal is to provide industry experiences in these fields for students.  We appreciate the grant from the Monument Hill Foundation and a donation from Mike Hinkle to get us started on this path.  We will be looking into deals over the next few months to make the most of their funds.  Thank you, Monument Hill Foundation and Mike Hinkle, for your funding!

In a Time of COVID

COVID has brought many changes in how things operate.  As an organization that provides shared space, equipment and resources COVID can provide a challenge.  But these challenges are nothing new to makerspaces.  In the Pikes Peak region we are lucky to have maker resources such as the Pikes Peak Makerspace, Manitou Art Center, Pikes Peak Library District’s (PPLD) Library 21c and PPLD’s network of Creative Services.  And now Monumental Impact.  All four of us have been gathering together monthly for Makerspace Collaborations since COVID.  These sessions have helped enable Monumental Impact and formed many of our policies for a safe operating environment, especially in these times of COVID.  Thank you, Pikes Peak Makerspace, Manitou Art Center and PPLD’s Creative Services, for your time, expertise and collaboration!

Providing Experiences

Our mission is to enable and support high school students in technology, engineering and entrepreneurship with experiences and community.  As we have made strides to make our space ‘open for business’ we are grateful to those mentioned above that have gotten us here.  We are also grateful to those below that have been with us in the beginning to collaborate on work-based experiences to offer students.   Thank you, Pikes Peak Business & Education Alliance, D38, Tri-Lakes Cares, Triad Engineering, Colorado Technology Consultants, Techno Chaos, Simple Computer Repair, Hydration & More and the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce.  We are off to a great start!  

We look forward to building the buzz in the air for students to be inspired in career pathways in technology, engineering and entrepreneurship.  Are you a business or mentor that could help us build that buzz?  

How is Monumental Impact a Social Enterprise?

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Social impact is the effect an organization’s actions have on the well being of the community. Social Impact Projects are intended to foster more cross-disciplinary collaboration, encourage students to work within the community, and leverage their ability to benefit communities. A Social Enterprise exists to solve a social issue by combining commercial and social goals, but with an emphasis on a social mission (From Colorado Institute for Social Impact). Monumental Impact’s goal is to enable and support high school students with an interest and passion for engineering, technology and entrepreneurship with experiences.

As Monumental Impact starts up, we will foster student’s entrepreneurial interests as an incubator. Some students may jump right in with ideas they would like to offer the community. While other students are just looking for work-based experiences to get their footing outside of the classroom. We welcome both types of student interns!

As the student community capabilities grow, many of these experiences will form patterns of the types of products, services and events that student leadership can manage throughout the year. We look forward to this evolution as a channel for both student experiences and as offerings that benefit their student community, business community, residential community and themselves via self-improvement. In time, the goal is that students are leading all of these products, services and events that provide them experiences…in addition to giving back into their own programs as funds and skills. We look forward to enabling and supporting them in their journey!

Monument nonprofit ‘impacts’ technology, engineering and entrepreneurship for local youth

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Thank you to Benn Farrell, a freelance writer for the Gazette, for his article in The Tribune on Monumental Impact as we were finding our footing in 2020 after COVID restrictions were put in place. We started our nonprofit one month before COVID and yet we still had six interns that first summer that worked remotely to help form and shape our internship opportunities for students interested in technology, engineering and entrepreneurship.

Inspire the Engineers, Technologists and Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow

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We invite businesses and individuals to join us as we build an environment of support and mentorship for the engineers, technologists and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. There are many ways you can participate and you do not have to be an engineering and technology business. The key driver is providing experiences for students in the Tri-Lakes area so they can explore their interests and passions in engineering, technology or entrepreneurship. Below are some examples of participating:

  1. Contract Us for a Project: Within your business there may be a collection of similar tasks, an implementation or a prototype that you would like to be done. As a student team with mentors, Monumental Impact intends to be poised to help you scope, monitor and complete your project, all while providing engineering or technology experiences to student team members. We intend to have our own capabilities for computer programming and 3D design-to-fabrication. Some examples of projects are:
    • Providing an inventory of equipment, technology or software assets
    • Putting together a training or orientation media or visualization
    • Pulling together data and looking at ways of automating
    • Implementing a website
    • Implementing or troubleshooting a technology, especially in a business
    • Creating CAD representations of a product or parts
    • Implementing and providing demonstrations for an event of yours
    • Executing a basic cyber security check of your technology infrastructure
  2. Job Shadow opportunity: A total of 4 hours that can be separated into two 2-hour sessions. Students shadow an individual in an engineering, technology or entrepreneurial job. Students are not doing the work, but are observers and can gain exposure to different types of jobs.
  3. Join Our Community as a Mentor: From individual projects to being a part of the afterschool programs we support, let us know how much time you are willing to help and what skill sets you are offering. Skill sets we are looking for are project management, engineering (any discipline), technology (hardware & software), product management, customer service, financials and time management.
  4. Sponsor Us: Let us know if you want to sponsor a skill-building program or an event for us to organize and host. We intend to host events to increase awareness of projects we are doing and provide outreach programs to mentor and build skill sets in our younger talent pipeline.

Please contact us, if any of the above interests you or you have questions. We looking forward to growing a community of support for tomorrow’s engineers, technologists and entrepreneurs!