(ROSENBERG, Texas) – The halls of Texas State Technical College’s Fort Bend County campus have been filled with high school students throughout the month of March. The reason? TechXperience.
TechXperience is the college’s initiative to help high school students learn more about the career options and opportunities available to them through technical education. While it is normally confined to a single day, Chemese Armstrong, senior manager of enrollment at the campus, wanted to expand it to cover the whole month.
“Separating TechXperience to a whole month helps ease the burden on the campus,” she said. “It gives programs more time with the high school students.”
Armstrong shared an experience she had with some female students who were visiting the Occupational Safety and Environmental Compliance program. Armstrong recalled that as they learned more about the program, they expressed a realization that there were exciting careers they had not ever thought about before.
So far, over 10 different schools have attended this year’s TechXperience. Soraya Soto, career facilitator for B.F. Terry High School, welcomed the opportunity it gave her students.
“I sent out a survey to see who might be interested in this,” she said. “I’m trying to grow the program more and defeat the assumption that technical education isn’t as valuable as four-year universities.”
It helps that Soto has a more personal history with TSTC, as her husband, Cesar Castellari, recently graduated from the Industrial Systems program and is now attending the college’s HVAC Technology program.
“A lot of the kids’ parents work in technical jobs, but without degrees,” Soto said. “I want to show them this is a good avenue for them to support themselves and their families.”
For more information about TSTC, go to tstc.edu.
