By Amber Dyer, Coordinator, Communications & Marketing
Average reading time: 2.5 minutes
At the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Education and Workforce Council meeting, hosted Thursday, Sept. 4, at the Uplift Heights Healthcare Institute, leaders from Uplift Education and Baylor Scott & White Health examined how their Healthcare Pathways program partnership is advancing college preparedness and post-secondary success.
Strategic partnerships help prepare students for post-secondary outcomes
“The goal of K–12 education is to prepare youth to have lives of economic opportunity, mobility, and choice,” said Yasmin Bhatia, the outgoing CEO of Uplift Education.
When students feel supported not just by their administration and school system, but by the broader community, success is sure to follow.
To achieve this goal, Uplift Education has partnered with organizations to create programs that prepare students to navigate the ever-evolving occupational landscape.
“We bring in secondary partners to think through what degrees and certificates are that best prepare students for jobs,” said Phil Kendzior, Vice President of Workforce Development at Baylor Scott & White Health. “Once we nail those degree plans out, we can start backwards mapping all the way down to high school to prepare students for the admissions requirements for various programs.”
One such partnership is their health care workforce pipeline which is an immersive health care program that focuses on building students’ technical expertise and mindset.
“With our partners at Baylor Scott & White, we sat down and said, ‘what will it look like to prepare the future health care workforce and families?’” asked Dr. Remy Washington, incoming CEO of Uplift Education. The joint program between Baylor Scott & White Health and Uplift Education has simulation labs to recreate authentic hospital environments with real medical equipment, providing augmented learning experiences across multiple health care disciplines to prepare students for possible future careers.
“We very intentionally designed the simulation labs to look and feel like a major hospital,” said Sophia Kwong Myers, Senior Director of Career Pathways and Programs at Uplift Education. “They’re practicing how to take vital signs and how to draw blood. These are ways that we’re preparing students at an earlier age and being very innovative around the fact that we can’t have them working with patients.”
Connecting students with health care experts strengthens their support network
Beyond hands-on experience, the program exposes students to subject matter experts from various health care fields. Through their deep engagement with these experts, students will essentially become team members by graduation.
“Because of the level of involvement [students will] have with these scholars, by the time they graduate after four years, they’re already going to be part of the team,” said Kendzior. “They will already know the hiring managers; they will already have relationships. They will already be familiar with our culture and what it means to work with us. They will have realistic job previews and be ready to go.”
Programs like these demonstrate the power of partnership between education and industry, but measuring their success requires robust assessment systems. The recently introduced House Bill 8 (HB 8) from the 89th Texas Legislative Session will considerably change the state’s assessment system, leading to increased accountability.
HB 8 introduces a modernized assessment approach
Businesses throughout the Dallas Region rely on academic assessments and accountability ratings to evaluate the health of the talent pipeline and inform decisions about corporate relocations and expansions.
“By modernizing Texas’ approach to academic assessments, HB 8 will deliver clear data about educational outcomes to employers and working parents while maintaining rigorous standards for public schools,” said DRC Senior Vice President of Education and Workforce Jarrad Toussant.