Rhode Island Hospital President and CEO Joseph Amaral has already helped his three children get ready for college and a career. Now, through a program run by the Community College of Rhode Island, he’s helping many more do it every semester.
City Campus, a collaboration of the CCRI and the R.I. Office of Higher Education, has allowed hundreds of urban high school students to earn college credit and learn about prospective careers since it was launched in the spring of 2004.
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Students – who presently come from the Met School, Feinstein High School and E-Cubed Academy – are also given preparation for college throughout the program.
They have several course options, including “The Real ER,” which focuses on health care, and “Crime and Punishment,” which allows students to view criminal justice careers.
The program, which is worth three college credits, is taught by a team made up of a CCRI faculty member, a high school teacher and an adviser. It also includes people such as Amaral, employers who have opened up their workplaces to the teens.
“This allows us to get students to come in and see our hospital, exposing them to many facets of the health care system,” Amaral said. “[It could] interest them or at least let them know that it’s not for them.”
The Real ER program, which allows students to learn more about health care through “job shadowing” and other lessons, offers several ways to explore the field.
According to Nancy Diaz, one of six principals at Providence’s Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the Met School), the program not only helps students pinpoint what they may want to do once they complete school, but it also helps get them ready for the next stage of their education careers.
“A lot of our students are students who without this experience might not have the confidence to go onto college,” she said. “[CCRI’s] City Campus has helped our students really feel comfortable in learning what CCRI is and what college is.”
Her sentiments are echoed by K.C. Perry, principal at the New Feinstein High School in Providence. He said that students often need preparation before taking the leap.
“They’re afraid that when they come to college it’s a very different environment – it’s socially different, it’s academically different,” he said. “We need to allow our students to have the experience before they get there. This program does that.”
Amaral said that it’s not only urban youths who have difficulty preparing for college and selecting a career, and students across Rhode Island could benefit from this program.
“I really do see a great potential for this in the future,” he said.
