High school students to share conservation projects at Oct. 13 celebration

Oct 08, 2018 | Read More News

The Pima County Youth Career Connect project is providing 14 Sunnyside Unified School District students a chance to learn more about the botany, biomes and wildlife of Coronado National Forest as part of an internship experience on Mt. Lemmon Oct. 8-12. Students will then recap the weeklong experience at a Learning Celebration Saturday, Oct. 13, 2-3:30 p.m. at the Rose Canyon Lake Amphitheater. All are welcome.
 
The conservation internships are part of a partnership with the National Forest Foundation, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Arizona Conservation Corps and the Pima Youth Career Connect project. 

The internship enables students from Sunnyside High School and Pueblo High School to experience hands-on nature conservation while learning about the many professions that keep the environment healthy, such as wildlife biology, forestry, conservation biology, hydrology, environmental science and more. They’ll start the week at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, getting an up-close view of the animals and plants conservationists seek to protect. 

From Oct. 10 to 13, they will help a conservation crew manage an area of the Coronado National Forest, learn about the interconnected and ever-changing environment, meet environmental professionals, and build leadership and teamwork skills needed in every career.

The student interns are in the biotechnology program at Sunnyside and Pueblo High Schools, which is part of a larger effort to train students for science, technology, engineering and math careers. The program got its start when employers in the growing fields of biotechnology, aviation, health information technology and industrial technology said they needed more well-trained employees. That’s when Pima County’s One-Stop Career Center/Arizona@Work reached out to area partners to develop comprehensive curriculum and training programs to fill that STEM pipeline. 

The One-Stop administers the programs for more than 950 high school students across Southern Arizona. Many of the students have since moved on to coursework at Pima Community College as part of a $5.4 million Youth Career Connect program supported by the U.S. Department of Labor. Other partners are the Pima County Joint Technological Education District, Tucson Unified School District, the Sunnyside Unified School District and nonprofit partner, Tucson Youth Development. Pima County is the grant awardee on behalf of Innovation Frontier Arizona, which also includes Santa Cruz, Cochise and Yuma counties.