GO CAPS students kick off the school year

More than 250 students, parents and business partners flooded rooms at CoxHealth, the eFactory and Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation for the orientation and launch of the Greater Ozarks Centers for Advanced Professional Studies last week.

“We’re working to prepare you for jobs that don’t even exist yet—jobs that you’ll have 10 or 15 years from now,” GO CAPS executive director Lindsay Haymes told students at the medicine and health care strand orientation.

For 2 ½ hours each day, students from Springfield Public Schools and nine other area school districts will be immersed in an environment that combines hands-on career experiences and classroom learning by partnering students and employers on real-life projects.

Related Content: GO CAPS announced program offerings for 2015-2016

For their first lesson, students have filled out an application for employment, are developing resumes and will go through the same onboarding process as an employee at the organization where their classroom is housed.

“This is only the beginning,” Haymes said. “We want the projects that our students work on to be meaningful for the students and to have real-world applications.”

GO CAPS began enrolling students for its first two course strands, engineering and manufacturing and medicine and health care in May, and has begun enrollment for a new pilot strand this summer. The new strand which will be housed at the eFactory, will focus on entrepreneurship and will continue enrolling students through August 21.

Currently there are more than 50 students enrolled in the medicine and health care strand, and more than 30 in the engineering and manufacturing strand. All GO CAPS students will begin attending the program on August 17.