Career fair opens students up to new, surprising career opportunities

A nurse of 28 years, Joyce Kern is passionate about her profession.

Kern, who works for UNC Hospitals, shared her passion with middle and high school students from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Orange County Schools at the third annual career fair Thursday evening.

“There’s always going to be a need for doctors and nurses and maybe someday it will click for some of these students,” she said.

“If the career fair pulls one student in a direction which eventually finds a cure somewhere, well that’s what we’re about.”

About 80 businesses in industries like health care, sustainability, agriculture, construction and video game design were represented in the exposition at University Mall. The largest employer was UNC Health Care.

“A lot of kids don’t realize the broad range of specialties available in health care,” said Tom Maltais, assistant director of external affairs for UNC Health Care. “For example, we have 35 different types of nurses.”

Students spoke with representatives about different career opportunities and then with school counselors about courses relevant to those careers, said Kathi Breweur, the director of career and technical education for Chapel Hill-Carrboro.

Netasha Herron, a senior at East Chapel Hill High School, said she wanted to work in forensic science but learned about forensic nursing, which she said piqued her interests as well.

“I think the fair is a great opportunity to expose the students to a variety of different fields,” said Herron’s mother Donna Nixon.

Kern said one of the fair’s strong points is introducing students to fields they could have a passion for but haven’t yet been exposed to.

She said she tries to stress the diversity of the health care field.

“It’s interesting to try to encourage young men to consider nursing,” she said. “At first they aren’t interested, but then when I tell them about being a burn nurse or getting to fly in the helicopter as an ER nurse, their eyes get big.”

Chapel Hill-Carrboro spokeswoman Stephanie Knott said the system is often challenged to provide relevant jobs for students to explore because technology and services are always changing.

“The kinds of industries and technology that exist now may not even be the kinds of jobs and technologies that exist when these kids graduate,” she said.

“When we talk internally about instruction, we’re talking about preparing children for jobs that may not exist yet.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.