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TFIM Conference featured site visits, workshops, a performance at the
August Wilson Center and more |
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Students visiting Guardian Industries Corp. gathered outside for a group photo
with Guardian employees after exploring the company during the TFIM Student Leadership Conference
With no real career plan or path when he graduated from high school, Mike Peluso took a job as a janitor with Duquesne Light Co. in 1988. Twenty-three years later, he stood before students from The Consortium for Public Exploration’s career exploration program, The Future Is Mine (TFIM), telling them of a turning point that motivated his advancement to a leadership role in the utility’s safety training program.
Peluso’s career trajectory was one of many revealed to students when 17 of the region’s employers opened their doors to TFIM teams in April during their annual two-day Student Leadership Conference. Kicked off with the site visits, the Conference brought over 300 students and their advisors together for a tour and performance at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture and an overnight stay at the Pittsburgh Marriot City Center, where they enjoyed a dinner dance and other activities in the evening, followed by morning workshops and a luncheon speaker who talked about the qualities that make a leader.
Students visiting UPMC's WISER Institute got to see simulation exercises up-close
“Getting a chance to hear directly from working professionals how they found their vocations is one of the things our students love about site visits,” said The Consortium’s Associate Executive Director, Steve Seliy, who oversees TFIM. “The visits also illuminate the range of skills and occupations that might be needed in any single work setting. Our hosts always find so many creative ways to present the work done in their organizations.”
Peluso at Duquesne Light Co. was a master at it, relating first how he’d ascended from “pushing a broom and picking up trash” to a critical job in a danger-fraught industry. Students stood riveted as he demonstrated the perils, letting current from a power line fry a hotdog through a safety glove. Peluso credited his own career progression to “finding a passion for safety” while apprenticing as a lineman at an accident scene where carelessness already had cost one life and could easily have cost another.
The Duquesne Light Co. visit also afforded students the chance to try their hands operating a small crane, boarding the bucket used to reach power lines and taking the controls on other equipment. Afterward, they peppered Peluso and his colleagues with questions about how many people the company hires each year, how much beginning employees earn, whether Duquesne Light Co. needs plumbers and what, exactly, the engineers there do.
Among other employers hosting students were: the August Wilson Center; Allegheny County; Allegheny General Hospital; BNY Mellon; Carnegie Museum of Art; Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab; Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment & Technology Center; Clear Channel Communications; Dollar Bank; Guardian Industries Corp.; Jefferson Regional Medical Center; Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; Pittsburgh Pirates; Robert Wholey & Co.; Songwhale; and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s WISER Institute, more formally known as the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation Education and Research.
 After their site tours, the TFIM teams representing 25 high schools from across the region gathered at the August Wilson Center to view the exhibits and see Vanessa German (at left) perform. A multi-disciplinary artist whose work ranges from writing to sculpture, German has had her work displayed in museums and galleries across the country and performed at venues ranging from Pittsburgh’s Kelly Strayhorn Theater to national conferences for innovators and thought-leaders, including TED, POPTECH! and SNAP.
Networking is a big part of the Conference
She told students she began writing narrative poetry because she “believes in the power of stories” to transform people and the world. TFIM, she reasoned, is intended to help them begin discovering and shaping their own stories. “Your future is limitless if you believe the first line of your story is The Future Is Mine.”
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Following the performance, which brought students to their feet, applauding and shouting “awesome,” teams went to the Pittsburgh Marriot City Center for a dinner dance and activities in the second-floor lobby that serves as the Conference headquarters.
As they left, one junior from Monessen, whose words captured the feelings of many, said, “My favorite part is when all the districts come together.”
Among the evening’s activities, some students took time to participate in Hear Me, a region-wide project that Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab launched last year to amplify youth voices. The Consortium and SLB Radio, which have been collaborating all year to encourage students to express their ideas and aspirations through the project, set up a recording desk at the Conference.
Students watch a demonstration at Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab
“I think Hear Me gives kids a way to let things out,” said Weniesha, a Monessen student whose class participated earlier in Hear Me. “If you hold things in, they just eat away at you and Hear Me helps you get them out.”
She and her classmates, James and Crystal, chatted over dinner, about Hear Me, TFIM and their plans for the future. James said he was currently considering a career as an electrician, but said he’d joined TFIM because he wants to “keep other options open.” Like lots of students in the program, he’s already changed direction a couple of times, earlier considering careers in science and culinary arts.
The following morning brought workshops, some career related, and others designed to build social or emotional awareness and skills. Among hosts and presenters at the sessions were: Dottie Craig, an Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate assistant who combines community service projects in Jamaica with university learning; Pittsburgh Pirates Diversity Manager, Chaz Kellem who shared his experience overcoming disability and other obstacles to achieve a career dream; Matt Gondek, who turned a passion for art into a business; Secret Agent L, who started an international movement with an act of charity; Global Solutions, which works to advance human rights; Richard Shaheen, a special agent with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, who addresed the rules of the road for Internet safety; Jen Saffron, who worked with the Hear Me project; and David Wingerson of Womansplace, an agency serving victims of domestic violence and Jennifer Sethman, a Program Coordinator from The Consortium, who hosed a workshop on respect in relationships.
Breakout sessions are an enjoyable part of the conference. The Woodland Hills TFIM team, shown below, lead a teambuilding breakout that combined fun with skills needed to succeed.
A luncheon following the workshops featured the Conference’s keynote speaker, Kelly Eckert, a personal and professional development coach whose varied education and career have earned her degrees from Harvard and Tufts as well as stints as a biology teacher, marketing consultant, graphic designer, and filmmaker, among others.
Eckert talked about leadership. She told students that being a leader has less to do with job title or position than with “qualities” that motivate others. Among the most important are “vision, initiative and courage,” she said. “It takes courage to take action.”
Paul Spradley, shown above, leads a morning energizer to get the group ready for the day's activities
Paul Spradley, Assistant Director of Student Life for Multicultural Affair, served as emcee for all of the Conference's main activities. As in past years, Yough High School art teacher Bob Weaver and his students created displays that set the scene for the Conference and some of them also were on hand to do temporary tattoos.
The Conference also drew support from generous sponsors, including Lisa Brill, Carnegie Mellon University, the Hear Me Project, Comcast, Duquesne Light Company, Nutrition Inc., and Waste Management.
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