The Mahoning County Educational Service Center's Career Counseling Team will help Valley students find their career path, making sure they do not miss their opportunity amid the pandemic. 
 
This month, MCESC Career Counselors are launching the virtual Career Exploration discussion series, featuring live conversations with professionals in a new field each month.
 
MCESC Career Counseling aligned districts will be invited to Zoom conversations with specialists in a given field.
 
These interactive sessions will include Live Q&A with student and teacher participants.
 
Each session will be recorded to allow for teachers in these districts to access the materials in their classrooms at a later date.
 
January’s highlighted career field is law enforcement, with guests including a Special Agent from the FBI as well as Officers Paul Poulos and Phil Merlo of the Boardman Police Department who serve as School Resource Officers at Boardman schools.
 
The career counseling team helps provide students from more than 17 districts across the area with the resources to investigate a number of career, trade and school options.
 
When restrictions on visitation to districts and safe social distancing protocols were put into place, the MCESC said it stepped up to the challenge of changing the interface of career exploration events.
 
Virtual platforms have provided the ability for MCESC Career Counselors to connect students with businesses, schools and professionals in a virtual career, trades and college fair and its new Virtual Career Exploration discussion series.
 
“We’re very excited about this new platform,” says Robert Eggleston, Lead Career Counselor for the MCESC. “A virtual discussion will allow us to safely share the knowledge, experiences, and discussions of these experts with a much greater number of students than one guest has ever been able to reach. Each student we serve will have access to more first-hand information than ever before with the addition of recorded sessions into our database.”
 
This follows on the heels of JA Inspire, the virtual career, trade and college fair hosted through the collaboration of Junior Achievement of Mahoning Valley, MCESC, and Trumbull County ESC.
 
The JA Inspire event engaged more than 1,000 students from 35 area schools during the live portion of the event on November 19.
 
Through these resources, students walked away with knowledge about fields and positions that are in demand, and advice on how to reach their goals.
 
Teachers, students, and parents have access to the JA Inspire platform until February 19. Students can view recorded webinars and collect information from the booths at https://jamvinspire.vfairs.com/.
 
The MCESC Career Counseling team said it is using these virtual events as a bridge for their in-person career exploration courses, which have been hindered due to the pandemic. 
 
“We are pleased to continue our service to our districts in these expanded platforms,” says Eggleston. “The world keeps spinning, and students are still moving forward making career decisions and setting goals. We are confident we are providing them with connections and tools to thoughtfully explore a number of opportunities to help them make informed decisions about their futures. We’ll continue to innovate with engaging solutions to provide these students with the resources they need to do so.”