The Upper Rio Grande College Tech-Prep Youth Consortium exists to provide our students with better career opportunities, elevate students' academic and technical aptitude, build partnerships between educators and employers, and promote the economic development of our region.

Our programs are designed to develop young people's competence, confidence, and connections that can ensure successful careers and citizenship. They connect students to a range of postsecondary options: four-year college, two-year college, technical training, structured entry-level work along a career path, and the beginning of a pursuit of lifelong learning.

Career and Technology Education is a series of high school courses, combined with hands-on training, that prepare students for their chosen careers. Students arrange a series of required courses and hands-on training, called a Tech-Prep Career Pathway, with their counselor. Tech-Prep career pathways are important because they allow students to earn college credit for their high school classes. When students graduate, they can transfer, or articulate, those college credits to a participating technical school, college or university.

The counselor also helps students arrange workplace exploration, as well as part-time employment and training opportunities, called School-to-Careers programs. The school-to-careers, also called school-to-work, movement provides a new form of education for a new economy that links learning and earning. The goals of the school-to-work movement are to provide better education, better employment prospects, adult role models, and multiple postsecondary options for all students.

Using federal seed money, States and their partnerships design the school-to-work system that makes the most sense for them. There is no single model. While these systems are different from State to State, each provides every American student with:

• Relevant Education - allowing students to explore different careers and see what skills are required in their working environment;
• Skills - obtained from structured training and work-based learning experiences, including necessary skills of a particular career as demonstrated in a working environment; and
• Valued Credentials - establishing industry-standard benchmarks and developing education and training standards which ensure that proper education is received for each career.

Every State and locally created School-to-Work system must contain three core elements:

• School-based Learning - classroom instruction based on high academic and business-defined occupational skill standards.
• Work-based Learning - career exploration, work experience, structured training and mentoring at job sites.
• Connecting Activities - courses integrating classroom and on-the-job instruction, matching students with participating employers, training of mentors and the building of other bridges between school and work.

While School-to-Work may look different from State to State, each local system provides relevant education, marketable skills and valued credentials to all its learners.

• See the relevance of rigorous education
• Gain real workplace experience and an understanding of career and educational options
• Work with adult role models as peers

• Are rejuvenated by a focus on interdisciplinary team-teaching that's connected to real workplaces
• See real results and motivation from a broader range of students
• Are empowered in their profession, within restructured high schools and their communities

• Have an available pool of new workers who understand the needs and expectations of their business
• Can reduce employee training costs and turnover
• Improve morale and management skills of adult workers