Durant holds GEAR UP Career Fair

Durant High School students learned about life after high school Wednesday as 47 professionals visited the school for a Career Fair.

The fair was sponsored by the Southeastern Oklahoma State University Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) Partnership as part of a career mini-grant program for the month of November, which is National Career Month. Durant High School Counselors Cheryl Conditt, Kelly Kane and Debbie Booth coordinated the event.

Students selected which fields they would like to know more about, and participated in three sessions with professionals in those fields.

People from many fields students can pursue locally were represented, including accounting, insurance, journalism, veterinary medicine, health care, law enforcement, wildlife, the military, real estate, marketing, cosmetology, industrial arts, computer technology and more.

Durant High holds a Career Fair every other year, Conditt said.

“By helping the students learn about educational requirements, job experience requirements, monetary rewards, fringe benefits and positive and negative aspects of the job, we feel they will be better prepared for the future career decisions they must make,” she said.

The SOSU GEAR UP Partnership is a federally grant funded program that serves 1,852 eleventh- and twelfth-graders in 14 schools in Bryan, Choctaw and McCurtain counties. The schools are: Achille, Bennington, Boswell, Broken Bow, Caddo, Calera, Colbert, Durant, Fort Towson, Hugo, Rock Creek, Silo, Soper and Valliant.

For more information on GEAR UP, call (580) 745-3122 or visit www.se.edu/gearup.