Nontraditional Careers Are Important For Boys Too

We at Trailblazers have thought a lot about encouraging girls to study for careers that are nontraditional for women, careers like engineering and information technology. But it turns out that it just as important to encourage boys to consider nontraditional career paths.

Welcome to the NEW Trailblazers Blog

Trailblazers has been putting out a newsletter on nontraditional students, employment, occupations, and other topics that are important for Virginia's CTE professionals. But we have found that we have much more to report than we can include in a two page newsletter, so we have started a blog. Here we will post short reports on current news and research. We also will continue to send the newsletter each month with longer articles. Please keep in touch with us about topics that interest you. We are here to assist with your research and information needs.

Youth Unemployment

CTE’s technically-focused programs, with their high graduation rates, are ideally suited to help address the current, serious youth unemployment problem.

Looking for Best Practice in Virginia

This spring Trailblazers will be looking for examples of best practice in graduating nontraditional completers from Virginia CTE programs.

In 2010, 39,703 students graduated from high school having completed career and technical education programs. In that year, 95 percent of career and technical education students finished a program and graduated. This is well above the state graduation rate of 80 percent.  Seventy-three percent of CTE graduates continued into postsecondary, the majority in four-colleges and most of the remainder in community colleges. This is a great achievement for CTE educators across the state.

Governor Announces New Investment in Higher Education With An Emphasis on STEM

Governor McDonnell announced on December 3rd that he will call for $50 million in new higher education investment and a comprehensive package of higher education legislation for the upcoming session of the General Assembly.

Women in STEM: How Are They Doing?

Women now earn the majority of all non-science bachelor’s degrees, and they are making significant advancements in science and engineering degrees. In 1966, women earned 24 percent of all STEM degrees. By 2006, this had risen to 51 percent. In biology, psychology and social sciences, women now earn more degrees than men.