Dayton High School to Work Coordinator Receives the CIS Board's Les Adkins Award

The Oregon Association of Career and Technical Education (OACTE) annual conference was the venue for the presentation of a statewide award on Thursday, April 16, 2009. Debbie Kearns, School to Work Coordinator at Dayton High School, received the Les Adkins Award for Career Guidance Excellence. Cheryl Buhl, Director of the Oregon Career Information System (CIS) presented the award.

The Oregon CIS Board gives the Les Adkins Award annually. The award was established in 1987 to recognize excellence in career development practices. Les Adkins was a founding board member of CIS, a self-supporting public consortium at the University of Oregon since 1972.

As the part-time School to Work Coordinator, Kearns works with the high school students and the middle and high school teachers to organize, guide, and complete a variety of career-related activities.  These activities are designed to meet Oregon’s personalized learning diploma requirements and, most importantly, to connect academics to the real world.  To help teachers integrate career planning into their classrooms, she developed a CIS training manual for all high school and middle school staff.  She also created a junior-level class curriculum that uses most elements of CIS. 

Kearns’ work touches all Dayton students as they build their education plans and engage in career-related learning.  She is responsible for preparing students for job shadows, providing support materials and training to staff and students.  She arranges about 75 internships each year, first finding the employers and then meeting with each employer and student to ensure an appropriate placement.  She helps other staff create school-based business ventures and students plan, promote, and host events.  She is also responsible for an annual job fair attended by all high school students each spring.

In addition to facilitating district-wide use of CIS for educational planning, Kearns has been instrumental in securing funding for several career and technical programs.  She is the staff contact for special programs, such as ASPIRE to help students pursue higher education and the BizConnect WIRED project to connect businesses to schools and schools to businesses.  She serves on numerous local committees and organizations and always promotes the importance of hands-on, real life experiences for students.