Oklahoma's Offerings

The Oklahoma vocational education school's business and management academy will differ from the current business vocational school in several ways, according to Career Center spokesperson Barb Houmard. The whole F wing of the Career Center is being redesigned and reorganized to accommodate the academy curriculum.

Physical improvements in the building will include a work area for student's independent studies, Houmard said. "It will be equipped just like a real-world office setup, with all the office machines they need," she said. "Instead of study hall, students will have flex time to work on projects they may be doing for the school, or maybe businesses can bring in small projects they want students to do."

These real-world assignments will serve as on-site professional office experience for students in each of over 50 career paths. The most important innovation in the curriculum will be that each student will have an individual, unique career plan that determines what courses and independent study that student must complete to become a certified graduate.

Instead of selecting a major area of study such as business technology, computer occupations, marketing and cooperative business education, students in the academy will choose a career goal. For Tina Florence, that goal is to become a certified public accountant. Nobody in her family ever became an accountant before, the Orrville junior said, but she has known ever since she was a small child that she likes that kind of work.

"I like figuring numbers and stuff like that," Tina said. "I have always liked math, since I was little." Her career choice was aided by learning that CPA's command a good income. As a major in the business tech prep program at the Career Center, Tina will be able to take one or two courses at the Wayne College branch of the University of Akron, in Orrville, as a senior.

She is required to take college-preparatory English and math courses. In all, there will be nine major areas of study in the academy: accounting, administration and management, administrative support, banking and finance, computer information systems, distribution and warehousing, hospitality and tourism, marketing, and retail and wholesale selling. In general, students will earn their course credits in such basis subjects as English and mathematics in the process of doing their individual projects in each one's Individual Academy Plan or IAP, according to Houmard.

"The students choose a major and choose a career," she said. "Say one wants to be a claims adjuster after graduation. They would take just the courses they need for a career in that. They will have an Individual Academy Plan, and on the IAP will learn at their own pace and own schedule, instead of going to classes in groups of all students in the same major. The way it is now, the students in office assistance (major) go everywhere together; their schedules are exactly the same. In the new program, one may choose to be a secretary, another maybe a medical-records clerk. They would have different schedules, with the medical person taking a course related to medical terminology and the secretary maybe taking shorthand."

Grades and credit will be determined by a list of skills required for each career, ranked at the level of skills required for each career, whether entry level, technical level, or professional level in the case of a professional career certified public accountant.