Seymour High School senior Carissa Wasikowski has been taking a new class in entrepreneurship this year — and loves it — but doesn’t think the concept is for her.
“I don’t think I’d want to open up my own business,” she said. “I’d definitely want to work for a big company.”
This year Wasikowski and two other SHS students will be interns at a branch of the Sikorsky Credit Union inside the school. The company manages over $600 million in assets.
So, yeah, that’s pretty big.
A branch of the credit union opened inside the school’s Room 132 last year.
And beginning next month, the students — Wasikowski, Ed Companik, and Michelle Wagmeister — will begin working as paid interns there, doing everything from dealing with customers to handling cash to marketing products.
They were interviewed over the summer and, once hired, took part in Sikorsky’s week-long training and orientation program.
The branch is the second for the credit union at a high school in the area — a branch opened at Oxford High School in 2009.
Hours are from 10:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Mondays, but will be extended if warranted, said Assistant Principal Paul Lucke.
The process began a couple of years ago, he said, when he learned about grants for developing business classes available from the state.
“The state was pushing some areas we obviously needed, and one of them was finance,” Lucke said.
The school obtained a grant of about $30,000 to develop a personal finance course and reach out to financial professionals in the area, he said.
Around the same time, officials from Sikorsky Credit Union committed to opening a branch at the high school.
“At the time we had discussed, long-term, having student interns who would get some real world experience,” Lucke said.
The whole point, he said, is to better prepare students for the ever-evolving job market. He attends conferences where the state Department of Labor presents statistics on what types of jobs will be most prevalent in the future.
“One of them was in banking/finance,” Lucke said. “In any financial sector … the jobs are just going to be there.”
The school brought back a marketing class this year, as well as a new class in entrepreneurship, and will offer another class next year on e‑commerce entrepreneurship.
But are students actually interested?
“They’re popular,” Companik said. “I know a lot of people wanted to get into that entrepreneurship class and they just couldn’t get in because there was way too many people.”
He said he wants to pursue a career as a budget analyst and is taking a marketing class this semester.
“We’re finding out all different ways on how to market companies,” he said. Their latest research project entailed finding real-world examples and then presenting them to classmates.
Companik caught the business bug early from a relative who’s an accountant, but for Wasikowski, the classes were a spark.
“When I started taking the accounting classes I realized I really liked it and I wanted to pursue a career in the business field,” she said.
And more new classes are on the way, Lucke said.
The school got nearly $50,000 in new grants this year to, among other things, develop a higher level personal finance course and buy textbooks, have a teacher go through a five-day professional development workshop at the New York Stock Exchange, and fund business-oriented field trips, computers, and other equipment.
Students are also starting a chapter of DECA, an international association for studying marketing and business.
Through that program a student-run school store will open soon near the credit union, Lucke said.
It seems like an awful lot, but as the economy continues to change at a seemingly ever-increasing pace, he said educators have to stay ahead of the curve, too.
“As Mr. Lungarini, our principal, says, you might be working a dozen jobs by the time you’re 30,” Lucke said. “You might be changing jobs, but they’ll probably all be within that sector you choose. And there’ll be jobs there, we believe — and the data and statistics are out there — that haven’t even been invented yet.”
