Tech Prep Consortium helps high school students get a head start at Sinclair

College can be an intimidating prospect for most. Between the price of entry and the stressful applications, it can be daunting for individuals to make the choice to enter higher education.

Going from high school to college can be quite divisive, and students are oftentimes left unprepared. Thankfully there are a multitude of organizations that have noticed this and intend to help students.

Sinclair itself houses one of these organizations called the Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium. This is an organization designed to prepare students for college even when they are still in high school.

The consortium is intended to help students get the help they require to prepare for college. College can seem like a massive undertaking with so much work to do. Director Laura Hinkebein believes the solution is to allow students to take a chunk out of that work while still in high school.

“We work with those high school programs and those high schools to help them earn credits when they have completed curriculum that’s in line with our curriculum, and also help them understand the opportunities that we have here at Sinclair,” Hinkebein said.

This means that students can add these courses to their load when they are already in high school. This essentially means they get to get a head start on their college credits as a part of their regular high school curriculum.

The benefits do not stop there either. In fact, they continue into one’s career at Sinclair. Finances are a huge concern for those pursuing higher education. Luckily this program will give discounts when it comes to taking classes. There are no small discounts either.

“For the high school students that we work with, we provide the tech prep scholarship. They also have an opportunity to use what we call our BOGO award, which gives them an opportunity to take six credit hours for the cost of three credit hours, and Sinclair covers the other three,” Hinkebein said.

The consortium even opens opportunities at Sinclair outside of the usual curriculum. There are events throughout the year that are designed to give students hands-on experiences in their fields.

“The other thing that we do is we host career exploration days. So we bring the students from our CTCs and career tech education partners to Sinclair, and they participate in different activities and they get to see the labs and meet faculty. So they get an idea of what we have to offer here at Sinclair,” Hinkebein said.

“We also have the Miami Valley Tech Prep Showcase. And so that’s a huge event where last year we had about 770 students compete for, I guess it’s a competition where they compete against each other within their own career tech pathway. And we bring in different judges from local industry partners and faculty to judge the competition,” Hinkebein said.

This program can even help students out even after their departure from college. Being enrolled in such programs can make students look so much more desirable to potential employers.

“Students that have a background in career tech education and then continue on to pursue a credential or degree here at Sinclair are very employable. And a lot of times these students have a leg up because they have a little more experience within their career area than a student that maybe participated in traditional high school,” Hinkebein said.

The Consortium can be a great advantage that can help students to achieve their degrees. Between the benefits one can get before, during and after college, interested students should pursue this program.

Andrew Barnes, staff writer