Will Costello – Loveland Reporter-Herald, Colo.
Construction on an extension to the new Thompson Career Campus is underway, paving the way for a new career and technical education pathway that will train students to be certified emergency medical technicians by the time they graduate high school.
The new extension, around 2,000 square feet in size, is expected to be completed by July, barring any delays due to weather, and the program will begin at the start of the next school year.
Johnny Olsen with Best Steel welds a steel beam while working on an expansion to the Thompson Career Campus on Monday. (Jenny Sparks/Loveland Reporter-Herald)
Demand for the program is booming, according to Jason Germaine, principal at the Thompson Career Campus and the adjoining alternative high school Ferguson High.
“We’re in the process right now of communicating to applicants who’s been accepted, and it’s full with a waitlist for both juniors and seniors next year, which is awesome,” he said.
The new EMT program is two years long, but because the school district has partnered with Aims Community College, students who join in their senior year can seamlessly continue the program after graduation.
The first year will be spent largely on classroom topics relevant to serving as an EMT, said Thompson School District Director of Career and Technical Education Andy Stevens, with the second year focused on more hands-on learning required for the EMT certification.
TSD has partnered with Thompson Valley Emergency Medical Services on the program, and TVEMS has agreed to provide one of their professional trainers to lead the hands-on portion of the course.
In addition to preparing students for careers in the EMT field, the certification is also required to become a firefighter, meaning that students looking to pursue such a career will be ahead of schedule.
Additionally, according to Germaine, the program shares similarities with another career pathway that has proven to be the most popular at TCC, the health sciences field, which prepares students for careers in nursing.
“Seeing students have another opportunity that’s in the neighborhood of that experience is really awesome,” he said. “If you’re pursuing a career in health care down the road, both experiences would be to your benefit.”
The project was funded by a joint grant from Larimer County and the Bohemian Foundation, a Fort Collins-based nonprofit. The goal, Stevens said, was to encourage more career and technical education, particularly in the public safety area, something that is lacking regionally. Thompson’s EMT program, Stevens said, would bring students from as far as Fort Collins and even Estes Park looking to enter the field.
Additional public safety career pathways like firefighting and law enforcement are future goals for the Career Campus in the coming years.
“That’ll be the next challenge, once we get the EMT program up and running and all of the kinks worked out,” Stevens said.
The classroom’s construction was funded by the grant from Larimer County and Bohemian Foundation, costing $2 million, including most of the equipment that will be used for instruction. The operations of the classroom will be funded by the school district.
The classroom will have lecture-style seating for instruction and plenty of open space for hands-on practice, like CPR training on dummies, Stevens said. Additionally, the space could be used at night to train other community members or members of the Thompson School District in CPR or other basic first aid skills.
“We’re just super excited, we can’t wait to get started,” Germaine said.
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