With 12 different Career Academy Centers around the state, North Dakota leads the United States in Career Technical education. All of North Dakota’s technical education programs align with industry needs, teaching students specific skills applicable to various careers available throughout the state.
In the fall of 2024, Bismarck will start breaking ground for another Career Academy building. Located in Silver Ranch, the new building will be called Noble, the fourth high school Career Technical Center in the Bismarck-Mandan area.
“North Dakota is ahead of the game,” Career Academy and Technical Center Director Dale Hoerauf says.
Noble will offer plumbing, air conditioning, electrical and carpentry programs. This center will also hold space for what’s called a sandbox – hands-on training with bobcat equipment.
“We are preparing students for jobs in the real world. We call them high skill, high wages,” Hoerauf says.
By the end of 2025, Bismarck-Mandan will be the only city in the United States to offer a Career Center to middle schoolers, grades 6-8, as well as having four locations open to grades 9-12.
Career Technical Centers offer classes like intro to nursing, automotive collision, graphic design, applied mechanics, aviation, creative engineering and robotics. With more to come, Bismarck currently has 39 different courses available to all high school students.
Depending on the class, students can learn things like fixing a hole in the wall, changing the oil in a car, or how to properly bandage a wound. It’s often easier for students to experience success in a classroom when the material they are learning is applicable to real-world situations. Hands-on classes instruct useful skills, regardless of what the student plans to go into after high school.
“All of our classes are geared towards careers,” Hoerauf said. “But, someone can still be interested in automobiles. They don’t necessarily have to want to be an auto technician. If they just wanted to know about their car, that would be a good class.”
Students actively engage in career-based classes because it creates an affordable way to experience a potential career path while still in high school. Because of gaining experience and skills in their class, hundreds of students have successfully transitioned from high school to careers in various industries.
“This is a way of experiencing while you’re still in high school,” Hoerauf said.”I think students in the Bismarck-Mandan area are just so lucky.”
Empowered Education
Four years ago, Bismarck took their technical education to the next level by introducing an Empowered Program to grades 11 and 12. The program offers 10 different core classes, providing a new way to earn credits needed for graduation.
The elective students take at a career academy is tied into whatever core class they take in Empowered. If students take an Empowered English class, and they’re also in a welding class, students can meet their English class requirements by applying their interest in welding, whether that be reading and analyzing an article about welding, or writing an essay on their current welding project.
If you’re not self motivated, it doesn’t work,” Hoerauf says,“This is different, we don’t tell you what to do.”
This program creates a personalized learning experience, giving full freedom to how students choose to gain their math, social studies, english, p.e or science class credit. Rather than being about the minutes and deadlines, it’s about the state standards.
“It might take somebody less than a semester here. It could take someone more than a semester here because they just didn’t quite get all the standards,” Hoerauf says, “Students have to take control of their ownership.
