As a component of Iowa’s state plan for Perkins V is that each secondary career and technical education (CTE) program must establish, maintain and integrate a career and technical student organization (CTSO). Each secondary CTE program is required to offer a CTSO by the start of the academic year 2024-25. Guidance is available on the Department website here.

The Department of Education supports the CTSO Advisor Academy, a free monthly webinar series on CTSO management for CTE educators. Upcoming are two sessions highlighting CTSO competitive events, held December 9 and January 12 from 4:00pm-5:40pm.  For more information, please register here to be sent the calendar of events and to be added to the mailing list.

Finally, each CTSO has an executive director who can provide individualized support.

BPA - Deb Jones 

DECA - Morgan Petersen

FBLA - Lou Voss 

PBL - Ryan Steines 

FCCLA - Kayelani Kirschbaum 

FFA - Iowa - Scott Johnson 

HOSA - Kent Seuferer 

SkillsUSA - Teresa Mankin 

TSA - Rhys South 

For more information on Iowa’s CTSOs, please contact Chris Dzurick at chris.dzurick@iowa.gov or 515-419-4792. For more information on the CTSO Advisor Academy, please contact Cale Hutchings at cale.hutchings@iowa.gov or 515-975-8193.

In June 2019, the Iowa Department of Education was awarded a $1.3 million grant from Ascendium Education Group to support guided pathways development and implementation at Iowa’s community colleges until December 2021. Within this initiative, colleges are focused on building unique and available pathways at each community college, putting structures in place to help students start and stay on a guided pathway, and ensuring that all students are engaged and learning.

Community college leaders recently convened to move this implementation forward. Unlike fall 2019's large face-to-face full-day convening at DMACC with over 120 people, this year, due to COVID-19, four two-hour convenings were held virtually by Zoom from September to November. Each of these convenings was valuable to the colleges and allowed each of the virtual meetings to focus on college-requested topics that the facilitator, HCM Strategists, put together. The September convening was focused on how community college presidents can help lead a local initiative, with President Joe Schaffer of Laramie County Community College leading the discussion. The first October virtual meeting focused on advisors and advising practices that help students get on pathways, with Dr. Myra Furr, vice president of student success and dean of students from Stanly Community College in North Carolina, leading a discussion which used Stanly’s advising model as an example. The last webinar in October focused on moving a college from buy-in of guided pathways to full commitment, with Lesley Bonds, director of student services and equity from Bakersfield College in California, leading the discussion. The  November convening was a review of the colleges’ Community College Research Center (CCRC) assessment of their progress. Southeastern community college and Southwestern community college that had moved from “in progress” to "at-scale" for certain guided pathway initiatives shared their process with their peers from other colleges. The last three virtual convenings each saw over 120 college staff participating in the discussions. 

Beyond the virtual meetings, colleges have recently updated their progress in the guided pathway work plans and built more work-based learning courses into their program curriculum. The colleges have also been focused on adding transfer majors to their program curriculum. There are currently 26 vetted discipline frameworks and over 210 approved transfer majors across the 15 colleges.  Additional transfer major discussions in the disciplines of human and family services, engineering, computer science and music are underway.   

Contact Chris Russell, Education Program Consultant, Bureau of Community Colleges, at chris.russell@iowa.gov or 515-725-2247 with comments or questions.

Jennifer Fernandez-Miranda knew she wanted to be an English teacher. But the real question was: How? After all, Fernandez-Miranda hadn’t had anyone in her family take this path. The logistics – not to mention the cost – seemed insurmountable.

“During my senior year at Columbus Junction, I felt very anxious, I knew that I wanted to go to college, but it didn’t seem like a realistic possibility for me,” she said.

Fernandez-Miranda’s dilemma was pretty common at Columbus Junction High School, and educators there were seeing bright students turning away from bright futures. It’s not like the district didn’t have counselors. But they, like pretty much everyone in their profession, have been stretched thin. Career and postsecondary counseling seemed to always take a back seat to more pressing issues.

In a neighboring district, the Louisa-Muscatine Community School District was noticing those same stumbling blocks for their students. That’s when the Louisa-Muscatine Superintendent Mike Van Sickle had an idea: What if there was a school counselor who was solely dedicated to working with students to follow their dreams? And if a small district in Louisa-Muscatine cannot afford another counselor, might the position be shared with another district and, perhaps, a community college?