A new career service center is set to open up at the Amarillo College. The career services center is actually funded by a grant that came from the support of the community and its partnership. The partnership was originally created to help motivate students and increase the number of these students who actually earn a degree in college or even a certificate from a trade school. The center opened up this week and the opening took place with an exciting ceremony. The whole purpose of this center will be to help the students so that they can choose the type of career they would like to have while also gaining interview skills and figure out how to create a decent resume. The director of the career and employment services, Renee Burnam, was very excited about the opening. Burnam said, “Amarillo College has never had a center.” He also said, “They’ve had several services and different people have taken that role, but they also had (other) full-time jobs.”

Funding for the project came from the Amarillo Partners for Postsecondary Success Initiative. They provided a total of $211,600 for the project. Burnam says that the idea is to focus on helping students shadow employees in their place of work to get a better idea of different job opportunities. It will also be about allowing these students to gain necessary experience through internships. Burnam said, “We feel like the Career and Employment Service Center can help students connect what they’re doing from the moment they walk into the college to the world of work and be successful later on in life.” In order to create such a connection, Amarillo College decided to partner up with the Workforce Solutions Panhandle as a way of connecting the students at the college with employers.

The director of the Workforce Solutions Panhandle, Trent Morris, believes this was the best idea. In fact, he has said, “We can bring labor market information that might not be readily available at the college, which will help students choose career paths that will lead to jobs that are in demand in the local area.” Morris also believes that the organization should continue to be involved with the center in order to help businesses so that they can find the right kind of employees for the positions that they have available. The President of the college, Paul Matney, believes that the center is going to be a huge help with getting the college to be connected with professionals and helping students decide which careers they want.