Forward Janesville - TheReport - Second Quarter 2021

14 • W W W . F O R W A R D J A N E S V I L L E . C O M Fresh minds. Innovative spirits. The ability to deliver solutions on time and with clarity and competence. Those three elements are at the heart of Craig High School’s ELEVATE program, a year-long course that involves juniors and seniors tackling challenges facing local businesses. We’re talking about real businesses and real challenges, not just simulations or pretend play. In the past two years, students have reworked marketing plans, designed a gift card system for downtown merchants, developed a human resource process for onboarding new employees, proposed social media solutions for companies, and worked on a variety of other projects. Here’s how it works: Students in the ELEVATE program dedicate three of eight class periods each day to formal instruction, working on their business challenges, meeting with their mentors, or fieldwork at businesses. The program includes courses in global business, finance, and business communications. Students are guided by a business mentor, and a team that includes economics teacher Fritz Elsen, English teacher Cindi Haberkorn, and Brandon Miles, teacher and instructional manager of the business department. Business leaders from all over Rock County serve as guest lecturers. “Kids don’t just learn from the teachers,” said Shawn Kane, Craig High School Assistant Principal and ELEVATE program coordinator. “We want them to learn from the professionals.” How do they find appropriate work for students? “We use our existing connections in the community to find business projects for kids,” Kane said. Those connections include people like Mike Mathews, operations manager of the Janesville Innovation Center, and Oakleigh Ryan, a Stanford grad with an MBA from Harvard, who serves on the executive committee of ARISENow and is one of ELEVATE’s business mentors. Kane and his team of teachers meet with businesses to define the scope and sequence of the project, Kane said. The projects aren’t the business's front-burner, make-or-break challenges. Instead, they're usually somewhere on the list of “things we’d like to do if we had the time and the resources.” ELEVATE usually tackles 12 business challenges a year, but they’ve found one project often leads to another, and the connection between the students and the business runs over into the next semester or into the next year, Miles said. For example, student work on the Downtown Janesville Inc. project led to work for ARISENow, the public-private partnership working to position downtown Janesville as a “vibrant neighborhood where commerce, culture, entertainment, and history intersect.” The organization’s most visible success is Town Square, with its pedestrian bridge, fountains, and festival street. But the ARISENow team wanted to know how people felt about the city center, and what projects to tackle next. ELEVATE students Joseph Richardson, Aubrey Haworth, Maddie Viles, and Thomas Lyon took on the challenge of creating the survey and getting it out to the public. Working with a mentor, students developed a survey, asking people how they felt about downtown Janesville’s ambiance, its value as a family-friendly destination, parking availability, safety, and a variety of Craig High School students ELEVATE local businesses