Cleveland school CEO Eric Gordon says the district has many public and private partners. Some help students with everything from food and clothing to health care. Others offer educational opportunities to prepare students for their futures. And Gordon says these collaborations are different from those in the past.

Giving is now many times a two-way street
“I think what’s important about the partnerships we’ve formed in Cleveland is that they’re not philanthropy for kids," says Gordon. "So it’s not a bunch of people saying we’re supposed to do good for Cleveland’s urban youth and then we go home and feel better about ourselves. It really is a two-way benefit. So my kids get experiences they need to get a rich education and the partners are getting back the readiness they need for employment.”

This could be for trades like construction or plumbing, the medical field or the high-tech sector.

Cleveland students learn alongside engineers
One of those is General Electric Lighting Institute at NELA Park which houses the MC2 STEM High School within the company’s lighting research and design campus. Here in a large workshop that they call a “fab-lab,” about 20 sophomores are busily at work on projects with G.E. engineers. One of the students, Alexis Jackson, is fabricating at motion-sensitive light for people with limited mobility.

“Our project was to make a light that helps people with disabilities and 

we got to choose what the disability was and how it works. So I have to make like a rough draft of what our light enclosure will be like for our project. So now I’m just cutting out the sides of my enclosure and measuring them to make sure they’re all the same.”

This program has helped Jackson narrow down what she wants to do in the future.

“I want to be a pediatrician or OB/GYN, or probably help make stuff for the medical field like more new technology.”

For G.E. Lighting the STEM school collaboration fits well with the industry’s rapidly changing needs. Andrea Vullo is community relations manager at NELA Park.

General Electric grooming potential future employees
“They’re not traditional engineering roles like they used to be. They’re not just taking wires and putting them in a glass bottle essentially and making a filament glow. We’re taking these fixtures that are intelligent and have sensors on them and are able to take data, and how do we analysis that data and utilize that to help cities or help homes or help out customers such as Walmart or Target or one of the other big stores that we work with so that they can help their customers in the end.”

11th and 12th grade students attending MC2 STEM High School continue their technology classes at Cleveland State University where they can earn college credits along with their diplomas. Three former students who will graduate from college next summer plan to intern at Nela Park.


Cleveland Clinic offers students opportunities in real medical settings
One of Northeast Ohio’s fasting growing fields is health care, and one of the largest employers is the Cleveland Clinic. In 2005 the Clinic began a summer internship program for public school students. The effort has grown to include a wide variety of year-around learning experiences, but they aren’t just located one place. Director of civic education at the Clinic, Bryan Pflaum, says they bring health professionals into the Cleveland schools and put students into actual hospital settings like surgeries. And he says the programs are reaping benefits.

“Four of our former high school interns are now at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. We have students who are working at Cleveland Clinic in nursing and the allied health professions. So we’re now seeing those students learn about different careers, get excited about those careers, and they eventually get the education they need to be a part of this industry.”

Besides clinical medical experiences, Pflaum says next year the Clinic will offer students courses in the business of health care such as accounting and management, another growing aspect of the health care industry.


Thousands of job openings in high tech and health care predicted
And area employees will be relying on efforts like the public/private partnerships at the Cleveland public schools. According to Team NEO, a Northeast Ohio economic development organization, in the next 10 years the region’s need for doctors, nurses, medical assistants and health care management professionals, will grow by 17 percent. That’s a total of more than 37,000 new positions. Meanwhile, there will be about 6,000 new jobs over that period in the computer and high tech engineering fields.