Five Questions With: Mario Cirillo

MARIO CIRILLO is the head of the Academy for Career Exploration, a public charter high school in Providence. / COURTESY ACADEMY FOR CAREER EXPLORATION
MARIO CIRILLO is the head of the Academy for Career Exploration, a public charter high school in Providence. / COURTESY ACADEMY FOR CAREER EXPLORATION

Mario Cirillo is the head of the Academy for Career Exploration, a public charter high school in Providence. He talks about how the school prepares its students for technology-related careers.

PBN: What sort of courses are available at ACE for students interested in computers/cybersecurity?
CIRILLO:
The Academy for Career Exploration, a public charter high school, offers a full college preparatory curriculum with an emphasis on technology. The program provides students with options to develop their skills in three distinct areas: computer programming and web development, networking/cybersecurity and data science. Our networking and cybersecurity pathway focuses on a crucial area of information technology and gives students options for moving into entry-level positions upon graduation from high school or a solid foundation to continue on to post-secondary programs that will advance their certification. The courses that are offered in this area are Computer Science 101 (a course developed in collaboration with the University of Rhode Island) that offers, A+ (IT Essentials/Intro to Networking), CCENT (Routing and Switching), and CCNA (Internet Security).

PBN: Is this something more students are becoming interested in?
CIRILLO:
At the Academy for Career Exploration, we are providing access and opportunity to technology for urban students. We consider technology an essential skill for the 21st century, just like reading and writing. We are teaching these students how to code, how to build computer networks, how to design websites and how to lead a team. We are providing them with opportunities to learn marketable workplace skills. We’re asking them to think about how their strengths and interests can be applied to make a difference in industry and in service to their community. We are inspiring them to achieve their potential and prepare to be part of a global workforce. A workforce where we don’t even know what the jobs will be in 10 years.

PBN: Can you tell me about students who have gone on to work in these fields after graduation? What are they doing now?
CIRILLO:
In 2012, the R.I. Department of Education requested that the Academy for Career Exploration re-imagine its career and technical educational program. Research revealed a regional trend toward technology-themed pathways. Insights from the Tech Collective, Bridge Technical Talent and Atrion, as well as the University of Rhode Island, CCRI and Roger Williams University, helped guide the planning process. By 2014, plans were underway at the Academy for Career Exploration to develop the new program. The first class of students who have benefited from the four-year program will be graduating in 2018. We can already share a measure of our success, however, in the fact that over 200 ACE students took Computer Science Concepts (CSC101) last year and over 50 percent completed college-level requirements to earn four transferable credits from the University of Rhode Island.

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PBN: How were you instrumental in getting low income students more/better access to Internet service at home so they could continue their coursework and extra-curricular projects after they left school for the day?
CIRILLO:
We have developed strong relationships with a broad network of industry, post-secondary, and nonprofit professionals in the course of building our program. Several of these individuals sit on our board of directors or serve on our Program Advisory Council, but the majority of these professionals are involved because they believe in our mission and they want to help our students. Through these relationships, our school has received donations of time and talent, as well as equipment, and the outcomes of these collaborative partnerships continue to grow. For instance, COX Communications has been an essential partner in providing their Connect2Compete program to our families to ensure they have Internet access and reliable equipment at home so students can do their work. With educational practices changing, and the incorporation of models like blended learning and the flipped classroom, students need working computers and reliable Internet access at home.

PBN: Workforce development is clearly an important topic of conversation these days. Is the Academy for Career Exploration involved in that conversation?
CIRILLO:
The culture of the Academy for Career Exploration organization is changing rapidly to successfully drive innovation in education and meet the needs of what many are calling the innovation economy. In many ways, we consider what we are doing every day workforce development. I think we can all agree that the ultimate measure of success in educating a student is the level of competency and satisfaction that student achieves in life and work. It would follow then, that as educators, we must be keenly aware of, and in our opinion, closely connected to, the future employers of our students for the purposes of clarifying the types of skills they will be looking for. To that end, we are actively involved in the Tech Collective, we have a terrific Program Advisory Council, we meet regularly with industry professionals, and as a matter of fact, our Director of Operations Vanessa Toledo-Vickers sits on the board of Commerce RI. From that perspective, it puts us at the center of the conversation about how critical it is for our state to develop a more skilled, technology-savvy workforce.

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