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OPS Career Center PD Jeremy Cowley wins statewide award

Jeremy Cowley, Program Director for the OPS Career Center, was named Administrator of the Year by the Association of Career and Technical Education of Nebraska on June 4 during the organization’s conference in Kearney.

Cowley will start his fourth year as Program Director this fall.  He says receiving the award is an honor and a testament to a lot of hard work by a lot of people at the Career Center, not just him. 

Cowley says his hope is that the award helps him elevate awareness of what the Career Center is and that it offers outstanding opportunities for students in OPS.  

He says when you look at emerging job trends, where the skills gap is in the community, career education has never been a larger part of the conversation than it is today.

"We want to be a national model people look at as how you do career education in an urban school district.  That’s where we are headed.  Whatever we have to do to get there, we will do to get there.  And a lot of that is through being innovative, being willing to question process and the way we do things and move things forward.  But that’s where we want to head and we won’t stop until we get there.  And when we get there, it won’t be time to stop either because we will need to continue to push the envelope and move forward.”

Cowley says the Career Center’s focus areas have shifted a bit for the upcoming school year. 

They include industry partnerships, recruitment and retention, engaging parents in career conversations, working on small student learning communities and student placement.

He says every student leaving the center as a senior should have a plan for their first year out of high school, whether that’s college, career or military.

For more information, the website is ccenter.ops.org.