Daytona State Program Gives Students Head Start to Careers
Training and recruiting the next generation of skilled workers is a goal of many communities. A week-long camp at Daytona State College’s main campus offered students a head start on finding the right career for them.
The college has offered the career exploration camp, funded through a federal Perkins grant, since 2014. This year’s camp featured 31 students participating in programs in cosmetology, science, and digital and interactive media with Daytona State faculty and staff.
“It is a community outreach/recruitment activity that gives the college an opportunity to showcase some of our career and technical programs and provide students with hands-on experience,” said Gina Stafford, associate director of academic affairs at Daytona State. “Our goal is to pique the interest in hopes of seeing them in our classrooms in the future.”
Stafford said the camp is free and is open to high school students who are permanent residents and attending school in Volusia or Flagler counties.
The students enrolled in the digital and interactive media camp spent four days learning about videography, sound design and digital media and created a 5-minute film featuring Daytona State College professor and artist Stacey Reynolds.
“I’m super excited to expose young individuals to the arts and not only what we do at Daytona State,” Reynolds said.
Campers were broken into groups for sound, video and digital media. The students learned about the different kinds of equipment they would be using to create the film.
The camp’s second day was all Hollywood, with filming and recording as campers set camera positions and did sound checks in preparation for shooting. DSC faculty members Scott Velazco and Brad Moody – along with DSC grad Josh Segal and senior lab tech Michael Bradtke – worked with the campers to get production underway.
“It’s fun to have the energy of students focused on the thing you’re most interested in, this big pie of media production,” Velazco said. “For the last 10 years I’ve been teaching in the music production program here at Daytona State and that’s also a lot of fun.”
The experience of making a movie was new to most of the campers.
Autumn Demarest, who served as the film director, said the experience was rewarding.
“I think it’s really interesting to use the camera and act as a director,” she said. “I think it’s a really good fit for me.”
Karmen Williams worked on sound design and said learning new skills is important.
“I feel really excited learning something new and seeing things differently in the world like commercials and movies,” she said. “I could definitely see this as being a career that I pursue in the future. This is such a great experience for young adults, and it allows us to have great critical thinking skills. And it gives us more options to look at when we graduate high school.”
Moody, who teaches digital and interactive media production at DSC, said the camp experience was doubly rewarding not only for being able to work with students, but also with his Daytona State colleagues.
“It’s exciting first working with people like Scott and Michael,” he said. “When we have projects like this it’s a lot of fun. The second part is watching students do things like the students are doing. To expose them to what we do is really exciting.”
Student journalist Aaliyah Whites said she enjoyed the activities.
“I had lots of fun and learned plenty,” she said. “I got exposed to work environments I never thought about participating in. I see myself pursuing and following a different career path, but if given the opportunity I would totally take advantage of it and enjoy it.”
