Boys in nursing? Girls in computer engineering? They may not sound like traditional career roles, but that’s the whole point of Kellogg Community College’s annual Nontraditional Fair, which started at 9 a.m. today on the college’s Battle Creek campus.
Around 80 Union City Middle School students — some pictured above at lunch in the college’s Student Center — are participating in the event, which educates boys and girls about nontraditional career paths.
As part of the event, the students are split into all-male and all-female groups. The girls spend the morning learning about criminal justice, emergency medical services, computer-aided drafting and computer engineering, while the boys spend the morning learning about nursing, physical therapy assistance, medical laboratory technicians and early childhood education.
In the afternoons, the groups switch, giving students a well-rounded survey of possible career options to choose in the future and, possibly, assisting in changing what future generations think of when they consider “traditional” roles in the workforce.