Newport, RI – While America anxiously waited for Punxsutawney Phil to tell us how many more weeks of winter to expect, employees at the Hyatt Regency Newport were seeing shadows, as more than 40 high school students from the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center participated in Junior Achievement Job Shadow Day in conjunction with National Groundhog Job Shadow Day. Junior Achievement Job Shadow Day provides Rhode Island students with the opportunity to “shadow” a workplace mentor with the goal to show how the skills learned in school are applied in the workplace.  

Junior Achievement Job Shadow Day kicks off a year-long initiative of job shadowing programs throughout the State. The National Groundhog Job Shadow Day program is coordinated by the Job Shadow Coalition, which includes America’s Promise, Junior Achievement, the US Department of Education and the US Department of Labor.

For the past four years, Junior Achievement of Rhode Island has partnered with the RI Hospitality Education Foundation (RIHEF) to highlight the wealth of career opportunities available in the industry. This is the second year that RIHEF has partnered with Tech Collective, the Industry Partner for IT and Bioscience, to focus on information technology and its application to the hospitality industry.   

Currently, there are more than 67,000 Rhode Islanders working in the hospitality industry, making it the second largest in the state and an economic powerhouse. Information Technology is one the fastest growing industries nationwide, expected to grow 68% from 2002-2012. In Rhode Island, the IT and Digital Media sectors currently employ nearly 16,000 professionals.

Half of the participating students from the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center are enrolled in the Lodging Management Program (LMP), a two year program designed by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, that introduces students to the lodging industry and teach them the management principles that will enable them to achieve success in a hospitality leadership role. The program includes an internationally recognized certification, creating especially for the LMP curriculum.

“The Lodging Management Program has been a terrific opportunity for our students at the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center, providing industry standard curriculum not otherwise accessible to us,” said Leonora Hughes, Hospitality Instructor for the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center. “Groundhog Job Shadow Day is an excellent experience for our students, and provides them with real contacts in the hospitality industry to further explore all the opportunities available. Equally important, the benefit from this applied learning experience has direct relevance to their future success.”    

The other participating students are enrolled in The Academy of Information Technology & Game Design at the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center. The academy was formed seven years ago to service the scholastic needs of area high school students from four surrounding communities. The program’s three-year curriculum provides students with hands-on learning experiencing in technology fields including hardware and software, operating systems, programming, web design and digital media. Woonsocket’s Academy of Information Technology is the only one in Rhode Island, and it is one of 100 certified academies nationwide that are funded by the National Academy Foundation.

Students were given the opportunity to shadow professionals from a variety of areas in the Hyatt Regency Newport; rotating between the front desk, sales, reservations, information technology, and housekeeping. “We are honored to work with Junior Achievement to showcase the many career opportunities within the hospitality industry,” said Dale Venturini, president of the RI Hospitality Association and the RI Hospitality Education Foundation. “This year, thanks to Tech Collective, we are again especially proud to showcase how information technology is used within the hospitality industry.”

"We want young people to know they have a world of opportunities in business and JA Job Shadow Day allows them to experience business first hand," said Lee Lewis, president of Junior Achievement of Rhode Island. "This type of activity is what Junior Achievement is all about. Through job shadowing, students see the practical applications of classroom lessons carried out by professionals and can connect the importance of schoolwork to their future dreams and aspirations. By working with the RI Hospitality Education Foundation the Academy and Tech Collective, we're able to provide an unprecedented number of students with real life, job shadowing opportunities."

RI Hospitality Education Foundation and Tech Collective are recipients of the Industry Skills Development Initiative Grant through the Governor’s Workforce Board of Rhode

About Junior Achievement
Junior Achievement (JA) is the state’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs.  JA programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace. Students put these lessons into action and learn the value of contributing to their communities.

About Tech Collective

Tech Collective is Rhode Island’s Information Technology and Bioscience Industry Association. Uniting industry, government and academic stakeholders, our mission is to inspire, engage, educate and employ a high-skill, high-wage Knowledge Economy in Rhode Island. Since its transition from the Rhode Island Technology Council (RITEC) in 2004, Tech Collective has received more than $6M in federal, state and private grant funding to foster industry collaboration, awareness and development through events and initiatives including: GRRL Tech, Women in Technology, Bio-Ed, Tech Laureates’ Night and STEM-based education and training programs for K-16 students as well as incumbent and transitioning workers. For more information about Tech Collective, please visit www.tech-collective.org. 

About the RI Hospitality Association

The RI Hospitality Education Foundation is a Rhode Island non-profit corporation, formed for the purpose to encourage persons embarked on a career in the foodservice or hospitality industries in Rhode Island; to provide scholarships, grants, and endowments to those enrolled in a course or curriculum involving foodservice or hospitality management; and to promote the education and understanding of the general public about the career opportunities available in the industry. 

For more information on the RI Hospitality Education Foundation, please contact the Rhode Island Hospitality Association at 401-223-1120 or visit www.rihospitality.org.