Spring Meeting -2005 All Star Sponsors

Career Communications, Inc.

Career Communications, Inc., publishes American Careers educational programs for high school, middle school and elementary classrooms. The programs are contextual, respond to the needs of diverse learners, support the 16 career clusters and meet state standards and counseling and career development objectives. In all, American Careers programs are a consistent, sequential, research-based approach to integrating academic and career development. American Careers programs have reached over 17 million high school and middle school students, 10,000 elementary classrooms and 1 million parents throughout the United States and the U.S. territories, providing current, quality information on career-technical education opportunities. The company also publishes an American Careers Parent Edition and, in April 2004, launched the American Careers Health Careers Planner, a unique program for middle and high school classrooms that promotes interest in health careers and supports educational planning and workforce development.

Cisco Networking Academy Program

Changing the Way People Learn. The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a comprehensive e-learning program, which provides students with the Internet technology skills essential in a global economy. The Networking Academy program delivers Web-based content, online assessment, student performance tracking, hands-on-labs, instructor training and support, and preparation for industry standard certifications.

Kuder Career Planning System

National Career Assessment Services, Inc. TM is committed to career and technical education for all students transitioning from middle school to high school and high school to postsecondary education and the workforce. Stakeholders are collaborating nationally through the implementation of the Kuder ® Career Planning System and Develop Your Future TM curriculum to prepare students for post-high school success. The research-based system is used to identify and align student interests to the 16 career clusters to help create a focused career plan. Parental involvement in career and technical education is encouraged through Internet-based technology. State and local leaders access a rich data set to assist accountability requirements, placement, and program retention.

National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation

The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fulfilling the educational mission of the National Restaurant Association. As the nation's largest private sector employer, the restaurant and foodservice industry is the cornerstone of the American economy, career opportunities, and communities. Focusing on three key strategies of risk management, recruitment, and retention, t he NRAEF is the premier provider of educational resources, materials, and programs, which focus on attracting, developing and retaining the restaurant and foodservice industry's workforce. For more information on the NRAEF, visit www.nraef.org .

Oracle Academy

The Oracle Academy is designed to educate secondary school students (ages 16 to 19) on the fundamentals of database and Java technology and to provide them with the necessary skills to pursue academic and professional opportunities.

Through strategic partnerships with secondary education institutions, the Academy educates our students using the latest technologies. We arm our children with the technical skills that they need to survive in today's ever advancing information age, as well as the business and analytical skills that they can carry with them for life.

The program is a one or multi-year commitment between Oracle, education institutions, their teachers and students. It is comfortably centered in a traditional classroom format while simultaneously exposing students to the latest in e-learning technology. For additional information, please visit http://academy.oracle.com .

VTECS

VTECS is made up of several state departments of career and technical, business and industry partnerships and federal agencies that pool their resources to provide innovative career and workforce development resources that are applicable in virtually every education and training sector. VTECS has been in the business of providing high quality industry validated occupational information for thirty years that is now housed in two of the best software packages available anywhere. These include VTECS DIRECT that house both career cluster and occupational content information and VTECS Connect that manages students and trainees in a variety of work base learning situations. VTECS also engages in large and small scale externally funded projects that run the gamut from career cluster information to national and state level skill standards. VTECS adheres to the philosophy that the knowledge and skills needed in the workplace should serve as the base for what is taught in the classroom other learning environments. For more information, please visit our website at www.vtecs.org .