Communication is an important part of every aspect of our lives, especially when choosing a career. Recently, Kelly Flowers, guidance counsellor at West Muskingum High School in Zanesville, OH, sent out an email communicating the top fifty high-wage occupations that are in demand for Ohio.
Attached to this email was a chart:
http://ohiolmi.com/proj/projections/ohio/Buckeye50.pdf
listing the top fifty high-wage occupations which are in demand for the period of 2008 to 2018. Since my son is a freshman at West Muskingum High School and hasn’t decided on his future after high school, I decided take a look at the information.
The bottom of the chart lists the occupations for the Information Technology, Engineering, and Science fields. I didn’t find it surprising that eight of the fifty occupations were technology related. High demands occupations in Ohio include:

When I read this list, I thought about all of my colleagues around the state who preparing students for these occupations and wished that there was some way I could pat them on the back for their efforts. The average annual earnings for these occupations range from $41,746 to $111,821 and the total annual openings for the occupations range from 138 to 22,090. These are occupations can enable our students to make a decent living for themselves in difficult economic times, in our state and across the country.
Thinking back to my original idea of how important communication is, I decided to forward this information to the guidance counsellors at my school and to ask our school librarian to make a poster size copy of this chart to hang in my room. I want my students to know about the opportunities in the Computer Science work force. Maybe more of them will consider this as their career path.
Thank you Kelly Flowers for making me aware of this very valuable information.
Dave Burkhart
Task Force Chair
CSTA Board of Directors