Virginia Association for Career and Technical Education


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   (Page updated 07/02/2008)

The Virginia Career Education Foundation

The Virginia Career Education Foundation was launched by Governor Mark Warner in 2002. The Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 public-private partnership that promotes career and technical education and related careers.

Public partners are the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia Community College System, the Virginia Employment Commission, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Private partners and in-kind partners are listed under the KnowHowVirginia Program button. The public partners and the KHV Program buttons are live links found across the bottom of each page.

Under the leadership of VCEF's first president, Brenda Frierson, a number of focus groups and state surveys indicated a general misunderstanding about Career and Technical Education as it exists today. A major awareness campaign, KnowHowVirginia (KHV), was launched to inform the public -- students and their parents in particular -- about the many career opportunities and options afforded through pursuit of CTE fields.

KnowHowVirginia Website

The centerpiece of the awareness campaign is a robust portal website www.knowhowvirginia.org for self assessment, career exploration, and career planning. The website is organized around 16 career clusters with sections labeled INVESTIGATE to learn more about careers in the selected cluster and GET READY to find out about opportunities in schools and colleges. Major links include Virginia Career View and Career Prospects in Virginia.

A unique feature of this website is the ability to enter the name of a middle school, high school, community college, or four year college or university and view a list of all the CTE courses offered. For secondary schools, information is based on school division end-of-year enrollment reports for the prior year.

GET AHEAD WITH CTE offers an overview of CTE in Virginia and a FAQs section.

REGIONAL ACTIVITIES are posted by users and may be searched by region of the state (based on Workforce Investment Board regions) or by career cluster.

RESOURCES AND LINKS lists resources and links to related websites. Users may search by career cluster or by other general topics, including a section for parents, for students, for educators, self assessment, job search, general resources, and colleges and universities. This is the place for users to submit their recommendations for resources and website links at SUGGEST RESOURCE.

DOWNLOADS is an exciting feature we are happy to offer to educators across the state. Users may access the downloads from the KHV Program button on any page, and complete a simple registration form with name and e-mail address. Posters, postcards, bookmarks, KHV logos, and the VCEF solicitation kit are available for consumers to download and adapt to their use. As materials are developed, they will be added to the downloads section.

Other Awareness Activities

  • State Fair exhibit: posters, postcards for parents, students, and businesses, stickers

  • Future Fest with WTKR-TV in Norfolk

  • Article in ruReady magazine and quotes from CTE graduates in "Spotlight on CTE" sections throughout the career cluster features (distributed to 100,000 high school juniors)

  • Bookmarks featuring CTE program areas and the KHV website (distributed to ~300,000 middle school students in conjunction with CTE Week, Feb. 2005)

  • Article in 8th grade version of ruReady (distributed to ~125,000 8th graders)

  • Presentations to state CTE program area conferences, CTE student organizations, Career Nights, counselor groups, CTE teachers in-service, State Tech Prep, local Advisory Councils, Kiwanis Clubs, Workforce Development committees, VA State Building and Construction Trades Council, Governors Construction Task Force, Latino Advisory Commission

  • Communication with CTE coordinators, local school division superintendents

  • In development: calendar featuring CTE Success Stories -- graduates of CTE programs in Virginia who are successfully employed in that CTE field (to be customized for each school division and distributed to homes of all ninth graders 2005-2006 school year)

How YOU Can Help

  1. Become familiar with the site and assign career exploration assignments using www.knowhowvirginia.org

  2. Encourage students, teachers, counselors, parents, administrators to use the site

  3. Ask your webmaster to post a link to the website -- logos available from the DOWNLOADS section or copy from here:

  4. Use the logo on your print materials: newsletters, assignments, course descriptions (use print version from DOWNLOADS)

  5. POST your recommended regional activities, resources, and links to the website. We believe in working smarter -- sharing good ideas that work without reinventing the wheel!

  6. Contact VCEF to request a speaker, make suggestions for the website, or send your own CTE Success Story leads (name, place of employment, CTE program, and contact information)