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EASTON – “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
That’s the question many adults ask youngsters. Some kids have a clear idea, while many just shrug their shoulders.
But for 76 Caroline County students, being able to sample a variety of cutting edge careers this summer has spurred their imaginations about what might be possible beyond high school and higher education.
Although they are only in middle school, about 300 kids from three Mid-Shore counties focused on hands-on activities that could inspire “career paths in cybersecurity, media arts, video design, health, computer science and engineering,” according to the registration brochure developed by the People for Change PFC Coalition, who organized and provided subject experts and educators for the fifth year of the Summer Career Enrichment Program (SCEP).
“It’s STEM on steroids,” said PFC Black Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Mclaurin. His wife Sandra Pruitt is the executive director and grant writer of the PFC Coalition and the couple are the program directors of SCEP.
The PFC Coalition is “a membership organization serving over 350 minority businesses and nonprofits, and we help with capacity building and expansion for those businesses and nonprofits,” Pruitt said.
“We want to try to inspire, educate and excite these kids into technology,” said Mclaurin, whose “background is 35 years of system integration and network engineering.”
Students in sixth through ninth grade from Caroline, Dorchester and Talbot counties participated in SCEP this year at Easton High School.
Two 2-week sessions were offered from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Thursday, July 7 to 17 and again from July 21 to 31. Free bus transportation as well as free breakfast and lunch were provided.
The investment is worth it, according to Scott Warner, executive director of the Mid-Shore Regional Council, which helped establish the partnership with the PFC Coalition to develop and expand the $300,000 program for the three Mid-Shore counties.
Warner and MSRC board president Walter Chase led a small group of interested adults to witness the program in action on July 10. They visited the classrooms to witness the teachers and students in action.
“Nobody in this country is doing what we are doing, and we’ve got all minorities doing the training,” Mclaurin said. “So this is a unique opportunity.”
Other counties are waiting for the program “but we can't expand until we work out all the kinks and the bugs here,” he said. “I’ve got to take my hat off to Mr. Chase and Mr. Warner because they saw the vision.”
School superintendents have embraced the program after seeing it in action, Warner said. Each PFC entrepreneur instructor has a teacher from one of the three school districts who acts as an assistant. Regardless of whether students decide on a career path, opening their minds and giving them experiences has value, Warner said.
Chess instructor Felix Cummings is a longtime engineer in the defense industry. “As I traveled, picking up the game of chess was one of the things that helped me to relate to one another, no matter what country I was in,” he said.
Cummings’ roomful of students were intently trying to outsmart their opponents. Lockerman Middle School (LMS) rising eighth grader Nadia Parker said chess was teaching her “life lessons.”
Edward Lin, a rising eighth grade student at Colonel Richardson Middle School (CRMS) said, “Chess is fun. I think the strategies will help me in life.”
In the robotics classroom, instructor Jerry Holley was teaching the subject for the second year. During the school year, he teaches high school English and language arts in New Jersey. His students were busy on their MacBooks and wheeled robotic vehicles and either intently studying their computer screens or smiling and giggling.
He said LMS rising sixth graders Luke Harper and Aiden Kaiser were already “rock stars.” Although they were the “two youngest kids in the classroom, they have done a lot more than any other team has done. They always laughing and having fun together.”
The goal was to create fully autonomous robots five days into the 8-day session and trying to troubleshoot their own issues, rather than calling on an adult, Holley said. Hayden Eason, a rising eighth grader at LMS, had advanced to a megabot, a tier two project.
Sarai Lambert, who’s going into eighth grade at Lockerman Middle School took the media communications class with Dr. Tekemia Dorsey, CEO of DTD Enterprises. She said she was learning useful skills.
While most students worked in classrooms, other small teams were scripting the videos they were producing using their cell phones and MacBooks.
“They're really learning true life skills in a fun, collaborative way,” said Lindsey McCormick, director of College and Career Readiness for Caroline County Public Schools
Besides chess and robotics, an SCEP Ambassador course for program alumni who want to promote courses and clubs at the high schools they’ll be attending. Altogether, the program offered nine learning tracks each session.
McCormick said she was impressed when she arrived that morning. Before the doors opened, four boys had “set up their own chess boards as they were waiting to come into the building.”
Just four days into the first session, students were already forming new relationships with their peers from the other two counties, seeking them out to sit together in the cafeteria.
“They're definitely making connections among each other already,” McCormick said. “They're learning their strengths, they're learning their interests, and that will only benefit them and our school systems, because they'll have a better idea of themselves and what they're interested in at an earlier age.”
The SCEP program began as a pilot program five years ago, even amid the challenges imposed by the Covid pandemic. Dorchester County hosted the pilot program in 2021. The next year, the other two counties joined, and students were bussed to Dorchester Career and Technology Center. In 2024, Colonel Richardson High School hosted the program, and this year, Easton High School was the host.
Besides MSRC, 28 other organizations and businesses sponsored the 2025 SCEP including Caroline County Public Schools, American Legion Caroline Post 29, Caroline Human Services Council, Choptank Electric Trust, M&T Bank, PepUp and Shore United Bank.
Created in 2001, MSRC operates as a “cooperative regional planning and development agency within Caroline, Dorchester and Talbot Counties to foster physical, economic and social development. The Council initiates and coordinates plans and projects for the development of human and economic resources.”
