EAST HAVEN

Since last year, students at Joseph Melillo Middle School (JMMS) and East Haven Academy have been introduced to many future opportunities in the field of aviation as part of the first co-ed Aviation Career Exploration (ACE) program in the country that will be brought to East Haven High School (EHHS) in the next school year. However, the future career ambitions of East Haven students are hardly limited to the skies and are now being brought to the seas through a program that is exploring careers in all things maritime.

Coming on the heels of ACE, this newly inaugurated maritime program at EHHS provides an additional curriculum for East Haven Public Schools “to further its mission of affording diverse career pathways to its students,” said district Superintendent Erica Forti. Some of those pathways may include ones that students were previously unaware of, and there are numerous ones available to them that revolve around the element of water.

“We're looking to provide opportunities for kids to learn about careers they don't even know exist,” said Maria Pompano, the instructional leader for science at JMMS and EHHS, who is overseeing the program. “We're right on the shoreline, and we have all these resources, and they have no idea that they can utilize them. The hope is that we'll be able to bring that to light to give them a lot of just opportunity [and] exposure.”

Partnering with the Boy Scouts of America, without whom Pompano said, “none of this would be happening,” students will be exposed to all kinds of careers connected to the sea. Those include careers in marine biology, leadership and communication skills, and nautical engineering. Students will get a taste for the latter when they receive kits to build underwater submersible robots from the University of Bridgeport, said Pompano. Submarine builder General Dynamics Electric Boat has also partnered with the program to educate students on careers in nautical engineering. Even the businesses behind boats are a component of the program.

“We're going to visit, hopefully, North Sails, so there's that marketing aspect. They sell these awesome sailboats,” said Pompano. “[Students will learn], ‘What does that look like? What goes into that? How do you know if you like that?’” said Pompano.

Other field trips to locations such as Mystic Seaport, the Naval Submarine Base in New London, and the U.S. Coast Guard station in New Haven will allow students to closely see those opportunities, thereby playing a supportive role in students’ education to make their schoolwork “more valuable,” Pompano added.

Students interested in marine biology have the opportunity to take courses in the field for college credit at Southern Connecticut State University. There is also a plan for students to get their boating license and CPR certification.

“Anything that will make them more marketable and will open doors to them,” said Pompano.

The inauguration of the maritime program, along with the introduction of the ACE program at the high school and the ongoing Careers in Technical Education curriculum, is resulting in a wide spectrum of fields and career choices for EHHS students to explore. As is a goal of the latter program, the skills and knowledge that students in the maritime program will acquire can be of tremendous help when taking the next step into higher education or the workforce. Like Pompano, school officials see that there is no better place for this kind of education and reinvestment in the community to take shape than where students already live.

“This is about taking advantage of where we are, just as we did with our aviation program,” said East Haven Board of Education Chairwoman Michele DeLucia. “We are right near the airport, and we are also right on the water, and we have community partners ready to step up to offer our students experience, training, and opportunity.”