Quick Connections
Fairbanks Workforce Development Task Force holds first Speed Mentoring event
By Rindi White
Quick Connections
Fairbanks Workforce Development Task Force holds first Speed Mentoring event
By Rindi White
“W

hat’s the best part of your job?” “How do you balance work and life?” “What kind of money do you make?”

Students at North Pole High School had the opportunity to turn the tables on adults and ask them the hard questions at a November Speed Mentoring event held through a collaboration of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Alaska, Alaska Resource Education (ARE), and the Fairbanks-North Star Borough School District.

Held in two sessions, more than thirty mentors from the construction industry—mostly from AGC member companies—answered questions from high schoolers about their work. The event during school hours, replacing their usual environmental science or geometry in construction lessons.

A wide room full of people, mostly young adults and mentors, sit in pairs and small groups on folding chairs facing each other, engaged in conversation on a gray floor.
A woman in a red and black flannel shirt gestures and speaks to two young people, one with distinctive bleached hair, sitting in front of her. She holds a clipboard on her lap.
A bearded man wearing a gray vest and baseball cap talks animatedly to two young men sitting opposite him. One youth holds papers. A glass wall with repeating "PATRIOT PRIDE" text is in the background.
A long view of a hallway-like room with many people, adults and teens, sitting in small face-to-face clusters on folding chairs.
A woman in an orange cardigan smiles and gestures with her hands while speaking to a young person in a blue shirt with their back to the camera. Other groups are conversing in the background.
View from behind two young women with long hair sitting at a blue circular table across from a woman wearing glasses and a black jacket, who has her hands clasped.
Rebekah Matar, safety manager with Exclusive Paving/University Ready Mix, is part of the AGC Fairbanks Workforce Development Task Force and helped organize the event. She says the task force sent out an email to people who had been to its meetings, asking if they would take part.

“We were looking for not only field personnel but office management as well. It takes all of these people to make a company run well,” Matar says.

With more than two dozen professionals representing all facets of the construction industry, each pair of students had five minutes to ask questions about their career. When time was up, the students rotated to the next mentor and repeated the process.

“I thought it was excellent to be able to get in touch with kids who maybe had no thought about getting into the industry,” says Jennifer Quakenbush, vice president of Great Northwest, Inc.

The small-group format made it easier to answer questions about salary and the number of hours worked, Quakenbush adds—it was less invasive than answering those questions in front of a broader audience.

“You’re not just talking at them; you’re talking to them,” she says.

ARE Interior Program Coordinator Naomi Mitchell suggested the idea for the Speed Mentoring event. She says it’s an event ARE has successfully held in Anchorage. She was thrilled when the Workforce Development Task Force not only liked the idea but immediately jumped on it, putting it on the calendar.

Mitchell called the event a “smash success.” Task Force members liked it too; another is on the schedule for Hutchinson High School in March, and Task Force members say they plan to continue holding the events next school year.

Rindi White is the editor of The Alaska Contractor. All photos provided by Alaska Resource Education.
Back to Issue