Drew gets up at 6 a.m. every weekday to take the city bus to the Rosa Parks Pavillion in downtown Rochester. He scans his badge to get into the Mayo Clinic building and joins his seven classmates for their morning lessons before they all embark on the rest of their work days at 9 a.m.
Drew attends Rochester Public Schools (RPS) Project SEARCH program. He, and many of his classmates attended the Rochester Academy for Independent Living (RAIL). Project SEARCH is a program for students ages 18 – 22 years old with intellectual and developmental cognitive disabilities. Students will participate in internships while receiving systematic instruction in order to learn competitive, marketable employment skills. With the help of RPS Opportunity Services, some of them will go onto work at Mayo Clinic, and other employers, after their graduation.
Throughout the rest of this school year, Project SEARCH students will work within Mayo Clinic under realistic, practical conditions and carry out full time responsibilities and tasks–ultimately to build the experience that will lead to competitive employment opportunities after their graduation from the program.
Carlisle Corson, RPS teacher of Project SEARCH, has been working in this field for over 30 years and teaching Project SEARCH in Rochester for the last five years.
“They’ll learn the, what we call, ‘hard skills’ like the technicals of doing deliveries, sorting, and processes,” Carlisle says. “But for a lot of them, and the thing that Project SEARCH is designed to do is teach them the ‘soft skills’ like social interactions, communication, courtesy tendencies, and things of that nature.”
Project SEARCH started in 1997 in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The hospital served persons with developmental disabilities, and its staff felt that the hospital would benefit from people with similar disabilites helping perform tasks. Often faced with trouble staffing high turn-over, the hospital found a great way to keep positions staffed while also building skills for people with developmental disabilities. Project SEARCH has 717 program sites in 48 US states and 11 countries. Since 2010, 43,375 people have been served.
The Rochester franchise of Project SEARCH was established ten years ago. It was started as a nine-month internship program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, designed for individuals whose goal is competitive employment. The program is structured to achieve total immersion in the workplace facilitates to teach and learning process as well as the acquisition of employable and marketable work skills. Interns participate in three internship rotations to explore a variety of career paths. The interns work with a team that includes their family, an instructor, skills trainers, and local and state agencies to create and achieve an employment goal.
This branch has served 51 people since 2015 with 34 graduates accepting positions in the community and 17 graduates accepting positions at Mayo Clinic. Project SEARCH at the Mayo Clinic is one of nine total Project SEARCH locations in the state of Minnesota.
The process for students to enroll in Project SEARCH is strategically strenuous. For students to qualify to be in this program, they undergo a hiring process consisting of applications, skills assessments, and interviews about why they want to work in the program.
Over the course of the entire school year, eight Project SEARCH students in Rochester will work in three, ten-week intervals in specific Mayo Clinic departments, including Central Services, Charter House, Environmental Services, Food Services, Human Resources, Nursing, Recycling, and the DAHLC.
Drew is working in Central Services for his first rotation this year. In this rotation, he needs to dress in full scrubs, disposable gloves, and a hair net. He sorts and stacks viles to be used for lab testings.
“I’m liking it here,” he said. “I’m doing the same thing a lot. And I look like a smurf!”
Just a few long hallways and an elevator ride away are his classmates Jose and Kevin in the Food Service department.
Jose and Kevin wear aprons and hair nets while they prep the cafeteria for the lunch rush where Mayo Clinic employees gather for their lunch break.
“I’m tired at the end of the day,” said Kevin. “But I’m learning lots of new things. I have to measure the rice we make so we don’t make too much.”
Along with Kevin, Jose gets to work behind the cafeteria counters and operates in a full-scale, commercial kitchen.
“I cut the tops off the strawberries and then cut them in half,” said Jose. “It’s going well. The days are long and I don’t know when it’s going to be a busy day or not. But I also get free food which I like.”
Carlisle has graduated over 30 kids since he started at Project SEARCH.
“I’ve stopped by the departments where we have some of our students, some of who couldn’t even speak a word in social settings, and have seen them having sophisticated conversations with their team members or customers. The progress they make here is truly astonishing,” he said.
Project SEARCH has transformed the lives of its students and sets them up for success in their careers. Regardless if they are brought onto a role at Mayo Clinic after their graduation from Project SEARCH, they can carry the skills (hard, or soft) to their next endeavor.
This programs would have ten years of secured funding through the Ignite Student Learning Referendum.
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Watch the Project SEARCH graduates from last year share their feedback to the RPS school board of directors. (1:18:09)
Watch Project SEARCH graduate, Spencer accept a role at the Mayo Clinic as a team assistant.
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