Explore how the Kentucky Postsecondary Advising Scope and Sequence can strengthen Individual Learning Plan (ILP) implementation and support meaningful college and career readiness. Participants will learn about new ILP training resources and how to leverage the Kentucky Postsecondary Advising Scope and Sequence alongside Futuriti, Kentucky's career exploration platform, to help students make informed postsecondary decisions. Discover strategies for integrating these free resources into various advising structures while building strong school and community partnerships to support robust, student-centered advising systems.
Director, Kentucky Advising Academy, Council on Postsecondary Education
Mitzi Holland is an education leader with more than 25 years of experience in Career and Technical Education (CTE) and postsecondary readiness. She began her career as a business educator, spending 15 years developing students’ practical and career-focused skills. She later served... Read More →
Senior Fellow, Kentucky Advising Academy, Council on Postsecondary Education
Susie Burkhardt is a lifelong educator with a 35-year career of fostering student-centered learning and academic excellence. Currently serving as a Senior Fellow for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, Susie is supporting the development of the Kentucky Advising Scope... Read More →
This session focuses on how CTE instructors can collaborate with local business and industry to establish, design, and sustain inclusive employer-engagement partnerships that create authentic, real-world career readiness for all students, including those with disabilities. Participants will learn intentional partnership design strategies to co-create vibrant learning experiences, equip employers with the tools, resources, and supports they need to participate confidently, and reduce employer uncertainty.
In this session, you'll explore how Ready for Industry supports career readiness through interactive, standards-aligned lessons. The program covers essential sectors like Manufacturing, Construction, Health Science, Information Technology, and Logistics. Students build awareness of real career pathways, develop soft skills, and learn about current workforce trends and expectations. Whether you're leading a work-based learning program or just looking to bring more career-focused content into your classroom, Ready for Industry is a powerful tool to help students connect what they learn in school to what they'll need on the job. RFI includes an opportunity for participants to earn an industry-recognized stackable micro-credential through NOCTI.
This session introduces Kentucky’s newly adopted Middle School Career Studies and Financial Literacy Standards and highlights a set of ready-to-use lesson plans designed to support their implementation. Participants will explore how early career awareness and financial literacy help students recognize their strengths, set meaningful goals, and make informed decisions about their futures. Through discussion, practical examples, and implementation strategies, school counselors and educators will gain tools to create engaging, real-world learning experiences that prepare all students for success in high school, postsecondary pathways, and beyond.
In my service as our CTE Coordinator I have coordinated with our students, leadership team, CTE departments, and community stakeholders to identify areas of strength and areas of needed growth in our CTE programs. This systems-based approach has supported significant growth in post-secondary readiness the last few school years, with our school earning the highest postsecondary readiness score in its history on recent state accountability measures. This session highlights the key strategies that drove that growth. Our work centered on elevating student voice, restructuring scheduling through advocacy to ensure pathway access and clarity in communication, informational posters that are personalized to our school/district, highlighted communications through our school news program and our local news programs within our community, reflecting on workforce and accountability data to align programs with employability trends and community needs. Through strong PLC collaboration, shared leadership among counselors and pathway teachers, intentional community partnerships, and the implementation of a readiness tracker, we created a unified, outcomes-driven CTE system. Participants of this session have opportunity to gain practical strategies that have been utilized by our team that have supported team alignment, practical and repeatable data reflection, and building pathways and learning opportunities that meet specific student needs. This session would be appropriate to be attended by administrators, counselors, and CTE instructors.
