GPS 2 Success Wins White Paper Award
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
The winning project was 2015 GPS 2 Success. Team members include Cheryl Shepherd, sponsored by Bowen Center; Nicole Sherrill, Zimmer; Jennifer Stouder, DePuy Synthes; Tom Till, Ivy Tech Community College; and Kristin Whitacre, sponsored by SYM Financial Advisors.
The award, named after Jean Northenor, KLA advisor emeritus and trustee, comes with a $1,000 prize to be used toward the project. Northenor judges the projects for the award along with Suzie Light, Kosciusko County Community Foundation, and Brad Bishop, OrthoWorx.
The GPS 2 Success career fair April 14 at Grace College allowed students from several area high schools to meet representatives of 58 businesses, colleges and governmental entities. The career fair was attended by more than 2,000 high school juniors and seniors before being opened to the public later in the day. The KLA team partnered with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce on the career fair.
Shepherd said the team plans to give the prize money to the Chamber to purchase the Guidebook app that was used at the career fair to communicate with the students.
The team plans to follow through with the career fair, Stouder said. She said they plan to invite more schools next year and hopefully have more exhibitors.
“We had close to 2,500 kids so it was a great day, it was a long day,” Stouder said.
“We have a long list of things that we need to do next year differently,” Till said.
Moderator Allyn Decker asked the team a few questions about the project. The first was why the team chose to work with the Chamber on the career fair.
“We wanted something that would not only benefit our community and target on that 4.8 percent unemployment rate, but we wanted something that would be sustainable moving forward,” Sherrill answered. “So we ended up partnering up with the Chamber of Commerce. They put on an event with just Warsaw Community High School last year focusing only on juniors and seniors, and we wanted to not only target that market but we wanted to focus on our community and open it up to the public in the evening as well.”
Stouder answered Decker’s question about the app that was used. She said, “The app was something I learned how to do this year. And under DePuy licensing, we went ahead and expanded it further. This particular app was free to download for all students. We thought, what a great way to communicate to them, but also for the parents to know as well.”
The idea with the app was to show all the exhibitors at the career fair, what jobs they had available, their addresses and websites, in addition to little tidbits for the students like how to interview and dress for an interview, she said.
Shepherd answered Decker’s question about what the role of a career fair was in a young person’s life.
“Anybody who works in human resources and pretty much any business area knows that the job market is tough right now. There’s not people out there to fill our jobs, and there’s a lot of different factors that go into that,” she said. “But the job fair’s important, especially for these juniors and seniors, to plant that seed in their head of what jobs are out there for them, what education they need to get there – some of them don’t even know – and how to get there. And we want them to come back to our community to work, we don’t want them to go to other places.”
Before announcing the winning team, Northenor said, “This year the teams did an exceptional job of researching on topics, both in searching literature on their issues and interviewing contact experts. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one where all the projects went so far in depth. At times they almost lost me with all the background that they had done. As usual, there were many worthy concepts, but the judges evaluated projects based on established criteria and other. Also considered was how helpful the monetary award would be for the realization of the project.”
On the GPS 2 Success project, Northenor said, “The judges found this project doable, and, in fact, they were already doing it that day (April 14). They went out to the (Manahan) Orthopedic Capital (Center), had a big group of people, mostly students, and followed that through and we were very, very proud of it. We found the project doable, and we knew what the outcome would be when we heard the presentations. But we were really impressed with the fact that the day they made the presentation (at Project Proud), they had to leave to go do the project, which was interesting the way they worked that through. The importance to the region is clear as we currently face workforce shortages in many areas. The breadth of the impact was excellent. We do believe it is sustainable and it is an enhancement to the existing event, but their approach took it to a higher level.”
Other projects were Breaking the RECycle; Community Drug Awareness and Response; Health Research in Kosciusko County; KIDSS: Kids in Need of Services and Support; and Kosciusko County River Tourism.
Guest speaker at the graduation dinner was J. Davis “Dave” Illingworth, president of Toyota of Warsaw and former vice president and chief planning and administrative officer for Toyota Motor Sales USA. He also previously worked for Lexus.
Illingworth said he once was asked by a reporter at the Chicago Auto Show “back in the early days” what it took to make Lexus successful.
“The answer I gave, I said it took three things: It took prayer, it took teamwork and aspirin,” he said.
He said he didn’t pray for Lexus to be successful, but for the people of Lexus, the people he was working with and for guidance in his decisions.
Teamwork was important because of all the people involved who had to be ready for the launch of a division in 1990.
“The other part was the aspirin, of course, and there were a lot of headaches,” he said.
Illingworth then discussed the importance of teamwork using the story of the first moon landing in 1969. He said the story of Apollo wasn’t just about rocket ships and space travel, but about people working together to achieve a difficult goal.
“A year after his trip to the moon, Neil Armstrong was asked, ‘What impact, if any, did the Apollo mission have on the world?’” Illingworth said. “Armstrong expressed disappointment that the Apollo mission had little impact because he believed the world had missed the real message of Apollo.”
Armstrong said, according to Illingworth, “In the spirit of Apollo, a free and open spirit, you can attack a very difficult goal and achieve it if you can all agree on what the goal is and you will all work together as a team to achieve the goal.”
[[In-content Ad]]
Latest News
E-Editions
The winning project was 2015 GPS 2 Success. Team members include Cheryl Shepherd, sponsored by Bowen Center; Nicole Sherrill, Zimmer; Jennifer Stouder, DePuy Synthes; Tom Till, Ivy Tech Community College; and Kristin Whitacre, sponsored by SYM Financial Advisors.
The award, named after Jean Northenor, KLA advisor emeritus and trustee, comes with a $1,000 prize to be used toward the project. Northenor judges the projects for the award along with Suzie Light, Kosciusko County Community Foundation, and Brad Bishop, OrthoWorx.
The GPS 2 Success career fair April 14 at Grace College allowed students from several area high schools to meet representatives of 58 businesses, colleges and governmental entities. The career fair was attended by more than 2,000 high school juniors and seniors before being opened to the public later in the day. The KLA team partnered with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce on the career fair.
Shepherd said the team plans to give the prize money to the Chamber to purchase the Guidebook app that was used at the career fair to communicate with the students.
The team plans to follow through with the career fair, Stouder said. She said they plan to invite more schools next year and hopefully have more exhibitors.
“We had close to 2,500 kids so it was a great day, it was a long day,” Stouder said.
“We have a long list of things that we need to do next year differently,” Till said.
Moderator Allyn Decker asked the team a few questions about the project. The first was why the team chose to work with the Chamber on the career fair.
“We wanted something that would not only benefit our community and target on that 4.8 percent unemployment rate, but we wanted something that would be sustainable moving forward,” Sherrill answered. “So we ended up partnering up with the Chamber of Commerce. They put on an event with just Warsaw Community High School last year focusing only on juniors and seniors, and we wanted to not only target that market but we wanted to focus on our community and open it up to the public in the evening as well.”
Stouder answered Decker’s question about the app that was used. She said, “The app was something I learned how to do this year. And under DePuy licensing, we went ahead and expanded it further. This particular app was free to download for all students. We thought, what a great way to communicate to them, but also for the parents to know as well.”
The idea with the app was to show all the exhibitors at the career fair, what jobs they had available, their addresses and websites, in addition to little tidbits for the students like how to interview and dress for an interview, she said.
Shepherd answered Decker’s question about what the role of a career fair was in a young person’s life.
“Anybody who works in human resources and pretty much any business area knows that the job market is tough right now. There’s not people out there to fill our jobs, and there’s a lot of different factors that go into that,” she said. “But the job fair’s important, especially for these juniors and seniors, to plant that seed in their head of what jobs are out there for them, what education they need to get there – some of them don’t even know – and how to get there. And we want them to come back to our community to work, we don’t want them to go to other places.”
Before announcing the winning team, Northenor said, “This year the teams did an exceptional job of researching on topics, both in searching literature on their issues and interviewing contact experts. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one where all the projects went so far in depth. At times they almost lost me with all the background that they had done. As usual, there were many worthy concepts, but the judges evaluated projects based on established criteria and other. Also considered was how helpful the monetary award would be for the realization of the project.”
On the GPS 2 Success project, Northenor said, “The judges found this project doable, and, in fact, they were already doing it that day (April 14). They went out to the (Manahan) Orthopedic Capital (Center), had a big group of people, mostly students, and followed that through and we were very, very proud of it. We found the project doable, and we knew what the outcome would be when we heard the presentations. But we were really impressed with the fact that the day they made the presentation (at Project Proud), they had to leave to go do the project, which was interesting the way they worked that through. The importance to the region is clear as we currently face workforce shortages in many areas. The breadth of the impact was excellent. We do believe it is sustainable and it is an enhancement to the existing event, but their approach took it to a higher level.”
Other projects were Breaking the RECycle; Community Drug Awareness and Response; Health Research in Kosciusko County; KIDSS: Kids in Need of Services and Support; and Kosciusko County River Tourism.
Guest speaker at the graduation dinner was J. Davis “Dave” Illingworth, president of Toyota of Warsaw and former vice president and chief planning and administrative officer for Toyota Motor Sales USA. He also previously worked for Lexus.
Illingworth said he once was asked by a reporter at the Chicago Auto Show “back in the early days” what it took to make Lexus successful.
“The answer I gave, I said it took three things: It took prayer, it took teamwork and aspirin,” he said.
He said he didn’t pray for Lexus to be successful, but for the people of Lexus, the people he was working with and for guidance in his decisions.
Teamwork was important because of all the people involved who had to be ready for the launch of a division in 1990.
“The other part was the aspirin, of course, and there were a lot of headaches,” he said.
Illingworth then discussed the importance of teamwork using the story of the first moon landing in 1969. He said the story of Apollo wasn’t just about rocket ships and space travel, but about people working together to achieve a difficult goal.
“A year after his trip to the moon, Neil Armstrong was asked, ‘What impact, if any, did the Apollo mission have on the world?’” Illingworth said. “Armstrong expressed disappointment that the Apollo mission had little impact because he believed the world had missed the real message of Apollo.”
Armstrong said, according to Illingworth, “In the spirit of Apollo, a free and open spirit, you can attack a very difficult goal and achieve it if you can all agree on what the goal is and you will all work together as a team to achieve the goal.”
[[In-content Ad]]
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092