Danielle Archuleta, 18, always has been interested in helping others.

“Having the ability to help someone out on their worst day and make them feel better is something I’ve always enjoyed doing,” she said. “To help someone through a struggle and make a difference in their life.”

But the Springfield High School senior said she had no idea what to do with that passion or how she could potentially use her passion in a career, until she switched schools and enrolled in health science profession courses her junior year of high school.

Now, she's earned her Certified Nursing Assistant license from Lane Community College and has been accepted to attend the University of Portland next fall to study nursing.

She said the high school health occupation courses have helped her craft a plan for the future.

“The classes have enabled me to explore these types of careers while still in high school, so I can apply and go to college already understanding what I’m interested in,” Archuleta said.

The health science courses Archuleta has taken are part of a CTE pathway, or a series of elective courses.

CTE stands for career technical education. Courses in CTE — once known as vocational classes — often allow students to earn college credit while in high school. Students also gain skills and technical knowledge and experience to prepare them for high-skilled and high-demand living-wage careers, such as health science, construction technology, engineering, business management, early childhood development, computer sciences, robotics, culinary arts and more.

The career technical courses also can better prepare students for the next step in their educational career, no matter what that may be, according to Leslie Watson, a teacher who heads the health occupations professions CTE program of study at Springfield High School.

"Students have more of an idea or a very clear idea of what they want to do when entering college," Watson said. "They are more informed of the classes they need to take and have more confidence going into it. My students definitely go into college with more experience and more of a plan for their future."

For Archuleta, the health occupations pathway at Springfield High has helped transform her passion and drive to help others into a tangible plan. Although she may not yet be a nurse, the CTE classes she’s taken have given her enough experience to know that nursing is the route she wants to take.

“The classes have helped me to narrow things down,” she said. “I had thought about being a nurse before when I was at South (Eugene High School), but I didn’t really know how to get there.”

Archuleta transferred to Springfield High from South Eugene High in 2017 after her family moved to Glenwood.

"I just wanted to try out a different school," she said. "And Springfield seems to just be more culturally diverse and it has the classes I'm interested in."

Some of the courses she’s completed at Springfield include anatomy and physiology, medical terminology, human body systems and biology. She’s received college credit for several of the courses, too. Students enrolled in health occupations courses also learn about empathy, medical law and ethics.

“Not only does the program help students determine what their next steps may be, it also builds their professional work skills and teaches them things like dependency, compassion and responsibility,” Watson said.

Watson has built the health occupations pathway at Springfield High from the ground up.

The program started in the 2013-14 school year with 59 students enrolled in one anatomy and physiology course, according to Watson. Since then, the program has expanded to now offer eight health occupations courses with 183 students enrolled in at least one course and 54 of those students enrolled in more than one course, Watson said.

In Lane County there's been a recent push to expand CTE programs.

Oregon voters in 2016 passed Measure 98, the High School Graduation and College and Career Readiness Act. Under this act, districts receive funds to establish or expand career and technical education programs in high schools, as well as to improve access to post-secondary programs and expand dropout-prevention strategies in high schools.

In the three metro-area districts, eight high schools now are operating 46 CTE programs in almost 20 career fields, according to the City Club of Eugene.

In addition to helping students jump-start a career, CTE programs significantly boost graduation rates and lower drop-out rates in Lane County and across the state.



Oregon students who are enrolled in CTE programs are 15.5 percent more likely to graduate from high school in four years than students who do not take the courses, according to data from the state Department of Education.

Follow Alisha on Twitter @alisharoemeling. Email alisha.roemeling@registerguard.com.