Central students shadow local employees with District 203’s job shadow opportunity

Ria Jha, Staff Writer

Students from the Naperville 203 School District were offered the opportunity to job shadow employees of various companies on Oct. 5, 2017.

Organized by Dr. Lynn Andrees from Naperville Central and  Bryan Peckhart from Naperville North, the job shadow event allowed students to learn about the professions in many fields, including engineering, accounting, law, and many more.

Junior Nancy Liu visited the Naperville Electric Utility Company with junior and fellow classmate Kenny Li, where they took tours of the facility and learned about transformers and the electric grid of the city.

This opportunity really helped me to get a look into the engineering fields I’m interested in,” Liu said. “This job shadowing has given me ample insight into the possibilities I have in the future and the path I want to head down.

Junior Adarsh Mattu learned about the various types of engineering pathways through his visit to Argonne National Laboratory. He and a group of 4 students toured

the facility, visiting the supercomputer MIRA and Advanced Photon Source (APS), as well as inquiring employees about their day-to-day activities.

“It expanded my horizons, and many of the subjects that we discussed really piqued my interests,” Mattu said.

Junior Arvind Mohan and sophomore Abhinav Bawankule explored the field of marketing and business management at Sikich LLP. Bawankule felt that the experience was worthwhile and helped him plan his future better.

Being in high school, our time to choose our future is coming closer and closer,” Mohan said. “To me, there is nothing better to help than working with professionals of potential careers.

Srishti Kama, a senior at Central, has been participating in the job shadowing program for three years. This year, she visited Sikich LLP. In past years, she has explored the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Klein Hall CPAs, an accounting firm.

“I really enjoyed this experience and I think it’s really beneficial to learn about career field especially when deciding what major to go into in college,” Kama said. “It helps if the people you talk to are young and relatively fresh out of college. This experience is helpful to decide what careers interest you and what [don’t].”

With around 40 different options, students in District 203 benefited from the opportunities and can continue to explore various career paths in the future.