The Oskaloosa school district this year launched a program to get high school students real-life experiences by working on projects around the city and with local businesses.
Called The Hub, students will have a donated off-campus location to work in starting this fall, in Oskaloosa’s downtown. Organizers aim to have 30 students participating this fall.
“It’s an opportunity for kids to help those businesses out, get some real-life skills, and just get some career exploration,” said Carrie Bihn, facilitator of The Hub.
The impetus for The Hub is two-fold: expanding career exploration opportunities for students and building up needed soft-skills that employers want, Bihn said. Also, this education model is designed to encourage students to come back to Oskaloosa to work, she said.
“If we can get a kid interested in an entity that’s downtown or around Oskaloosa … maybe they’ll have to go somewhere else for education, but then they can come back,” she said. “They know what the possibilities for future employment are right here in town, that they don’t have to leave town to find gainful employment.”
High school students are helping with different projects around town and partnering with area businesses, Bihn said. For example, they worked with the elementary school on an entryway and a courtyard that needed repairs, she said.
Another project originated from a local physical therapy office that helps prevent sports injuries. The business wanted to establish an Athlete of the Season and needed the students’ help to bring it to life, she said.
The students dug in and did research, asking different coaches questions about what they were looking for in top-notch athletes. They also worked through questions of what the award would look like, eventually choosing a medal and designing a T-shirt for it, she said.
Another student noticed a lot of garbage in a local cemetery near the high school, Bihn said. She organized an opportunity for students to earn volunteer hours that would go toward earning them a silver cord at graduation.
“[It’s] a win-win,” Bihn said. “The community looks better, the cemetery looks better, the kids did something better for the school, and they get recognition for it later on at graduation.”
Michella Friesen,executive director of the United Way of Mahaska County, partnered with The Hub this spring by working with a student on United Way’s Back to School Fair, a project that provides backpacks filled with school supplies for kids.
The student had a variety of tasks, including talking to a police officer about a Stuff the Police Car event, where volunteers fill a police car with donated items. She also made sure students who needed backpacks were registered and that supplies were on hand for volunteers to pack the bags.
“It’s doing that behind-the-scenes work and getting us prepared for the activity, and it’s not necessarily busy work, but it is work that we have to do,” Friesen said. “The student is gaining so much knowledge out of being here with us. … It’s getting them really in that work environment idea headspace, and not that school headspace.”
The Hub model encourages problem-solving among its participants, she said, encouraging students to get from point A to point D on a project.
“I think we sometimes forget the power of our youth, and so this is a great way that we can use the power of our youth,” she said.
Bihn said a committee of people over the years researched the concept for The Hub as the district looked for ways to increase student engagement and opportunities for hands-on experiences. Other similar models they studied include Iowa BIG in Cedar Rapids, Eden Prairie schools in Minnesota, the career and tech ed department at Central Campus in Des Moines and APEX in Waukee. They also talked to a manufacturing plant in Knoxville about soft skills, she said.
In Waukee, the district has had its own building that houses the APEX program for about 10 years, now with about 400 business partners, said Brad Buck, superintendent of Waukee Community School District. The Waukee Innovation & Learning Center houses APEX, School to Work, Intro to Education and Restaurant and Hospitality Leadership. In 2025-26, enrollment for all programs combined was close to 860, with just over 700 enrolled in APEX, according to the district.
The building was designed specifically to not look like a school, he said. For example, some rooms have dummies to work on for the Certified Nursing Assistant program. There is equipment for aspiring physical therapists, and APEX also has a strong actuarial sciences program as well, he said.
“And then the newest edition we just put on, it has a large open area with all kinds of bandsaws, welders, [a] paint booth, and that’s for the career tech ed stuff that’s coming,” he said.
Buck said the program has evolved to now having a “significant school-to-work program.”
“In that program, kids are placed in jobs for a semester, so they spend a semester getting to know resume, job skills … and then they do a semester out in a job site. We also have apprenticeships that we’re working on.”
Educators hope students get to explore areas they are interested in, and investigate the pathways that emerge from different careers, he said.
“And then for other kids, it’s like they figure out that’s not really for them,” he said. “I think we’re trying to do a lot better job of helping kids understand the pathways and the kinds of things that are in those pathways, more so than necessarily deciding what they want to be earlier.”