Daily Lumina News 121720

Allison Lindsay didn’t dream of being a contact tracer. She came to the State University of New York at New Paltz as an athletic trainer in 2017. But when the college reopened in the midst of the pandemic, she suddenly had a new job.
Contact tracing and disease intervention is not a new profession. The practice goes back hundreds of years. But this year, contact tracers’ numbers grew by the thousands. On college campuses, they are part of the new, rapidly deployed pandemic workforce.

Nathan Swink's passion for welding began when he was 13 years old. Today, a one-time hobby has become a full-time career. Swink is the CEO of Swink’s Welding and Fabrication Inc., where he operates a company that has seven full-time welders on staff.
You can learn more about Swink and the high-demand industry of welding in this video, which is part of a new series on promising career paths for early-career workers of all education levels.

Seventeen-year-old Naomi Barnes juggles sports, student government, charity work, and dual enrollment college classes. She's also the only member of her family currently employed. Despite this intense workload, she refuses to let her lifelong dream of attending a historically Black college or university fade.
College application season can be stressful in a normal year. But this is not a normal year. Experts worry that the added pressures of pandemic life may make an already taxing application process that much harder.

Millions of individuals have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. They need fast and flexible training and upskilling opportunities to transition back into the workforce.
Leaders of two very different institutions—Purdue Global University and Broward College in Florida—discuss the potential of short-term, work-related credentials and certifications for underserved student groups, including students who hold down jobs while pursuing their training.