Libby Manship is working with Eastern Hancock as a community liaison.
CHARLOTTESVILLE — One of the goals of officials in the Eastern Hancock (EH) school district is to make sure students have opportunities to learn about what types of jobs are awaiting them after high school.
Through a partnership with The Community Foundation of Hancock County, district officials will now be working with Libby Manship to help that happen. Thanks to a grant, Manship, who will work outside of the district and not directly with the students, has come on board to be the district’s community liaison.
She will be assisting the district on two fronts — to continue to increase their growing list of community partners and to help district officials strengthen and improve the partnerships they have already established.
“My role will not be directly with the students,” Manship said. “My role will be to help cultivate external relationships with organizations and businesses that may not be aware of the workforce opportunity with students.”
Manship, the president of Manship Consulting, LLC, has a deep background in workforce development, including working with former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.
“I love this community more than anything and I have a real passion for helping Hancock County employers and schools,” Manship said. “Schools and businesses need to find each other for long-term success.”
Manship believes a students’ ability to connect the dots between skills and the things they learn in the classroom, coupled with workforce experiences, will empower students in new ways and help them directly apply what they have learned to a future career.
In just four weeks since Manship started, the EH school district has already grown the quantity of engaged contacts by more than 30%, Manship said. This is why EH Superintendent George Philhower wanted to bring Manship on board.
“All of this is being done to help improve the school experience for our students and improve the number of employable graduates in our community,” Philhower said.
Agriculture teacher Diana Arellano has worked tireless through the years, internally connecting students with outside school opportunities, Philhower said. However, the hope is Manship will be able to work from the outside, through businesses, connecting them with possible future employees.
“We received a grant that goes through the Hancock County Community Foundation that will allow us to have this external person, someone who cannot be employed by the school district, to help our students,” Philhower said. “Libby is awesome and we just know she’s going to do great things for our students.”
State officials are asking school districts to make sure students are college and career ready when they leave high school, meaning the more hands-on opportunities district officials can give students, the sooner they can make decisions about career choices.
“This is also about getting the workers in our building so our kids can see them early,” Philhower said.
Philhower brought up an excellent point in that most educators have been inside the education business since kindergarten, so bringing in outside business people will really help students broaden their future possibilities.
“The more we can do to work together with community businesses, the better our kids are going to be,” Philhower said.
Manship agrees and said the sooner students know about all the work opportunities out there, the sooner they can find a focus, start taking classes and eventually get real work experience in their field of interest.
“We want to equip students with knowledge so they can start dreaming of new career paths so they can have a personal road map,” Manship said. “For some students, that road map may be going straight into the workforce, a trade certification, an associates degree or a four-year college.”
