As America continues to age, the need for personal care or home health aides is shifting into high gear, with no signs of slowing down. One big reason: There are 73 million baby boomers, the largest living adult population at about 25 percent, and 10,000 of them turn 65 and retire each day. As Baby […]
Senaida Avalos, a freshman at Polk State College, is grateful the Polk County School District develops new programs that keep up with current market demands, such as the Pharmacy Technician Academy at Fort Meade Middle-Senior High School. “I think that one of the things that the school system did well was create programs, such as […]
Mankind has always had a fascination with space, and as Mars 2020 approaches, Polk County is playing an ever-increasing role in the high-tech aerospace industry. Some of the county’s involvement stems from Florida Polytechnic University, where a 14-member team is working with the Florida Space Institute on a capstone project to build a Mars rover. […]
Polk County Public School graduate, Riley McDanal, likes to figure out why people think and act the way they do, a trait that’s led her to follow in her mother’s footsteps and major in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. McDanal is being profiled as part of a series on students who attended Polk […]
As more people turn to alternative forms of medicine to cure their aching back or recover from surgery, physical therapists are in more demand now than ever. Florida Southern College is helping train the physical therapists of the future through its new Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program, which started in the Fall 2019 semester. […]
For Brittany Tillman, her path to math all started at Lincoln Avenue Academy and Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, both magnet schools that focus on science, technology, engineering and math. “They provided me with early exposure to STEM topics as well as continuing to foster my interest in the math and sciences as I […]
As the nation struggles to train enough cybersecurity experts and analysts to fill a shortage that has grown by 50% since 2015, four Polk County colleges are offering courses and degrees to help prepare students for this growing field. In the next two years, about half a million cybersecurity jobs will remain unfilled, according to […]
Winter Haven Hospital’s new Family Medicine Residency program — in partnership with Florida State University College of Medicine and BayCare Medical Group — recently gained accreditation and opened its Family Health Center. In 2018, Winter Haven Hospital announced it was partnering with FSU to create a program that recruits doctors to complete their residencies in […]
In Polk County’s Lakeland-Winter Haven MSA, among the fastest-growing jobs are post-secondary teachers, chemical equipment operators, family general practitioner doctors, medical care aides, and chefs, according to CommercialCafe and the Tampa Bay Business Journal. It should come as no surprise that these jobs are in demand, here’s why: POST-SECONDARY TEACHERS The number of college-level teachers […]
Despite the language barrier, a new school and an unfamiliar culture one Polk graduate is now excelling at a Polk institution of higher learning hoping to pursue a career in medicine. Jessica Echevarria moved to the United States from Cuba when she was seven, knowing only how to say “Yes,” “No” and a few other […]