CONTRIBUTED PHOTO From left to right, Marshalltown High School seniors Emily Aguilera, Joanna Rivas, iJAG Advisor Mary McCann Fuchsen, Sophie Cardona, Shalayia Price and Rahma M’Rabet recently attended the National Career Development Conference in Indianapolis, Ind. from April 24-26.

A total of five Marshalltown High School (MHS) seniors recently traveled to Indianapolis and participated in the Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates (iJAG) national conference, learning important lessons in the process and preparing themselves for the next step in their journeys once they graduate.

Four of them — Shalayia Price, Emily Aguilera, Sophie Cardona and Joanna Rivas — exhibited a group project on creative decision making after winning their state competition in March, while Rahma M’Rabet ran for a national office. For their first project at regionals, the prompt regarded a new vending machine being installed at a school, and the students were tasked with deciding where and what they would put in the vending machine and why.

At state, they were given 45 minutes to devise a plan for keeping the population of their community growing by attracting new families to move here.

“Marshalltown is really community based, and it was really easy to come up with an idea to keep our population growing and keep families here,” Price said.

According to Rivas and Aguilera, their solutions were to host a variety of monthly events specific to the time of year and build more homes marketed to young families hoping to plant their roots in Marshalltown because, as they noted, much of the income-based housing currently available in the community is restricted to senior citizens and veterans.

“For the events, we would have little businesses to have the community come and just interact with those businesses to learn more about them and then also have possibilities for internships or job openings. And just have the community be able to network with other businesses that we bring in, so that way, every month there’s an opportunity to be able to do that.”

M’Rabet, on the other hand, worked her way up to the position of a state officer for iJAG and had the chance to run for a national position among all of the states that participate in JAG programs. She was one of the top 20 officers in the nation and took a 50 question test before partaking in interviews and making the top 16 and then top 12.

“Throughout the week, we had just a series of interviews and a series of sitdowns with voting delegates from each state, and then introducing ourselves to the JAG board and everything and kind of basically pitching yourself,” she said. “It was really like an election process, and then our last one was the business conference where we had to give our two minute speech as to why we should be picked to the position we were slated as. And then the voting delegates got to choose.”

She didn’t win nationals, but she was in the top four for the parliamentarian position. This was M’Rabet’s second time at nationals (last year, she was a competitor), and she said she’s interested in pursuing politics as a career. Price is also interested in studying either political science or psychology, while Rivas intends to take a gap year and continue her job as a paraeducator at Hoglan Elementary. After that, she would like to study early education at Marshalltown Community College (MCC) with a focus on kindergarten before transferring to a four-year school.

Cardona is exploring studying radiology or x-ray technology at the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) Newton campus but hopes to stay involved in community-based initiatives. Aguilera will be pursuing a business degree and going to beauty school to work as an esthetician or cosmetologist.

“I did have a good experience with going to nationals, and I liked how all that worked. So maybe in the future, we’ll see what that holds and maybe I would be into something like that,” she said.

Their advisor, Mary McCann Fuchsen, said that while iJAG may be more generally associated with skilled trades job training, it offers something for all students with a wide variety of interests.

“It’s more just getting to know the student and building a personal relationship with them because then, once you know them, you can help them navigate their career path,” she said. “Any student, whether it’s a career and college, whether it’s military, whether it’s trades, we’re ready to help them navigate the process… Watching the growth and the confidence and kind of the courage it takes to go to a conference and put yourself out there and present in front of people is something that I think these girls probably didn’t imagine, when they started iJAG, that they would come this far and they would’ve gotten the opportunities they got. I’m really proud of all of them.”

M’Rabet discovered her passion for political science during a legislative day at the Iowa Capitol, and she even secured a job shadow and internship with the governor’s office this year.

“I feel like it really does touch up on more than just trades,” she said.

The national conference was held from April 24-26. To learn more about iJAG, visit https://www.ijag.org/.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.