FEATURE
Participants in the Summer 2019 CERM Job Shadowing Day Program visit an active job site on Phase One of Westside Park at Bellwood Quarry in Atlanta. (Photo Credit: Brittany Denton)
CERM Job Shadowing PROGRAM What They See is What They Can Be
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t’s impossible for a young person to envision being something they have never seen. But, seeing another person – especially someone who looks like them – accomplish something significant or interesting can create a spark in a young person that ignites a dream they desire to fulfill. For instance, basketball legend Michael Jordan needed to see sports icon Julius “Dr. J” Erving fly with a basketball to dream that he too could fly into the stratosphere of athletic accomplishment. Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey needed to read Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” before she dreamed of and acquired transcendent mega-success and wealth. Likewise, entrepreneurs Albert G.
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/ summer 2019
Edwards and the late Marcus L. Reese needed to see possibilities, potential and opportunities in the engineering field before they could envision having a technical career. The two high school students at Mattie T. Blount High School in Pritchard, Alabama, met in the early 1980s at a summer outreach program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for high school, where they were exposed to careers in architecture, engineering and construction. This experience created a spark that wouldn’t ignite until more than a decade later, when the two friends reconnected in 1995 to form Corporate Environmental Risk Management (CERM). Since the firm’s humble beginnings in the South DeKalb Business Incubator
near Atlanta, Georgia, the firm has grown to more than 100 employees and provides customized engineering solutions to its energy, environmental, facilities, federal, transportation and water resources clients throughout the Southeastern United States. The experience Edwards and Reese gained from meeting at a summer outreach program encouraged them to make exposing young students to technical careers a major component of CERM’s business philosophy. The company’s early efforts at job shadowing consisted of bringing in students and allowing them to shadow employees. The employees would share their daily activities and discuss what a career in the engineering
