East Windsor HS Senior Completes Professional Skills Program

East Windsor school officials are lauding one high school senior’s completion of an extracurricular program designed to help develop his professional skills.

Clifford Lumpkin this year completed the Developing Tomorrow’s Professionals  program and was recognized Thursday by the East Windsor Board of Education.

Irene Parisi, director of curriculum and instruction, said this is the first year that East Windsor has participated in the program.

Developing Tomorrow’s Professionals is a carefully constructed program of training, assessment and support services designed to address the needs of young men of color (Black and Latino), providing year-round overlapping mentoring, academic skill set training, university linkage, and technology training as it relates to academic performance and assessment, according to the program’s website.

Parisi said all participants are partnered with academic and professional mentors. They are also provided with professional support and provided a frame of reference for the workplace.

Parisi said participants attend 10 academic Saturdays at Southern Connecticut State University. Those Saturdays include a combination of skill set development, discourse, rigorous writing, college lecture and assessment, according to the program’s website.

The participants have to address who they are, develop their inner voice and learn to present themselves accordingly as a professional.

“It’s to help these kids to be college and career ready,” Parisi said.

Lumpkin said he’s interested in studying business and arts, and looking into attending Bethune University.

Lumpkin said he enjoyed being in the program and is working on a senior project about his experience going through those 10 academic Saturdays.

Board of education member Kathleen Bilodeau said she thinks it’s an awesome program.

“I think that they’re teaching the young men what their potential is,” Bilodeau said.

As part of the program the participants are taken to a tailor in New Haven and fitted with a suit helping them be professional, Parisi said. Upon graduation from the program, they are given a computer preloaded with software that will help them in the workplace, she added.

Parisi said twelve young men were interviewed for the program and three were chosen from East Windsor. Lumpkin was the only one to complete the program as an East Windsor student.

Parisi said the program is one she doesn’t want to let go and will be applying for it again in January.