A degree in elementary education allows you to enter one of the most rewarding professions, teaching young children and preparing them for future schooling. An elementary school teacher works hard each day to develop the minds and attitudes of future generations. This career path requires compassion, patience and a desire to help children learn.

Education

The first step towards a career in elementary education is a bachelor’s degree, which will take about four years to complete. Over the course of your education you’ll learn how to work with young students of different ages and abilities and how to create lesson plans.

A bachelor’s degree in elementary education often includes field work, such as student teaching, which is often completed at the same time as teaching certification requirements. Teaching certification differs state-to-state, so you’ll need to find out what your state requires. Some states require you to receive a master’s degree after initial teacher certification to teach.

Career

Elementary school teachers are typically certified to teach preschool through sixth grade, but this also varies state-to-state. As an elementary school teacher, you will cover multiple subjects throughout the day and teach important concepts such as problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration. There is also the opportunity to teach special classes, such as art, music and physical education.

Dedicating your life to educating will require you to be creative. You will need to make lesson plans that keep young students engaged in learning and can be adapted to their needs. Teaching also requires patience and the ability physically, mentally and emotionally keep up with students.

Salary and job outlook
According to BLS.gov, elementary school teachers earned an average of $54,550 per year as of 2014. The field is expected to grow about 6 percent over the next ten years, about as fast as average.

Explore a little more with Next Step Academy’s course “Careers in Education: Primary Education“

Students pursuing a business degree have a wide range of options available to them as they work towards finding their career niche. For the sports enthusiast, a career in sports management could be the perfect path that combines business and sports. You don’t have to be athletic — you just need to be a strategic thinker and have a passion for sports and people.

Education

A career in sports management starts with a bachelor’s degree in business. Look for a program that offers a minor in sports management or event planning. Some schools offer a specific sports management degree, but these programs still focus heavily on business fundamentals and are difficult to find.

Upon completing your degree you’ll have a strong understanding of sports marketing, economics, professional communication, business ethics and event management.

Career

Many graduates will go on to work with professional institutions such as the NFL or with non-professional sport leagues. You may also choose to work for a college or high school athletic department, or for a recreational center such as the YMCA.

Sports management allows you to work within every aspect of the industry. You have all the possibilities of a business degree, but with the focus of a booming industry you’re passionate about. You can work directly with sports teams, facilities and stores, but you also have the opportunity to work with sports focused non-profit groups such as the Special Olympics. The possibilities are endless.

If sports management sounds like a career path you’re interested in, then check out Next Step Academy’s “Careers in Sports Management” course to learn more about this exciting field and find out if it’s the right fit for you.

Students looking to study communications are often faced with one of two dreaded questions: “what are you going to do with that degree?” and “doesn’t everyone already know how to communicate?” Yes, it’s true, most of us have been developing communication skills since infancy, but it takes practice, creativity and a strong command of language to turn those skills into a profitable art.

The study of communications is ultimately about understanding people and how they create, send and receive any type of message (verbal, non-verbal, visual, written, body language, etc.). It also studies how the medium (social media, television, radio etc.) affects the overall message and how mediums are best suited for sharing specific types of information. There are several major fields within communications each with their own array of subfields. If you’re an outside-the-box thinker with superb communication skills, rest assured, you will find your place within communications industry.

Public relations (PR) is a communications field concerned with organizations’ public personas and brands. PR professionals take a holistic approach to developing plans for organizations to craft and share their messages with the public. A PR professional may craft a message that portrays the organization’s image and personality, while another message could be about a campaign promoting special event or initiative. As a PR professional, you may choose to focus your career on any number of specialities such as: branding, crisis management, or event promotion. Many PR firms also offer marketing and advertising services under their public relations umbrella because these fields are closely related.

Marketing is similar to PR, but there are specific skills as a marketer you’ll want to master. For instance, writing in both short and long forms, being able to make sense of analytical information and thinking creatively in a “big picture” way. Marketing professionals tend to focus on target audiences, building brand recognition and developing two-way conversations with the organization’s audience. In this career field you may also be responsible for developing new personalities or “re-branding” organizations entirely. There is quite a bit over overlap between marketing and PR, so be prepared to wear many hats in the workplace.

Advertising, while similar to marketing, focuses more on the power of persuasion with the ultimate goal of selling a specific product or service. Advertising professionals use the research of their marketing counterparts to create advertisements for print, television, radio, billboards, and many other unique “guerilla” style tactics. The advertising professional’s responsibilities may resemble or even cross-over into marketing roles.

Journalism is not all breaking news reporting, and it is certainly not all television broadcasting. Those jobs make up only a fraction of this career field. There are as many beats (specialties) in journalism as there are topics of conversation: politics, money, food, arts, crime, science, technology, the list goes on. Journalists may work for television news networks, magazines, newspapers, or for themselves as freelance writers. No matter their beat or medium, journalists tell real-life stories from your hometown, to the other side of the world. This career path may offer unique opportunities to travel, interview different people and investigate stories.

Media is one of the larger fields within communications. The three biggest media subfields are radio, television and film. Each of these three media subfields have countless job positions to choose from: writing, producing, directing, media buying and more.

So, the next time someone asks “what are you going to do with a communications degree?”, kindly explain that a career in communications offers opportunities in multiple fields, and every other industry requires some type of communication specialist. Once you’ve made your point, send them to Next Step Academy’s “Careers in Communication” course. A career in communications could be right for them, too!

When Niagara University student Cody Candelario, an aspiring chef majoring in luxury hospitality operations at the university’s esteemed College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, mounted his own social media marketing strategy, it landed him on this Sunday night’s episode of Food Network’s “Cutthroat Kitchen.”

Cody, a native of Healdsburg, California, is presently spending the summer in a Niagara University internship at Hotel Belvedere in Bellagio, Italy on the shores of Lake Como. On weekends, he travels to learn about food preparation techniques at places like Cinque Terre, Milan, Florence, Rome and Venice. Cody will spend his senior year in Germany participating in Niagara’s dual-degree program with the International University of Applied Sciences in Bad Honnef, Germany.

The campaign to become a Food Network star began when student Cody started working at Carmelo’s, a restaurant in Lewiston, New York. As he started posting photos on Instagram to capture his culinary creations, others began to notice. In just a few months, he had developed connections with chefs, promoters and cooking labels. Soon, he was was contacted by a casting agent for the Food Network. In mid-December, Cody learned he made the cut for “Cutthroat Kitchen.”

The premise of “Cutthroat Kitchen” is four chefs are each given $25,000, which they may spend on supplies to either assist in their own preparation or on ways to sabotage the efforts of their opponents. After each cooking challenge is presented, the chefs have 60 seconds to gather ingredients from the pantry and regroup for an auction to bid on culinary curve balls, such as the exclusive use of an ingredient or not allowing opponents to taste dishes. A chef is eliminated after each of the three rounds, and the last competitor standing wins the money left in their personal bank.

“I’ve never liked the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?'” Cody said. “I have a loose set of goals I wish to accomplish, and a direction. In the next three years, I want to open a food truck. Then in the next five, a restaurant. I also want to be a sommelier, a hotel owner, a Food Network judge and a rock star.”

Does this sound like a great college/career experience? Find out more about Careers in the Culinary Arts and take Next Step Academy’s online course.

Article excerpted from a press release from Niagara University.

With graduation season nearly upon us, the personal finance website WalletHub recently released its 2015 Entry-Level Jobs Report, which takes stock of the first-timer employment landscape by comparing 109 different types of entry-level positions based on 11 key metrics ranging from starting salaries to industry growth rate.

Here are the best and worst jobs according to the report:

Best Entry-Level Jobs
1. Training Specialist
2. Web Applications Developer
3. Network Engineer
4. Attorney
5. Environmental Engineer
6. Software Engineer
7. Designer – Web
8. Information Security Analyst
9. Financial Analyst
10. Programmer

Worst Entry-Level Jobs
100. Welder
101. Building Inspector
102. Policy Processing Clerk
103. Electronics Assembler
104. Boilermaker
105. Claims Processing Clerk
106. Consumer Loan Servicing Clerk
107. Refinery Operator
108. Sheetmetal Mechanic
109. Floor Assembler

Some of the highlights from the survey:

• Certified occupational therapist assistants are expected to see the most job growth by 2022 (42.6%).

• While web application developers, web designers, software and network engineers, and programmers are all among the 10 Best Entry-Level Jobs, computer operators have the grimmest outlook, interestingly enough – with 17% of jobs in the field projected to be cut by 2022.

For the full report, please visit Wallet Hub.

> To explore career options, visit Next Step Academy’s free online career courses.

The Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) is hosting it’s first-ever Culinary Voice Scholarship Challenge. ICE is giving away eight scholarships — totaling more than $140,000 — in its search for the next generation of culinary talent. America will vote for the finalists and the winners will be chosen by a panel of ICE industry experts.

To enter the contest, upload a one-minute video to ice.edu/culinaryvoice demonstrating creativity, passion for food, service or entrepreneurial flair. In the video, contestants should explain who they are, what they hope to achieve in the culinary or hospitality industries and why they deserve the scholarship and the chance to study at the nation’s newest, state-of-the-art center for culinary education (opening Winter 2015 in Lower Manhattan). 

50 finalists will be determined by public vote, and for every vote, ICE will make a donation to No Kid Hungry to help end childhood hunger in America.

One full scholarship and one partial scholarship will be awarded for each of ICE’s four award-winning career training programs: Culinary Arts, Pastry & Baking Arts, Culinary Management and Hospitality Management.

Voting begins on March 1, but you have until March 28 to vote and upload an entry. Winners will be announced on April 3rd, 2015

> Not sure if a job in culinary is the right career path for you? Explore a little more with this quick course about Culinary Arts.

Next Step Academy just launched the Careers in Culinary Arts course this week. To get you thinking about all things foodie, we found this great graphic on Pinterest we thought you might enjoy.

Source: Pinterest

It’s time to sharpen those blades — and your skills! Think a career in the culinary arts might be right for you? Take the short course to find out if you have the natural skills and interest to pursue this career choice.