Editorial: Huntley High/Centegra partnership worth replicating

Remember the candy stripers of yore, cheering up the halls of hospitals by pushing wheelchairs and delivering paperwork?

They were high school kids who wanted to volunteer and learn a little bit about patient care and the inner workings of a hospital.

There still are young hospital volunteers, but at Centegra Hospital in Huntley you'll also find high school kids in scrubs and work clothes, learning all manner of things about the inner workings of a hospital.

Two dozen Huntley High School students are participating in the school's new Medical Academy, something Centegra says is the first partnership of its kind in the U.S.

The students serve residencies at the hospital, which opened this year, closely observing doctors and nurses, watching medical procedures, working in the pharmacy and in the bowels of the hospital, learning about what makes the building and the people in it tick.

The academy is limited to 30 juniors and seniors with high GPAs who have taken three years of biomedical science. Twenty-four are part of the program.

But Centegra, based in Crystal Lake, is in talks with other high schools in McHenry County to expand the program into a sort of farm team.

"It's really about expanding their knowledge of the profession," Bernadette Szczepanski, Centegra's senior vice president of human resources, told our Madhu Krishnamurthy for a story in Tuesday's newspaper. "Our hope is these kids stay on in the health care profession, return to serve their friends, family and their community. We've had a long tradition of working with students within our three hospitals."

This is an important extension of both the partnerships businesses have established with schools and the academy-style concentrations some of our suburban high schools have built to position kids for careers.

Elgin Area School District U-46, based in Elgin but serving 11 communities in Cook, Kane and DuPage counties, has a specialized academy at each of its high schools that students compete to be a part of:

Broadcast Education and Communication Networks at South Elgin High; Gifted and Talented Academy at Elgin High; Science, Engineering & High Technology at Bartlett High;

Visual and Performing Arts at Larkin High in Elgin; and World Languages & International Studies at Streamwood High School.

These types of intensive study options are prime examples of how our high schools encourage student success, whether it's for those who want to be doctors and engineers or those aspire to run the machinery that keeps a hospital running.

We hope the Huntley High/Centegra partnership catches on.