The inside of the Davis School District’s Catalyst Center doesn’t look like your typical high school.
You won’t find many orderly rows of desks. Instead, there are flight simulators, a video production studio, a compounding pharmacy lab and a whole host of other professional equipment across various fields. Outside, students are cutting wood to build a tiny home. Another group is test-flying drones.
Students from the district’s 10 high schools apply to come here for specific hands-on experiences. Two of their eight class periods are spent at the center, and the rest at their neighborhood high school.
This magnet school in Kaysville is the model of K-12 career and technical education that Utah leaders want expanded statewide. After visiting, Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz secured $65 million in state funding to give school districts grants to create or expand their own so-called catalyst centers.
Career-focused education is in the spotlight right now, both in Utah and nationwide. In public K-12, state leaders have talked about it as a way to engage apathetic students and give high schoolers more options after graduation. In higher education, there’s an ongoing debate about whether a degree is worth the cost, and state lawmakers have been critical of programs they say aren’t aligned with workforce demand. As a result, lawmakers have required Utah’s public colleges and universities to cut “inefficient” programs and reallocate those funds to higher-performing ones with better job opportunities.
Utah students are already required to take one career and technical education credit to graduate from high school.
They can take that credit at their neighborhood school, but what makes the Davis Catalyst Center unique, according to its director, Tyler Poll, is the focus on working with businesses. Instead of a teacher assigning students a project for practice in the classroom, the center has more than 250 industry partners who are giving students projects.
“We never have students ask us, ‘When will I use this in the real world?’” Poll said. “Because the projects are from the real world.”
The center offers 15 programs, ranging from cybersecurity to pharmacy tech. It’s a model that comes from the Center for Advanced Professional Studies Network, with which the center and a handful of other Utah Districts are affiliated, according to Poll.
Some companies send their broken drones to the center for students to fix and send back. Students have also flown drones to count animals on Antelope Island and helped ski resorts with avalanche prevention.
Construction management students are building tiny houses for The Other Side Village in Salt Lake City, whose residents have been chronically homeless. Farmington High School junior Tate Lyon, one of the students who worked on the project, spent an afternoon cutting wood for a wall.
“Normal schools don't have, like, a crazy setup like this. They're not, like, ‘go out and build, like, a whole mini home,’” Lyon said. “[The center] tries to give you a really good hands-on experience with people that know what they're talking about, so you can get real-life experience.”
Video and audio production students are working with Utah Rep. Blake Moore on the Veterans History Project. Students record interviews of veterans in Utah telling their stories, which are then archived at the Library of Congress.
“None of my homework ever made it to Washington, D.C., sometimes to the fridge,” Poll said. “But these stories are living on, and it's all recorded and edited by students.”
When students don’t have a client to work with, they come up with solutions to problems they see.
Bountiful High School senior Eli Downer worked with his peers in the cybersecurity program on a password manager for people who are new to computers. One of his partners came up with the concept after their grandmother’s accounts kept getting hacked.
“I'm learning, like, how hackers break into passwords, how different password-breaking methods work, different stuff like that,” Downer said. “Just learning all the ins and outs of everything, setting up servers, hardware side, everything like that.”
After high school, Downer hopes to either get a job with the National Security Agency or start a cybersecurity business.
The main goal is to help students find something they’re interested in to pursue after graduation, whether that’s a profession or further education. The center opened in 2022, and most of its students have gone on to college, according to Poll. The center wants all students to at least leave with some kind of credential that they can put on their resume, giving them more job options.
“One of the crimes of K-12 education is we have too many kids leaving not knowing what they want to do,” Poll said. “Sometimes we talk about high school graduation as the finish line. Really, it's the starting line.”
The programs offered are based on what jobs are in demand, especially nearby. For example, Poll said there is a high demand for cybersecurity analysts, including at the Hill Air Force Base. Education has historically been five to 10 years behind industry, but the center doesn’t have that problem since it’s partnered directly with businesses.
In working with real companies and in an environment that’s more flexible than a normal school day — there aren’t bells signaling the start of class and students don’t have to ask permission to go to the restroom — Poll said teenagers are learning how to behave in a workplace. They are also learning so-called soft or durable skills like communication, collaboration and time management.
Poll has also heard from several parents who say the center has changed their child’s perspective on school.
“It's tough to go to a job where you hate 100% of it, and sometimes our students in our schools hate 100% of it,” Poll said. “But if they can like 25% of their schedule, whether it's a school schedule or a work schedule, if 25% of it is something they're passionate about, it makes the other 75% a lot easier, a lot easier to swallow and a lot easier to manage.”
If a student finds something they’re passionate about, Poll said, that can give them a goal to work toward, like getting a high enough GPA to get into a certain college program or getting a high school diploma so they can get a specific job.
Other school districts are already excited about the new state funding. A group of northern Utah schools plans to open a new catalyst center in the fall. Other districts have toured the Davis Catalyst Center to get ideas.
“Our economy is in a place where it is because there's so many great people that live in Utah,” Poll said. “And the more we can do as a state, and the more we can do as educational institutions to build our own, but also keep our own here in Utah, it will only continue to make Utah a great place to live.”
The Davis center is also eyeing the grant funding. The school has ambitions to add more programs. After just three years, Poll said it’s already at enrollment capacity.
