Kit Becnel, Co-Director of the Academy of Information Technology at Carencro High School in Lafeyette, LA, (center) was honored with an Aldo Papone Award at the 2007 Institute for Staff Development. Pictured with Kit is Cynthia Dauphin from Acadiana High School in Lafayette, LA, and Joel Hilbun, Co-Director of the AOIT at Carencro High School. (photo by Doug DeMark)

Kit Becnel
Academy Director, Carencro High School
Lafayette, Louisiana

Kit Becnel is so excited about NAF’s Academy of Information Technology program at the Carencro High School in Lafayette, Louisiana that she can hardly contain herself. It’s not surprising when you realize that she is the Director of one of a few exemplary NAF programs that were selected to join the pilot ASPIRE program (Academy Support for Programs In Reach of Excellence).
The idea behind the ASPIRE program is Academies can learn from each other; from visiting each other’s schools, seeing projects and events that other Academies do and sharing best practices with each other on line and in conference calls. All Academies that are part of the 20-member Academy cohort are expected to work hard to further develop their Academy according to the main elements of NAF’s model, including placing Academy students in internships, implementing a career-themed NAF curriculum and developing an engaged Advisory Board to create opportunities for work based learning.

“We’re quite innovative and we have an excellent foundation and framework which we’ve developed from the National Academy Foundation guidelines,” says Kit. “We have a huge community and parental involvement which helps us tremendously. One of the big keys to our success, and also why we’re part of the ASPIRE program, is we’ve concentrated on building relationships and establishing trust between our educational program and the community and businesses in our area. We have relationships with many types of businesses and industries.” These businesses include engineering, governmental, nonprofits, family foundations, higher education, radio broadcasting, computer maintenance/ networking, health care, emergency room healthcare, digital media broadcasting, banking and manufacturing.

Much of the success of the Carencro’s Academy of Information Technology is due to a “very eager” faculty, according to Kit, which moves the curriculum forward and gets industry leaders to come into the classroom and speak to students. Other Academies in the ASPIRE program see how the school has developed activities to engage the community including an event they call “The Fall Frenzy” which is a big recruitment drive that takes place once a year. It’s a thematic event in which students in the Academy get to showcase their work to potential student applicants.

Schools in the ASPIRE program also get to learn about Carencro High School’s “Animation Festival Awards Night” which is patterned after the Academy Awards. Students have their work judged and parents and the community are guests at the big event when the winners are announced. The entire event is produced by the students.

The Carencro High School is in its fourth year of operation and has maxed out their 75 student slot for students starting in the fall. So far they’ve had 100% placement of students in their internship program, something Kit is extremely proud of.

“Our supervisors, our school board and our principal and people at every level make everything run so well here,” says Kit. “Any school that we come in contact with through the ASPIRE program is made to understand we consider this a key to our success.”