Dr. Diego Tibaquirá, Clare Bertrand, and Kaitlyn Mills on Bridging Classrooms and Careers Through New Advanced Placement Courses

Narrator: Future of Work Florida.

Narrator: Welcome to the Future of Work Florida Podcast brought to you by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Florida Chamber Foundation. This podcast series is dedicated to equipping Florida's business leaders with the knowledge, solutions and resources available to secure Florida's workforce talent today. Our Vice President of Talent Development for the Future of Work, Rachel Ludwig, sits down with Dr. Diego DiBaquira, professor at Miami Dade College, along with Claire Bertrand, Executive Director of Career Strategy and Partnerships, and Caitlin Mills, Director of Industry Recognized Credentials, both at College Board. The three discuss how partners across Florida are helping bridge classrooms and careers through new Advanced placement courses in business with personal finance and cybersecurity.

Rachel Ludwig: Thank you so much, all three of you for being here for this conversation today. I'm super excited, um, to learn a little bit more honestly about the work that you're doing here in Florida. And we have a guest from Miami Dade College, which is really great partner here in Florida as well, to share about the work happening there, um, and really understanding that this is happening across the country. And we're working as a state, as you know, to increase work based learning opportunities, accelerate our learners to get that, that valuable experience. So again, can't thank you enough for sharing your expertise today. So, um, Claire, for those who aren't super familiar with College Board and all of the work that you do, can you share a little bit of an overview, um, of the work that you're doing and why you're kind of engaged with the Florida Chamber as well as Miami Dade College and other institutions across Florida?

Clare Bertrand: Sure thing. And first of all, Rachel, thank you so much for having us. We're so thrilled to be here and really excited to work with the Florida Chamber of Commerce on this. So first and foremost, for those of you not familiar with the College Board, uh, we've been around for 125 years. We're a nonprofit and our mission is really to clear the path for all students to own their future. And because that is our mission, we've been engaged with early talent, uh, for more than a century, as I mentioned, serving 7 million students a year. And we have 6,000 members across high schools and colleges. Um, essentially we're going to talk today about our Advanced Placement courses. These courses help young people get high school credit as well as college credit. Um, and we're going to talk about a little bit of a new sort of angle to these courses as we get into it. But just, uh, so people understand the scale of advanced placement, 89% of high school students attend a high school that Offers advanced placement and 3.5 million students took an advanced placement course last year. We're expanding access to AP to meet the needs of the new economy and to expand the reach of AP and the achievement that it signals. Um, I can get a little bit into the great partnership we have with the US Chamber of Commerce as well as Florida with the US Chamber of Commerce. We have a historic partnership because they actually understand that students need to demonstrate what they know and really be able to navigate and show their credentials, show their skills in really a new labor market. Um, and for this particular partnership, the Chamber of Commerce is supporting our Advanced placement business with personal finance course as well as our Advanced placement cybersecurity course. Both of these courses are launching nationally in 2026. Cybersecurity has already been adopted by Florida and business and personal finance, we're really excited to bring that to Florida as well. Uh, we've also done a few surveys with, uh, the Chamber of Commerce. We've surveyed 500 hiring managers. Um, and that really demonstrates the urgent need to prepare our early talent. Caitlin Mills, my colleague, is going to get into a little bit more about what the course is all about as well as, um, our colleague, Diego Tibaquiera. Um, and I just wanted to note too, we're so excited to work with our state and metro chambers. State chambers, like Florida Chamber of Commerce, uh, the state metro chambers are part of a coalition called Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce. And you know, again, Florida Chamber of Commerce has really taken on a leadership role in making sure that all high school students have access to these high quality courses that enable students to get high school credit, college credit, and the skills that employers are looking for in an employer endorse credential. Um, so, yeah, that's sort of the overview of all of it. And again, really excited to be here.

Rachel Ludwig: Thank you so much. That was a wonderful overview. I know. Um, you know, there's so many learners that are looking to get access to those opportunities and, and truly elevate their, you know, educational experience in high school, but also accelerate into college and, and those, um, work based learning opportunities as well in cyber security. There's no better college to talk about that than Miami Dade College here. So I'm excited for getting, um, into that a little bit later today. I'm going to shift to Caitlin for a second. So I want to talk a little bit about career readiness. It's such a hot topic. All, you know, hiring managers are talking about it. Honestly, students are talking about it. They want to make sure that they're getting those valuable experiences so they feel confident when they take that first internship or their first job. So you can, uh, Caitlin, could you talk a little bit about why you feel career readiness and education needs a reset and sort of how you guys are approaching career readiness at the College Board?

Caitlyn Mills: Yes, absolutely. Rachel, thanks so much again for having us. You are absolutely right. There is a national conversation happening right now about how are we preparing students to be successful long term? What does that mean in K through 12 and higher ed and how these systems work together? And a lot of the, the conversation is really kind of centering around this disconnect that we're experiencing between education and employability. And what we're seeing a lot of times in high school as well as, um, in college, is that employers are often absent from the conversation around learning and course design, um, and secondary ed. You can see that students who are maybe placed in career, uh, tracks, if you could call them that, are often denied that access to advanced coursework and entrepreneurial thinking sometimes. And students who are placed in these other college bound tracks are kind of disconnected from attaining those technical skills. And at the College Board, we are focused on really breaking that or between college and career. Students are very clear. They want to do work that matters and employers want to hire talent that's ready. And what we're doing as the College Board, uh, with all of our members across high schools and colleges and with our employer partners, especially through the work of AP Career Kickstarter, our courses is really to strengthen those connections between our state leaders and our local advocates, between employers and educators, and really kind of bringing together a full ecosystem that helps develop early talent. We're not taking it over.

Clare Bertrand: Right.

Caitlyn Mills: But there's an ecosystem that's out there and we really want to do our part with the reach that we have and the courses that we're developing to strengthen that ecosystem, um, and to lessen that bit of disconnect that we're seeing.

Rachel Ludwig: Yeah, that's great. I know that in my time, um, in this role and even prior at doe, you know, we, there's been an emphasis on cybersecurity for a while here in Florida, um, and there's different pockets of, you know, certifications and training opportunities happening. But I was really fortunate to visit Miami Dade College a while back and see sort of the center for Cybersecurity there. And so, Diego, I'm really excited for you to be involved in this conversation. And maybe we'll start off with you talking a little bit about like project based learning and relevancy to help uh, students really prepare a little bit differently but also get into sort of the work that you all are doing down at Miami Dade College.

Narrator: Um, yes. So it's really. I was very fortunate uh, in both places, Miami Dade College and College Board because I came in from the onset when we were developing this and then we thought of uh, how do we best develop something that is going to be really fruitful and beneficial for the students in that sense, um, we can develop curriculum um and it would be the same. But this time project based learning came into um, the mix AP cybersecurity. Being in there from the beginning. I walk into a room as an advisory board member to 25 people being in the room and it's the first time truly that I've seen something like this in which high school teachers which are going to be teaching the course, college professors which are going to transition those students maybe to. And then industry was in the room at uh, the same moment and we all went through it. What is it that because at the end our pipeline goes from high school to college, recruit, retain, graduate and sometimes we think that that's it, our job is done, but it's not. And then the work based learning and everything else that we're doing is telling us that we need to get them jobs and then once we get them jobs we need to keep them in the jobs and give them a career. Um and so that was one piece of it. The other piece of it, high school should go back to the way of training students that don't want to go to college um, and to give them something solid that they can go out and make a career out of it. Um, and that's where AP Cybersecurity came in and the way that it was um, developed um, working with industry, um, both at Miami College and Career, um, and College Board we ask industry, if we teach them this, what do they need to have at the end for you to hire them? Very straightforward question. And then we go backwards and they need this and they need this and they need this because sometimes they're not coming with those things. We do a great job graduating them but they're just not ready on day one. Um, on the job training, it used to be a thing of the past. Now we want students to come in and be ready to make ah, an impact on day one. And that's what we are giving them um, with this type of courses um, in which they're able to not only lectures and the theoretical um, information but there's actually a lot of Practice, um, virtual, um, machine learning, um, labs, um, and a lot of different things that the industry is telling us this is what they need. Um, and then, um, Caitlin is going to talk more about that. But, uh, we do match this to an industry recognized, um, certification which the students can take. So actually they take the course, they can pass the AP Ex exam, get college credits, go for that industry certification, which happens to be security plus for this. That will really augment what they put in the resume. Just coming out of high school, they decide to try to go to work, they're going to have a solid foundation in which they're going to stand out. If they want to go to college, they already have some credits in there and they can keep on going on that path as well.

Rachel Ludwig: Absolutely. That's really great. I love how the pairing of the industry certification is in there. I think that's really important today. Um, so that's great. Um, I want to talk a little bit. I know Claire, you mentioned a little bit about the partnership with the U.S. chamber of Commerce. I connect with them regularly and kind of the work that they're doing in talent pipeline management, but also the business leads fellowship. Is there any other detail you want to add regarding the partnership that you all have and kind of why, you know, it makes sense now for the courses and the partnerships to happen? Sure.

Clare Bertrand: I mean, I think as Caitlin mentioned, as, uh, Diego mentioned, we are really interested in making sure that all students have access to the skills they need and the academic skills. So both academic and technical skills. We also know, as I mentioned, our mission is about clearing the path for all students to own their future. We're at a moment in time, and we have been for the last couple decades, where we know that college isn't a great fit for all students. Most people get to college eventually. Most people want a B.A. most people want to have advanced degrees. That makes sense. They still matter a lot in the labor market. And we know that not everyone takes a linear path to that. There's a great community college, great technical college, great short term, post secondary, uh, credentials that students can get that help them get into industry, build both technical and transferable skills, and really kind of get them prepared for a life where they're thriving. Um, they can build a family and they can have everything they want. Um, so when we were Talking to the U.S. chamber of Commerce, we realized, and also we've been talking to dozens and almost hundreds of employers as well through our great chamber partnership. But what we've been hearing is that students early talent are not coming out of high school prepared, they're not coming out of college prepared. So knowing that college board has the reach we do. Our advanced placement courses are built to really build those skills, build both academic, academic and technical skills. Um, and that we are inviting employers to the table. We've always had high schoolers, high, ah, school faculty at the table. We've always had college faculty at the table. Now we're inviting employers. And the U.S. chamber has been a key part to us getting to employers having that credibility with a partner like the US Chamber next to us to say, we want to know the skills you all need. We want to make sure every single high school in America has courses that are aligned with skills that generally employers, uh, are looking for. And a lot of those skills are durable skills. Um, so we're again, really excited about the partnership. I think key to the US Chamber partnership is, you know, the Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce coalition partnering with state chambers like Florida, because every state is different, labor markets look different locality to locality. So we, we want to make sure, we honor that. We appreciate that we are working with small and medium sized businesses through our chamber partnerships like the Florida cham, to make sure we're meeting their needs, not just, just the national need. Um, so it's just been quite exciting. And uh, yeah, we're, we're just so thrilled that we're able to be here with you today and talk a little bit more about these courses as well as the partnership.

Rachel Ludwig: That's great, Caitlin. You know, in terms of the actual courses, can you talk a little bit more about, you know, the things that they're doing within the courses that are helping sort of increase or level up the relevancy, if you will, for the students who are taking those courses?

Caitlyn Mills: Yes, absolutely. I don't know about y', all, but some of the most engaging courses I've ever taken in high school and in college were the ones that really asked me to get my hands dirty in the content, immerse myself in it. Right. And really kind of build my own thing and figure out how to take the concepts that someone was telling me about and apply them to an actual situation. Whether that's a real world scenario or whether that was, you know, something a project that I created of my own. And that's not just true for me.

Clare Bertrand: Right.

Caitlyn Mills: That's true for learning in general. We know that learning sticks better when students can see it, when they can really build something of their own, when they can pitch it or defend it and like, truly own what it is that they're doing. And so take our AP business course. Everything that students learn in that course, they learn by doing. It's project based. One of the projects that they work on is developing their own business plan, right? They develop a product or a service that they are trying to bring to the market. With everything that they learn in the course, they give shape to that idea. They work together in teams, they focus on collaboration, they think about and learn about how do I lead a new kind of initiative like this. They learn how both businesses and individuals make money and keep their money. Right? And so whatever a student's interests are, whatever their, their future is. Claire talked about how a lot of career paths, especially, you know, even ours, right, are not very linear. What these courses are designed to do is them both the technical skills to work within these disciplines, but also to give them those durable skills and tools and frameworks that help them to bring their passions into the world. And so as a part of, you know, what we're doing with this course is in this national conversation that we're having, if you take the skills of business and you start to apply it to, you know, the trades like plumbing or construction, what you end up seeing is you're training the next generation of small business owners that can be their own boss. We're adding and growing this network, network of small businesses that really help to make this country run, right? And in addition to the thoughtful and really collaborative design of the course like we've been talking about with high school faculty, college faculty and industry experts, students have the potential, through the exam to earn college credit or an employer endorsed credential, or set them up to take other IRC exams to help them access high growth industries. So we're not just being intentional, right, about designing the course experience, but we're also making sure that the test is like not just another test, right? It's packed full of meaning that could be a catalyst and a connector, a connector to the future with the qualifying score that you get. And so we're really trying to be thoughtful and intentional about every piece of the student experience that helps to affirm, ah, you know, students ability to say, yeah, I'm actually pretty good at that. I really want to pursue those things and then give them the tools to actually pursue that, whether college is your first step or a later step, or whether you want to enter into an internship, apprenticeship or an aligned entry level role. And so, you know, that's not just true in our business course. Diego, do you want to talk a little bit more about what this Looks like in cybersecurity as well.

Narrator: Yes. And so something that industry, both at, uh, the college level and college board has tell us is they need to practice. They need to practice. They're coming in and we're telling them, you know, do packet tracing. They have no idea what that is. Um, maybe they did the theory. So in my case, I tell the students, repetition, key to memorization. But you got to do it in different ways. You cannot do the same thing. And if they come in and see the PowerPoint lecture, that is not enough anymore. From there, write it down. From there, create no cards, but from there, go and do a virtual lab or an actual physical lab in which you're doing something like packet tracing. How does a packet get from here to the destination and back? Um, from using Wirechart to be able to inspect the packet and see, uh, the origin, um, IP address, destination, IP address protocol. The students are being put into an area that they had never had a chance to be able to explore. And something else that we're doing, um, we're exploring, um, different cybersecurity competitions like capture the flag and other things. Why is that important? Talking to industry. Industry says, sure, everybody's graduating with the curriculum. Cool. What else are they getting? 1 industry certifications. All right? They are placing some value in it. Okay. Um, and then the next one is cybersecurity competitions. And the reason for that, if a student goes in and says, I participated, I was part of a team. As a team, we finish in the top 10% in that competition. And individually, I participate in this thing, and I finish in the top 5% or top 10%. Industry's taking that because they're seeing that the industry, um, that the competition really forced them to put their hands on a keyboard and do something. They cannot just say, you know, I did it without. There's going to be backing. Every competition has the records and everything. So that is. And then we bring in that as well, um, as part of what the students can get in this AP cybersecurity course. So hands on keyboard is essential. They have to. And then every single topic, every single unit has a piece, a component that goes in there that helps, um, the students really get the knowledge, not only by looking at the presentation and going through the lectures, but actually applying what they're seeing and learning, um, that sticks with them more, and that's how we prepare them even better. Um, like Kathleen say to take the AP exam and then the industry certification, um, as well.

Rachel Ludwig: Absolutely. All those kind of durable skills with the competition. Piece. I really love that because, you know, it's teaching, resiliency, problem solving, teamwork, all of that stuff. That's awesome. Um, can you talk a little bit about, you know, being Florida based, uh, you know, what makes Florida's approach unique and sort of how are, um, schools and students responding to this approach?

Narrator: So, um, I think Florida is very well placed, um, to be the launching pad for this, um, cybersecurity. Um, to be honest, when we got on it, there was a lot of buzz already about cybersecurity when we started doing this. But I think we have caught up. And it's not because we just caught onto the buzzword and try to put something together, but we really went down to how do we design something that is going to be solid for our students? Um, and again, the industry piece from the beginning, um, and here at Miami Dade College, we called in build, um, Business Industry Literacy Team. We just had our Cybersecurity Thursday where they went in there over 40, um, knowledge units from the National Security Agency to tell us, is this what should be in our curriculum? How much value do you place? And they voted. And so when you make industry really feel part of the process, and I think that's the key on this course. We made them feel part of the process, um, their input really matter. And we were going to include it in the course and they saw it when we were developing this. So in that sense, now Florida has a chance to be kind of like one of the lead states in the United States to take this to the next level. Um, but like Claire said, we want every student, um, every high school student to have the opportunity to do this. And high school is a really great place because sometimes the students don't know what they really want to do. And they might say, you know, I wanted to do design or something. You know, I took this AP cybersecurity course and it really put me in a path that, you know, gave me a career, um, a couple of years down the line. That could be the notion. So I think we're very fortunate that now we're here doing this. Um, we're doing it at the high school level, at the college level, and we're really trying to move forward in the same way. And I like the way that we aligned in the way we're doing things. Um, we're not doing it this idea, that idea, but we're kind of going into the same way. And that helps the students, which is our common denominator. At the end of the day, how do we provide Them with, with all this so that they can actually take it and make it. Having the Chamber of Commerce, um, being involved in it, um, that is really going to be great because they're going to see it, that this is really a wholesome and everybody's involved. We want to give them the best opportunities, um, out there. And cybersecurity is a field that is still growing. Cybersecurity used to be kind of like a subset of computer science, but we all use cybersecurity on a daily basis. Um, so in that sense it's a field that is going to keep growing. Um, and so we need the workforce and we need them ready to take on the challenge, um, that is coming. Not in the future. Right now. Right now we need people with skills that we're providing in this course.

Rachel Ludwig: Yeah. Can you actually. Let's dive into that a little bit more. So what are some of the technical skills that they're learning in an AP cybersecurity course? We talked a little bit about sort of the durable skills piece. I alluded to that earlier. Can you dive into just a little bit before I share shift back to Claire and Caitlin to kind of close us out? Like what are those specific skills that we know employers are really, really asking for?

Narrator: Yes. And so when we went to employers we asked them that question, what is it that you need? So what we're trying to prepare them is number one, you need to speak the language. So in that sense we're teaching them the acronyms, um, the words, um, and then the next thing is what are the tools? What are the tools that they're using? So from the creation of uh, using a Raspberry PI and then installing uh, Kali Linux, which is one of the main type of systems, um, that we use in cybersecurity, to the top 10 top 20 tools that you're going to be using again, packet tracer, NMAP and other skills. So they're starting to use that on a regular basis throughout the course. Um, but in, throughout what they're doing, not only they need it to pass the course, but to pass the exam. And then the um, security plus industry certification, those are the cores. So we're taking not only industry, but also what is the certification asking them to do? And Comptia Security does a great job. They have about 10 page, um, exam objectives where we can pull in and know exactly what the students need to know. But so the technical piece, um, is heavy. Um, and then we're trying to provide them with what industry is saying these are the tools they need to have. These are the tools they need to learn from being able to find it, download it and play with it. Um, and there is a lot on the Internet now. There's a lot of places that have um, virtualization on some of these tools that the students can start using, um, right on day one, um, from well known ports to basic Linux commands, um, things that they're going to use, um, every single day of, um, their lives, um, once they get into this type of career.

Rachel Ludwig: Yeah, that's wonderful.

Caitlyn Mills: And I can add a little bit more if you don't mind, about what those skills look like in our business course. I think Diego, you raise a really important point on what it means to understand the language and so what, you know, uh, understanding what the types of attacks, cybersecurity attacks, how to mitigate those using AI tools and not using AI tools.

Rachel Ludwig: Right.

Caitlyn Mills: I think understanding how to do both is super important in the cybersecurity course. In the business course we're thinking about, about business skills. Right. Understanding the language of finance. So students are thinking about how to read financial statements and interpret them and to pull out um, different KPIs that help them understand how well a business might m be performing in terms of entrepreneurship. Right. They're thinking about how do I test a product idea using primary research and secondary research. Uh, they also have an emphasis on marketing and sales. Right. So we think about the four Ps of marketing and understanding how to leverage that to really, um, help that product idea that they're developing with their business plan, which happens throughout the course to really gain the competitive advantage in a market. They think about how to pitch that idea, how to pitch that service, uh, to potential investors. Right. So we're really thinking about end to end from developing and sustaining a business as well as on the personal finance component. What is the language of business and how do we give students those tools to really be able to begin to speak that? And then with subsequent courses in cybersecurity, of course they'll follow with networking, um, um, computer science principles or some other courses that we can fold into those pathways. Right. Same idea with business. And some of the next courses they can dive deeper, um, into some of those more technical as well as those professional skills that they're developing.

Rachel Ludwig: That's wonderful.

Narrator: And I think, um, just to touch on the AI piece, um, teaching the students AI and how to use it in an ethical way, um, AI is here and is here to stay. Um, AI is not here to do your homework. AI is here to be utilized as a tool that will make you, in the case of AP cybersecurity, a better cybersecurity analyst. And some things that we're using it for. Anomaly detection. It takes forever to be able to analyze that. AI can come in, um, in a very robust way. Be able to do that, uh, log analysis every time you log in and log out of somewhere and throughout the day for every single person, um, is a lot of information. How do you digest that information and make decisions based on it? AI can help that. So those are two of the many, um, that we use in, um, cyber AI to help in cyber security nowadays. Um, and so teaching the students how to not only understand AI a little more and how to properly use it, um, but how to use it as a tool that will make you a better cybersecurity analyst. That's what we're going to try to do with the AI implementation into the course.

Caitlyn Mills: Absolutely.

Rachel Ludwig: Great. Well, listen, I, I, this has been extremely informative. Let's, uh, I want Claire to go ahead and close us out for, you know, a big call to action in Florida. You guys have shared so much information. I'm really excited. So, Claire, what's our call to action for folks in Florida?

Clare Bertrand: Sure, thanks. Um, generally speaking, you know, I know Rachel, we've talked about the audience for this podcast, right? This, this reaches a diverse number of, uh, folks. School leaders, you know, state legislators, staffers, you know, smaller chambers across Florida, uh, educators, parents, maybe some students. So really what we'd like everyone to do is stand with us in making these courses count. So talk to your community leaders, your education leaders. We want to make this the number one advanced placement course in America, both cybersecurity and business with personal finance, and really start a generation to get ready for their future. So call your community school district leader, tell them why they should add this to their school schedule. Um, we're also happy to connect with anyone in Florida who wants to learn more. Um, get in touch with us. Just go to collegeboard.org our contact information's there. Um, and also, by the way, school leaders are making decisions now on courses, and they really need to hear from the business community. So for anyone in business listening who's excited about this course, who'd want their district or the district surrounding their business to get, bring these skills to their students, Give a call to your districts. Uh, we can provide support on that. As I mentioned, um, you know, we can share some of that contact information, uh, maybe in the, in the podcast landing page as well, for the Florida Chamber Podcast. Um, and then also we, as you know, Caitlin mentioned this, um, Dr. Diego mentioned this. We want students to get opportunities outside of the classroom. We want that project based learning, uh, but we also want experiential learning for them as well. Because we know that's the best way to learn, build those durable skills, understand business and industry. So as we look to expand those opportunities, think about how could I provide internships for young people who are in these courses. Apprenticeship and other work based learning opportunities. We're really excited to work with, uh, small, medium sized businesses, large businesses, multi state national, uh, to give students more access to those work based learning opportunities. So really those are kind of the call to action. Uh, as I mentioned, College board, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, we're here to help. Um, and we really again want every single student to have access to these great courses.

Rachel Ludwig: Excellent. Well, again, thank you so much for being here and sharing, um, the great work that you all are doing. We appreciate, appreciate your time today.

Narrator: Thank you.

Clare Bertrand: Rachel.

Narrator: Thank you so much. Rachel, thank you for joining us for today's Future of Work Florida podcast. To find out more about the resources discussed in today's segment, we invite you to visit our website@flchamber.com futureofwork florida. Together we can champion the future of work and create America's best workforce right here in Florida. Be sure to subscribe for future content.

Narrator: Um,