A College and Career Readiness Initiative
The Best Buy Career Pathways program is a year-long, college and career readiness initiative for teens ages 16–19 that builds technical, professional, and life skills through mentorship, hands-on projects, and paid summer internships in STEAM fields.
The Program
Over the school year, members of the Career Pathways Program got to experience various professional activities through the projects they created, like advertisements, album covers, photographs, and a public service announcement that led to a paid internship at the end of the program. The curriculum includes units about graphic design, photography, audio production, and video production. Throughout the Career Pathways program, mentors support teens in building both technical and soft skills, while also preparing them for college and career success.
Past Projects
The 2024-2025 cohort’s culminating project was a public service announcement focused on addressing the issue of teen burnout. Through this project, the cohort demonstrated their learning of videography, audio technology, video editing, and much more! Here you can view “Overworked: A PSA on Teen Burnout” created by the 2024-2025 career pathways cohort as a presentation of the skills they learned during the program.
Career pathways helped me build a lot of soft skills; it was really nice to collaborate with peers.”
-Jay W.
2024-2025 Cohort
“Career pathways helped me explore Adobe, connect with new people who became close friends, and prepare me for my future career and college.”
-Andy O.
2024-2025 Cohort
Career Pathways Mentors
Career Pathways Facilitator
Rubby Marquez Tellez is a proud first-generation college graduate from the University of Oregon. Drawing from her own experiences as a first-gen student, Rubby is passionate about community building, mentorship, and helping others find their path. Her goal is to empower young people to explore their creativity, discover their passions, and feel confident navigating the college application process—or whatever comes next after graduation.
Tech Skills Instructor
The tech skills mentor is responsible for teaching the necessary tech skills. They follow program curriculum and curate projects and engaging lessons for the teen cohort.
Requirements: Bachelor’s degree
Interested in showing your tech skills, making technology more accessible, and teaching a cohort of teens! Please click the button to contact us and learn how you can be a part of the Career Pathways Program!
Frequently Asked Questions
Have any questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us at rmarquez@omsi.edu!
Applicants are notified of their acceptance in early October, the orientation and informational meeting is then as well. The program starts mid-October and will end in the last week of May. The program also has winter and spring breaks. The internship is 6 weeks long, starting in early July and ending in mid-August.
The cohort meets every Saturday from 10:00 to 2:30 at OMSI. Attendance is mandatory, however, program members are allowed to miss up to 4 meetings. Have a transportation barrier? No worries, just tell the program facilitator and we can help with that!
Career pathways matches program members with an internship in subject matter interesting to them, whether that’s art, science, marketing, etc. Since internship positions vary each year we have no way of knowing for certain what positions will be available.
Some past internship positions have been with OMSI’s marketing team, in OMSI’s chemistry lab, and with museum engagement.
Career Pathways is a very hands-on program so participants are expected to attend most, if not all meetings. However, participants may miss up to 4 meetings and are not expected to do any work for the program outside of meeting hours (Saturday, 10:00 – 2:30).