04/29/2026
Ask a high schooler to picture a hospital, and there's a good chance they describe a scene from a TV show: doctors rushing down halls and nurses checking charts. But if you ask them who runs the lab tests, who preps the surgical tools, or who manages the respiratory equipment, things might get quiet.
Lindsay Jenson, a Talent Delivery Partner with Aspirus Health, runs into this exact silence every time she visits a local middle or high school.
"Many people can't really think of a job in a hospital that's not a doctor or a nurse," she says. "We need surgical techs, respiratory therapists, lab techs - all of those jobs that kids just might not know about."
Itâs a blind spot that makes recruiting difficult, but the Copper Country Intermediate School District's Career and Technical Education Health Careers program in Houghton and Baraga Counties, are taking students out of traditional classrooms and dropping them right into the reality of local healthcare settings to see it all.
Instructors like Brooke Osterman and Amanda Hermanson are are sending students to shadow at dentist offices, physical therapy centers, laboratories, and even inside local ambulances.
The goal is to let teenagers see the gritty, everyday reality of healthcare before they sign up for a single college class.
Sometimes, that reality is a wake-up call. Dana Hansen, the Administrator for Home Care and Hospice at Baraga County Memorial Hospital, points out that figuring out what you don't want to do is just as valuable as finding your dream job. She has seen students who were dead-set on nursing step into a chaotic emergency room for a shadow day, only to realize the anxiety is simply too much for them. Learning that at seventeen - rather than two years and thousands of dollars into a nursing degree - is a massive relief.
But for the students who do find their footing, the head start is undeniable.
Jennifer Heltunen, the Laboratory Director at UP Health System - Portage, watched the program work firsthand with her own daughter. During her two years in the CTE program, her daughter spent significant time doing work-based learning right in the Portage lab, even earning her phlebotomy certificate before getting her high school diploma.
When she eventually enrolled in the medical lab science program at Michigan Technological University, she was so far ahead that she ended up as the Teaching Assistant for the university's phlebotomy class. Pathways into programs offered at other higher learning facilities such as Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College as popular options for students as well.
That kind of early exposure grows confidence. But for the Copper Country, this program is about the future of local healthcare just as much as education.
Recruiting healthcare workers to the Upper Peninsula from the outside is notoriously tough. People arrive with good intentions, but adapting to the intense winters and the isolated, tight-knit culture isn't for everyone. Heltunen said that a great strategy is to invest in the kids who already know and love the area.
By opening their doors to these students, facilities across Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw counties are essentially interviewing their future workforce. Hospitals like BCMH and Aspirus, alongside local care centers like Bayside Village and Portage Pointe, are giving these kids a reason to stay.
"If CTE didn't benefit us and our communities, we wouldn't be doing this," Heltunen said.
