National program coming to La Crosse, looking for 12 high school students

Project Search will put disabled students into internships at Gundersen.

A job-training program for disabled high school students that has operated around the country is about to be launched in La Crosse.

Project Search is looking for a dozen students with disabilities to spend a year in a special instructional program at Gundersen Health System.

Ann Wales from the human resources office there says students will learn classroom work, employability  skills and then “they will experience three different internships to develop their skills and see what they like to do,” she said.

Once students have completed the program, they’ve often gone on to get work.

“Nationally, it’s about 74 percent successful and in Wisconsin it’s proven to be 80 percent successful,” Wales said. “That’s amazing, considering a lot of these programs aren’t successful getting the students to work.”

Wales hopes to have a 100 per cent success rate locally.  

The career training program began 20 years ago in Cincinnati. It has been tried in several other Wisconsin cities.

An instructor from Holmen High will be in charge of the training curriculum, beginning next fall.