{"id":233132,"date":"2025-07-24T13:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T17:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=233132"},"modified":"2025-07-24T14:01:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T18:01:18","slug":"career-day-inspires-connecticut-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/07\/career-day-inspires-connecticut-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Career Day Inspires Connecticut Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

UConn School of Medicine\u2019s Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Dr. Kwame Amankwah<\/a> volunteered for the first ever Career Day at Horizons at Westminster School<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And you can see the joy and impact his time had on the middle schoolers from Hartford.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was truly a rewarding experience to be part of such an amazing event. Having the opportunity to introduce these young individuals to careers they might not have known about was very meaningful,\u201d shared Amankwah of UConn Health who taught the summer program students more about their health, how to do health screenings like taking their own pulse, and even showed vascular surgery tools he uses in the operating room.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Amankwah teaching students of Horizons at Westminster School how to take their own pulse. (Photo by Westminster School).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Horizons at Westminster provides a free academic and enrichment program each summer to close opportunity gaps for students from Hartford. Participating Hartford Public School students attend for a six-week summer program\u2014starting in kindergarten and returning every summer through 12th grade.<\/p>\n

Horizon students can\u2019t stop talking about the conversations they had with the Career Day participants like vascular surgeon Amankwah from UConn. Other successful Connecticut professionals they also had the opportunity to meet and learn from included a video game engineer, TV news anchor, sports news producer, former NFL player, real estate agent, insurance expert, state legislator, forensic scientist, podcaster, police officer, lawyer, biomedical engineer, and business developer.<\/p>\n

\"Career
The experts volunteering at the first Career Day of Horizons at Westminster School including UConn vascular surgeon chief Dr. Kwame Amankwah (fourth from left). (Photo by Westminster School).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amankwah added, \u201cEven more inspiring was seeing the students realize that all of these career paths are within their reach\u2014that there is nothing they cannot achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Kwame Amankwah at Horizons at Westminster School (Photo by Westminster School).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was very clear to us how much the students enjoyed this and how important it is, particularly as Horizons at Westminster will continue to grow and support our students throughout high school,\u201d shared Katie McKinney, development director for Horizons at Westminster School.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely fun and educational,\u201d concluded Amankwah about the special Career Day.<\/p>\n

“Our students loved meeting Dr. Amankwah from UConn!” applauds Patrick Owens, executive director of Horizons at Westminster School.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Vascular Surgeon of UConn Health introduces Hartford middle schoolers to careers in medicine at Horizons at Westminster School<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":233138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1868,2294,179,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-233132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-meds","category-all-surgery","category-uconn-health","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-27 17:24:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233132"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233149,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233132\/revisions\/233149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/233138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233132"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=233132"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=233132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}