Andi Dervishi gets up in the morning, dresses for the office, attends power lunches and has a 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekday schedule. It’s not an employer who sets his schedule, and it’s not a co-worker with whom he has lunch. This up-and-coming businessman is 16 years old and a student at High Tech High in Point Loma.

Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High Charter School opened in September 2000 at the former Naval Training Center. This small and innovative learning campus began with 200 students and is founded on three design principles: personalization, adult-world connection and a common intellectual mission.

Although he never attended a traditional high school, Dervishi credits High Tech High with providing an environment that pushes him to learn while giving him freedom to do things his way.

The business community is fully engaged in seeing the high school succeed. As frequent campus visitors, local CEOs speak at power lunches and teach a class or two. A business class on financial freedom last trimester taught by Mayumi King, chief executive of Inspired Learning, spawned Dervishi’s interest in business. Before learning about balance sheets and how to write a business plan, he was headed toward a career in computers and had already completed two computer company internships.

The business community’s hands-on experience with High Tech High is not unique, rather it appears to be part of an accelerating trend. It begins at the elementary school level by helping elect trustees to influence curriculum, and continues through the community and private colleges right up to both the graduate and undergraduate programs at local universities.

The goal is to ensure an across-the-board workforce is prepared for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Even in today’s slow-paced economy, executives report a shortage of qualified job candidates.

Mike Chapin, chief executive of Geocon, a large design engineering firm, recently cut a hefty check to a head hunter who found him employees. “As CEO, my toughest job is hiring people,” Chapin says.

Doing his part to improve the local workforce, he dedicates a few hours of his workweek to San Diego classrooms. Through the Business Roundtable for Education and San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., Chapin teaches communication skills to 10th-graders as part of the Corporate Leaders Advocating Success Skills program. Junior Achievement prepares the curriculum.

Chapin says his endeavors are a little selfish: he wants to improve the job candidates he may interview in the future. He also finds the effort rewarding. “I leave those classes feeling uplifted and like I’ve accomplished something,” he says.

The Business Roundtable was begun 10 years ago by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce as a way for the private sector and educators to collaborate on improving kindergarten through 12th-grade education. Ginger Hovenic, the Business Roundtable’s executive director, says San Diego businesses are “really looking at the end product. The business community is looking for all students to be a part of the company.”

Junior Achievement offers a variety of age appropriate programs in kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms that teach students everything from how to conduct themselves during a job interview to understanding bank accounts, running a business and planning a city. Joanne Pastula, president of Junior Achievement, says almost 700 volunteers from San Diego companies are involved. “It’s a wonderful bridge between businesses and schools. The businesses love it and the kids love it,” she says.

Some businesses have taken it upon themselves to develop their own programs. Solar Turbines partners with Mission Bay High School to provide students with job shadowing, computer lessons, apprenticeship programs and scholarships. Vinod Arora, manager of experimental and tooling at Solar, says the programs are a way to train employees for future hires. He says it’s difficult to find qualified master machinists and tool and dye makers in California, “so we train our own to hire.”

Apprentices are employees the day they begin training and are encouraged to attend community college to take classes in physics and chemistry. Solar picks up the cost of tuition and books.

Augie Gallego, San Diego Community College District chancellor, says it’s common for businesses to send their employees to the district for specialty classes and training. The district recognizes the need for a greater understanding of what businesses need from graduates and is doing what it can to meet these needs. “(Everything) from contracts with business where we customize training to meet the specific needs of a company or industry organization to business and industry providing both curriculum development advice and actually donating equipment and other resources,” Gallego says. “We partner with Hawthorne Machinery in our diesel technology program at Miramar College. We are working very closely with IDEC Pharmaceuticals to train the 650 technicians the company will need over the next few years.”

The community college district obtains insight for its programs directly from the business world. “We have an advisory committee from business and industry that meets regularly,” Gallego says. “Faculty in specific occupational fields often come from industry and have continued to strengthen contacts in business and industry to provide the trained employees they need to be competitive.” Through its Employee Training Institute, the district constantly evaluates the needs of local business and industry. “Businesses not only provide valuable insight and advice through occupational advisory committees, but a number of companies also provide some of their experts to teach some of the courses; they provide resources so that students can gain more hands-on experience. Faculty intern at some companies during the summer to keep current with the industry.”

It may be college where students and future employees study for their careers, but the need for business skills beyond the textbook is great. Gail Naughton, co-founder of Advanced Science Tissues and new dean of the business school at San Diego State University, knows what biotech companies seek in employees and knows from experience what graduates are lacking. As both a scientist and businesswoman, Naughton not only can work in a laboratory, but she also understands what it takes to establish the business that houses the lab. “Schools are being more receptive to what business needs are, but we are not yet tailoring the programs and the training of the students so they can hit the ground running,” Naughton says. It is her vision to take her experience and translate it into new programs at the business school.

“When you get trained in engineering and science, your training does not include any management or business aspects whatsoever,” Naughton says. “Yet, when you go into a business, whether it’s a pharmaceutical business or high-tech business, you day to day have to work in an interdisciplinary group with real timelines and real budget constraints. Traditionally science and tech students are not trained in (business) disciplines at all.”

Now, Naughton is in a position to make changes. One of the first things she plans to do at SDSU is start a joint program between the sciences and business that will graduate Ph.D.s with MBAs. “Top notch scientists will also be trained in the disciplines that are successful in a business.” She says it also is important for scientists to understand when it is no longer economically feasible to continue a project.

University of San Diego’s science department reached outside the education realm in its endeavor to build a new science center. Patrick Drinan, USD dean of Arts and Sciences, says the university collaborated with the private sector in designing the $41 million science center that broke ground in May 2001 and will house classes by fall 2003.

Biocom/San Diego participated in that effort. “We worked with Dean Drinan and several of the professors at USD to explain to them the needs that exist in the biotechnology industry in San Diego,” says Joe Panetta, Biocom’s president and chief executive. “(We wanted to) really give them a feel for the practical training that students need to function in an environment in a biotechnology company, which is much different than an academic institution.”

Flexibility and adaptability is what’s being sought in biotech employees and, Drinan says, those qualities are found in USD’s current graduates. “People aren’t just chemists anymore or just biologists,” he says. “You’ve got to be involved at the frontiers of the discipline overlap. (In the new building), there is faculty from several disciplines on each floor. So there’s going to be a lot of interconnecting and showing students that the nature of science is not a box where physicists do one kind of work and chemists do another. Some of the most interesting things in the sciences happen at the boundaries as they overlap.”

Drinan says it’s important for students to have a degree and hands-on experience. Most of USD’s undergraduates have almost twice as much laboratory time as you’d find at a state university. “At even the most prestigious UC schools, the undergraduate programs don’t offer the kind of laboratory experience that USD is going to offer,” Panetta says. “San Diego State probably comes closer to USD. And what we find in the biotech industry is that the four-year students who come out of USD and San Diego State are much more employable as laboratory technicians in biotech than the students who come out of a four-year program at a UC school.”

Panetta says about 10 percent of the San Diego biotech workforce is here on visas due to the lack of qualified candidates here. It is important for businesses to invest in the future because the technology moves ahead so quickly. “We need to make sure we’re partnered with the universities to continue the level of training so when these students come out of school they are ready to work in biotech. We don’t want them to be three or four years behind what’s happening in the industry.”

Technical business colleges also are leaning on their relationships with the business community.

At National University, a new school of engineering and technology, developed from input by businesses like Qualcomm and Sempra, offers selected programs that meet workforce demands. A computer science and technology department and an applied engineering department have been created as the result of a task force formed to uncover and meet the needs of local business. “We can offer very well thought-out select programs that are needed and not offered anywhere else,” says Leonid Preiser, chair of the new department. “National University has a wireless communication program not found anywhere else and offers a master’s of science in project management.”

Businesses are not the only entities forming education partnerships. UCSD’s new on-campus Preuss School, which enrolls grades six through 12 and is chartered under the San Diego Unified School District, is an intensive college preparatory educational program for low-income students whose parents have not obtained a four-year degree. Principal Doris Alvarez says in order to be accepted, students must demonstrate potential and a desire to attend college. A lottery determines enrollment. About 500 students in grades six through 10 are now on campus. Each year a grade is added.

The community college district also is taking a hands-on approach at High Tech High.

“We have been involved with High Tech High from the early planning stages of the charter high school and continue to serve on the high school’s advisory committee,” says Gallego. “Plus we are developing an innovative articulation curriculum. Students who graduate from High Tech High will be able to obtain an associate degree after attending San Diego City College for only one year, then transfer to a four-year university.”

This accelerated future is tantalizing to 16-year-old Dervishi, who is preparing to intern next semester at the EDC. “I just want to get out there,” he says.