While graduation quickly approaches, Wylie seniors Cristobal Correa and Dylan Ragan have been busy completing a marketing micro-internship with local business Six27 Creative Co., an opportunity earned upon winning the Development Corporation of Abilene’s (DCOA) branding competition for their NEXTU program.
Correa and Ragan were one of 80 student teams from Wylie High School to compete in the NEXTU competition, according to Wylie’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) coordinator Lainey Alcorn. She said three teams were selected from Wylie to present as well as three teams from Abilene ISD.
“The DCOA selected two winners,” said Alcorn. “One team from each school district.” In addition to winning the internship, Correa and Ragan also each won MacBook Pros and an adobe creative cloud license.
Ragan said he and Correa work very well together and described their decision to partner-up for the competition as a “no brainer”. The branding competition for NEXTU required them to redesign the NEXTU logo and create a brand campaign, which is what they presented to the DCOA.
“We made a new design based on the company’s mission and goals,” says Correa. “They selected us to participate in an internship with a media marketing company to further develop our logo by combining it with the design presented by students from AISD.”
Correa said working with others to combine each team’s logo was a challenge, but showed him how compromise and teamwork can bring diverging ideas together.
“I was able to see just how different our ideas are and how it was possible to incorporate two ideas into one. I learned how different people’s thoughts are but also how easy it was to come to common ground,” Correa said. “Achieving this goal was possible by multiple pitches and compromises on both sides.”
Correa and Ragan have participated in CTE classes throughout high school with this competition opportunity falling under the Design and Multimedia Arts class. Each has extensive audio-visual production experience through Wylie’s CTE as well and said the competition and internship compliments this experience and their future endeavors.
“I plan to go to college for AV Communications…to work on documentaries and TV, “said Ragan. “I have a lot of ideas and need the ability to present them.” A skill he felt the competition gave him an opportunity to learn in a real-life setting.
Correa, who wants to be a film producer, wants to learn all there is to know about projects in general. “…I need to learn about the different aspects of projects and all that goes into them,” said Correa. “Design is a very important one because it’s how people identify something and set it apart from everything else.”
“NEXTU is a career empowerment program that brings scholarships to our CTE students,” said Alcorn. “We are excited to have a new partnership with the Development Corporation of Abilene to bring NEXTU to Wylie.”
According to DCOA, the organization established their partnership with Wylie ISD in 2022, and in March committed $13,000 to fund the Construction and Electrical Power Equipment Program through its NEXTU program at Wylie ISD.
Read about more Wylie CTE students and their experiences here!
By Kristen Johnson