Adopt A Class introduces elementary school students to careers at leading Northern Kentucky life sciences, IT companies

Students across Northern Kentucky are learning about a wide variety of career opportunities by participating in fun activities in the comfort of their own classrooms. At John G. Carlisle Elementary School, third graders perform a science experiment with strawberries, extracting their DNA, and sixth graders at Holmes Middle School are taking apart and rebuilding computers all on their own.

During Adopt A Class sessions, students are mentored by adults actively working in the fields of life sciences and information technology. Adopt A Class serves more than 12,500 students from kindergarten through eighth grade in 57 schools across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. In this program, businesses and civic groups connect with students in underserved communities for mentorship.

BE NKY helped fund the expansion of Adopt A Class in 2025 with an investment of $100,000. This funding supports 40 new teams, which includes 320 new mentors serving 1,000 new students.

This investment is also part of a larger initiative by BE NKY to expose all students in kindergarten through 12th grades to career opportunities in Northern Kentucky’s target industry sectors of advanced manufacturing, information technology, supply chain and life sciences.

Employees from Gravity Diagnostics in Covington started volunteering at John G. Carlisle about four years ago, beginning in just one third-grade classroom. Since then, the company has expanded to support all three third-grade classrooms.

Molly Wheeler, Gravity Diagnostics marketing communications manager, said the strawberry DNA experiment is always very popular with the students.

“We bring in laboratory equipment, and they get to wear lab coats and take home a test tube of strawberry DNA,” said Wheeler. “The students are very engaged and so proud of themselves when they succeed.”

Gravity Diagnostic’s teams visit the school once a month to teach students about career opportunities across multiple departments at the company, not just the sciences. Wheeler’s favorite activity to do with the students involves creating a marketing campaign for an object in the classroom. She said the students can hone their inner creativity and overcome their shyness while presenting their campaign to the class.

“Having the opportunity to translate your job in a way that a nine-year-old can understand helps you fall back in love with your job,” said Wheeler. “It helps me reconnect with the reasons I chose this profession.”

Covington-based BlairTech is in their first year of volunteering with Adopt A Class and marketing director Laura Blair said a computer building activity has been the most popular among students so far. The BlairTech team brought computers to the school where students opened them up, learned about the internal components and what each part does, put them back together, and powered them on.

“Seeing the students light up and get excited when they realized they could actually take a computer apart and make it work again was so much fun to watch,” said Blair.

She said it’s important for young people to know there are many different careers paths within a single business, so BlairTech, like Gravity Diagnostics, wants to make sure to teach students about job opportunities at the company beyond their focus on information technology.

In their remaining visits this school year, Blair said they will teach the students how different areas of a business work together. The students will create a custom 3D-printed faceplate for a desktop computer and collaborate with different departments, such as finance, sales and production, to bring that product to life.

“When they come to visit BlairTech for a field trip, they’ll get to see their design printed and installed on a real computer and connect what they learned in the classroom to a real workplace,” said Blair. “They can then take their faceplate home as a little souvenir of their work.”

Every year, third-grade students from John G. Carlisle also go on a field trip to Gravity Diagnostics to watch technicians at work. Wheeler said the students get to make their own employee badge, tour the laboratory, participate in a supply chain simulation and engage in a serial dilution activity using real lab equipment.

Programs like Adopt A Class can give students exposure to future career opportunities they might not otherwise get to experience, and Blair said they were very intentional with their decision to mentor sixth-grade students because it’s important for kids at that age to have something to work toward as they continue their education.

“We specifically chose middle school because we thought the STEM aspects of what we do would be more engaging to the older students as they begin moving into high school and thinking about their future,” said Blair. “It is meaningful to us for these students to know there are great career opportunities for them right here in Northern Kentucky.”

This is Wheeler’s third year serving as a team lead for one of the third-grade classrooms at John G. Carlisle and she encourages any company that is interested in creating an Adopt A Class team to take the leap and get involved.

Gravity Diagnostics and BlairTech are just two of many Northern Kentucky companies across multiple industry sectors involved with Adopt A Class, including CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting Services, Prysmian North America, DBL Law, Taylor Farms, Amazon Air and Castellini.

“Your job is to open the students’ eyes to what’s out there and the many different careers available to them,” said Wheeler. “You don’t necessarily have to be a great teacher; you just have to show up and build that relationship. The kids we mentored the first years, who are now fifth and sixth graders, still remember us.”

If you or your employer is interested in forming a mentorship team with Adopt A Class, please contact Clare Taylor, Director of Northern Kentucky Region, at clare.taylor@aacmentors.org.