Golden Path Solutions Newsletter – September 2025

by | Sep 8, 2025 | Blog, News | 0 comments

Students walk into the Moorhead High School Career Academy

Welcome back to school to all of our educators and students! It’s always an exciting time of year as we see familiar faces at upcoming events, witness renewed student activity in Compass (more than 500 students have already updated their Compass profiles!), and notice an increase in scheduling for career fairs, conferences, summits, and other opportunities to connect.

We also look forward to seeing our employer partners, including at the 2025 North Dakota Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) State Conference on Wednesday, Sept. 10, in Bismarck. Stop by our booth if you are there!

Let’s get to it!

Compass event calendar is filling up

If you’re an employer, you may have noticed recent Compass emails highlighting career fairs in Casselton, Minot, and Bismarck/Mandan, all ND. A new feature allows educators to send email invites to employers in Compass by targeting geographies, industries, or career clusters. You can also sign into your Compass account and go to Events for the full list. In addition, we include a list of events at the end of every Golden Path newsletter.

Contact us if you want help getting the word out to schools or employers. Employers, if you don’t yet have a Compass account, create a free account today!

Get ready for the 2025-2026 school year

With the new school year underway, here are a few best practices for all of our audiences:

  • If you’re a North Dakota educator and using Compass for the Four-Year Rolling Plan, we recommend taking our course, “Managing the Four-Year Rolling Plan in Compass,” in the ND Educational Hub. It will help you prepare for the academic year while you earn one professional development credit. Some of the topics covered include updating your user list in compass, how to approve opportunities, and using agreements and agreement templates with the new advanced WBL module.
  • If you’re an employer in Compass, make sure that your company profile information is up to date. We recommend reviewing your selections in the Connections Database, including schools you want to connect with. You can easily refresh your Career Profiles with new photos and short embedded YouTube videos. Remember, as an employer member you can create your own Career Profiles, so consider adding one or two more to highlight important careers with your company!
  • College users may want to review their College profile information, confirm links are still accurate, and add any new program or amenity information. We encourage you to add photos and links to make your content more engaging for students. Finally, review your strategic employer lists and add any employers to your page that may have recently joined Compass. If you’d like to add employers who are not yet in Compass, please contact us and we’ll reach out to them.
  • Students, it’s a great time to update your Compass profile with any activities you did over the summer, including any new hobbies or activities. You may also be asked to update your profile by your school counselor if using Compass for the 4-year rolling plan.  Spend a few minutes in Compass to look at new opportunities and favorite the ones that interest you. Toggle “yes” to “Match me to employers” if you want us to make connections for you!  

Parent resources for your student

Be sure to get on our parent communication list if you’d like to know more about how Compass can support your students.

Our quarterly parent emails highlight how students can use Compass to search for work-based learning experiences, future careers, potential employers, postsecondary schools, and even scholarships for college!

If your student opted into our employer matching process, you may also have an email from Golden Path asking you to provide consent. Once you do, you’ll also be invited to the quarterly parent communication. You can also work with your school to get on the email list.

Also, watch for Golden Path Solutions stories in the new College and Career Readiness Newsletter from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, as well as the Golden Path blog.

New features in Compass, including for Moorhead Schools

We recently shared new Compass features at NDCTE’s North Dakota Professional Development Conference – and we’re already working on the next group of new features!

We’re currently upgrading Compass’ job shadow request and approval process, as well as finalizing changes to the new student home page and Career Profile layout. We’re exploring trends in student interests that can be useful for schools and communities, especially as relates to workforce development.

We’re also releasing a new program of study functionality for Moorhead Area Public Schools, which will help MAPS and other schools using its Career Academy model to track student engagement with programs of study and enable schools to easily update their high school learner plans. Finally, we’re creating features to allow educators to fine-tune their notification preferences according to their role. Watch for more Compass updates when we send out future release notes.

CTE center partnerships a success

Earlier this year, we announced our new partnerships with the Bakken Area Skills Center (BASC) in Watford City, ND, and the Williston Basin Career & Technical Education Center (WBCTEC) in Williston, ND. We’re excited to see both of those partnerships taking off, including through four employers supporting the BASC. These employers (H.A. Thompson & Sons in Bismarck, and Red Rock Auto, Delta Constructors, and Lund Oil, in Watford City) all also benefit from Golden Path Solutions’ employer memberships. These partnerships support local schools, while also helping employers connect with students across the state.

We’re excited to share more about these CTE center partnerships at the upcoming North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC) Annual Meeting Sept. 17 in Watford City. Golden Path Solutions will be presenting on a panel with BASC Director Dr. Wayne Heckaman, Shawn Brink from ND Energy Education, and Anselmo Hernandez from ONEOK, moderated by Reva Kautz with the NDPC.

Moving forward with the Detroit Lakes Chamber

Our partnership with the Detroit Lakes (MN) Regional Chamber of Commerce is off to a great start. We’re making sure employers understand how they can use Compass to connect with local students through our relationship with the Detroit Lakes High School.

Two virtual meetings at 1 p.m. Sept. 23 and 9 a.m. Oct. 15 will walk employers through the benefits and process of connecting with schools and students. Watch Golden Path and Detroit Lakes Chamber news for registration links.

Thanks to our renewing employer members

Each year, we welcome renewing Golden Path employer members who want to strengthen their connections with students and schools. We wanted to say thank you to a few of those partners, including Apex Engineering, Bergstrom Electric, DSG, Altru Health, Goldmark, Lunseth Plumbing, North Dakota Building Trades Unions, Rapat, and more. We’re also thankful to North Dakota State University, Bismarck State College, North Dakota State College of Science, and Mayville State University for their continued partnership with the Golden Path team (and to Concordia for starting their journey with us)!

Let us know about your events

If you have an event that you want us to include in our newsletter, please send us a note at info@goldenpath.net. If you are an employer and want to publish your event to schools and students, remember that you can do that through Compass. If you’re an educator wanting to invite employers to a school event (like a career fair or expo), you can do that in Compass too, choosing the employers you invite by industry, name, career cluster, or distance from you.

Important dates

Connect with us

Keep up with the latest opportunities and information here:

More information

Contact Patrick for more information or to connect about opportunities with Golden Path Solutions.