Go to school, get a job

RI Secretary of State Seeks Creative Ways to Help Students Enter Job Market

Secretary of State Ralph Mollis and URI Student Nick Bottai of
Charlestown

By Rachel Nunes, URI Journalism Student

Secretary of State Ralph Mollis toured Chariho High School Career and Tech (CTC) Program March 20^th and talked to Skills USA students about making the Rhode Island job market more accessible.

With URI student Nick Bottai, Mollis visited the CTC, where students learn hands-on career skills. These include carpentry, nursing, and HVAC, as well as many others.  

Mollis is running for Lieutenant Governor and, if elected, plans to focus on better developing Rhode Island’s workforce, as well as ensuring Rhode Island students are better prepared to enter that workforce upon graduation.

To get a better idea of how well CTC students are being prepared to enter the workforce, Mollis talked to students involved in various programs about what they were learning and how it connected to their future plans. He made sure to congratulate Skills USA contest winners, who have shown excellence in their respective CTC disciplines in competition.

“There is a growing job market for students graduating with technical skills,” said Nick Bottai, the URI student who organized the tour. “These technical skills could be directed towards fixing the skills gap in the RI job market.”

Bottai, a Chariho graduate, is an intern at the Rhode Island state house for Representative Donna Walsh of district 46, a former Chariho teacher. He met Mollis at the State House, and offered to give him a tour.

As well as interning at the State House, Bottai is the treasurer for URI’s chapter of College Democrats and president of the URI philanthropy group Strike a Chord. In high school, he won the Gina Raimondo junior leadership award his junior year and the Reagan Presidential Leadership Award his senior year.

An accounting major, Bottai plans to become an entrepreneur and perhaps one day run for public office.