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Dr. Nichole Lemmon describes her career as a series of “doing things that haven’t been done in our community before.” When she was a teacher at Central High School, she established Central Intelligence, the popular student journalism club. Then in 2011, Springfield Public Schools (SPS) asked her to take on a new role with a very 2011-sounding title: coordinator of eLearning. Now, she’s the director of virtual learning and strategic planning for SPS—in charge of virtual programs for students all over Missouri. “We serve 120,000 enrollments annually,” she says.

The virtual programs were developed to help solve scheduling issues for students. Over the next several years, SPS’s virtual learning programs grew, as did nationwide interest in virtual education. Ultimately, legislation was enacted guaranteeing families access to virtual learning—and requiring school districts to provide it. “Our school board believed in what we’d built [at SPS] and said, ‘Let’s offer it to the state,’” Lemmon says. “I thought we’d get 30 districts to sign on, but we had over 100 partners within the first six months of the idea.”

With this new scope, Lemmon’s program took on a new name—Launch—and expanded. Then the pandemic arrived, and Launch flexed again to offer programs for all grade levels.

Coming out of the pandemic, a new educational need emerged. Employers were struggling to find enough qualified employees, and the Launch team believed it could help. They envisioned a new curriculum focused on job readiness, which could be tailored to specific industries, such as teaching or computer programming. In 2022, the State of Missouri’s Office of Workforce Development and Higher Education dedicated more than $2 million in funding to support the program.

Missouri State Senator Lincoln Hough says this investment makes sense. “Making sure that our students have access to diverse educational and workforce training programs is a key component to moving Missouri forward,” Hough says. “These programs help us attract new businesses and continue to grow our small business sector. ”

For Lemmon, it’s just the latest chapter. “I don’t know what the next need will be in education,” she says. “I just know we’re flexible enough and creative enough that we can meet it.”—Lucie Amberg