High school is a crucial time in students’ lives — a time where they can develop academically, socially and professionally. Jessica Ellwood, a business teacher at Southold High School, feels that professional development is a life skill that’s paramount for student success. 

With the guidance of the Virtual Enterprises International program, students who enroll in the full-year elective class at Southold, Greenport, Mattituck, Shelter Island, Westhampton Beach and Bridgehampton high schools have the opportunity to learn entrepreneurial skills. Program participants at each school create “virtual businesses” to understand the inner workings of entrepreneurship, according to Ms. Ellwood. These businesses, she said, are “student-run and teacher-facilitated.” Last year, she said, Southold students created a business called UpRISE, which dealt in all-natural sleep enhancers that worked with people’s natural sleep cycles. 

Throughout the class, students have to interview and be hired for their jobs within the firm at their school. The students can choose to continue a firm from previous years or start a new business in the class. 

“These businesses are half-virtual, in the sense that no actual currency changes hands,” Ms. Ellwood said. “But they’re real in the sense that there’s an entire internal commerce of funds, bank accounts and websites that the kids who are in the program can purchase from each other.”

Ms. Ellwood has been the facilitator of the Virtual Enterprises program in Southold since 2017, and has taken students to competitions across the state the state to help bolster their professional education in the course. After an interview competition at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station last year, she got the idea to host a similar event on the East End — and the first-ever Virtual Enterprises East End Interview Competition was born. 

The competition will be held Friday, Nov. 8, at Southold High School from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fifty-five students from the six schools will each participate in two to three rounds of interviews with 30 local business leaders, who will provide them with feedback on their resumes and interview skills.

“I’ve been overwhelmed with the positive response from people willing to be a judge for this event,” Ms. Ellwood said of the local business leaders who volunteered to participate. 

Mattituck High School businesses teacher LuAnne Nappe said the program teaches students skills that they will “take with them for the rest of their lives.” 

She said she is “thrilled” that the upcoming competition will be close to home, rather then in New York City. “The bus situation is really a problem with East End schools,” Ms. Nappe said. “Just getting them to the events is a huge problem.”

At Westhampton Beach High School, business teacher Amy Demchak-Connell said the upcoming competition offers students an opportunity to be in a professional environment close to home. 

“All of these things help prepare them for college and future careers,” she said. She hosts another Virtual Enterprises event at the Long Island Aquarium in December for East End students in the program and feels that business teachers in the area have formed a “tight consortium” to support students’ education. 

“They’re all ways that students can be exposed to these opportunities in our own local environment,” Ms. Demchak-Connell said of the competitions, “because so many things that happen are such a distance away, so it brings it close to home.

Ms. Demchak-Connell and Ms. Ellwood agreed that local businesses play a key role in facilitating events like the upcoming Southold competition. 

“On the East End we have such a supportive business community,” Ms. Demchak-Connell said. “All of our local businesses are always there to be mentors and they always are the biggest advocates for our students when we need corporate sponsors.”