At Cottage Grove High, two coordinators match student needs with community resources.

Housed in Cottage Grove High School, the team coordinates interaction between students and business partners, ranging from simple three-hour worksite visits to out-of-town CAM internships.

It also helps special needs students make the leap from education to employment.

Three-quarters of the team's funding comes from federal grants, the other one-quarter from the district's general fund.

Roughly 70 to 80 percent of CAM internships have been conducted with local businesses, says Heather Murphy who, along with Mary Meyers, specializes in school-to-work vocational transition for the district.

"We have a balance between what the students need and the community can provide," Murphy says.

For instance, many Cottage Grove students are interested in natural resources and forestry, and Cottage Grove is home to one of Weyerhaeuser's' state-of-the-art lumber mill, Murphy notes, plus a Forest Service district office.

Cottage Grove's size -- population 7,400 -- may actually be an advantage in some ways, Murphy says.

"Health services are popular for CAM internships, and we have full rein at the hospital here. In Eugene, you've got several high schools, all wanting to get into just two hospitals," she says.

Virtually all internships are extended job shadows ranging from 30 to 100 hours -- as opposed to actual employment that directly benefits a company -- and so comply with federal law.

"Some employers (eventually) hire the person they started training anyway," Murphy says.

Sometimes finding an internship that matches a student's career interests requires some creativity.

Murphy set up an internship at Wildlife Safari, a kind of open-air zoo near Roseburg, for a student interested in animals care as a career. She's even placed Cottage Grove students in engineering firms and television stations 20 miles up the road in Eugene.

Last year, when graduating seniors were making presentations about their CAM projects, Murphy recalls, "95 percent so professional and well done that I knew we really were sending these kids into the future knowing what it is they really want."