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Despite Roseville Joint Union High School District spending $70,000 on a subscription to Naviance, a college and career readiness program, many students and staff still claim to have little knowledge of the program.

Naviance offers features like career profiling, scholarship applications and college essay resources.

Roseville High School College and Career Center Technician Jaqueline Seider acknowledges that there is a lack of awareness about Naviance, but feels that it could be extremely useful to students.

She is attempting to educate students on the system and how it can be utilized to its fullest extent.

“Naviance can definitely be used in the classroom, as far as utilizing it at home-in the career center we use it to work on college choices. There is just so much built in there,” Seider said. “ I’m having tutorials most Thursday in here during both lunches to help guide students is navigating the site. We’re trying to get students to use it more, it’s kind of sad that isn’t being utilized as much as it could be.”

Still some teachers are trying to integrate Naviance into the classroom.

Freshman Seminar teacher Paul O’Brien has been using the Naviance system in an attempt to expose more students to the service.

“If students know where they are going and know what it takes to get there, they may find more motivation to succeed in courses that are challenging for them,” O’Brien said. “Not only helps students identify a potential career, it assists them in identifying colleges that may help them attain a career objective.”

Freshman Caitlin Tran, who is not enrolled in the Freshman Seminar class, says that she has not been in-depthly informed about Naviance, but says that she can see why it would be advantageous.

“I don’t take freshman seminar so I haven’t been exposed to it but from what I know, it seems like it could be very useful,” Tran said. “I’m not to worried about scholarships and college as a freshman but I do think it is something that should be talked about more with students. It just seems like a waste to spend so much money on something actually helpful and then not really tell students about it.”

O’Brien said that if students are familiar with Naviance, they will find themselves much more prepared for life after college.

“ Students who use Naviance habitually as a portal to explore post-secondary education will discover lots of other tools they can take advantage of as they prepare for post-secondary education in their junior and senior years – résumé building, college applications, college grant opportunities, and help with meeting deadlines.”

Senior Tyler Estrada wishes he had known more about the program earlier in his his high school career.

“[Naviance] is very important, I know some AVID students who have used it… I have to do scholarship and college applications on my own and they have help,” Estrada said. “I feel that if you have a resource just sitting there and not being used you should try and make people more aware of it. Especially if it’ll help people.”