Florida’s Exceptional Employer Award
Pictured left to right: Dr. Cannon Cameron, OCPS ESE program specialist; Dorea Mays, Rosen Single Creek associate HR director; Elizabeth Gonzalez, Rosen Shingle Creek HR manager; and Sue Kozoil, VP for Quest, Inc.
Orange County Public Schools and Quest, Inc. are proud to announce the selection of Rosen Shingle Creek as a 2016 Exceptional Employer Award recipient. OCPS and Quest collaborated on the nomination. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD), Blind Services, Vocational Rehabilitation, and other partners recognized Rosen Shingle Creek for its commitment to employing individuals with disabilities.
Quest, Inc. works as a partner with Orange County Public Schools Exceptional Student Education (ESE) Transition School by providing a job coach.. OCPS provides a teacher and an employment specialist, with a job coach provided by Quest, Inc. The job coach works with teachers to assist students aged 18-22 with achieving employability skills. Rosen Shingle Creek, owned by hotelier Harris Rosen, is one of the partner sites where students go to obtain and implement employability skills.
Harris Rosen
The purpose of the program is to provide job training to students with disabilities, allowing them to obtain employment in that industry after program completion. Rosen Shingle Creek was nominated because not only do they partner with the school district to allow students to obtain the skills, but they also hire some of the students once they complete the program.
Over the last few years, Rosen Shingle Creek Resort has hired 26 individuals with disabilities. The hotel also hosts Project Search, which is a national model program for preparing individuals with disabilities for the job market. This partnership with the Orange County Public Schools is a valuable program for students who need to learn new skills to enter the workforce. The hotel staff treat the interns as regular employees. They participate in employee orientation, staff meetings, and special events to learn what it is like to be a hotel employee.
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Harris Rosen is truly an exceptional human being as well as employer. He continuously invests in our community with his Tangelo Park initiative and is going to duplicate that in Parramore. He recognizes that his success depends on his front line employees and rewards them with good wages and health care among many other things of which I am not aware. No, I do not now, nor have ever worked for this wonderful citizen.