“I want you to repeat one word after me,” Andre Perez told a group of about 15 current and future Iberia Parish leaders Tuesday afternoon: “Opportunity.”

The group echoed it back to him.

Perez, director of Primary Partnerships and Special Projects at South Louisiana Community College, was speaking to the current class of Leadership Iberia, a program offered by the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce. Participants spend a year visiting institutional leaders around the parish.

“We want to teach (participants) about things in the parish they don’t know about,” Chamber President and CEO Janet Faulk-Gonzalez said. “They get a sort of behind-the-scenes look at the businesses and institutions of Iberia Parish.”

Participants were ending a day dedicated to learning about Iberia’s educational institutions by visiting SLCC’s International School for Aviation Excellence. Earlier they had visited an elementary school and observed a French immersion program, the Iberia Parish Career Center and met with the principal there, and had heard from Iberia Parish Superintendent of Schools Dale Henderson.

There are about 600,000 people between 16 and 64 in Louisiana, Perez said, who have not completed a high school education.

“That’s an opportunity,” he said.

Perez said as these new leaders thought about the future of the parish, SLCC was a partner they could work with any time.

“We have plenty of venues to serve” that opportunity, he said.

The ISAE at SLCC, which cut the ribbon in January 2016, is the only rotary flight school of its kind in the state, and one of only a few nationally, with a fleet of helicopters parked beside it. The school prepares students for careers as transporters for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico, as emergency medical and air evacuation flyers, as agricultural crop dusters and for careers in tourism, among other jobs.

SLCC Chancellor Natalie Harder reiterated Perez’s message.

“There are plenty of job openings in this state if you have the right skill set. If we’re going to serve students, we need to create programs that result in having a graduate that industry wants to hire. No one ever calls an economic development agency or a chamber (of commerce) and says, ‘You know what, I want to move my business there — do you have 200 psychology majors I can hire?’ Or, ‘I want to expand, just give me 50 journalism majors,’ ” she said, which prompted at least one journalism major in the room to grimace with a pained recognition of this fact.

Leadership Iberia started 19 years ago by now state Rep. Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, Speaker of the Louisiana House.

The current program ends in September, and a new one begins in January. Applications, available on the chamber’s website, are accepted through mid-December.

“It’s an excellent program. You learn a lot about Iberia Parish,” said Linda Horton, a driver’s education teacher who said her participation this year has inspired her to become civically engaged with the parish and city once it’s over. “It’ll be interesting to see, after the class, what I get involved in,” she said.

Applications are reviewed by a small committee at the chamber. “We’re less interested in what someone’s involvement has been and more interested in what they want to create,” Faulk-Gonzalez said.