For many Durham teenagers, the path to fulfilling their girlhood dreams - and to launching their careers - could begin at the Holton Career and Resource Center.

The center is home to the new Holton School of Cosmetology. A Durham Public Schools offering, the cosmetology program can accommodate up to 100 students from any public Durham high school. Each pupil will receive free vocational training worth at least $10,000.

Rickelle Purefoy, a Southern High School senior, was one of several teenagers who visited the Holton cosmetology facility last week for an open house.

"My mom can do hair and my godsister can do hair, so I've always wanted to do hair," Purefoy said.

Daniela Yepez, a junior at Riverside High School, was trying on scrubs, which all students in the program must wear.

"Since I was young, I really liked a lot of things about doing ... hair and makeup and things like that," she said.

Yepez recently moved to Durham from Granville County, which she said has nothing like the Holton cosmetology program.

"This is a really really good thing being offered, especially since it's my first year in Durham Public Schools," she said.

The new program replaces one based at Hillside High School, which has closed. As part of the switch, which allows students from across the district to study cosmetology, a salon and training center was built in the space that had housed Holton's small-engine repair classroom. (That workshop was replaced due to low enrollment.)

The female-dominated - at least for now - Holton cosmetology program complements a male-dominated Durham Public Schools barbering program that was launched when the renovated Holton building reopened in 2009.

By the end of the two-year program, Holton cosmetology students will graduate from high school with 1,200 to 1,500 hours of training. That will qualify them to take the state cosmetology licensing exam.

Melissa Godwin came to the orientation with her neighbor and friend, Madrika Davidson, a Northern High junior.

"I think it's amazing that she will have an employable skill and license when she finishes high school and that she will be able to earn a living, whether she chooses to go to college or not," said Godwin, who called herself a mentor to Davidson. "And she's been wanting to do hair and wanting to do hair and wanting to do hair."

Godwin liked what she saw at the orientation.

"It feels really professional and the staff feels really professional," she said. "It feels like they have high expectations for the students, which is really important."

The new facility boasts large mirrors amid bright-orange work spaces.

It should begin to serve customers -- both walk-ins and by appointment -- after Labor Day.

One visitor, 89-year-old Geneva Dillard, was enthusiastic about the facility.

"If I were young, I'd go back and start teaching here again," said Dillard, who was the first person to teach a racially integrated cosmetology course at the old Durham High School.

The current cosmetology instructors are Nellie White, now entering her 19th year of teaching in Durham public schools, and Gena Kelly, who like White taught Hillside cosmetology students for the last eight years.

"Cosmetology is the art of beauty [of] the hair, the skin and the nails from head to toe," White said. "It's the art and the science of it."

Kelly, asked what new cosmetology students struggle to master, replied: "In the beginning, everything, even down to the basic [hair] roller set. They never knew it could be that difficult."

Most students tend to enjoy hair dressing and coloring, Kelly said.

Davidson is looking forward to learning about doing nails. "When I get mine done, they look fun, and you can do different designs and stuff," the junior said.

Davidson, who wants to become a pediatrician, believes that cosmetology can help support her as she works toward higher degrees. So do Purefoy, who wants to study forensic science in college, and Yepez, an aspiring paralegal.

They've got a while to go before then. It won't be until January, after 300 hours of training and practice on mannequins, that the students will first begin to cut actual human hair.

Daniela Yepez asked her Spanish-speaking mother whether she'd let Daniela gain experience cutting her hair.

Translating Cecilia Yepez's reply, Daniela said: "First with my brothers; maybe later with hers."