Failing to get an education or vocational training beyond high school, failing to graduate, or failing to obtain equivalent credentials can limit an individual to a lifetime of poverty or low wages.
But, there are second chances that can turn things around and area residents don’t have to get on a college track to take advantage of them. Several organizations within the region are working together on a project designed to make its residents more employable, called the Big Goal Collaborative.
Northeast Indiana Works is among the groups involved in the project. It believes enrolling more students in programs at the region’s five career technical education centers could reduce its unemployment while alleviating worker shortages.
The agency will start stepping up efforts to accomplish that in October with a CTE awareness campaign called Made by Me.
The campaign will help correct the outdated misconception that manufacturing work requires little intelligence or skill, which in the past attached stigma to the work and discouraged adequate preparation for it. Many people do not realize most of northeast Indiana’s unskilled manufacturing jobs relocated more than a decade ago to low wage countries.
“Right now I think ‘Plan A’ is go to college and ‘Plan B’ is, if that doesn’t work out, then you can go do one of these other things,” said Gary Gatman, executive vice president of strategic initiatives for Northeast Indiana Works.
“What we want to do is to create two Plan A’s. For some kids, going to college is the perfect path. For other kids, going through a technical education is the perfect path. And I have to be honest with you, a person coming out of a technical education path has zero college debt, which is not a small thing.”
Students taking the training available at CTE centers can earn certifications useful in applying for jobs requiring technical vocational skills. Very shortly after leaving high school, students with advanced manufacturing skills can be earning $20 to $25 an hour.
“What we’re really doing in this region is taking the old model of shop class and we’re making them high tech; we’re making them engaged, we’re getting employers connected to them” Gatman said. “Through these programs, students will actually become certified welders, certified machinists, certified electricians, certified health care, IT, whatever the discipline is.
“And not certified by the high school, certified by an independent, third party employer group. So, Microsoft would certify the IT people. And the National Institute of Metalworking Skills would certify the machinists. They have to meet their standards and pass their tests. The curriculum in these high school shop classes is evolving to be highly technical and geared for these workers with those skills.”
Fort Wayne Community Schools is serious enough about the preparation it is providing students for advanced manufacturing that it opened a $500,000 welding lab at the start of the school year in its Anthis Career Center complex.
Many of the jobs at today’s manufacturing facilities require certification because they involve very highly skilled work. Bob Roebuck, an assistant principal at Anthis, said he receives weekly calls from area employers looking to connect with students who are gaining the latest welding expertise.
When employers add welding capacity today, for example, they add robotic and laser welders. The job of a welder involves maintaining and operating the robotic or laser welder, touching up where required, and doing inspection work and essentially quality control.
“It’s the same thing on the machining side” Gatman said. “Some of the machines that these places are buying are $2 million and $3 million machines that these graduates will be operating. A single piece of equipment in there, if you break it, it’s going to be an $800,000 repair. They’re not going to put someone on there who doesn’t have it going on.”
Once a student earns the certifications, “they have a number of paths that they can take,” he said. “You could stop right there and just become a worker and make a nice living for the rest of your life.
“You could go on to college and build on the certifications you already have and get a degree and become an engineer, for example, or some other professional. Or you could become an entrepreneur, if you’re so inclined, and design new parts. I know that there are opportunities in industry to do that.”
The regional CTE awareness campaign will be designed to get parents and students and counselors working together to give high school technical certification programs the consideration they deserve, said Rick Farrant, Northeast Indiana Works communications director.
In addition to special workshops for counselors, “we’re going to … get information out in social media arenas that young people frequent,” he said. “We’re going to have print materials for counselors and parents and others. We’re going to have a micro-site that people can go to that would then direct folks who are interested in this to other opportunities for information.”
The campaign will begin with middle school counselors and students, as well as their parents, “because we need to start early with this awareness,” he said.