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• Apprenticeships for Rural America
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Transcript

Tim Sablik: Hello, podcast listeners. Today's episode is all about the growing role apprenticeship programs play in feeding the workforce pipeline. We'll hear from a community college in the Richmond Fed's district about how one of these programs works in practice.

But first, I'm speaking with Michael Newsome, the community development regional manager for workforce pathways in North and South Carolina at the Richmond Fed. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Newsome: Hey, Tim. It's great to be here.

Sablik: You've been thinking about apprenticeships for some time and gathering information about programs in your travels and conversations around the Carolinas. Why has apprenticeship become such an important topic in workforce development today?

Newsome: As I've had time to discuss workforce issues with government, academic, and business leaders, I've discovered that everyone is thinking about apprenticeships.

Apprenticeships have risen in importance because a lot of employers are struggling to find the right talent. Labor force growth has slowed and, with an aging population, it's becoming even more important to develop talent that's already in our communities. This is especially true in rural communities. Apprenticeships let people earn a paycheck while they build in-demand skills, which helps the workers and employers and strengthens local economies.

Sablik: That definitely covers why employers and workers would be interested in these programs. Why is the Richmond Fed interested in apprenticeships?

Newsome: At the Richmond Fed, we study the factors that help communities build strong, resilient economies. Workforce pathways are an important part of that. Healthy labor markets depend on connecting people to opportunities. Our role is to understand what's working, bring together partners to learn from one another, and share research and insights.

Here at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, I have several colleagues publishing work on apprenticeships to help explain what we're learning across the Fifth District. And, at the Investing in Rural America conference, which will be held Sep. 30 through Oct. 2 in Asheville, N.C., there is going to be a great panel session focused specifically on rural apprenticeships.

Sablik: You touched on this a little bit, but maybe you can talk a little bit more about what makes apprenticeships different from traditional education pathways.

Newsome: One important thing that makes apprenticeships distinct is the way work and learning are integrated. Apprentices are employees, earning wages, experiencing day-to-day job activities and learning from mentors while they complete the related instruction. That alignment helps ensure the skills they are building match real workplace needs. This allows for a more efficient labor sorting, matching the right workers to the right jobs.

Sablik: Based on your conversations with businesses and educators, what makes successful apprenticeship programs work? What are the key ingredients?

Newsome: From what we've heard from employers, educators, and workforce organizations, successful apprenticeships are built on strong partnerships. Employers need to be deeply engaged. Education providers have to deliver high-quality and relevant instruction. And, workforce intermediaries play a key role in recruitment and administrative support. The common threads are clear communication and consistent commitment. This combination of partnerships with clear communication and consistent commitment make apprenticeships a powerful pathway to meet our workforce needs.

Sablik: Michael, thanks so much for joining me to talk about what you've been learning.

Newsome: You're welcome.

Sablik: Melissa Stowasser is the vice president for community and continuing education at Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., where she oversees the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships program. Melissa, thank you for joining me.

Melissa Stowasser: Thank you so much for having us.

Sablik: To start off, can you just tell us about the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships program?

Stowasser: Trident Technical College is a part of the technical college system in the state of South Carolina. Our designated service region is Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties. It's in that space that we're supposed to fulfill our mission, and the mission of the college is workforce development.

Apprenticeship falls absolutely within that spectrum. We see it as a perfect means of helping our employers get the talent they need and our citizens get the skills they need to get the great jobs that are here.

We started working in the apprenticeship world over 45 years ago. In the late 1970s, we were working with a large manufacturer here to do apprenticeship programs for adults. Our president at that time really understood the power of apprenticeship, and so she wanted to help scale that across our region, allowing other employers to have the same opportunity to build their own talent. She created an office of apprenticeship here and tasked that office with going out to the employers and talking to them about how they could set up these apprenticeship programs.

One of the things we realized very early on was that some of the smaller manufacturers would say to us, "We don't have the capacity to do that. We're not like these larger companies." It was in that space that a sector partnership strategy was born. We started pulling a lot of like manufacturers together who needed the same occupation and building a cohort of students to support an apprenticeship program, where you could hire one or two and someone else could hire one or two and pretty soon you had a full-fledged apprenticeship program going. That was really successful.

When Boeing came to town, all of our smaller manufacturers started losing their minds. They were losing all of their skilled talent to the great new shiny entity that was here in the region. And so, one of our manufacturers that we had been working with was German based. The new CEO, who had come fresh in from Germany, asked us if we would be willing to start a youth apprenticeship program.

We knew that Trident Technical College could not do this alone, and what we did was reach out to all of our partners we thought would really be instrumental in creating something like this. We needed a group of employers in a sector partnership. We had to have our K-12 folks working alongside us. We knew that the chamber of commerce was vital.

Collaboratively, we envisioned how we could put this together to bring 16-, 17-, and 18-year-old students into our local manufacturers in an employment capacity so that we could fill those critical workforce needs we had in our region, but also so that we could mentor the young talent we had here and we wouldn't need to import people from around the country to fill them. We're sitting on a gold mine of talent in Charleston.

Sablik: Yeah, that youth focus is really interesting. Apprenticeships, a lot of times in the U.S., have been for entry-level workers.

How do students apply for the program, and what's the typical experience for apprentices that go through it?

Stowasser: In 2005, the state chamber of commerce worked to create a piece of legislation called the Education and Economic Development Act. With a part of that legislation, they started creating an IGP — an Individual Graduation Plan — for every student that starts in the eighth grade. And so, eighth grade counselors are telling students and parents about this opportunity and they're driving them towards this as a viable educational option for all of them.

We have great partnerships with our K-12 system. We work very collaboratively on behalf of the employers to educate the students and their parents. We have information sessions out in the schools. We also have, once a year, an information session that our K-12 partners will drive the students and parents to. We'll have about 1,100 people here on a Saturday morning.

So, that's how we recruit.

After we have that big information day on that Saturday morning, then the students begin submitting their applications. Once they're completed, they're sent to the college. We vet them and verify them, and then we send them out to the employers.

When the students get hired, we begin to work on their schedules with the K-12 system because they're still taking their high school classes. They're also enrolled in the exact same college classes that an adult student would be enrolled in for a career-specific program. And, we work with the employers to figure out what their employment schedule could look like. They'll work part time in the fall, and then in the summer they work full time so that they get as many hours on the job as they possibly can. They do this over a two-year period.

Sablik: Are the employers also involved in crafting their curriculum in school?

Stowasser: Absolutely. All of our programs at the college have advisory committees from our employers. They work with us to determine what our courses should look like and what our programs should be.

Sablik: What types of businesses are offering apprenticeships?

Stowasser: We have apprenticeship programs for youth in 12 different industry sectors and over 24 occupations. Not all occupations are active every year. It depends on who's going to be hiring for what jobs in that particular year.

The variety of employers is vast. We started with the manufacturers and we started with one program, six companies, and 13 kids. Now, we have over 80 companies, usually hiring at any given time across those 12 industry sectors. So, it was manufacturing, then it was a little bit of IT, and then it was culinary and hospitality — that's a burgeoning industry in our region. Since then, it's just grown over time into the business industry, HVAC, automotive, transportation, and logistics — up for grabs because the employers are eager to help build their talent.

Sablik: How did those employers get involved?

Stowasser: We have an employer partnership division within the college that has business consultants who go out and work with employers to assess their needs and figure out what opportunities we can engage in with them to fulfill those needs. Our K-12 partners are key, too, because they have a lot of business connections, so they're talking to them about doing apprenticeships and they're bringing them to the table. Our Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce is all about talent development. They're always talking about the program and sending employers to us.

The employers who tend to come to us tend to be the smaller ones, which surprises people a lot. They usually think it's going to be the huge ones that are going to have big apprenticeship programs, but it's the small mom-and-pop shops who need us. They're the ones who came to us in the first place, saying we really need talent because the larger companies are consuming that talent from us.

Sablik: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like you haven't faced a challenge attracting employers to participate in this program. What are the key things that are drawing them there? Is it the quality of the apprentices that are coming out of this?

Stowasser: You said we haven't had a challenge, but I'll tell you that we have.

One of our biggest challenges is matching the available employment opportunities to the students who want to engage in those. For example, I could place just about every HVAC student I could get in a position out there in the industry, but getting enough IT positions for the students is more of an obstacle. There's a mismatch, so we keep trying to change that paradigm so that students have opportunities and employers are getting the skilled labor that they need.

If you're planning on one employer to build a program, you're not going to be successful because you can't sustain it over time. We started out, like I said, with six companies. The first year, that one employer approached us and we asked them if they'd be willing to work with their competitors. They hosted a luncheon and at that luncheon, we encouraged other employers to join us. So, that was the first initiative.

As the word spread about the success they were having, they're approaching us. By becoming a part of the educational process instead of a consumer of the process, employers were getting better talent because they were helping cultivate and hone that talent.

Sablik: It definitely seems like quite a juggling act to make sure that you're matching the things that the students want to study and then the demand from the employers. What are some things that you've learned from coordinating with so many partners to administer and keep this program going?

Stowasser: I would say the most important thing that we've learned is that partnership is critical. There is not one of us who could have done this by ourselves, but it's that collaboration and ongoing critical communication. It requires individuals to be willing to check their egos at the door.

Sablik: One thing that we've been thinking about at the Richmond Fed recently in research is whether apprenticeship programs could work in rural communities as well. I don't know if you've learned anything from your experience that might speak to that question.

Stowasser: Folks think that you have to be a big corporation in order to do something like this. You do not. But you have to be willing to say who are the employers that are in that region and what skills do they need? What skills can they help hone?

Whenever you're thinking about a rural area, you need to think about employers differently. In the second year of the program, one of the things we realized as a college was if we were going to have other employers do this, we needed to be an employer ourselves. So, any post-secondary institution that is serving that rural region could be an employer.

The K-12 systems we partner with can be employers — one of the most successful HVAC students we had was hired in the school system. You can have IT in the school district. You can have business in the school district. You can have accountants in the school district. You can have culinary students in the school district working in kitchens.

Folks don't think about law enforcement. We have law enforcement agencies that are hiring these students [and] county governments and local governments that are hiring these students.

Sablik: Along those lines, what advice would you give to communities that are interested in developing their own apprenticeship programs?

Stowasser: I'd say don't try to do it by yourself. The first thing I would do is identify the partners you need at the table. Who in the region can come together to help build this out for you? Pull together those partners. Get a coalition of the willing.

Absolutely set the tone so that everyone sets their ego at the door and embraces this whole concept of collaboration and joint ownership. I think that's critical.

I would also say don't try to overdo it. So many communities come to us and they say, "Oh my gosh, we have this opportunity for this grant, and we have to have 1,000 youth apprentices in the next three years." And I say, "Leave the money on the table." You need to start small and you need to do small very well. If you do small very well, you will have such a win that it will grow organically from that first success.

Sablik: Melissa, thanks so much for joining me to talk about this exciting work.