National Center Helps Stakeholders Grow Construction Workforce with Resources for Strengthening Participation of Women in Apprenticeship

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Working simultaneously with unions, contractors, women, and students, the  National Center for Women’s Equity in Apprenticeship and Employment is helping the construction industry grow the skilled workforce it needs by incorporating and retaining more women. One way the center is doing this is by bringing registered apprenticeship to bear as a proven strategy to grow and retain talent, according to Jayne Vellinga, Executive Director of Chicago Women in Trades, the parent organization of the center.

By providing evidence-based strategies and practical applications, the center supports employers in their efforts to build and implement apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs and then provides ongoing support to ensure that more women successfully complete their apprenticeships and launch long-term careers in their trade.

Midwest stakeholders including registered apprenticeship sponsors, training providers, and workforce development professionals can benefit first hand from the center’s expertise by participating in the upcoming Building Women’s Equity in Apprenticeship and Employment: An Institute for Practitioners and Employers, which will be held Friday, October 13, 2017 before the start of the Women Build Nations conference in Chicago.

The multi-pronged approach taken by the center is a reflection of several factors influencing the availability of skilled laborers today.

“If I’m a contractor, I want to find some women that I’m going to cultivate and treat like an integral part of my workforce so when I bid on a project that has a female hiring goal, I already have a great skilled person that I know produces for me,” said Vellinga.

Bringing women into these careers is good for the employers but it’s also an issue of equity, according to Vellinga. In construction jobs, which have been traditionally held by male workers, a new employee with a high school diploma and no work experience will enter the field at nearly $20 per hour. In five years, that person could earn nearly $50 per hour. By contrast, roles with similar educational requirements in traditionally female jobs, such as Nurse’s Assistant, will enter the workforce at around $12 per hour and only increase their earning potential by a few dollars in five years.

A couple of years ago, the center received a Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to set up a technical assistance center for the Midwest. The center was one of three grantees spanning the county. With this grant, the center has begun to expand their reach and bring technical assistance across the region.

The center works with their national partners, primarily unions, to develop technical assistance plans, provide training, help decipher regulations, and develop best practices and case studies. They provide employers assistance on issues as varied as recruitment and retention to domestic violence.

“It’s also about career choice,” explains Vellinga. “Not every woman is a nurturer. Not every woman without a college degree wants to work with children or old people or be a waitress. Women have wide range of interests whether they’ve had an opportunity to go to college or not. It’s important to have that level of career choice and the earning power that goes with jobs that have been traditionally male.”

In 2016, the center received an additional grant from the Department of Labor targeting equity partners. The center was named the lead agency for a consortium of 10 organizations around the country. This consortium includes virtually every funded tradeswoman organization in the country and works with the national Registered Apprenticeship program. The consortium assists apprenticeship program sponsors with their equal employment opportunity planning. They provide tools, guidance, technical assistance, training, and other services in support of building equity for women in apprenticeship. Today, women make up only 15% of all apprenticeships, and in the construction field, the numbers are much worse at just 3% nationwide.

An improving economy and projected workforce shortages are helping to spur momentum for women in trades. Vellinga also points out that certain incentive programs work exceptionally well to motivate positive hiring practices. The Illinois Tollway system, for example, offers earned credit to contractors who bid on construction projects for each woman or minority that is hired. What makes this program especially beneficial is that it also awards credit for retaining these employees. “So, if you’ve done a good job with your workforce, you don’t necessarily have to be the lowest bidder to be successful in getting a contract,” said Vellinga. “What I like about this system is that it rewards you for what you’ve done, not just what you say you’re going to do.”

In her 17 years at Chicago Women in Trades, Vellinga has seen significant improvement in the work environment for women in construction. As an example, she tells about one of the plumber’s unions she works with in the Chicago area. Just four years ago, this group had just two women in their apprenticeship program. However, with a change in mindset among the union’s leadership, they started bringing more women into the program. Today, they have 32 women in their apprenticeship program and are also supporting a robust mentorship program.

“Last year, for the first time in this local’s history, they sent women as delegates to the union association convention. And not just one woman, but three,” said Vellinga.  “These numbers are going to make the difference. You can’t ignore, refuse to train or create an untenable work environment for an important percentage of your workforce.”

For more information on the center or on the Women Build Nations conference, contact Jayne Vellinga by email at jvellinga@cwit2.org.

Exponential Growth in Registered Apprenticeship in Transportation Fueled by Accelerator Activity and Industry Commitment

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Registered apprenticeship programs are growing to meet the demands of the transportation sector. A powerful tool for companies to develop the talent they need to fill positions, apprenticeship is being adopted to address workforce gaps in a growing array of occupations. The U.S. Department of Labor funds intermediaries such as FASTPORT and TransPORTs to develop registered apprenticeship programs and expand the number of apprentices for employers in the transportation and logistics industry.

“I am currently working with a large supply chain exporter with 60 branches in the U.S. Their vice president reached out to us because he wants to use apprenticeship to build his workforce,” said Barbara Murray, TransPORTs Apprenticeship and Partnership Development Expert. “He said there are great supply chain programs out there and named a couple of universities. But, then he said the graduates of those programs have great theoretical knowledge but they don’t have any work experience so they really still can’t go to work.” Plus, Murray pointed out, it is at this point that new graduates often discover that the job is not a good fit.

Combine the career readiness that apprenticeship provides with the astoundingly high retention rates of 87-93% of employees who complete apprenticeship programs, and it is clear why more companies are turning to groups like TransPORTs and FASTPORTS, for assistance in getting new programs up and running for an increasing number of occupations.

Resources such as videos and the new SMART Maritime and Transportation Career Pathways and Occupations Toolkit are available to help spread the word about the growing number of maritime occupations available through registered apprenticeship.

“My role has been changing the face of what apprenticeship is. Those professional careers can all be done with apprenticeship. The only way to do that is have people understand what apprenticeship is,” said Murray. “There are so many open positions right now where the people applying don’t have the needed skills. There’s a mismatch. More can be done than just taking classes and sitting in a classroom. Actually taking relevant classes that are matched to the work that you’re doing; that’s the difference.”

Truck drivers are an in-demand group and accordingly, this was one of the earliest national training standards program developed.
“We now have nine national employer companies sponsoring registered apprenticeship programs. Through these there are currently 814 apprentices operating on the national standards with a truck driving apprenticeship,” said Dave Harrison, Executive Director of National Apprenticeship at FASTPORT.

One of the key boosts to apprenticeship has been the advent of national apprenticeship standards, which facilitate the expansion of programs across states and make it easier to replicate programs.

“In 2014 an idea was born and some of us in the industry started actually writing what is called the National Standard of Apprenticeship, even before anything was passed in legislation. We just believed it was going to happen,” said Harrison. “It’s just been since the middle of 2015 that we started getting engagement on national strategies. So, if you look at it, it’s not very old.”

Truck drivers and diesel mechanics are some of the most in-demand employees being developed through apprenticeship today.

But there has been a lot of growth in a short time. Since the beginning, Harrison points out the truck driver segment has experienced the greatest growth, because that’s the biggest area of need. Moving forward, other related occupations are beginning to catch up. These include occupations like diesel mechanic and fleet manager. FASTPORT currently has programs for eight occupations in this area.

Over the next two years, Harrison predicts explosive growth in apprentices joining programs for freight broker or cargo broker and related occupations. These occupations are increasingly important to the world economy “because they integrate everything, air, land, and sea,” said Harrison.

In maritime, employers around our nation’s ports have diverse workforce needs and the new occupations being pursued for apprenticeship reflect this diversity. “The hot jobs include electro-mechanical, welder, HVAC, crane operator, logistics associate, freight forwarder, and, most recently, graphic designer,” said Murray.

Currently in process, FASTPORT is working to co-sponsor a new registered apprenticeship program with the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) to launch programs for freight brokers. With over 1700 employers as part of their association, this TIA program will quickly rival truck driver programs in terms of enrolled apprentices.

Harrison sites partnerships with industry as the driving factor for apprenticeship program successes. It is the industry connections which helps guide the best practices for reaching employers. One of the key activities they do is host accelerator events, often as part of national trade conferences. FASTPORT will be attending the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, August 24-26. “This is a great event and I would encourage anyone interested in apprenticeship and the transportation industry to attend,” said Harrison.

“A lot of what we do is make it simpler and quicker for companies,” said Murray. She cites the U.S. Department of Labor’s commitment to the ApprenticeshipUSA program with contributing to their success by adding more people but not more administrative layers. “We have more people, more opportunities to work face-to-face with companies and turn their programs around more quickly,” she said.

To learn more about starting an apprenticeship program, contact Dave Harrison at dave.harrison@fastport.com or Barbara Murray at brmurray77@gmail.com.

Presenters at First D&I Virtual Roundtable Took it from the Top in Tackling Common Challenges

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An opportunity to discuss strategies for tackling common challenges brought forty diversity and inclusion professionals together for the Midwest Transportation Workforce Center’s first D&I Virtual Roundtable discussion on June 8. When they registered, attendees were asked to share their challenges and questions. Among their responses, some strong themes emerged. Common challenges shared by the attendees included:

  • Gaining buy-in and support from senior leadership
  • Demonstrating and communicating the value of diversity and inclusion
  • Evolving corporate culture to not only recruit people with a broad range of backgrounds and ethnicities but to also welcome these people and make them want to stay

The roundtable discussion was the first in a three-part series hosted by MTWC this summer. The MTWC is hosting this series to address a need among D&I professionals for a place to share ideas, learn from peers, and network with others with similar goals.

The roundtables are being facilitated by Tremaine Maebry, an attorney and advocate who currently manages the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at a major transit organization. Maebry kicked off the discussion by explaining why he chose the topic of this first roundtable.

“In my conversations with colleagues and other advocates, our discussions often center around how do we get a seat at the table or how do we get buy in or support from our executive leadership team,” said Maebry. “I say that most of our senior leaders understand the importance that diversity plays in our organizations especially when it comes to the bottom line, retention, recruitment, and profit. What is unclear is the role that the D&I professional plays and how we fit in. It can be difficult for leadership to see us as strategic partners. It’s important for us to understand our roles and what we’ve done to create value. We need to do that before we ask for a seat at the table. We need to be able to articulate that especially to those in senior positions.”

Presenters, George Watts and Laurie Blazek of Top Line Talent, discussed strategies that D&I professionals can use to improve communication, especially with senior executives. Using some of the strategies outlined in their recent book, “Becoming a Strategic Leader,” Watts walked through ways that people can align their communication to the personality traits of the people with whom they are trying to communicate.

Watts asked the people in the roundtable to consider how they ranked various aspects of their personality. Then, they were asked to consider the top traits of their boss or other member of senior leadership at their organization. Given certain traits, Watts outlined the best communication styles that work to communicate with people with those traits.

To demonstrate, Watts asked for a volunteer. The volunteer shared that her top personality traits, as defined by Watts’ model, are a tendency toward extroversion and open-mindedness. On the other hand, a person she needs to communicate with at work has an almost opposite set of personality traits with a tendency toward conscientiousness and being emotionally stable.

“He is looking for you to present a metrically based argument and a process. You have a tendency to sell how diversity can make the workforce more creative and innovative and it can expand the talent pool. What he really wants to hear is how diversity can improve financial performance and result in decision making,” suggested Watts.

Overall, Watts talked about how D&I professionals can rebrand themselves to better communicate with senior leaders at their organizations and adjust their personal communication style so that their messages are more well received by their audience.

“To earn a seat at the table it’s important for you to understand your personality structure and then understand how your audience wants to receive that information and hear that information,” explained Watts.

In addition to communication style and personality traits, Watts proposed that D&I professionals think about their profession as a whole.

“What business are you really in?” asked Watts. “You have to define yourself as a talent management professional and diversity is one of the tools in your toolkit. You have to put diversity in the larger context and see it as part of the bigger picture.”

A recording of the roundtable discussion is available here.

Attendees at the roundtable included people from apprenticeship programs, community and technical colleges, consulting groups, industry, non-profits, primary and secondary schools, state departments of labor and transportation, transit agencies, transportation agencies, and universities.

While this discussion focused on communicating with top leadership, the next roundtable, on July 18, will focus on “Building Diversity and Inclusion from the Ground Up.” Bridgett Willey, Director of Allied Health Education and Career Pathways at UW Health, will speak about her experiences developing programs in education, training, outreach, and workforce development that cultivate diversity and inclusion.

Before the next roundtable, D&I professionals are encouraged to continue the conversation via the MTWC Community of Practice by joining the group on Google+ where there is a special section devoted to Workforce Inclusion and Diversity.

For more information or if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Maria Hart at maria.hart@wisc.edu.

Taking Hands-On Experiences on the Road Reaches More than Students

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Employees with specific skills and a technical education are in demand in the transportation industry and this need is growing. Unfortunately, too few young people are being ushered toward transportation careers. Over the past decade, the nation’s K-12 educational systems have worked hard to deliver students to four-year degree programs at universities. This focus has greatly reduced the number of shop and hands-on technical classes, resulting in dwindling opportunities to expose students to the sorts of careers that drive the transportation industry today.

The Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence is determined to reverse this trend by providing young people with in-person, hands-on experiences, while demonstrating the value to parents, school administrators, industry representatives, and others. They are doing this with a new mobile outreach unit, a trailer decked out with stations for each transportation mode that is pulled by a truck. The trailer is outfitted with several pieces of equipment, creating hands-on stations where students, counselors, teachers, peers, and parents can participate in real activities that occur in transportation careers. These activities showcase the technology in the industry and help students develop passion for transportation careers.

“It’s one thing to put out a webinar, put out a newsletter, or tell someone about these careers,” said Chris Hadfield, Director of the Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence. But, he pointed out, it’s completely different when students and their parents visit the trailer and have that hands-on experience.

The mobile unit was used for the first time in early May at an event where high school students were competing to build fuel efficient miniature cars with lawn mower engines. The event hosted about 700 attendees and approximately 200-300 people walked through the trailer.

The Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence’s new mobile outreach unit is equipped with hands-on experiences representing each mode of transportation.

Inside, the center has designed an experience that promotes engagement with not just the students. School decision makers and parents, which the center refers to as influencers, are also targeted by the trailer.

“You have to have something to draw them in, the big trailer does that. Then you have to have industry partnerships,” said Hadfield. The goal is to have industry representatives from each transportation sector accompany the trailer at events. These industry volunteers work alongside center staff to greet people and talk about transportation jobs.

“We know that when we put an industry person in front of a school superintendent while they’re seeing students get engaged with the experience, that’s when we start to have real conversations about bringing their tech programs back, bringing their transportation programs back, maybe doing some cool internship or apprenticeship with us,” said Hadfield.

Involving industry representatives in outreach activities also serves to bring the transportation sectors together.

“Our idea is to have somebody from the trucking industry sitting side by side, two feet away from, somebody from the aviation sector and they’re side by side with somebody from the railroad and so on and so forth. We have these people mingling and they hadn’t realized before that they have something in common and now they realize that they do. And, common denominators mean that you should be collaborating and working together. There’s a lot more power in working together than alone in silos,” sad Hadfield.

Moving forward, the trailer will be made available to each of the center’s 26 partner post-secondary schools across the state. To utilize the trailer, the schools’ responsibilities include coordinating industry representatives to accompany the trailer, getting the high schools in their region on board, and arranging either a career fair on their own campus or to bring the trailer to a high school. The trailer is made available to center partners at no cost except to return the truck with a full tank of gas.
Brand new, the trailer is already booked for over 36 events over the course of the year. The success of the project so far is attributed to the collaboration of the schools, employers, and the center. Having representatives from the industry is really important toward the outreach goals of the center.

“If a post-secondary educator tells a secondary educator or a student about these careers, that’s nice and it works fine. But, when an industry person tells you, ‘By the way I’m hiring and right now I have people who work for me and this is what I pay them and this is what they do,’ the message has much more weight for a student, a parent or for a school superintendent,” said Hadfield.

About the Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence

The Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence is an innovative collaboration between Minnesota state colleges and universities and industry partners dedicated to educating and training workers for high-demand careers in the transportation industry.

The center was started in January of 2013 in response feedback from industry “listening sessions” held in 2012. Through the development of partnerships, the center supports workforce alignment in order to meet the current and future needs of the state’s transportation industry, not only in terms of the number of graduates but also in terms of the location of programs and the rate of degree attainment. The center coordinates the alignment of skills and knowledge needed by employers with what is taught in instructional programs while providing outreach to improve student awareness of employment markets.

Highway Maintenance Engineering as a Case Study for Growing the Transportation Workforce

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Transportation infrastructure in the Midwest encompasses all modes from inland waterways to bike paths. Midwesterners continue to rely on and demand more from their investments in the past.  Keeping up requires innovation and for that we need creative thinkers interested in transportation asset management. As we celebrate National Transportation Week, we have a chance to reflect on what the Midwest can do to develop the transportation talent that we need to meet the needs of this sector moving forward.

The discipline of Highway Maintenance Engineering is an excellent model for exploring how to grow talent in transportation. Like many transportation occupations, jobs responsible for maintenance could be made more attractive with an image makeover. Yes, filling pot holes and removing road kill may be the most visible responsibilities, but we entrust highway maintenance workers with far more.  Highway maintenance workers are responsible for keeping the infrastructure in a state of good repair and at the same time keeping the adjacent air, soil, wildlife, plant life and water clean and healthy.

In order to improve the image of this occupation, there needs to be a change in mindset, both internally within the highway maintenance organizations as well as externally in the eyes of potential employees.

Challenges facing the highway maintenance workforce are the same as those facing transportation occupations across the board, making highway maintenance a good model for piloting strategies to address these challenges. For these reasons, the Midwest Transportation Workforce Center has chosen to focus on Highway Maintenance Engineering as part of the National Transportation Career Pathways Initiative.

The responsibilities of highway maintenance organizations are changing rapidly and finding the workforce with the skills and experience needed to execute these tasks will require a concerted effort.

For various reasons, the majority of attention around roadways has traditionally emphasized new construction, with less attention paid to maintenance. Maintenance jobs incorporated primarily tasks such as mowing and filling pot holes. Accordingly, the image of the average highway maintenance worker is not a glamorous one, to be sure, among the general public.

Today, departments of transportation are changing their mindset from construction thinking to maintenance thinking. They are assessing roadways across the entire lifecycle from construction through the end of its life expectancy. These assessments are including not just the costs of materials to build a new road but also the costs of maintaining the road surface and rights of way as well as well as the harder-to-quantify costs, such as the environmental impacts of all the construction, design, and maintenance practices.

In addition to this mindset change, highway maintenance is seeing an increasing use of new and emerging technologies such as computerization, drones, and geographic information systems (GIS). People entering this discipline will need experience with these technologies. These are some of the exciting things happening in transportation and we need career pathways to tell students about such opportunities.

Another trend affecting highway maintenance is the move toward automated vehicles. While this technology is still very new—it may not be clear exactly what form automation will take over the coming decades—it is undeniable that automation will change how our roadways are used. This will certainly change how we maintain our highways and rights of way.

Trends pushing maintenance thinking to the forefront include an increasing understanding of the environmental impacts and the impacts on human health of transportation. These impacts include road dust (from tire, brake pad, and road surface wear) as well as water runoff. Mitigation of these impacts are increasingly the responsibility of highway maintenance organizations. Whereas, in the past, maintenance considerations may have included driver visibility and safety, today’s maintenance practices must also take into account such things as the welfare of beneficial pollinators or the control of invasive plant species.

As highway maintenance organizations are charged with more responsibilities, the people doing this work will need to be more highly skilled and bring a broader range of technical expertise to the table.

Fortunately, the next generation of employees is excited about environmental sustainability. Aligning the needs of this discipline with the up-and-coming workforce is quite feasible. Young people today are interested in the holistic stewardship that will be required by this profession.

Like so many occupations in transportation Highway Maintenance Engineering careers need to be rebranded to reflect that these jobs are becoming more highly skilled, highly valued, and better compensated. Internally, highway departments will need to adopt a maintenance mindset. Externally, the next generation of transportation workers need to be shown a new image of highway maintenance.

Visit the MTWC Highway Maintenance Engineering Career Pathways Initiative page to keep abreast of this initiative.

To learn more about the National Transportation Career Pathways Initiative, visit the NNTW website.

About the Author

Dr. Adams is a civil and engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has more than 25 years of research experience and is an expert in freight policy research. Dr. Adams also led the 21st Century Workforce Development Summit, one in a series of regional summits used to identify needs, set goals, strategies, and best practices across various transportation career paths. The regional summits culminated in the National Transportation Workforce Summit, which Dr. Adams also co-led in the spring of 2012 in Washington, DC.

Keeping Truck Drivers Past that Crucial First Year

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What if companies could reliably prevent a particular type of loss that costs them millions of dollars annually? That’s exactly what trucking companies can do with some straightforward strategies in onboarding and retaining truck drivers. Industry data and our own research and surveys have helped Strategic Programs, Inc. identify ways to improve driver retention, especially within the first year.

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Designed for Generation Z, Online Pre-Apprenticeship Offers Wisconsin Students a Fast Track to High-Demand Careers

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In recognition of the importance of workforce issues to Wisconsin’s contractors, Wisconsin Operating Engineers partnered with Destinations Career Academy to develop the Operating Engineers Pre-Apprenticeship Program. This program prepares students for registered apprenticeship while still in high school. Hosted through the McFarland School district in south-central Wisconsin, this program is available through course options to students throughout the state.

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Michigan Construction Workforce Campaign Sets Foundation

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One year ago, MichiganConstruction.com was launched to promote the construction industry. Started and funded by construction employers, Michigan’s premiere construction branding campaign has generated over 34-million media impressions delivered to television broadcast media markets and social media platforms throughout Michigan.

“Our focus is on Michigan’s construction industry,” says Dan DeGraaf, CEO of the Michigan Concrete Association who spearheads the MichiganConstruction campaign. He sees that the only way for the construction industry to compete for the best-and-brightest, is to unify in an effort to show people how cool it is to work in construction.

MichiganConstruction­­ produced three TV commercials that does just that.  The latest shows how kids can go from video gaming directly to construction.

Heather Smith, Marketing Director of the MichiganConstruction campaign says, “The trick is capturing interest generated from the ads and connecting those job seekers with our construction employers.”  This campaign drives and captures interest with cutting edge inbound digital marketing tools utilizing branded web-based and social media technology.

The MichiganConstruction campaign paved the way for the creation of the Michigan Construction Foundation.

Formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, the Construction Foundation seeks to promote a positive image for Michigan’s construction industry to attract, recruit, educate, train and support new workers.

Brindley Byrd now serves as Executive Director of the Michigan Construction Foundation.  Working with their employer partners,  MichiganConstruction designed a framework to build an effective organization, serving as an industry intermediary, to integrate and align Michigan’s workforce development system.

“Michigan’s construction industry offers such opportunity for people to get good paying jobs,” Byrd says thinking about why he is excited to be part of this effort.  “MichiganConstruction easily connects job seekers with the many construction job, education and training options across the state.” Today’s construction industry needs workers with the right skills, qualifications and character to build a better Michigan.

For more information, contact Heather Smith at heather@MichiganConstruction.com.

Midwest Take Note: St. Louis is Taking the Lead with New Partnership Model for Highway Construction Workforce Development

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In a ground-breaking strategy, transportation organizations and workforce development boards are coming together to share expertise and resources to grow the transportation workforce. As part of a national initiative, St. Louis, Missouri will lead the way for the Midwest as one of a dozen sites selected to pilot this model across the country.

This step represents a remarkable opportunity to refine the Midwest Strategy—a cohesive approach across our states for growing the transportation talent pipeline. As other industries have built successful programs in collaboration with their state and local workforce development boards (WDBs), the transportation industry can draw on these models and emulate similar partnerships. Even as the project was being announced, additional Midwestern cities and states are following St. Louis’ lead to explore new ways to build partnership and collaboration across agencies and with industry partners.

Workforce development boards bring a wealth of resources to such collaborations, excelling at building community connections, building business networks, and acting regionally. Likewise, the transportation sector brings strong industry leadership to the table together with domain expertise in select areas such as certification and licensing and mid-career recruitment.

St. Louis is one of a dozen sites across the United States selected for the Highway Construction Workforce Development Pilot program. This program is a partnership between the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Associated General Contractors of America, American Road & Transportation Builders Association, the US Department of Labor-Employment & Training Administration, and state and local workforce development boards.

The project was created to address the challenge of developing a skilled and diverse workforce. Project partners will evaluate methods and processes to close skills gaps in highway construction and to draw qualified applicants into these occupations. Work will also be done to identify, train and place individuals in high-demand highway construction occupations.

The pilot locations include select cities and states. The cities are Pittsburgh, Atlanta, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles. The states are Connecticut, Rhode Island, Alabama, South Dakota, Arizona, and Idaho.

SLATE, the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment, is the Workforce Development Board that is identifying constructions projects and convening local stakeholders. The MTWC will provide updates as the St. Louis working group identifies new processes.

About the Author

Maria Hart is a freight transportation researcher and a transportation planner by trade. Hart manages all center activities including stakeholder engagement and outreach strategies. She also curates the transportation workforce resource clearinghouse database. Hart applies social science approaches to center activities, including such methods as collective impact, community building, and communities of practice, in order to inspire conversations around transportation workforce development that drive innovation.

MTWC Launches Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Initiative

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This summer, the Midwest Transportation Workforce Center (MTWC) is hosting a series of conversations focused on diversity and inclusion practices.  Most businesses understand that diversity creates value in the workplace, builds stronger, more innovative teams, and will be critical to addressing future workforce shortfalls. However, implementation often falls to the wayside as the day-to-day objectives of running a business take priority.

You are invited to join others in the diversity and inclusion space to create a network that helps scale solutions across the United States. Hosted by the MTWC, this initiative will be facilitated by Tremaine Maebry, EEO/Diversity Initiatives Manager at Metra.

Through this initiative, MTWC hopes to provide an information exchange platform that makes space for diversity practitioners, advocates and champions from various industry backgrounds to have a dialogue on diversity and inclusion initiatives. Through a series of interactive, multi-layered discussions, the community will explore best practices, questions, resources, information, concerns, suggestions, recommendations and challenges of making a diverse and inclusive workplace with the intent of transforming that information into sustainable, workable, initiatives.

The initiative’s goals are:

  • To engage diversity and inclusion advocates from different industries, professional associations, generations, and geographic regions in meaningful dialogue and intentional actions.
  • To weave the principles of diversity and inclusion into sustainable, workable initiatives.
  • To identify impediments to creating a diverse and inclusive environment, and then propose solutions and ideas on how to address those challenges.

We welcome diversity and inclusion practitioners from all industry sectors.  Registration is now open for the first virtual roundtable discussion to be held June 8, 2017 at 1:00 p.m. Central Time.

For more information or if you have any questions, contact Maria Hart at maria.hart@wisc.edu.