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Public-Private Partnership Helps Technical College Launch New Transportation Center with $3 Million Challenge Grant

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A curious person, who uses their sleuthing skills to get to the bottom of a problem with the aid of computerized diagnostic equipment, may not be what most people picture when they think about automotive technicians or diesel mechanics. Yet, today, successful candidates in these occupations are just that; they are inquisitive problem solvers. They need these skills to work in a field that has become increasingly technical and computerized.

There is a shortage of workers with these skills nationally, and in Wisconsin, employers are having trouble finding the talent they need to fill positions. In the state’s largest city, Milwaukee, a public-private partnership, called the MATC RevUp program, has been launched to help recruit more people into the field and provide needed training.

Tom Hurvis, issued the funding challenge to help fill the need for more technicians and provide opportunities for students to obtain the skills needed for a family-supporting career in the automotive field.

Tom Hurvis, Co-founder of Old World Industries, issued a $3 million challenge grant in March 2017 to expand automotive programs at the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and kick off fund raising to create the Al Hurvis-Peak Transportation Center. Grant funding will provide seed money to launch expanded academic programming and outreach activities, including the additional personnel and equipment expenses for the new transportation center.

The grant provides $1 million in immediate funding, and up to an additional $2 million for every dollar MATC raises for the RevUp program over two years. To house the transportation center, MATC is repurposing an existing auditorium at its downtown campus. The building will be named the Al Hurvis PEAK Transportation Center to honor Tom Hurvis’ father, Al Hurvis, who was an automotive executive in the Milwaukee area.

The RevUp project is taking aim at the causes behind the talent gap in the state.

“The biggest issues are two-fold. First, there is a shortage. The recession caused people to hold off retiring. But now, with the economy rebounding, combined with all the changes in technology, a lot of those baby boomers are leaving. We’re going to have serious technician gaps in the workforce,” said Steve Herro, Project Manager of the Al Hurvis-Peak Transportation Center at MATC. “Secondly, there is a negative stereotype around auto mechanics. It is seen as a non-technical career with no growth potential. This is why we use the term technicians, to better reflect the current reality of this occupation.”

In addition to technology evolving, the way that young people find their way to careers like automotive technician or diesel mechanic has also changed.

“In the past, young people probably had some sort of mentor—like a family member—who was working on a car and they got a chance to help. In our urban areas, today, youth coming up have not had the same sorts of opportunities,” said Herro.

The RevUp program is focused on opportunities for students in urban settings. The two-pronged approach is providing additional support and engagement activities for existing students and outreach into the community to get more young people interested in transportation careers.

The RevUp program is focused on opportunities for students in urban settings. The two-pronged approach is providing additional support and engagement activities for existing students and outreach into the community to get more young people interested in transportation careers.

MATC RevUp will be partnering with area groups, like the Boys and Girls Club, which have expertise in putting on camps, to host automotive-related camps starting this summer. These camps will be at the middle school and high school level and introduce students to careers in the automotive industry. Representatives from area businesses will offer their time as mentors. One of the planned activities for high schoolers is to build raceable go carts. This project will provide experience with engines, fabrication, and auto-body painting.

Herro points out that the skills learned by automotive technicians provide advancement opportunities over time along a career pathway. These skills are also highly transferable according to Herro, and technicians may not spend their whole careers in the automotive field.

“One of our instructors told me that he had a student from the diesel program who went on to work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico making $100 grand after three years. Diesel is a huge area because you can work on any diesel engine. It doesn’t matter if it’s at a power company, in a truck, or in a manufacturing setting,” said Herro.

The RevUp program will also be running after-school clubs during the school year. While Wisconsin has many high-quality automotive programs that meet national standards, many schools in the state have discontinued their automotive programs due to costs.

“Often, an automotive program might have $500 to $1000 per year to purchase supplies. That doesn’t even provide annual updates for their automotive diagnostic equipment,” said Herro. “We need to do more than just support those schools. We need to dive deeper into the community and get more students interested in these programs,” he said.

Milwaukee area native, Tom Hurvis, chairman of Old World Industries, LLC, the parent company of the PEAK automotive brand, issued this funding challenge to help fill the need for more technicians and provide opportunities for students in urban Milwaukee to obtain the skills needed for a family-supporting career in the automotive field.

Interested donors can contact Laura Bray, Executive Director of the MATC Foundation and MATC Vice President of College Advancement and External Communications, at braylm@matc.edu.

New AAS in Logistics Engineering Technology Fills Talent Gap in Emerging TDL Occupations

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If you ask most companies in shipping or logistics if it is possible to hire someone with an associate degree who knows logistics, engineering, and information technology, they will tell you that such graduates do not exist, and they would be right. But, graduates with this unique set of skills will be hitting the workforce in just two years thanks to a new AAS program coming out of Columbus State Community College in Columbus, Ohio where the first class of students have enrolled in the degree program and begun their instruction this fall.

“I was excited to see this degree was being created. It fills a gap that has been out there for some time,” said Jeremy Banta, Lead Faculty for the Supply Chain Management program at Columbus State.

The new AAS degree in Logistics Engineering Technology (LET) was formed after collecting input from area employers who helped the college identify the skills and knowledge requirements for this evolving occupation. The degree brings together core competencies in accounting and finance, communication, information technology (IT), leadership, and logistics. It also brings in technical knowledge from industrial engineering technology and electro-mechanical engineering technology.

“What we’ve recognized is it’s difficult to find the right people with the right skill sets,” said Brandon Andrews, Senior Corporate Learning & Development Manager at Intelligrated, which is part of Honeywell. “We’re looking for a certain level of aptitude or proficiency before we bring them on.”

Andrews points out that the increasingly automated logistics field relies on sophisticated systems representing investments in the tens of millions of dollars. His company does not hire inexperienced people to run or maintain such systems. They are looking for well-trained people who have chosen the occupation and who are prepared with the training they need to get up to speed quickly.

“The Logistics Engineering Technology program at Columbus State encompasses the more technical aspects together with the operations piece and how the systems all interact with the facility, as a whole,” said Andrews.

The goal of the AAS program is to have students graduate with an understanding of the fundamentals of IT and computer science, principals of engineering, and fundamentals of logistics so they can talk to all these groups.

“The main rationale for the degree is to combine logistics with engineering technologies,” said Tara Sheffer, Grant Coordinator at Columbus State. “We know logistics is changing, we know distribution is changing, we know there is a skills gap.”

The new degree program was developed with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, which specifically aims to help community colleges develop academic programs for the education of technicians for high-technology fields important to the nation’s economy.

“Columbus State recognized early on that most students in the Supply Chain Management degree program were returning adults,” said Banta. To accommodate these students, 50 to 75 percent of the courses for the LET degree can be completed online.

Industry partnerships were key to the development of this degree program. They will also be key to future evolution of this program, which is slated to include a work study component and internship requirement.

Columbus State is also working to develop a third phase to this program, referred to as a “two plus two plus two” pathway. In this model, students embark on a career pathway beginning the last two years of high school. Then, they complete a two-year degree program at a community college followed by two years at a university to earn a bachelor’s degree.

As they move forward, the college will continuously work to identify and predict emerging technologies and trends affecting logistics occupations. Their goal is to continuously update the curriculum to meet evolving needs within the workforce.

“I always joke that an English professor does not necessarily have to be out in industry to see what’s new going on in their area. But, we do,” said Banta. “At least once a week we’re taking a tour, talking to an industry leader, or attending a conference so we can hear about what is new out there and what gaps need to be filled. For instance, a lot of employers right now are saying soft skills are a problem. Employees know how to do regression analysis, but they don’t know how to write an email.”

For more information about the degree program, visit the Columbus State website. Information about the curriculum and how it was developed may be found on the Columbus State website page for the grant project. To learn more about collaborating with Columbus State, contact Tara Sheffer at tsheffer@cscc.edu.

No Textbooks, Real-World Experiences Prepare Industry-Ready Graduates

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A relatively new degree program at Kansas State Polytechnic is filling a significant talent gap and launching competitive applicants into the workforce. The Airport Management degree program was founded on the principal of teaching evidence-based and real-world practices so graduates will enter the workforce with experiences on par with what they would gain from years of on-the-job experience.

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Transcripts of Apprenticeship Webinar and Call Available

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The transcript of the MTWC webinar, “Why all the momentum for Registered Apprenticeships? What are they?” held December 8th is now available for download on the MTWC website. Here, you can also view the recording of the webinar as well as download the presentation slides and other helpful resource materials.

After the webinar, a follow-up call was scheduled to allow more time to ask questions of the panel of experts about registered apprenticeship programs. The transcript of this call is also available on the website.

Taking the Lead in Supply Chain Talent, Tri-State Region Creates Partnerships to Build Capability

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Painting the picture of what supply chain management encompasses and then creating a vision of a career in this field in the minds of young people is part of what is making the career pathway initiative, Supply Chain OKI, successful. Another key contributor to the initiative’s success comes from the numerous collaborative partnerships created across the region. Supply Chain OKI is building programs that develop skilled supply chain professionals and help retain that talent within the industry. Led by Partners for a Competitive Workforce, the initiative represents adjacent areas of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, a tri-state region from which the initiative gets the “OKI” in its name. Read more

Mentoring Young People in Michigan: DeAnte Thompkins Shares His Experiences

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DeAnte Thompkins has hired and mentored more than 600 high school students as director of MDOT’s Metro Region Youth Development and Mentoring Program (YDMP), a program he was once in himself. MDOT’s twelve-week program provides summer job training as a foundation for entering transportation-related careers. We recently asked him some questions about his experience with mentorship programs.

What’s a typical work week for the students in the program?

Participants in the program work a standard forty-hour work week. The week is generally broken down into three days of work in the field and two days of mentoring activities. Over the last several years, we have partnered with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources so that the students could help in the beautification efforts of Belle Isle State Park. This provides a very safe work environment for students while still making an impact on a gem of Metro Detroit.

What are some actual student paths after finishing the program?

We have a number of success stories that have come as a result of being exposed to our Youth Development and Mentoring program.  After being exposed to the opportunities in transportation, we have kids go on to major in civil engineering. We have a gentleman that has been with YDMP since roughly 2009 who decided to become an aircraft mechanic because of what he saw during our mentoring event at MDOT’s Aeronautics garage in Lansing. We have other students that went on to get skilled trades certifications because of exposure to that career path. Read more