A Decade of Innovative, Strategic Workforce Training Pipeline Development

ANGELA RIGNEY: Good evening. My name is Angela Rigney, and I'm the director of Career, Technical, and Adult Education with Pennsylvania County Schools in Virginia. And this evening, I have the distinct honor of having with me, Ms. Amanda Hylton, who is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. We're going to share with you this evening a decade of innovative, strategic workforce training pipeline development that we have been working on over the last decade in our region.

AMANDA HYLTON: So we'd like to get started with just a little bit of a history of the Danville region. Tobacco and textiles was really a huge part of our community for a very long time. And in 2008, we had both that were lost, and we had a definite economic issue on our hands. So we really needed to look towards how to reinvent the region. So we looked towards manufacturing.

There's a long history of manufacturing in our region, and it's a legacy that dates back to 1939 as far as training and manufacturing support. And it is something that is very important to what our community is. It's in our DNA, so to speak. So we had to look towards how to reinvent ourselves, building onto that manufacturing history, and bringing in modernized manufacturing to be able to replace tobacco and textiles.

In addition to that, at the same time, there was a lot of studies going on through Deloitte and through other entities about where manufacturing was going in the future. And there was a definite need to fill skills gaps in the manufacturing sector. And you can look at the slide here and look at some of the big facts. For example, 3 and 1/2 million jobs over the decade from 2014 to 2024, we're going to need to be filled, and it was estimated that 2 million of those were going to be unfilled.

Looking at all of this, our region decided to create a strategic implementation strategy to be able to grow capacity within the existing manufacturing programs, as well as to modernize them so that we could move towards where manufacturing was going in the current state.

Working together, we pulled a group of education leaders, a group of industry leaders, and a group of community leaders to be able to form a strategy to be able to meet the needs and grow the manufacturing pathways to be able to meet modern manufacturing needs, as well as being able to grow to scale to be able to reinvent the community in a modern manufacturing ecosystem. We met with industry first, to determine the skills that were needed, the requirements that were going to be needed, and to make sure that the education that we were developing was going to meet the needs of what the modern workforce was asking for.

We also started this, as you'll look at the screen, you can see the different pathways, we actually started at the community college and we worked towards doubling the capacity of the programs within that particular area by working on modern equipment, growing the number of pieces of equipment that we had, and of course, growing the capacity to be able to train the students. Simultaneously with that, we worked on creating a dual enrollment program at the high school level that would feed into those community college programs. Then, we worked towards creating an advanced level training program that met industry needs, specifically towards frontline, managerial workers that would be able to grow the additional scale. And then, we moved back to the middle school.

The reason for doing it in this particular manner is we needed to be able to grow the community college pipeline, and we needed to create that awareness of students at a younger age in order to be able to feed that into those high school dual enrollment programs once they are interested, and then move forward to creating the community college level. And then, currently, we're actually taking it to the next level and developing that manufacturing engineering program. So that we have a complete implementation strategy all the way from the sixth grade through the 12th grade to the community college to the associate program, and then on to the four-year degree program, as well.

ANGELA RIGNEY: So like Amanda said, as we worked through this implementation strategy, one of the things that we found very early on was, how do we make sure that we are strategic in how we plan out this process? And one of the things that again we started with was, how do we make sure we have that training pipeline ready for when we draw business and industry partners to our region? We had a very strategic plan that was purposeful in how we laid out this format that she just went over.

As Amanda stated, in our transition program and our implementation strategy, one of the first programs that we're looking at is our GO TEC program, which is at the middle school level, so we currently provide this to sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students. We focus on nine different pathway areas-- precision machining, metrology, automation and robotics, welding, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, IT and coding, and health and medical sciences. As we designed this program, we focused on strategically, what types of content, what types of equipment, and what skill set we wanted our students to have upon completion of these programs at the middle school. As they begin to transition into high school, we wanted them to have a good foundation of knowledge and skills to be prepared to make sound decisions in careers that they might be interested in, but also give them exposure to careers that they may not have had exposure to prior to the GO TEC lab.

You'll see, the equipment is state-of-the-art equipment. We had very fortunate collaborative efforts with our business and industry partners on the types of equipment that we needed to put into these labs. And also, working with our dual enrollment partners and our higher institutions to make sure that we're giving our students high-level content and high-level skills to be prepared when they transition into these programs. We didn't want to give students something that they were not going to be challenged at, and to be able to be prepared when they transition into our high school programs.

So as we begin to transition into these programs, we started with pilot programs in our Pennsylvania County and Danville City area, which is the region of which Amanda and I serve, and this has grown out to multiple school divisions across our region, but also across other regions in the state. And Amanda is going to talk a little bit more about the scalability regarding companies and jobs that have come to the region because of these expansions.

AMANDA HYLTON: So one of the pieces of the intentional implementation strategy was the understanding of the need to create a workforce pipeline that would be able to serve the industries and attract industries to the region. One thing that we learned early on by working with our community leaders and by working with all of the consultants that we were able to work with, as far as workforce and workforce attraction, is that one of the key things that any industry is going to look for when they come to an area or look to locate in that area is whether or not you have a workforce that can supply the needs that they have. And if you are only supplying the needs to support the existing industry then, if they were to locate there, of course, they would absorb all of that existing workforce, and most companies would not come to a location and to locate there if that's the case.

So in the process of growing the capacity, growing these pipelines so that we could reach large numbers and being able to do that with modern equipment and modern technology so that people are attracted to those programs, one of the byproducts and the results of that, if you look at the screen here, is you can see that since we started this program, we have had eight new or expanding companies that have come to our specific region, which is region three, with over 1,650 higher than average per capita wage jobs that have been able to come to the community and support the workforce that we have here.

ANGELA RIGNEY: So then, we transition into our high school programs. And one of the things that we take great pride in is our programs that we have established at our junior and senior level of high school. One of the first focus areas that we started on when we started this back in 2013 was the precision machining program, and this served as our model. Again, we had that strategy, that implementation plan that we decided, how do we replicate, how do we build capacity, and how do we grow scale in our high school programs so that we get more students into that pipeline to be able to draw business and industry partners to our region? So when we started with a precision machining program, we found very early on that this model was something that we wanted to continue to work with, and you'll see throughout our presentation how we have built upon that model.

We've invested over $2.6 million into labs, equipment, resources to be able to provide again these students the knowledge, the skills necessary to be prepared to transition into these community college programs. So we have students that are participating in dual enrollment programs their junior and senior year and have completed their entire first year of the community college with dual enrollment credits transferring. That relevant technology, again making sure our students are up to par with business and industry standards. We want to make sure our teachers are communicating and collaborating not only with instructors at the community college level, but also our business and industry partners through advisory committees and other groups and other meetings and opportunities.

Both programs, through the community college and our high school programs, are aligned to NIMS certifications. Again, we want to make sure our students have certifications that are going to prepare them when they go out into industry, that are going to give them a leg up against other employees that are seeking those same jobs that they're going after.

We have higher than average pass rates on our standardized testing. So in the state of Virginia, our students take end of course testing. And what we have found is students who are in career and technical education programs, but more importantly, programs like precision machining, welding, automation and robotics, they find that programs that are giving them relevant real world experiences so that they are applying that knowledge and skills on a daily basis, they understand that math, they understand that technical writing and the importance of it, they perform better on those end of course tests.

In addition, we take great pride in that our students are very successful on the SkillsUSA level, both at the state, since its inception of our program here at the Career and Technical Center in Pennsylvania County. We've had state winners who have advanced to the national competition every year since 2014. We've also had national winners, which we're very proud of. We've also have 54 full-time students enrolled in our programs between Pennsylvania County and Danville public schools.

You see here again, that equipment and technology that's relevant to what we're doing, what you're also going to see when you see the community college pipeline. Making sure that our students are prepared and making sure that the technology, the equipment, the tools, the resources is at the same level that what they're going to get when they transition into that second year of community college. And then, the same thing will go into place as you see on the next slide when we talk about the community college transitioning into that third year capstone program or being prepared to go into the workforce.

AMANDA HYLTON: So moving into the community college level of precision machining training, you'll notice here that we have more than doubled the original capacity through the addition of the investments that were made to be able to upgrade and modernize the equipment and also to be able to expand the number of machines that we have at the community college level. Currently, we have a capacity of 90-plus students, we have four instructors, and there has been over a $7 million investment. And as you can look at the picture here, one of the things that was really important from industry was to be able to provide as much hands-on opportunity for the students during the course of their two years as possible. So we worked extremely hard with multiple partners to be able to afford to be able to get the extensive amount of CNC equipment that you see here so that the students can have as much hands-on time optimized towards their training as possible.

We have multiple SkillsUSA state and national winners through the training and the preparation. We ensure that the technology remains relevant so that it's always current and meeting the needs that the students have, as well as what the industry skill sets requires. And with the existing equipment and the investment that's been made at the community college level here, it is scalable even past the 90-plus, depending on how things are arranged and scheduled.

One of the other additions at the community college level as this program expanded into a larger hub and spoke-type model is the addition of other community colleges within our area that has first year training programs that are identical to what the high school dual enrollment program would be. So that students who do not go to Danville public schools or Pennsylvania County schools or our other high school partners, but want to participate, can go to the community college that is adjacent to our area for the first year and then, also join in with the second year of the community college training, as well.

The addition of the integrated machining technology came as a result of direct industry requests to have frontline manufacturing floor managers prepared that had some of the soft skills and some of the next level integration of business principles integrated into the ability to train on machines. in addition to not just training on one machine, but taking and learning multiple machines, and being able to optimize processes and flows into an actual flow sale experience at the end. So that students had real world experience coming out of training before they went into the workplace.

So when we embarked on this particular piece of the training, we were able to leverage grants and some other opportunities to be able to really focus on what the work floor needed to look like, as well as what the wall colors and the paint colors needed to be. So that when students came in to this space and looked at it, it represented exactly what the modern workplace floor for manufacturing looked like, and it was something that students wanted to be a part of.

You'll notice from the picture here that where the previous slide showed lines of the same piece of identical equipment, there is not any identical equipment that you see here. And that is intentional so that the students have the ability to be able to learn on multiple machines with multiple processes, and be able to integrate those into an optimized product at the end of the training.

One of the big pieces of this particular training is the incorporation of lean principles. The students come out with their yellow belt Six Sigma certification. They also look at process optimization, and there is a lot of behavior change and leadership principles with ethics, with manufacturing economics, and other pieces of critical thinking that's incorporated into all aspects of this training. So not only are they working on the machines and they're working the hands-on skills, but they're also bringing in some of those higher level business forces that is going to allow-- that allow them at the end to be more than just someone who operates the machine when they come out.

The end of this is dedicated to being a real production sale, and the students spend six weeks preparing for that production sale from actually ordering the equipment, the materials that are going to be needed, any of the tooling that's going to be needed, getting it in place, and then they go into what we call, the flow sale, which is actually where they spend each day working in, meeting as a team in the morning, they're assigned roles and responsibilities. So one will come in on one day and they're a metallurgist, and they're measuring the parts then, someone else is going to be the production manager, someone else is going to be the CNC operator, someone else will be the programmer. And they actually come in and function as it were an actual workplace floor for the last six weeks of the program so that they get that experience.

In times, if they work very well, there are some troubleshooting things that are incorporated into some of those programs. So that they get the opportunity to be able to work through problems, work through optimization for processes, and be able to come out with that different way of thinking when they graduate. And one of the key successes in this program is most every student has at least two job offers before they leave and graduate from this program. And we have had a lot of success with companies who have located in or around the campus as a result of this, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, but one of those companies in particular, every individual that is currently employed in their program has been a graduate of this particular training program.

So one of the things we were able to do as a result of the integrated machining technology program and being able to leverage some of those resources is actually create a metrology program that supports our integrated machining technology, but also functions as a course of itself and an actual training program on its own. And we were to be able to pull this in a lot sooner than some of the pipeline training that was planned as a result of being able to leverage these resources. And what you see in the bottom corner here is actually the metrology lab, and you can see a couple of the CMMs and some of the other table measuring machines that we have there for them to be able to utilize.

Throughout this program, one of the most interesting things that was able to happen is one of the certifications that students are able to sit for in this particular training program is the ASQ-CQI. And this was actually the first program in the nation that was allowed to be able to sit and take this particular test without a two-year work experience requirement. And one of the things that they found is that the students coming out of this program scored much higher than the national average of those who were sitting after the two-year work experience. So the training was very aligned to what industry was needing, and the ability for them to be able to score so high on those tests, we're able to prove that we were able-- we were actually doing what we set out to do and meeting industry need with some of the curriculum that has been developed.

ANGELA RIGNEY: And to build off of this, some of the additional program pathways that we've designed, again when you look at the capstone program and the IMT program and also the expansion as you look at the automation and robotics, you look at the metrology lab, you look at the welding lab, we continue to build out these programs at the high school level to offer dual enrollment credits for students. So that we again, are continuing to make sure that we are able to provide scale, but also give those students those skills needed to go into these training programs at the community college and on to higher institutions as we continue to build out this pathway and this implementation strategy that Amanda talked about early.

And you'll see, as we talk about some of the expansions that we continue to work on and some of the other opportunities, and you also see how this aligns back now to the middle school. Again, you've seen the community college level program, you've seen the IMT program, and you've seen the high school programs, and you can understand how we developed our middle school programs and the program pathways that were designed for that Career Connections GO TEC program.

AMANDA HYLTON: So building on the implementation strategy, one of the things that is critical to this process is continuous improvement, and constantly looking at where the gaps are, and what needs to be filled. And as we do that, we look for ways to be able to incorporate additional training and additional opportunities that will help fill the workforce gaps that we have discussed earlier on broader impact beyond just K-12, through community college and university. And one of those pieces is actually, a national Train the Trainer Center that we have here at the Integrated Machining Technology Training program in the Gene Haas Center. And we are actually one of four Gene Haas Foundation Teacher Training Programs in the nation that is able to offer short-term CNC operations courses.

So what we're able to do with this is actually bring teachers in from all over the country that are secondary, post-secondary, also industry participants. We are able to bring them in, we're able to give them these short-term training opportunities, and then they're able to go back to their schools, they're able to go back to where they work, and they're able to integrate and train the high school and the post-secondary students in those things that they have learned. So we're able to further expand our K-12 to community college reach by being able to teach the teachers how to train on these same exact pieces of equipment. And to date, I think we have trained from 22 separate states.

So building on that additional pipeline development, one of the things that we always focus on is how to broaden the partnerships and expand the opportunity so that we can reach the largest number of students possible to fill those workforce gaps. Whether it be through the community college to the university, whether it be middle school, or whether it be adult learners that can kind of fill in some of those gaps, as well with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, so that we can reach the broadest amount of people possible and give opportunities to people who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to be able to go into some of these training pipelines.

So as we look at that, one of the newer projects that we have now worked on is an adult learner short-term training that provides training in the CNC machining, your additive manufacturing, your welding, and your quality control inspection, which is the metrology training that we have talked about earlier. And it allows the students to come in on an 8:00 to 5:00 day, five days a week so that they get 40 hours a week in four months. And they're able to make immediate impact on the workforce skills gaps by entering the workforce at the end of that, rather than going through other pipelines, but it also gives them the opportunity, once they're turned on to this type of learning and to these types of opportunities, to go back and join the training pipeline, whether it be at the community college level or whether it be some of the other learning opportunities throughout the course of the pipeline.

One of the other pieces that we are currently working on that is going to add the final step in that training pipeline is the Manufacturing Engineering Technology Degree Pathway. And we're working with community college partners as well as university partners to be able to create a seamless pipeline for students who want to start at the community college and then go straight into the university, as well as offering an opportunity within our region right here at the Institute to have a satellite campus. For students who may not be able to go away to a four-year university, they can actually get that four-year degree right here on the campus without ever having to leave the region. So that we have the ability to again, focus on providing opportunities for students who may not have otherwise had that opportunity, and it also, increases those pipeline numbers, and is able to support then, the ability for us to continue providing large numbers that will attract economic growth moving forward.

As well as, the last piece that we kind of want to talk about with some of these additional pipeline developments, is, as we kind of talked about GO TEC earlier, with the Career Connections, we are continuing to expand those middle school career, focus, and awareness programs across the state, outside of just region three, but statewide, so that you have a larger number of middle school students who are exposed to your manufacturing pathways at an earlier age. So that once they get to the ability to be able to choose where they're going to go once they get to high school and beyond, they have this understanding of what modern manufacturing is, and we have a better opportunity to be able to allow them to have those opportunities moving forward.

So we've talked a lot about the economic development importance and how that relates to the whole ecosystem, and how the workforce development is a critical piece of economic development. And as we kind of talked about earlier with the Integrated Machining Technology Program, if you look at the first building that you see here that's labeled 232, it is actually what we call our Rapid Launch Facility here. And you'll notice that it is directly beside our Gene Haas Center for Integrated Machining Technology. And this is a direct result of support and interest from industry and companies who were looking to locate in our region as a result of the training pipeline that we had worked over the past decade as a community to be able to develop, and to grow, and to accelerate with modern technology and processes and training that's relevant to what those skill sets that those industries were looking for needed.

So this was built specifically to provide a space for these companies to be able to land and to quickly get off the ground. And as we have spoken about before, it also provides them the ability to easily access the students that are just next door, and be able to work with them throughout the year, provide internship opportunities, as well as be able to hire them even before they've completed the program, with the intent to hire and job offers before they've graduated.

And the other building that you see is our new Center for Manufacturing Advancement. It is also a building that is designed to support industry again, to allow innovation, to allow the optimization of processes. So it will support existing and new companies, and it will also provide some advanced level training through an industry 4.0 lab for automation and robotics, as well as IT and cyber. So that we can take these other training programs that we've talked about that have been built from the community college level and grown at the dual enrollment level into that advanced level that is similar to the Integrated Machining Technology Training Program.

So when we talk about how we get something like our training pathway done, the big question is always the money. So one thing we definitely wanted to bring out and kind of talk about is in order to be able to get the funding to do a large scale growth ecosystem like we have been able to develop here, it takes multiple stakeholders, it takes dedication and commitment from multiple school systems, and it takes both industry and technology partners to be able to bring it all together. And everyone has to come together and work together to be able to move that forward.

And it takes a lot of support from both grants-- if you look at the slide here, there's been over $42 million in grant support for this pipeline since 2013, and that's an amalgamation of federal, state, and local grant involvement. And one of the things that is key to being able to do this is being able to get one grant and be able to leverage that to get another grant and leverage that into another one so that you can get all of these partners and all of these entities together within the grant and the activity, and be able to further those and continue to move it.

The other key piece that is incredibly important in being able to create what we have created over the past 10 years is there has to be a focus of all stakeholders, all industry and technology partners, and all academia involvement on innovation, collaboration, and emerging technologies so that you're constantly keeping things monitored, you're constantly keeping things with innovative ideas and thought processes, and you're constantly keeping a very close thumb and pulse on what industry is requiring and what industry is needing. So that the curriculum is continuously improved to meet those needs.

ANGELA RIGNEY: So with that, also looking at that focus on innovation, collaboration, and emerging technologies, this is something that we continue to work on. We started on this in 2013, and we're continuing to work. We don't see an end in sight. We continue to build out all of our pathways, our programs. We're always looking 10 years down the road, what's the next best thing coming up, and how are we preparing our K-12 systems, our community college, and higher institutions to be prepared to provide that pipeline of skilled workers? So that we are able to draw, again going back to that early slide about the history, and how we're transforming our economy in this region, and how we're able to give our students and our adults that opportunity to be engaged in a business and industry that is very fulfilling to them and their family, we want our people to stay here in this region.

So we continue to work together. This collaborative group is phenomenal. When you work together as a group and you're bringing K-12 partners, higher institutions, community leaders, economic development partners from both county and city together to build a vision of what you want your region to look like, it's pretty phenomenal when you can see those outcomes starting to come together.

Again, it's a continuous flow. We're always working on what's the next best thing, how do we continue to improve what we've already done. Even though we built programs again in 2013, 2014, we don't lose sight of those programs and where they are and where they're going. We continue to evaluate those programs and make sure that they stay up to par, while we're continuing to add and engage new programs. We're continuing to build out those middle school labs across our region, across the state, but we're also looking at, how do we-- we talked about that 11th and 12th grade and those high school labs, but we're also working on now, how do we fill that gap in the ninth and 10th grade so we're continuing to build upon? And then, we're also working on, what does that elementary level look like? How do we engage students even at a younger age?

So once it's all said and done, we'll have that full K-12, post-secondary spectrum of skilled workers pipelined to be able to draw that scalability. We're starting to see those success stories from our students who have been engaged in those middle school labs who are now in our programs at our Career and Technical Center. We're seeing our students who started in our high school programs who are now employed by some of these very valuable employers in our region, and we're seeing and hearing great things coming from what we're doing. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for joining Amanda and I during this presentation, and we look forward to connecting with you in the future.