MONTPELIER — As employers clamor for skilled recruits in the trades, Generator, a Burlington-based makerspace, hosted high school students at the state’s first Advanced Manufacturing Day to encourage them to consider technical training.
“There is not a position, in any company, that is not in demand,” said Jamie Stewart, the executive director for the Central Vermont Economic Development Corp.
The high school students from Central Vermont gathered at Green Mountain Power’s district office in Montpelier on Wednesday for the event that is part of a growing push from both the business and education sectors for students to consider a technical career.
Generator board member Michael Metz said the nonprofit is looking to expand on an advanced manufacturing bootcamp program it piloted at Spaulding High School in Barre. Through the program, students learned the basics of tool training, safety, and design work and are introduced to local employers to learn about specific local opportunities.
“We want to, number one, try and find two more schools in this local region to expand this program,” he said.
Sporting safety goggles, students from Montpelier, Hazen Union, Harwood Union, U-32, and Spaulding high schools were shown how to use a computerized benchtop mill to carve their initials into a block of wood.
Local employers also set up stands in a quasi-work fair to give students a sense of the real-life opportunities available in Vermont in manufacturing. They included the dairy producer Vermont Creamery, Morrisville-based high-end exercise equipment manufacturer Concept2, and the Barre-based Granite Industries of Vermont.
Mark Dessureau, the owner of Dessureau Machines, a custom parts manufacturer with clients that range from Ben & Jerry’s to SpaceX, said he had to attend events like this in order to find recruits when it came time to hire.
“You have to work at it. You can’t just expect to put a sign on your door and get applicants,” he said.
As part of this work with high school students, Generator also wants to begin working toward the creation of a “certificate of value,” Metz said.
Certificate programs are exploding in popularity in the post-secondary sphere, with both private industry and traditional higher education actors competing to offer faster, cheaper educational offerings that can meet specific workforce needs. Metz envisions creating a certificate that could both show an employer a potential hire had certain basic skills and allow them to skip certain introductory classes if they wanted to get a college degree.
“So it gives you multiple pathways on and off this career path, right? That’s the concept,” Metz said.
Anja Samsom, a senior at Montpelier High, said she had long been interested in a career in engineering. She said she was glad she was able to talk to people actually working in the field to get a better sense of what their everyday work looked like.
“It’s made it more tangible,” she said.