SATURDAY, SEPT. 29, 2018 • KOKOMO TRIBUNE
BY GEORGE MYERS
KOKOMO TRIBUNE
F
iat Chrysler Automobiles
and Ivy Tech Community
College share a goal: to
bring young people, and at
some point more women,
into skilled trades and manufac-
turing — from welding to electri-
cal and mechanical work.
The vision, often expressed by
FCA leadership, is an uphill bat-
tle, statistics show, but it’s one
that communities like Kokomo,
intrinsically attached to the
manufacturing industry, con-
sider essential to avoid decline
in coming years.
The fruits of that labor were
on display in May at Indiana
Transmission Plant 1, where 19
area high school students — but
only one female student —
shared presentations on their 12
weeks spent at a Kokomo or Tip-
ton FCA plant during a work-
based learning program.
That capstone program — In-
tegrated Technology Education
Program — combines the re-
sources of Ivy Tech, FCA and
area high schools and career
centers to offer “career pathways
that feature technical certificates
in high industrial technology
fields,” according to an Ivy Tech
media release.
The fields — students partici-
pate in ITEP at no cost through
a federal grant — are chosen to
establish a manufacturing and
skilled-trade interest in high
school students seen as the next
generation of a workforce that
could soon be hit hard by retir-
ing baby boomers.
“We need apprentices. … I’ve
got somewhere around 42 pay-
checks left at Chrysler. I’ll be 63
this fall, and I’m thinking about
leaving. I don’t know if I’m
ready or not, but I’m thinking
about it,” said Craig Reed, an
FCA machine repairmen and
mentor for ITEP students who
talked to students Wednesday
about his backyard pool and op-
portunities with underwater
ocean photography.
“Here we’ve got the new wave
of kids. … We have to show them
that this is not a bad job. That’s
the number one thing. You know
what? We go to work, we make a
lot of money.”
There’s also a desire among
Ivy Tech and FCA leadership to
disabuse high school students of
the notion their next route needs
to be a standard four-year uni-
versity degree, which often
comes with a heavy burden of
debt and without the immediate
benefits of a skilled-trades job.
“I think, personally, I’m far
ahead of my peers,” said Joe
Johns, a Northwestern High
School and two-semester ITEP
student. “I know exactly what I
want to do when I grow up, and
what I want to do when I finish
my first year of college. I want to
go back and intern [at FCA].
“So I think I’m ahead of every-
one personally [based on] work-
force readiness and all that.”
Notably, Hoosiers without
bachelor degrees earned a me-
dian amount of $55,000 in 2015
when working in “good jobs,”
defined as at least $17 per hour
in a full-time job for people un-
der 45 and $22 per hour for
workers 45 and older.
The Georgetown University
Center on Education and the
Workforce also found manufac-
turing was the No. 1 industry in
Indiana for non-bachelor-degree
“good jobs,” with more than
203,000 positions and a median
earning of $57,000.
Still, the National Skills Coali-
tion, which advocates for skills
growth in U.S. industries, re-
ported in 2017 on Indiana’s “for-
gotten middle.”
The report stated that while
demand for Indiana’s mid-
dle-skill jobs, which require edu-
cation beyond high school but
not a four-year degree, will stay
strong, the training to fill those
jobs continues to lack.
“Middle-skill jobs account for
58 percent of Indiana’s labor
market, but only 47 percent of
the state’s workers are trained to
the middle-skill level,” reported
the NSC.
In response to such concerns,
Bob Varsanik, general manager
of the transmission and casting
division at FCA, said ITEP is
meant to “get you involved, un-
derstand what manufacturing
is. We need to do it with more
students; we need to do it with
more female students.”
Specifically, Ivy Tech Kokomo
offers the opportunity to gain
hands-on manufacturing expe-
rience while working toward an
associate degree during a stu-
dent’s last two years in high
school.
By enrolling in the program,
which has doubled in size since
its 2014 start, students have the
opportunity to earn certifica-
tions in manufacturing and gain
industry experience through in-
ternships and work study.
FCA is one of the companies
that routinely partners with Ivy
Tech Kokomo to provide the in-
dustry experience. Students
who get experience at FCA
shadow mentors for 12 weeks.
During that time, students
learn the ins-and-outs of manu-
facturing, and at the end of
their time in the program, de-
liver a presentation to manage-
ment teams.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m
way ahead based off the intern-
ships I got through my home
school … and the internship I
got here at FCA,” said Zack Ash-
ley, a Peru High School student
who attended the Heartland Ca-
reer and Technical Education
Center.
“I’m far ahead, because I
know exactly what I want to do.
I already have everything lined
up on what I want to do.”
But a piece of disappointment
associated with this spring’s
ITEP program was the lonely
participation of only one female
student.
“We need to get more women
involved in manufacturing, so
we’re really going to push for
that next year also,” added Var-
sanik, who hopes to double the
ITEP program next year.
Morgan Frye, who completed
ITEP in a previous semester
and subsequently moved into
an Ivy Tech welding program,
just finished her first year at the
community college and sees a
path for increased female par-
ticipation in skilled-trade ca-
reers.
“If they see a girl in it that’s
doing it and succeeding and
making good examples, it’s eas-
ier to get girls in,” said Frye.
“Tell them they can do it — go
in and do it.”
A study released by the
United States Census Bureau
stated women make up nearly
one-third of the manufacturing
industry workforce in the U.S.,
and “play a number of roles in
manufacturing from working on
the production line to running
their own manufacturing busi-
nesses.”
But with women making up
nearly half of the country’s
working population, at 47.5
percent, they are majorly un-
derrepresented in the manufac-
turing industry, notes the Cen-
sus Bureau – and progress has
declined from a high of 33 per-
cent in 1990 to 29 percent in
2016 for female representation
in manufacturing.
Statistics also show women
are drastically underrepre-
sented in skilled-trade jobs like
welding (4.8 percent); electri-
cians (2.4 percent); pipe-layers,
pipe-fitters and plumbers (1.6
percent); and tool and die mak-
ers (1.3 percent), according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Also, median earnings for fe-
male manufacturing industry
workers were nearly $14,000
lower than that for men –
$35,158 to $48,849.
“And make it hard on them,”
Morgan Frye advised. “I know
that sounds backwards … but
people baby the girls. And we’re
tough as nails. If you just throw
us in it and make us do it, we’re
not glass, we’re rubber. We
bounce, we don’t break.”
SKILLS GAP BECOME FOCAL POINTS
THE GOAL: TRAIN WOMEN AND YOUNG PEOPLE
When it all comes together,
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VALUABLE
LESSONS:
Western
High School
senior Ricky
Bearden,
center,
stands with
a few of his
classmates
in the
Integrated
Technology
Education
Program on
May 16,
2018.
(Tim Bath |
Kokomo
Tribune)
