 Good morning to all of you it is such a pleasure to welcome you to Charleston, South Carolina. Actually, I wish I was welcoming you to Charleston, South Carolina where it's a beautiful day outside. But instead I do welcome you and thank you for spending your time today to work with us today and explore the very exciting world of youth apprenticeships. And ladies and gentlemen this world is exciting. It is exciting because apprenticeships have power. They have the power to change lives and remarkable ways the power to accelerate our economies and the power to change our communities. This world is also exciting because it's such a superb example of the kind of change that can occur when multiple organizations work together in a united effort to achieve a common solution to a common problem. And you know you have a problem when there are good paying jobs that are going on field, while all of us know young people who are unemployed or underemployed. Back in 2014, we formalized our region's first youth apprenticeship program. I had the privilege of announcing to our community this when when when when when. Yep, that's five wins. It's five wins because it's a win for our youth, our employers, our economy, our communities, and our schools. And locally, since exception, 445 youth apprentices from a wide variety of backgrounds have been hired as apprentices. Now we have firsthand seen the impact that youth apprenticeships can have on a student lives by opening doors to opportunities that here to four were not open to them. From students being hired into skilled career fields, right out of high school and purchasing a home at the age of 19. Would you think about that. How many people do you know that can purchase a home before they're even old enough to buy their first beer. And the students progressing on to further their education and our bachelor's and even master's degrees and fields from engineering to neuroscience. Ladies and gentlemen, youth apprenticeships level the playing field and we repeat that effective youth apprenticeships level the playing field. This morning, we ought to offer our thanks to new America for engaging us in the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship PIA initiatives for their ongoing support of our regional program and for their willingness to assist us in this virtual conference today. But their encouragement and support. We've been able to expand our program and assist other communities around the country and developing their programs to continue this really important work. We've now received a grant from new America. As one of the two PIA national learning hubs, as a part of that effort, we are here with regional partners today to share with you. And I mean this, we're going to share with you, the most significant initiative during my 31 years as president, nothing has been as transformative as this. The game changing initiative was created, not by any one entity alone that's not possible, but by a truly collaborative effort effort that took place as a regional partnership. We came together to address critical workforce needs, and to mentor the next generation to produce skilled workers for a program like this to be truly effective. It requires the collective energies of multiple entities. No one entity can accomplish an effective program alone. Today, I'd like to identify to you, the six partners who have made our program possible. Throughout the day, you're going to hear from most of them as they share their perspective, their insights, and their experience first, first, and they are first area employers. We call them industry champions, they're willing to hire and mentor 16 to 18 year olds. Without them, ladies and gentlemen, you just have another classroom training program and not a true apprenticeship area employers. Second, we're blessed to have an arm of the tech system called apprenticeship Carolina. They serve as the intermediary with us DOL, but I like to simplify that simply say, they hold the hands, they hold the hands of industry partners and their local employers, making it easy for them to handle the paperwork. They also tirelessly recruit and secure federal funding to support apprenticeships throughout South Carolina. Third, our local school districts. Without them, it wouldn't work. They recruit support and encourage not only the students but their parents throughout the apprenticeships. And fourth, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, we have been very fortunate ladies and gentlemen to have a Chamber of Commerce that's taken an active leadership role in the support of educational initiatives. From the very beginning, the Chamber has played a critical role in launching and supporting youth apprenticeships, a critical role. Initially, initially they assume the role of raising the funds to cover what I've referred to previously as the ability to level the paying field so that every student, regardless of whether they had any money in their pocket, would be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Today the Chamber continues to serve as a champion, encouraging employers to participate by hiring and mentoring and also getting local policymakers supportive of this program. And fifth, the funders level playing fields require money. The Chamber has grown. Numerous other community partners have stepped up and recognize the impact of an effective youth apprenticeship program, and they have stepped up and helped fund the educational expenses or our students. And finally, try to technical college. The privilege of serving as I call the convener of the other five groups that I mentioned. And we also enroll the students and college certificate programs and their career specific fields. Add soft to three of my colleagues Melissa Stowasser, Danisha Seraphine and Mitch Hart, you're going to hear from them shortly. I hope you can see that what we have in Charleston is truly a collaborative effort. Again, I said this before, not one entity I don't care how much they cared could pull this off by themselves. We've developed this program that we've shared with you today with partnerships. As you develop partnerships and programs in your own area. If they look like ours, they may not. But it is our hope that you will form strong partnerships within your communities, and work to ensure that youth apprenticeships work to ensure that they become the national norm. To share with us today, the national vision for this really important work. What we're going to have with us today, Angela Hanks principle deputy assistant secretary employment and training administration at the US DOL. Yep, I know that's a long title. She's an impressive lady. And prior to coming to the Department of Labor in 2021. She was a deputy executive director of the groundwork collaborative. Welcome, Angela Hanks, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Angela Hanks. Thank you so much. He's so much Dr. Tharnley. Before I begin, I want to thank Dr. Tharnley and all of our hosts here at Trident Technical Colleges Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program and new America's partnership to advance youth apprenticeship for inviting me to speak today about the crucial role that all designed youth apprenticeship programs can play in helping our country build back better and in providing expanded opportunities for youth. The innovative youth apprenticeship programs developed here and in Charleston embody remarkable local partnerships, which Dr. Tharnley underscored are so important partnerships that are needed to increase the adoption of apprenticeship programs across the United States. The last year and a half has brought many challenges for you all and for the young people you serve. The pandemic has a brought historic disruptions to both school and work. In the recovery, we need focus strategies to support our young people to reconnect and find more pathways to good jobs and good careers. So I'd like to talk to you today about why we believe youth apprenticeship programs and the investments the federal government has made in them are a key part of how we break down barriers to good jobs for more young Americans. Youth apprenticeships like the ones we were hearing about today make a difference in the lives of young people. They offer an incredible opportunity to gain critical skills and real paid work experience in their early working years. And there's a lot of research on this that shows that young people, when young people are connected to the workforce, it increases the likelihood that they will be employed later in life and earn family sustaining wages. Youth apprenticeships have not only demonstrated debt-free pathways for youth and paid work experience, they've also shown promise in confronting structural equity barriers in our labor market, breaking down barriers to good jobs for underrepresented communities, confronting occupational segregation. There's great promise here to be built on. This is why the Biden administration, Secretary Walsh and the entire Department of Labor are committed to building and expanding on youth apprenticeship programs as a core component of our workforce strategy that's centered on equity and job quality. President Biden's economic plan prioritizes empowering workers, expanding the middle class, strengthening communities while providing a path to a good family sustaining job. It's important to acknowledge that United States has historically under-invested in the workforce development system for many decades. In 2018, for example, we spent less than one quarter of the average of other advanced economies, the share they spent on workforce as a share of their GDP. This lack of investment impacts all of us. Better educated workers create spillover effects for other workers and lack of unemployment or lack of employment has negative impacts on communities across the country. This is why President Biden is calling on Congress to significantly increase investments in American workforce development infrastructure and workforce protection. This includes a major focus on registered apprenticeships, youth and pre-apprenticeships, creating millions of new registered apprenticeship slots and strengthening the pipeline for more women and people of color to access these opportunities through successful youth and pre-apprenticeship programs. This historic investment in apprenticeship will be matched by our efforts to expand, diversify and modernize our registered apprenticeship system. Among one of the President's first actions was an executive order on apprenticeships, which included support for the National Apprenticeship Act, which is pending before Congress right now, and reconstituting the Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship for the ACA. Just last month, we convened the first meeting of the Secretary's ACA. You will note that we are convening an entire subcommittee that is dedicated to expanding youth apprenticeships, including clarifying our definition and examining key policy opportunities. And we aren't doing this alone, just to go back to President Thornley's point about partnership. We are working closely with our partners at the Department's Education and Commerce and more programs like youth apprenticeship cut across these silos, so to grow and strengthen it. So what must we even as we have big plans on the horizon, we are committed to continuing to seed and support progress on the ground programs like this one here in Charleston. For example, today, DOL has made nearly 50 million in dedicated investments through the youth apprenticeship readiness grants and youth intermediary contracts. These investments mark the first federal initiative targeted specifically at youth apprenticeship since the School to Work Opportunities Act, nearly 25 years ago, and will provide resources to expand apprenticeship opportunities at a critical time for young adults. In recognition of this pioneering work, South Carolina State Board of Technical Education received the youth apprenticeship readiness grant and was awarded $5 million to develop and establish new or existing apprenticeship models and programs for youth in industries such as manufacturing, information technology, cybersecurity and healthcare. Building on the examples here, here in Charleston at Trident Technical College, we appreciate the growing that growing these programs requires deep partnerships across community colleges, K-12 districts, industry and more. The investing in those community partnerships, the intermediate intermediaries that support them and providing technical assistance and support to design quality equitable programs alongside employers is how we get this hard work done. And I believe there are more partnerships we can be building, and I'd like to highlight a couple in particular. The first is Job Corps. In addition to apprenticeship, the Department of Labor also administers Job Corps at the largest residential career training program in the country with 125 Job Corps centers locations across the country. The program helps eligible young people ages 16 to 24, complete their high school education, trains them for meaningful careers and assist them with obtaining employment. Job Corps has trained over 2 million young people since it began in 1964. Job Corps centers already host many different free apprenticeship programs which provide hands-on training to prepare students for registered apprenticeships. And in addition to helping students complete their education, obtain career and technical skills and gain employment, Job Corps also provides transitional support services such as help finding a job, housing, healthcare and transportation. I think we can work closely with partners like the ones gathered here today to connect Job Corps students and employers to high quality youth apprenticeship programs. It's an underutilized strategy that we need more of. The second I'll highlight is YouthBuild. YouthBuild is a recognized free apprenticeship model under WIOA focused on strengthening connections to career pathways through apprenticeship. YouthBuild has a focus on increasing the supply of affordable housing and communities youth participants reside in. All housing built or renovated must be for low income or homeless individuals and families. Additionally, YouthBuild has a strong focus on serving diverse populations of out of school youth ages 16 to 24 with the greatest challenges finding good jobs and in demand industries such as healthcare, information technology, manufacturing logistics and culinary arts and hospitality. I see real opportunities for the YouthBuild model to adapt youth apprenticeship strategies and partnerships as well. So in closing I want to say that we at the Department of Labor are ready to support and do that hard work alongside you. We've made progress but we have more work to do. In fact, the number of youth apprentices ages 16 to 24 registered as apprentices has grown steadily over time, nearly doubling from 2011 to 2020. Currently apprentices ages 16 to 24 represent nearly a quarter of all federal program registered apprentices. That's over 68,000 youth enrolled in registered apprenticeship programs, but we need more. To get started, it's so important like that communities like Charleston tell their story, and others can learn from their experience. I hope the learning will well continue across communities gathered here today to make a difference in the lives of young people and their communities. The Biden administration is committed to supporting and expanding these programs so that young people can get the skills and work experience they need to reach their full potential. And that's why we as an apartment are committed to doing our part. That's why I wanted to join you today and why my colleague John Ladd who is the administrator of the office of apprenticeship will be joining me later. Thank you again to our hosts for inviting me to speak. We look forward to working with you and to continue to support these critical efforts and hopefully see you all in person one day soon. Thank you to everyone attending today for all of the important work you're doing and will do in the future. And we'll see each other soon. Thank you so much. Thank you acting principal deputy assistant secretary Hanks for joining us today and for your efforts to modernize the national apprenticeship system, and to ensure that that system supports the expansion of high quality apprenticeship in the future. We're grateful for the leadership of the US Department of Labor and look forward to the work that lies ahead. I want to quickly thank Dr. Sornley for kicking us off at the top of the hour. We wish we were in Charleston to, but as always your vision for the opportunities that apprenticeship can create in the community is inspiring. And we're proud to partner with you and try to tech to, as you said, level the playing field and expand options for you through the apprenticeship. My name is Taylor White, I am the director of the partnership to advance with apprenticeship at New America, which is a DC based research and policy organization, or in part of the Center for Education and Labor. I have a slide deck that I'm going to walk you through today as part of my introduction. But before that comes up, oh, thank you. And I just want to give a warm and hearty welcome to everyone on the line. And thank you for joining today's virtual site visit. New America is very happy to be hosting this in cooperation with our pie and national partner try to technical college. Next slide please. All right. So Paya, many of you may have heard of that if you're here on the line Paya stands for the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship. Paya is a multi year multi stakeholder initiative that we launched in 2018 with the goal of connecting, expanding and strengthening the field of apprenticeship from its inception long before COVID disrupted our, our learning and working lives. Paya has been rooted in a belief that youth apprenticeship can transform how the nation's education system prepares young people for careers and launches them into successful careers. Across the US today, as Dr. Formley, and Assistant Secretary Hanks mentioned too many students lack affordable post secondary options, and many young graduates find a degree comes with debt, but does not guarantee a well paying job that provides opportunities for career advancement. And many students who do begin college lead without having completed their degrees, or gaining the experiences and networks they need to get a foothold in the labor market to jumpstart their careers. In the meantime, as our economy has started to reopen, employers have a gun begun to show interest in building more nimble, more sustainable talent pipelines into fields like it, health care, business services, advanced manufacturing and the trades. Youth apprenticeship offers an opportunity to play a role for employers excuse me to play a role in developing a rising generation of talent, much of which exists eager and untapped in their own communities. As we look to reengage young people in our education systems and its businesses across the economy seek to address the talent shortages of today and tomorrow youth apprenticeship is a unique solution to both of these challenges. Next slide please. So with that in mind, PIA works to promote three main objectives we work to seed and study innovation in the field of youth apprenticeship. We provide direct support to local regional and state actors looking to grow improve and expand youth apprenticeship programs through the PIA grant initiative, which provides a combination of funding and technical assistance to 15 grantees around the country and to PIA national learning helps one of which you'll hear from today. Our work with these grantees helps us strengthen the case and evidence base for youth apprenticeship. Through our work with these sites, we are learning a great deal about what makes youth apprenticeship partnerships and programs successful and the policies and conditions necessary to help them grow and become sustainable. We do this and share this learning through our multi year research and communication strategy that seeks to improve public understanding and about the potential and impact youth apprenticeship and also to understand and disseminate some of the conditions that make it successful. And finally, because we know that stronger networks and communities of practice can help break down barriers, establish group norms, accelerate learning and generate fresh questions and ideas to drive continued innovation. PIA proudly operates the PIA network, a virtual learning community of sites across the United States, through which we share our learnings and seek to build bigger, stronger self sustaining field of youth apprenticeship. Next slide please. Well new America leads PIA. We do not do any of this work alone there's much too much to do for us to fly solo. So, first, our work is supported by a broad mix of generous philanthropic partners, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Woodward Philanthropies, the bomber group, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, JPMorgan Chasenco, the Ralph C. Wilson Junior Foundation, the Siemens Foundation, the Smith Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Next slide please. We conduct the research, share the communications materials and provide technical assistance to both our grantees and our network members we rely on the expertise, experience and collective networks of the PIA national partners. Their logos are here on the screen for you and I just want to thank them by name real quick. We call as our partners advanced CTE. We specialize Colorado, the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program, Education Strategy Group, JFF, the National Alliance for Partnerships and Equity and the National Governors Association. Some of our partners will be joining us today to moderate and participate in panels. And we thank them as always for their partnership and leadership in the space. Next slide please. The most critical resource that the national partners have developed over the last several years are the PIA definition and principles for high quality youth apprenticeship. As was mentioned in prior remarks, currently, there is no federally accepted definition of youth apprenticeship and so to provide consistency and clarity to the field. The PIA partners felt in 2018 when we launched that a priority was for us to develop a clear and common definition of youth apprenticeship to provide direction and consensus. Together, based on practices from across the field and input from leading practitioners at the local and state level, the partners agreed to create and adopt the shared definition of youth apprenticeship. And for many of you this will be familiar. As we define it, youth apprenticeship provides paid on-the-job learning under the supervision of skilled employee mentors. That learning is assessed on an ongoing basis against established skills and competency standards that are co-developed with employers and educators working together to figure out what's learned on the job and also how that learning is reinforced and complemented by classroom based instruction. And youth apprenticeship programs also at the conclusion of students' experiences culminate in a portable industry-recognized credential and post-secondary credit that can be transferred and stacked upon as students continue their educational and employment careers. We know that these elements are core to what makes apprenticeship an effective earn and learn model that can expand education and economic opportunity for young adults while delivering results for employers too. At the same time though, we know that just having these four elements in place can't always guarantee a quality experience, especially for youth whose learning needs are unique and differ in some ways from those of adults. We know too that if youth apprenticeship is going to really transform education and employment outcomes for young people, if it's truly to become the vehicle for economic mobility we know it can be, some key quality principles must shape the design of those programs too. Next slide please. So, excuse me, along with the definition, the national definition of youth apprenticeship we've just shared with you, a pie of partners also developed the following principles for high quality apprenticeship. We believe that to be high quality and to deliver results for youth, employers and communities, youth apprenticeship programs must be career oriented, equitable, portable, adaptable and accountable. But what does each of those mean. So, career oriented describes the purposeful blending of what's learned in the classroom and what's learned on the job to be career oriented youth apprenticeships must be structured around knowledge and skills that lead to careers that pay family supporting wages. To be equitable youth apprenticeship programs, which are rigorous and competitive, must be deliberately designed with equity in mind. Learning must be made available through youth apprenticeship programs and be accessible to every student. Supports must exist to ensure the success of those students who are most inversely affected by the inequities in our education systems and our labor market. Use apprenticeship prepares young people for jobs that can jumpstart a long career. For that reason, high quality youth apprenticeship programs must provide learning does portable. That means youth apprenticeships lead to valuable credentials, credentials, and transferable credits on which young people can continue building over a lifetime of growth into their careers and through their educational trajectories. Next, we have adaptable when when employers participate in youth apprenticeship, they make a real investment of resources and time to realize that investment, especially in a labor market, where people no longer stay at the same employer for a long time and the pace of technology means new jobs are created nearly every day. It's important that employers work together to ensure that the learning and skills apprentices acquire through their apprenticeship programs are not tied to a single employer, but are broadly valuable across an industry or sector. This broadens options for apprentices and expands talent pools for employers over time. And finally, PIA believes that high quality youth apprenticeship must value accountability. PIA apprenticeship programs rely on the careful and constant cooperation of high schools, colleges, employers, community organizations, and other stakeholders from across education, workforce, and business. Dr. Thorneley referenced this earlier, it is a core part of what makes these programs successful and allows them to deliver positive outcomes for youth and for employers. But doing so requires very clear roles, responsibilities and communication across the members of a partnership, and also a strids shared strategy for collecting, monitoring and analyzing data to provide ongoing support to apprentices and partners to ensure apprentices are being equitably served and to monitor overall performance program performance over time. These principles are intended to set a high and aspirational bar for the field of youth apprenticeship across the US, but next slide please sorry got ahead of myself. Across the US PIA network members have adopted these principles as they've built and expanded youth apprenticeship programs and built and aligned systems to support their sustainability. Today you can find these principles across at use across the US you can see several of our PIA network members all of our PIA network members and grantees really and dots on that screen. And you can find the principles in their program mission statements in state issued work based learning manuals and state and board policies that have been adopted across the United States, but reading the principles is certainly different from seeing them in action. Today you have a unique opportunity to do exactly that through this virtual site visit to the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program led by Trident Technical College. And you can see on this map there is a purple dot to represent Trident, one of our PIA national learning hubs, and we are excited to welcome you to the site visit to get up close and personal with this program today. Next slide please. PIA selected Trident as a founding national partner in 2018 and in 2021 we named TTC one of PIA's two inaugural learn national learning hubs, a designation that's meant to recognize its success in developing a best in the field youth apprenticeship model and its readiness to serve as a site of learning and innovation for the field. Throughout the day today, you'll have an opportunity to see and hear how Trident Tech and its partners in the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships built a model that demonstrates the PIA principles of equity, portability and adaptability, and you'll hear how as a regional partnership, they hold one another accountable for the program success and career orientation. And while today, the team from TTC Trident Tech and their partners will make all of this look easy, I can assure you it's taken a lot of sweat and tears. I don't think any blood but definitely sweat and tears to grow into the exemplar program it has become and is today, but you don't have to take it from me. Next slide please. In just a second, I'm going to pass things over to Melissa, Mitch and Tanisha from Trident Technical College who will share with you the origins and impact of their program and tell you really their story. You'll have an opportunity to hear how the program began, how it's thrown and what lies ahead for its work. Next, you will have an opportunity to hear from the apprentices themselves joining them will be family members who have been along for the apprenticeship ride. And you'll have an opportunity to hear what it's been like to be a young person in one of these programs to be a parent or family members supporting them in their journey and really understand what the difference that these programs can make in young people's lives. Following that panel, we will hear from some of the employer partners that are involved in the Charleston regional apprenticeship program that will be moderated by Eric Sells now from JFF, one of our PIA national partners. Following that session will turn it over to the educators and under the leadership of moderator Mimi Vofkin from the National Alliance Partnerships and Equity will have an opportunity to hear how educators from the K-12 and post secondary systems in the Charleston region create seamless pathways through the apprenticeship to credentials and careers. At the end of the day, I will be back here on screen. I have the honor of moderating our final panel of the day, the future of youth apprenticeship policy systems and sustainability, where you'll have a chance to hear voices from apprenticeship Carolina in the US Department of Labor, who will help us think about the path to replicating outstanding programs like the Charleston regional youth apprenticeships, and what the path to scale might look like. And then finally at the very end of the day, we hope some of you will join us for an informal virtual networking session that we will run for about five minutes, sorry, for about 30 minutes at the end of the day starting at 445. The link to that event was provided in your reminder email today that came in just about an hour before the session starts so we encourage you to use that link to join us later on and we will put the link up at the end of our final session for those of you who may not be able to make a decision until the very end of the day. Please know that we've set this agenda up so that you can drop in and out throughout the day today as your schedule allows. We hope you will stay with us for the full day we recognize your busy people with places to be and things to do. We also recognize it can be hard to stare at a screen for hours on end, though most of us have been doing that for going on two years at this point which is remarkable. So, before we dive into our next session, please take a short break to stretch your legs fill your water bottles get another cup of coffee and join us back here at 1145 for the origins and impact session that will be starting in just a few minutes. And until then, I just want to give another thanks to our opening speakers, Dr. Thorneley and principal deputy assistant secretary Hanks, and again a warm welcome to everyone who's participating on the line today. And last but by no means least, a thank you to Melissa Stowasser Mitchell harp and the team from Trident Technical College and all of their partners who will be sharing their knowledge expertise perspectives and wisdom with us today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your support. And we will see you in just a few minutes. Thanks very much. Good morning and this morning we would like to welcome you once again to the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship stories. We are here to share with you the origins and the impact of the program that we were so fortunate to begin. And if we can start slide presentation. That would be great. I would like to talk about the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program as a whole. But I'd like to take a moment first to thank deputy secretary Hanks, Dr. Thorneley and Taylor white for their inspiring words and their leadership without individuals like these women. We would not be able to move this type of initiative across the country let alone develop them with the fortitude that we've been able to do within our region. So thank you to all three of you for your inspiring words today. Like Dr. Thorneley said, I can to say that this is the most exciting initiative. In my 39 years in education, I started out in the K 12 system and post secondary, and all the things I've been involved with youth apprenticeship has had the most power and impact from what I've seen. As she indicated, this is a regional partnership that enables this to happen. And so today, my colleagues and I would like to give you sort of an overview of what this regional initiative looks like, and talk a little bit about our role and moving this forward within region itself. The first I'd like for you to take a look at the logo that you see on the screen. This logo is the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship logo. Whenever we talk about this program, we never talk about it as tried and technical program. And that's by design, because this program does not belong to us as a college. Although we were fortunate to serve as the local intermediary in this work. It is truly a collaborative partnership that enables this. So it is a jointly owned program and all of us together support this work. Next slide, please. In the introduction, Dr. Thornton, we talked about the partners in the partnership, so I'm not going to belabor those again. Although I am going to say that the role of those partners in making this work happens is absolutely critical in this space. I can't say enough about the role of partnership in engaging youth apprenticeship as a strategy for changing the trajectory of our life, our students and our economy. But there are a couple of things I would like to point out. And first, I would like to say that this program was created out of pain points. And I think that's really important to understand. Our local industries had a pain point. They had a critical work for shortage that they really needed to feel. But we also have a critical pain point within our region, as I'm sure that you do in many of your regions as well. And that's that we're sitting on a gold mine of talent in the community that we serve. And yet that talent has not been harvested in a way to enable them to have the really high skills that they need in order to take the incredible jobs that are opportunities within the region. So the partnership had a strategy of changing that within the region that we serve. And there are a couple of things I want to point out about that. First of all, in terms of the Trident region employers, whenever we were invited to create this program, we wanted to make sure that this program was sustainable over time. And so my colleague, Mitch Hart, you're going to hear from him in a little bit, looked at the employer who was interested in doing this and asked them if they would work with their competitors. And out of that conversation, the sector partnership strategy was born and that sector partnership strategy is really critical, because one employer does not have to hold all of the keys to keeping this running over time. If an employer decides not to hire within a particular year, that's okay. The apprenticeship itself doesn't fall apart because their sector partnership with multiple employers working in this space to make that work happen. The other thing I want to point out is that we are not engaged with just one local school district. Our local school districts within our region truly work together in partnership. They work across district lines to ensure that all students within our region have equitable opportunities. They share ideas. And so those K-12 leaders working together in that space is really critical to our growth as well. Next slide, please. So when you put this together, what does this look like? Well, one of the things I want to point out is that our program is truly a registered apprenticeship program. This is not a pre-apprenticeship program. All of the programs that we are offering here are youth apprenticeships that are registered with U.S. Department of Labor. They share all of the components of a registered youth apprenticeship program. The students are enrolled in job-related education or what many of you may refer to as the RTI. They are going to work while they are in that classroom experience, receiving on-the-job training for really skilled mentors so that the work that they're doing in that classroom is immediately relevant on the job. And that's really critical to ensuring that they're really learning these skills at the level they need in order to fill those jobs at the future. And they're earning a scalable wage. So the students are really engaged in work within a career field to which they aspire rather than pushing carts out of the parking lot of your local grocery store or selling fast food in your local restaurant, which so many of our young people end up doing in order to bring money into their pockets. So it's designed strategically that way. It's also designed as a two-year program. But it is adaptable because all of these youth apprenticeship programs are competency-based. And we can talk about that more as the day goes on, but they're competency-based, so the student has a series of competencies that they must master on the job. And the employer keeps track of those competencies and ensures that students meeting all of those before they are awarded their national credential. Next slide, please. So what do the students get out of this becomes the question. Well, this is designed so that students can start at 16 years old as juniors in high school and do enroll in college classes. They can start as rising seniors or immediately graduating seniors. But regardless of where they begin, they're going to earn four things. They're going to receive their high school diploma, which we know is critical to them being successful. But along the way, they're also receiving a certificate from Trident Technical College in a career-specific field. So they're enrolled in the exact same classes that the adults are enrolled in, earning the same certificates. These certificates are about 30 hours in length, and they are all part of an associate degree program. So some of these students actually double up and take additional classes that earn their associate degrees while they're in that two-year experience if they have the opportunity to do so. Others continue to give their associate degree afterwards or leave on to foreign institutions. They also earn their national credential from the U.S. Department of Labor, and we tell them all the time, you know, in our area, everybody knows who Trident Technical College is and what that credential means. But if you move across country somewhere, there's no guarantee that they're going to understand the value of the certificate they're awarded from the college, that they are going to understand the value of that national credential that they've earned from the U.S. Department of Labor. And finally, they get two years of paperwork experience. Now, usually when I'm doing this presentation, I tell you lots of student stories, but you're going to hear a panel of students and their parents who are going to tell you the stories themselves. So I'm not going to belabor all of them, but I am going to point out a couple. And the first one is the young man on this page. This is Byron Porsche. Byron Porsche started as a senior in high school. He was a football player who got injured and was kind of struggling with where he wanted to be in life and landed in culinary arts. So he joined the Youth Apprenticeship Program and I will not lie, and he won't lie either. We struggled wondering if we were going to get him through this program or not. I am happy to say that Byron made it through this program successfully and that here you see him earning his national credential from the U.S. Department of Labor. But what you don't see is that he is now still employed with this employer. He is a manager in one of the restaurants in the resort. And he contacted us this year to find out how he can hire a new apprenticeship coming full circle. Next slide, please. We started this out. We started in 2014 with one pathway. We had been approached by a manufacturing company that was really terrified about losing skilled labor. And so they wanted to develop a program in industrial mechanics. And as we said, Mitch asked them to work with competitors and they surprised us by saying yes. So we started with six companies in 13 youth in 2014. We now have over 18 occupational pathways. It ranges from 18 to 20 so far depending upon who's hiring each year and they run across nine different industry sectors. So it's not just specific to manufacturing. Apprenticeships can happen in any career field. I have 2019-2020 up here on the screen because I want you to see what our numbers look like pre-COVID. So pre-COVID numbers, we had 18 pathways in nine industry sectors. We had over 180 companies who had registered youth apprenticeships with the U.S. Department of Labor. They don't all hire every year and that's okay because we created this as a sector partnership. We had 118 apprentices, 77 new hires that year. In the midst of COVID, we lost a little ground. But we still were pleased that in the worst of COVID in 2020, we had 50 students hired into youth apprenticeship programs. Now post, well, we're not post COVID, but coming out of the worst of COVID, we are back to pre-COVID numbers. So we had approximately 80 apprentices hired this year and we expect that to grow over time. The beautiful young lady you hear is see right here is Madison. Madison started at 16 years old in our CNA pre-nursing program. She did CNA and patient care technician training and was employed by Roper St. Francis Hospital. At the age of 16, she was doing direct patient care as a patient care technician in the hospital. And the very first week on the job, she helped deliver a baby. Madison Crawford. Next slide, please. So with this slide, you see the multiple industry sectors in which these youth apprenticeships are created for our region. And you see beautiful students all the way around the screen. These are all some of our previous youth apprentices. As Dr. Thornley indicated in her earlier remarks, we have had 445 youth hired to date. These youth span a wide variety of walks of life and backgrounds. They are from under-resourced backgrounds to youth from more affluent households. They come from one of the highest performing high schools in the nation to some of the most struggling inner city and rural schools within our region. 40% of them have been students of color in a region that is 36% persons of color. So the demographics of this population outpaces the students of color within the region that we serve, which we find to be just an incredible asset. 34% of them have been female, which surpasses the national average for women in apprenticeship and many of them in nontraditional fields. They have gone straight to work as a result of their programs. The young woman in the upper right-hand corner was the first to buy her house at the age of 19. We've had five students purchase homes under the age of 21 as Dr. Thornley indicated before they can even buy a beer. They're buying homes. We also have students on the screen and amongst the other 445 who've gone on to four-year institutions to earn bachelor's and master's degrees. We've had them go to Princeton to study neuroscience and engineering and a wide variety of skills. And when you build your apprenticeships, if you build it with a ladder of progression to enable students to achieve whatever their career aspirations might be, you open doors to multiple opportunities and we found that the employers are very excited about being engaged in this work. Some of the students on the screen are students with disabilities. We have students with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities and we've provided all sorts of accommodations to assist them along the way. So apprenticeships are for all students, not just some. Next screen, please. With the next slide, you can see the variety of occupations we currently have available and as I indicated, this fluctuates. We've had as many as 20 different occupations at any given time, but at the moment we have individuals who are hiring and these career fields will have hired. And so you can see again that students have multiple opportunities. The list changes each year depending upon who's hiring, but is also expandable so that when companies have an interest in filling a critical workforce need. And we know that it's going to lead students to a viable career path. We are more than happy to sit down with them and work with our partners to create apprenticeships that make sense for you. Next slide. I want to return to this slide for a second, because I want to really emphasize the value of the partnership. As Dr. Farley indicated as Deputy Hanks, Deputy Secretary Hanks indicated, none of us can do this. This requires partnership, strategic work, and all of our partners have a critical place in this work. We also know from our experience that it is really critical to have a local intermediary to hold this partnership together and to ensure that the day to day operations take place. So it is our role as a college to serve as that local intermediary. So for the rest of our session this morning, we really want to take a deeper dive into what it takes to be a local intermediary. And the types of things you have to consider engaging in as you begin to develop these partnerships and youth apprenticeship programs that are successful for your area. Next slide, please. One of the things that we do is we serve as the liaison and support for all of our local stakeholders. We pull everyone together and we support them in this work. We engage in lots of communication between the partners or amongst the partners as we move through this. We also ensure funding and financial management. Dr. Thorne, we talked about leveling that plane field by ensuring that we have the educational expenses covered for all of our students. And so it is our role as the intermediary to really make sure that we are able to leverage those funds that are available within our region. They may be state dollars, they also may be philanthropic dollars to enable this work. And we collect and share the relevant data so that we can really begin to show program improvement and to also look at where we're having issues that we need to resolve as a community in order to ensure that all of our programs are equitable and that all of our programs are designed to meet the needs of our local industry needs and also our local student needs. So we have two divisions in our college who are really critical to making that work happen. We have the Division of Apprenticeship and Employer Partnerships that's led by our Dean Mitchell Harp. And we have the Division of School and Community Partnerships that is led by Tanisha Seroton. And both of those teams are going to share with you a little bit about how their groups engage in this effort to ensure that this moves smoothly and that all of our partners are sustained within this work. And so with that, I will turn this over to Mitchell Harp. Thank you Melissa. Go ahead and turn to the next slide please. Melissa said my name is Mitchell Harp. I'm the Dean of Apprenticeships and Employer Partnerships. We are the employer facing part of the program. We work with the employers on almost anything and everything you can think of. But our two primary goals with the employers first of all is to recruit employers to convince them to partner with the college and join us in this effort to start you the friendships all over Charleston. And second of all is to retain those employers, often tell my team that we need to be their best friends. And yes, we do jump when they call us. Some of the things you're going to, I'm going to go over here you see on the screen. But those are really the two primary goals of this. I mean we are the sales team for the program. You can't do an apprenticeship without an employer and as Melissa said we learned very early on that even though we were very thankful for the employer who reached out to us in 2014 and asked us to help get this started for them. But we were more thankful for them when we actually asked them if they would work with their competitors because if you're going to sustain a program and we're going into our eighth year of programs. You've got to have employer engagement you've got to have employers who are committed. And yes that takes individuals like my team who actually we call on the employers constantly for various different things. But I'm going to briefly go over the slide right here to sort of give you some insight in terms of what my sales team does to keep our programs going. First of all, we recruit and educate employers. As I said, I really do mean educate because many employers have no clue what an apprenticeship is. A lot of them think it's internships and we have to educate them that's a whole lot more than that. We actually sit down with them. I often tell people it's a boots on the ground approach is store to our sales. You're going to do this correctly. It's going to be done with quality. You've got to sit down with those HR managers those operation managers, the CEOs, whoever. I'm going to explain to him about the partnership and explain what the expectations are. I would say we want to be their best friend again and we were jumping when they when they actually call us. We do everything for them, you know as intermediary. The first things we do is we actually assist in developing their training plans and also developing their programs and standards for the apprenticeships. As Melissa said, all of our programs here in Charleston are us do certified or credentialed. So basically we have to help the employer identify the RTI. We're a technical college. So obviously we have a lot of wonderful programs here. We have advisory boards that employers sit on. So most of our suggestions for these employers. They go with but ultimately it's their program. So we honor what they want and we help them develop in that manner. We also actually help them identify competencies based on their job descriptions or evaluations that they provide us. We provide that for them. We put it all together for them and we work with apprenticeship Carolina who our state entity is to get actually registered the United States Department of Labor. We don't leave our employers though once they decide to join us and once they decide to partner with us to offer these young people the opportunity. We definitely make it an easy button for them if they have a question they call us and we we help them and guide them through that area. But we also work with being a community college we have the advantage of working with the internal people here at the college, meaning the faculty and the leadership to actually help the program keep blowing smoothly you're saying. You know, every year we start to use the apprenticeship program once a year. It is a full calendar year believe it or not though. It's October and we're already reaching out to our employers to find out if they're going to participate next August. We have a huge recruitment event that Tanisha will talk a little about a minute, which is really our kickoff season where we actually get young people to actually apply for the apprenticeship programs and my team actually connect them. With the applications with the employers who are participating. It usually takes us four or five months to actually place, you know, 80 to 90 kids, which is our average of placements every year. And then we, you know, once the apprenticeship starts again we actually continue providing that assistance throughout the duration of it. And finally, as you can see we do collect data with our employers to actually help them manage their apprenticeships. So let's go to the next slide please. One of the things that we developed a couple years ago to actually help track the data that I talked about was two years ago. I kept on getting asked how do we know what's going on the job and I'd always tell people who asked me that that we have wonderful partners and I trust them exactly with what they're doing. But then I thought you know wouldn't it be cool we can actually figure out what the young people are doing on the job. It's an app called my apprentice it's it's an app that we put together that basically helps apprentices understand the apprenticeship program requirements. It documents their achievements and it provides accessible information to the employers, and also us as an intermediary to actually help manage and most importantly mentor, you know that apprentice so they can be successful in the apprenticeship. The three thing that the apprentice, the my apprentice app tracks actually is the completion of the jre or the RTI. The hours completed on the job, they've worked and also the tasks required to be completed. In other words those work processes that you want them to learn or that the employer wants them to learn. And the beauty or the difference between this app and some of the other apps on the market is this this app is apprentice driven. The apprentice enters 95% of the information, which is important because first of all we want them to show ownership and their apprenticeship. We want them to understand what they have to achieve and strive to go after it. So it's a great tool that allows us to do everything from mentor the apprentices to monitor the apprentices to collect data on hours worked competencies completed. The apprentice has wage information in it so we can eventually calculate how much work they're providing for the Charleston economy. So with that said, I'm going to pass it over to my counterpart in crime Tanisha Sarah pen it used to be hook. I'm trying to get used to saying that, but she's going to talk to you a little about what she does for the program. Tanisha. Just to give a little tidbit I got married in the spring so we're all getting used to this new name of mine. But as he said my name is Tanisha Sarah pen I am the dean of the division of school and community initiatives here at the college. We are the student facing side of this partnership. My division serves as the liaison for educational stakeholders and can you go to the next slide I'm getting ahead of myself so sorry about that. This is the liaison for educational stakeholders and we collaborate with these stakeholders to provide seamless educational opportunities for youth in our region. Our division is made up of five individuals who are dedicated to this work, and we provide direct support to our K 12 partners, youth apprentices and their families as well as community leaders who are also engaged in this work. We'll go over a few things that you see on this slide and then we'll talk a little bit about the job related education component and our role in making that happen for the apprentices. We are fortunate enough to have a long standing and strong working relationship with our educational partners, as we have been engaged in providing dual enrollment programs for youth since the 1990s. So our collaborative efforts with regard to the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program has been pretty seamless since its inception in 2014. One of the things that we do to educate our K 12 partners is we host to workshop luncheon annually for school counselors and administrators, and we use that opportunity to update them on all new things happening with the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program. We've learned that with our division school counselors and administrators are our biggest cheerleaders they're the boots on the ground they're the ones meeting with the students and families and talking to them about all kinds of opportunities. And so we want to make sure that they are equipped with the information to share with those students and families as they're looking ahead to to their futures. So we started those luncheons with high school counselors, but then we quickly learned that we need to be tapping into the younger populations. And so we have also started to include our middle school counselors, and we may even expand even further partnering with our elementary school counselors and administrators so that we can ensure that we are a part of moving that pipeline forward and starting younger as students are making their plans. Another piece of that we're engaged our division is engaged with lots of different recruiting events. We're participating in parent nights and information sessions at high schools and even during IGP meetings for middle schools. We are participating in college and career fairs. And we're even doing virtual presentations right now. We've been invited by a few of our high schools to do virtual presentations for students in their career technical education classes to kind of help promote the program. But one big event that we are extremely proud of is our annual do the apprenticeship information session that we host. It's usually going to be the first Saturday in February every year and that's typically when the program officially kicks off for its hiring season. We typically do it on campus this past year of course with COVID we were restricted to doing it virtually but we typically have an amazing turnout, students, families, school counselors, administrators, community leaders, community organizations, all are able to come and learn all about the apprenticeship program. We also work with Mitch's team to invite employers to that event so that they have the opportunity to speak with students and answer any questions that they may have as they're learning more about programs. The other piece of what we do in terms of engagement and support we provide, we serve as kind of the intermediary on the student side in the sense that if the students are experiencing any hardships or they're going through some sort of difficulty. We step in and we connect those students to support services offered here at the college. We also monitor student progress and final grades in those use apprenticeship classes and I'll talk a little bit in a second about that job related education but we, we also monitor that progress for the students and what their grades look like, so that we can ensure student success and identify student support needs and wrap around sports that we identify are needed for for helping that student along and making sure that they're successful. In addition to that, Mitch mentioned a little while ago that we, we review those applications when students apply for position and one of our apprenticeship pathways. Those applications come to my team review those we also participate in interview processes as needed. And we hand those applications off to Mitch's team who then collaborates with the employers to determine which students are going to be hired for that upcoming academic year. Next slide please. Okay, so with the job related education. Mitch mentioned this and I don't think we can stress this enough I know you've heard it a lot this morning but this program lives heavily on its collaborative model with all involved partners. So with the job related education employers are usually the first to give that critical input on the education and training that is delivered to the youth apprentices. And they help to ensure that that curriculum is tailored and designed with the specific industry needs in mind. Once they have made those determinations, then my team steps in to collaborate with our academic leaders at the college. As well as our K-12 partners to finalize the curriculum and course sequence that the youth apprentices will follow. And there are three ways that we develop and deliver that JRE or RTI as some of you may be familiar. The first is that the college is the primary educational provider we provide all of the related courses for that respective pathway. For example, all of the courses required in our industrial mechanics use apprenticeship pathway are credit courses that are traditionally offered at the college. This particular way of delivering the JRE is incredibly helpful for those high schools or school districts that have high schools who are not able to offer a particular career technical education program in that subject area. And that opens the door to give students more options in CTE. The second is that some high school courses could be counted for college credit. For example, these apprentices in our culinary arts pathway who complete the high school culinary one and culinary two classes could also receive college credit for those classes and those two classes would count as our the first two culinary courses in the pathways JRE. And then the third is that some high school courses are required as a part of the apprenticeship curriculum. Our project need the way engineering assistant pathways, for example, require students to complete several high school PLTW engineering courses as a part of their progress in the apprenticeship program. And that is, is it for me. I think I am going to kick it back over to Melissa to finish out the presentation. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hi, please. And I will just wrap this up quickly and say to all of you that we are again delighted to have you here. I know that we probably just panicked you telling you that five people in Mitch's team and five people in Tunisia's team work to make this happen. But let me assure you that we started out with Mitch and Melissa and driving the show. It grew over time. And let me also assure you that both of those teams have multiple other responsibilities for the college so it's not just running the apprenticeship piece. The second thing I'd like to say is we gave you a quick overview and we're already running over time on this, but we do want to let you know that we are having workshops in the spring, April 4th and 5th at our site in Charleston, we hope we pray. And we would love to have you come and do a much deeper dive on subjects that are really critical to you in your communities. And with that, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much to the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship team at Trenton Technical College. My name is Kelly Betty and I'm a senior policy analyst with a PAIA team at the Center on Education and Labor at New America. And I'd like to invite you to join us at 1225 Eastern time to hear directly from youth apprentices and their parents at our next panel, expanding options and opportunity, the youth apprentice experience, which will be moderated by Elena Silva, director of pre K through 12 education at New America. I'm really happy to be here. I've watched the evolution of PAIA the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship at New America and across the country and particularly in Charleston so I'm so happy to be here with this great lineup we have today, an important lineup of guests, we have former youth apprentices, we have youth apprentices, we have parents and parents who also serve as administrators and faculty themselves so a lot of perspectives to draw from today. We are going to just jump in because we have so much to cover and we've got a great lineup as I said and we want to make sure that we leave time for questions and answers from the audience. But folks introduce themselves. We have Amber, Drake, Evan, Jordan, Kerry, Sonya, Pam and Zach all on our panel today. I'm going to allow them to introduce themselves, starting with with Amber, Amber tell us a little bit about who you are what work you're doing right now where are you in school and where are you working and what is your job title tell us a little bit about yourself. And I just graduated from Wando High School this year. And I'm working at Roper Hospital in my pleasant. I'm a pharmacy technician apprentice. I started the beginning of my senior year. I believe. Yeah, it was like the end of my junior beginning my senior year I started my apprenticeship. Right now I'm about a year and a half in almost two years. Okay, how about you. Where are you working right now what is tell us a little bit about yourself and and where you are at this point. Sure. I graduated Ashley Ridge High School 2019. One of my engineering teachers told me about youth apprenticeship. I was able to join up with Keon North America and I've been well ever since I've been an industrial engineering apprentice. I was able to get once I graduated from the or I guess I was done with the apprenticeship. I was able to become a technician at Keon I'm still the same company and I'm still with going tried and I'm trying to get my transfer credits for the Citadel to get my bachelor's so pretty cool. Very cool. Very cool. Evan how about you can you tell us where where where you are who you are. Sarah thank you. Thank you so much. Well I'm the parent of a 17 year old senior at Wando High School. He is pursuing the industrial maintenance certification, while also working at Boeing South Carolina. I'm also the registrar tried a technical college so I met this from a little bit different perspective as well. So I play a little bit of two roles in this but happy to answer any questions, provide any insight from both those perspectives. I'm glad you're here. Jordan, tell us about yourself. Where are you and where are you working. My name is Jordan Stuart. I graduated from some of the high school, and I work at Berkeley County Government as an age back apprentice, and I go to try to take me my associates degree. Thank you. That's great to hear Carrie. How about you can you tell us tell everyone who you are and where you're working and where you are at this point. My name is Carrie. I graduated from Hanahan High School, and I graduated. I actually got my certificate before I graduated. So right now I'm pursuing my associates degree. And I'm an automotive technician. So right now I'm working at an automotive shop on Ashley phosphate. And yeah, so it's all good. Thank you so much. So now can you tell us a little bit about yourself please. Good afternoon. I'm Sonya Addison Stuart. I think I serve in three different roles. I am the parent of Jordan Stuart. I am also an educator for Berkeley County School District. I serve as the career and technical education director for Berkeley County, and I'm also an educator as well. So I have several different perspectives that I can offer today. Thank you so much. And another parent, Pam. Hi, my name's Pam Zanowski. I'm the mom of Zachary Zanowski who just finished up the program in the spring of 2021. And was fortunate enough to get a full time position with the company that he did his apprenticeship with. And I'm also the executive director of the YMCA here in Somerville. And I can't say enough great things about the program. So looking forward to this. Thank you, Pam. And your son, Zach, why don't you jump in. Hi, I'm Zach Zanowski I graduated from Somerville High School in 2019. I currently work at Lincoln Electric as a manufacturing engineering technician. I am still pursuing my associate's degree I should finish it up this semester. Thank you so much to you all for those great introductions. It's great to have you all here. I know there's in this conference there's a lineup of other panels but I will say that I'm very happy to be with this panel. It's the best one because you really hear from the apprentices. And you get to hear about the perspectives of folks who've been through the program, hear the perspectives of parents and educators and so it's just so wonderful to have you here. I'm going to dig in a little bit by having us flashback. So those for those of you who are apprentices now or who are former apprentices. Flashback to the to the beginning so how did you first hear about the apprenticeship program and what or who influenced your choice to pursue the program. If if if there was someone in particular that helped you or there's a way you heard about the program. Let us know anyone want to jump in some perhaps one of the apprentices or yes amber go ahead. So, first, okay so I heard about the profile no one actually told me about it. I was in health science one at Wando, my junior year and there was a poster on the wall that my teacher had, she had highlighted and marked up but like no one would ever really look at it. So I was like, something's free let me go look at what it what this is. So that I read it, then it was about the program. So then I asked her about it she told me about it and the ones you have on the wall was specifically about the CNA, and I was going to originally do that. And then I looked more into it she told me about it. And she told me there was a try to take you to print this meeting coming up. So I went to that and they were first that was this year was the first year they were interested, introducing the pharmacy tech program. So that's when I was like okay I probably rather do that instead. So then she helped me out or work with my guidance counselor and we got all the applications and stuff put in for me to apply for the pharmacy tech apprentice program. So we did that. And I got in. And, yeah, went from there, but I heard about it basically through the poster to my teacher, I didn't know about it before and when I asked other like, you know my peers by friends that they knew about it like this is like, it was kind of too good to be true like even the guidance counselor didn't know about it. And they're like no we didn't know like nobody knew so I was like okay, it was something new so what other folks did you hear, did you see a poster and this is a physical poster right and not not like a digital or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And is it posters or is it the teachers that are maybe counselors or you're hearing it from your friends, or folks just hearing it around from me. Anyone really I think we got amber that yours yours is probably from a poster I'm trying to get a sense like Kerry Jordan, Drake or Zach. How did you hear about the program. I didn't hear about it from any actually my mom came to me and suggested I look to take a look at it because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do after high school. It was a good way to kind of get my foot in the door and something I might be interested without you know having to go for a four year degree, you know, getting a lot of money and debt and not still not maybe not knowing what I want to do. Um, I didn't know anything about the pressure program to my mom told me back in, maybe March, April issues I used to try it and I was like, no, because I'm not really used to doing anything new so she was like you know you should try it. So he signed up for it and yeah well from there, I actually had on two companies called me. One was in Charleston and I have another one right there but kind of government so I went to the one with time government and had an interview there. Terry or Drake you want to share how you first heard about it. Yeah, so when I was in my last engineering class in high school, my teacher Dr reader she, she wouldn't have any posters or anything but she kind of just word of mouth mentioned it to the entire class and I actually went home talked to my dad about it, and two of my friends that I know they were actually being mentored by my father at VTL. So I talked to them and they're like hey this is super awesome program and then I was able to talk to my guidance counselor and then I was able to talk to Alan. And she signed me up for that initial meeting day and it was it was pretty, it worked out pretty well I didn't even know that they had a pltw kind of way you could go as well if you're took engineering courses so I mean they had everything there. Yeah, word of mouth pretty much. Okay, how about you. Yeah, so basically like Amber I like walked into class one day and there was this beat up poster and I was like dang like, I had nothing like I knew nothing about it so I was like let me look it up because I know good and well I'm not paying for college and it ended up working out really great and I don't know like the guidance counselors my teachers they were like no honestly I don't think you should do it like, because you're going to be so backed up with work and stuff like that and I was like, I'm going to do it anyway, and I'm really glad I did. Yeah that's great so we have a we have a parent effect and a poster effect and sounds like some teachers were in it as well. It's great to hear that the stories of how you first hear about it because I, as you all know youth apprenticeship is is not as widespread as it could be across the country and it's not something that a lot of people necessarily know about. And while, while Charleston leads the way I'd say it still is so interesting to see how the recruitment happens like how are you finding out about these programs that aren't necessarily the first thing you think about or something that you, you'd know about. I want to get pull the parents in and ask their perspectives on the beginning and when they first decided to get involved. I guess some of you played a role but how you felt about it but before I do that I want to go ask the apprentices themselves. If you're, and I think Drake you you mentioned this but were your peers and your friends doing this as well as well or did you have to step out like on your own and be like I'm going to do this, you know, even though it doesn't seem like I don't know anyone else doing it. I'm going to do this, or did you already know people that we're doing it. I kind of, I already knew two other people that were doing it and I actually convinced my buddy to do it with me. But eventually he just, I guess the work in school got to him so he kind of just went away from it. But yeah I did know two kids that did it as well. How about you Jordan you said you'd never heard of it. I think it was also Zachary and Jordan you both said your mom told you so you did you know anybody else that joined or were were was it just, just you. What was that like. I know somebody that graduated about two a year or two ago for me, I heard they are graduating from something and they was doing it. And they actually were matter of fact they work at the same place I work at now in the automotive section. And they told me a little bit about it too. I have a couple to hear anyone else feel free to jump in it's, there's so much that we know about the peer effect like at this stage you're trying to figure out what you're going to do when you're in high school, and you look around you and that's I mean that's just a really big effect of looking around and sort of seeing what others are doing so while we take the guidance from our teachers and you take the guidance from your parents there's also like what everyone else is doing that's part of the reason I asked that question. So if you folks want to want to weigh in on that before otherwise I'm going to open up to the parents I'd love to hear from your perspective, either I guess your, your child comes home and has this idea. Maybe they saw it on a poster, or maybe you hear about it and it's so you know, where did you hear about it and what did you think about it when you first heard about the apprenticeship program and how did you feel about it. Just jump on in. I've heard about the program several years ago when it started so I was really familiar with it so Jordan said that he first heard about it in March but I don't think he remembers but I you know I started taking him to the apprenticeship events, and I was pushing him up and having him to talk to people to explore and see what the options were at that time so it was probably a little traumatic for him so he's probably blocked that out of his memory. So, when I first heard of the apprenticeship program. I, I was just amazed by and just to see the growth of it over the years has just been simply amazing so I've just been sitting on the sidelines you know waiting for my children to possibly explore this, this area. So Jordan was the child that took advantage of this, and I'm, I can tell him all the time how fortunate he is to have this opportunity, but even though you know he's fortunate to have this opportunity. It is still very challenging, as he will probably talk about in a little bit is a challenging opportunity, but there's so much growth in it as well. So again I've known about it for a long time I was excited and grateful that Jordan took advantage of the opportunity. Yeah Jordan it probably helps to have your mom be the cte director right so you wouldn't know about it. Evan or Pam. I guess I can jump right in. Thank you. I was involved in the youth apprentice program from the get go or do enrollment office to try to attack obviously where the heavy hitters, but at the time I was an assistant registrar and me or my office now. We were responsible for sending grades to the companies to the high schools and other enrollment information and you know at the time years and years ago. My, my child was in elementary school so I didn't think much of it, but you know going back two years in February of 2020. I don't know something just hit me and I mentioned it to him. My son really likes to work with things with his hands. At the time and even still to this day worked a lot with welding things and just messing with things making things and throw it out there at him as a suggestion and he went with it he really really liked the idea. I tried not to help him all that much from a sense of doing it obviously doing it for him but I empowered him to take take ownership of the process. The admission application process, the resume writing part of this the application. And he did that he you know I helped him, we helped him prepare for his interview with Boeing South Carolina and rehearsed it really with him during the initial part of the pandemic for four weeks we really practiced and rehearsed and he obviously did well enough to get the job. And he's been doing great ever since. So that was my role in it. Obviously, from as a parent, I also like Sonya, I often remind my son, how fortunate he is to be a part of this. And, you know, it's a great opportunity. You know, not many kids their age get this opportunity. I often have to remember that you know my son's a teenager. They're going through other teenage stuff at the same time. So they're balancing a lot, whether it's finishing their high school finishing or working with the company, taking the college classes, but also being a teenager and having that teenage life. So I think that it's a it's a balancing act. Sometimes they have to give up some opportunities that other teenagers get to do or choose to do. It's obviously it's challenging time for the teenage student but also for the parents as well. And how about you want to weigh in here and then we're going to turn to the apprentices I want to ask you all about exactly what Evan was just touching on how do you get how do you manage it all how do you balance it all but Pam what was your experience as a parent. I think for us it was a little scary when you know your junior comes to you and says you know that they don't want to go to college. But for Zach, I think it was a mature decision because he didn't want to go to college to figure out what he wanted to do. So we just started kind of exploring some different different avenues. There was you know we have a great career in technology school up here in Dorchester County. So we looked at that and honestly, the book that they give you for all the high school students we just happened to come across the youth apprenticeship program. I have a good friend in the school district and I asked her about it. And she said it was a great program she put us in touch with Alan Kaufman. We attended the, you know, kind of the meeting that they have to tell the, the introductory informational period that they, they provided. So we funded that and Zach kind of explored some different avenues and kind of like Evan and Sonia said it was a it was definitely a learning experience they have to sit down and write cover letters and resumes and go through the interview process and I think for us to it was, it was just we started waiting for him to get those interview results back was, you know, it was kind of scary, you know, and you're going through that with them but like both of them said, we, we constantly tells that how fortunate he is to be able to, you know, have been able to be a part of this program. And at the same time it is a learning experience because they are finishing high school they're going and taking college classes, and in addition to that working full time so it's a lot, but we're proud of them and we are, you know, he's very fortunate to be able to have gone, we have to have found this program, so. Yeah, so to second to all of you or third or fourth or whatever it is that the is certainly a privileged place if it's your fortunate to be part of this program. However, it's a lot. Right, I think, maybe Sonia said it was a challenging opportunity it's both it's amazing opportunity it's also really big challenge so we want to name that. So for those of you who have been through this or in it right now. You're navigating the high school, the college, the employer all at once, you're going back and forth to all these places and managing those transitions and even the different cultures of school and work and college classes. What was that like or what was that like, what's your typical week like what with how do you balance it all. What were the big challenges that you faced and and I think Evan mentioned giving up things. Was there anything you had to give up. Just jump on in any of the apprentices please. I had to get with some sleep time, you know, it's a lot, it's a lot of pressure in your back even though it's a job and squirt the same time. And you have to maintain it even though it's a lot because you have to go work the next day, and then when you get home from work, you can like can't rest a little bit. You have to just go straight to your work because you want to get everything done. So it was like, learning time management can my time management skills before was already kind of in. But like now when there was a whole lot more my play it was like okay now now I have to get right so I think learning to manage my time, like properly like that. It was hard for me to do but it was like a big plus from this apprenticeship because now I can manage my time properly. And also I learned like how important it is to communicate like communication is a big thing like letting my employers know like hey I have a school assignment or letting you know my teachers know you know like what let let people know what's going on like don't just leave people in mind because it. When I told my teachers when I told you know my employer like let people know what I had going on that I needed extra time to do something like everything you know worked out fine but yeah I think my biggest thing was. I'm just talking to people letting everyone knew like what I had going on and actually managing the time like you know high school college and work for me what I did was. So I was still in high school, but I had to take a majority of my classes, so I was just I had like an early release, so I would do my high school classes in the morning, and then once I finished I do my. Like the new credit trading courses, then after that I go to work at night from I'd only be at work for like two hours though, because you know working you're going to learn for experience isn't really you know for the it wasn't for the money so I go. And yeah so it was a cycle from high school college work that we did just like that, and then weekends I usually I had my weekends for food honestly yeah my weekend I didn't do any work on the weekend. It's a lifelong challenge to figure out how to balance the time and the work and all the things you have to do in your life. So again, the points that the parents were bringing up just about being teenagers. So, Carrie or Zach or Drake, you want to jump in. What was your experience like. Yeah, just like I was saying yeah right after high school a lot of my friends they kind of did the teenage thing but then I had I went straight from that to waking up at 430 Monday through Friday and then I would what I would normally do is I'd work. About 530 to 230 and then I'd go to college I take night classes I'd come home and I do homework the rest of the night so yeah it does get a little tricky working eight hour day and then taking a calculus class for example and then coming home and doing homework it's it's tough but it was well worth it. So. Yeah, um, like, like he said it's it's mainly like a juggling act to be honest like I was working at the time I was working two jobs. I was going to high school I was a junior at the time, and I was also going to the college classes at night, and then. Yeah, so I was working seven days for like two years and at the beginning I was still playing sports so I was still playing powder puff to but yeah like he said it's a juggling act but honestly, it was worth the sacrifice, like I like if I had to go back like I really, I wouldn't go out parting with them to be honest you know like it is what it is, but I'm really glad I did it. That was like another big thing as well like my friends like, or like friends on school like she said going out to parties and stuff not being able to go party because we're doing work, but um, like a lot of my friends are like why are you pushing yourself so hard like why are you doing all this. But my thing personally was I was trying to think long term because I did not want to go to school for four years. I was like I'd rather do this now and get it knocked out of the way, then graduate. When I'm done, you know, making money working, and then you know, I don't have any debt so Nick a big thing was like thinking long term and being motivated thinking about the future in the end like what's going to result what's going to come from all of this so. Thinking long term is an incredible skill to have at any age, but particularly when you're in high school so it kudos to all of you for having that foresight. If you want to jump in on this and then I don't want to want to remind just before you do I want to remind the audience please feel free to drop questions. We're going to move to questions in 10 15 minutes. So drop questions and if you have them and we'll try to get to them. Zach, how about you. Yeah, I'll jump in here a little bit. A typical day looked like for me I would go to high school in the morning, go to try to from about noon to four and get off and go straight to work at work till 11. So yeah, it's definitely takes a toll on you but it like everybody else has said it's worth it I now obviously I liked it here so I work full time for them. It's a great experience. The stuff that I've learned is been amazing that stuff I never thought I could do before. And it's great. So the challenge is I think that there's a lot of growth and development that the parents have mentioned would be great if you could try to qualify that you know give us a sense of how did you see your these young people that you were raising will kind of growth and development did you see how did you see them obviously it was difficult but also an opportunity so maybe Evan and Pam and Sonya if you have thoughts on that we'd love to hear them. Sure, I, you know, like I said teenagers, so obviously saw maturity change for the better. You know, like I said teenagers, but one thing that I saw that really impressed by that I certainly didn't have when I was a teenager. Or until recently, to be honest with you is financial management. And, you know, I see my son working at Boeing, and pretty much putting all his money away. I couldn't imagine what I would have done with the money that he has saved up. And then on the weekends he's working another job bag and groceries at a grocery store, just for gas money and things like that. Maybe not the way I would have done it, definitely not the way I did it. And I'm impressed to see that but at the same time it's that time management, because I'm as a parent. I keep telling him and reminding him school first your student first, no matter what your student first, but at the same time. I know that he's got these other responsibilities and it's hard to get him to understand that but he knows that I mean at this point. It's a little bit more difficult telling you know middle school kid that that's wanting to, you know, play basketball football those things. But at this point, you know, they're understanding that. You know, I think some of the student speakers today have, have even mentioned, you know, the value in this program as opposed to jumping right into that four year university setting and the amount of money that it saves because it's incredible. The savings and the graduating without that I mean that's just an amazing opportunity. I'll go ahead and jump in. For Jordan. The growth and development that I am seeing with him are those skills that we are hearing from the employers. The skills that they say that they desperately need in our future workforce and so I'm so very proud of him for his work ethic that he has and what he's learned throughout this process. He has to be to work at 7am in the morning. And we live about 20 minutes away from the work site and 610 he's out of the house every morning. I'm never up to wake him up. He comes to the bedroom to tell me by during the day. So I'm so very proud of that he shows up and he shows up on time. He stays, he doesn't call out. And so I've been trying to express to him that my gosh, that's a huge part of it right there that you have. You continue to develop these skills and some additional skills, workplace skills, you get the education component, and you will be so marketable. And I'm telling him this constantly. So I'm trying to work with him because I know those skills are very important to even communication. I remember when he first started working, he was like, I'm working with a lot of older men and I don't have anything in common with them and they're talking about hunting and I've never gone hunting before. And I said, find a common ground because this is what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to communicate with your with your coworkers and now he's coming home and he's talking about his coworkers and giving me different stories. So these types of skills are seen a lot of development with him in that area, a lot of growth and development. And, you know, I plan to continue to encourage him in that area. And also just all of the skill areas that he needs and he gets the support all around, you know, through his mentors, and also through their apprenticeship program and how, you know, they assist them as well. I'll jump in. You know, just what Evan and Sonia had said, you know, obviously the time management, something that we're really proud of with Zach was, you know, a lot of times when they start these apprenticeship programs they start out at the bottom. You know, they start out doing the, you know, he was on the floor for a long time working on the machines and he knew that, you know, as great experiences that was that isn't ultimately what he wanted to continue to do. So he kind of found his niche and when he found out that, hey, I'd like to be the one behind the computer actually programming the machines. He went to his supervisor and they had that conversation. And so then he transitioned into a whole, whole other level at the, you know, the company that he's at, and we were really proud of him for doing that. And, you know, like Sonia said, it's, it's nice to hear from his supervisors what a great job and what an asset he is to the company at, you know, as a 19 year old when he started working full time for them and it's neat when he comes home with certain projects and things that he's done and things that he's brought to the company. And so, you know, as a mom, you're, you're proud of the fact that he's actually contributing and he does show up and he is, he is reliable and he does what, what is asked of him and a lot of times, you know, you can't put a price on that being reliable, dependable employee and we're proud of the fact that he, he has done that and he has kind of juggled all the things that he needs to have done. Thank you all for that, but I mean we're hearing all of you young, young women and men and the parents who are you all are very impressive, you're all here, and you, you are, your communication skills are excellent, and you're willing to be here and all of all the things that are coming across just in this. Plus all the things that you're reflecting on and the parents that are on this panel are mentioning about responsibility and motivation and all that. For those, for those of you who are apprentices or were. Do you think, are you highly motivated like as an individual have you always been that way or did you what I'm trying to get at is what did you gain from the apprenticeship versus, you know, maybe you already were like that before. That's that in part because when we think about recruitment for youth apprenticeship and who's engaged in this, and in these programs and we want to expand it we want more people to be able to be engaged, you start thinking about like what would it take is obviously takes a lot. So what would you say you, what did youth apprenticeship teach you, what did you get out of it. It taught me that. Okay, I'm not going to say I was immature, but I'm not like, I wasn't as mature as I thought I was like I thought I had all my stuff together like oh, like now. Okay, so before I started my guidance counselor teachers told me, it's not going to like it's not going to be easy you know, a lot of work you're going to have, you're going to have a lot of a bigger workload. I wouldn't know I was like, you know what I make, you know I make good grades in school. You know I never really struggling with everything was good for me I'm about to go and this is going to be a breeze. But no, I started it. And you know I was struggling because there's a lot of work and plus, you know I was in high school so I wasn't, I wasn't used to doing college you know, public classes will be will be a more, more work. So, when I started it. I'm like a lot of what's struggling but you know I talked to my teachers talks and my guidance counselor, and you know they got me track, and I can definitely say I have gotten a lot more organized program like, I learned that organization is very important keeping up, you know, with the test, you know, I never used to keep sticky notes or set reminders in my phone or set alarms but you know I'm doing all that stuff now keep myself organized so I think a big thing on this program is organization or maturity whatever, whatever word it is but I feel like I grew up I learned a lot like I took a big step forward I probably don't know if I ever would have taken if I didn't join this program because I was still undecided before I joined this program of what I wanted to do after high school. I just know I didn't want to do the four years. So I didn't know if I would, you know, go to try it in it, you know what I would do so. Yeah. How about the rest of you. What did it teach you, what did you gain. It was just basic sub skills, you know, getting involved with people out work, getting to work on time because when I first started I was just like, there's no way someone can just come here every day seven o'clock and money, and then I just learned from that and I started to get the feeling that on, and I started to enjoy because place I work in now it's a lot person I was working with it's a it's a lot and it's amazing how you can learn so much from one person about about AC units maintenance because I wasn't even I wasn't when I first started I wasn't working with air condition I was working with electricity side, and I didn't even know how to change a change the balance in the light bulb, you know what I'm saying. So they taught me that, and I'm just like wow that's that's pretty easy like no one, no one ever showed me that. And now they got me, they got me driving in the van by myself so it's really amazing how much I learned over the past three or four months. Drake or Carrie or Zach. Sure. I think one of the biggest things I got from the youth apprenticeship was like the work side of it. Working that key on. I started off like Pam was saying I started off on the floor, assembling forklifts and then eventually I transitioned over in the department, but just working, working with, you know, every different type of engineer and just kind of seeing how life is and how everyone, how all the departments mesh together and how it's, it was unbelievable is something I could have never learned in in school really so it was, you know, priceless for me. Yeah, I've always, I've always liked a busy schedule you know I think my whole thing was trying to like be able to stick up for myself in certain situations or, you know, even just like trying to be less shy, because like the idea of being here, you know, two years ago would have like the scare be like I never would have done it but now like, I don't know it's definitely taught me to, you know, speak up in, I don't know be less shy, especially working with a ton of guys it's like you got to speak up sometimes you know saying so I definitely learned a lot and, and it was it was great. And on that point, my mom would tell you I was, I'm a pretty quiet person but I feel like through this experience I've become a better communicator of what I need to say. You know, I've learned how to work on projects with other people and, you know, just be a part of a team that can we get stuff done. It's definitely a great program. I like I learned a lot about how stuff is manufactured. It's amazing how much stuff that you don't notice that you use every day that behind the scenes takes so much effort to make. Yeah, thank you, all of you. I hope you must not know you couldn't know how impressive you are so you're all really quite incredible. And I, at some point you'll be able to reflect back maybe and watch this and remind yourselves of how incredible it is at your age that you are able to be so well spoken and so mature. So kudos to you all and unto the parents who are, who are supporting you. We're going to go to some questions in a moment but from the, from the audience but before we do from the apprentices and I think Evan you're the parent here without the apprentice. So if you happen to know this, what are your plans for the future some of you are still in your apprentice apprenticeship program some of you are done with it but what do what are your plans if you know do you know what job you eventually want to be doing or what do you want to be getting. Let's Zach I'm going to go straight back to you because you were the last person to speak so we'll start there. Actually in the spring I'll be leaving link electric and I'll be going to middle Tennessee State University for mechatronics engineering. All right let's go carry. Yeah so right now I'm finishing my degree up. So I mean I did graduate but I graduated my certificate so right now I'm just finishing up the degree and then after that you know I plan on working maybe even starting my own business one day, you know, an automotive shop one day but we'll see Jordan. I plan on getting my associate's degree for the next two years and I plan on working somewhere where I can be like a supervisor from air conditioning and then for doing that for a couple years and then I want to start my air condition business. Amber, or Drake. But can I can I tell you how I came to the conclusion of what I was going to do. Okay, so, you know, I work as a pharmacy tech at Roper and now at the hospital. So, I thought I was going to be strictly limited to just working in the pharmacy but that was not the case like I've been all around, you know, like in surgeries like I've done a lot of stuff in here. So, you know, being in the hospital I met a ton of different people, and there's I realized how much health care there are there's a lot like a lot more than I thought because you would just when you think hospital you think you know doctors surgeon there's like you know stuff like that. But, um, every day when I go in the radiology room to drop off meds in there for the radiologist and radiologist text, they'd be in there on their iPads in the dark just you know watching a movie or something like that because you know. It's really out of the room it's quiet they only you know someone only comes in there when they need to scan you know and it's quick. So I was like, that was fun because you know, you know, you know, you just in the dark into doing paperwork. So, started talking to them, and got to got to talking more about them and they let me mentor them so I came in. I think it was. Yeah, like three days. So, um, I was like wow I really liked it so then I came to conclusion that I wanted to do rad tech which is radiology tech. And that's a two year program so I'm taking the prerequisite right now. In this August, I'll be taking a right tech program agreement. Drake how about you. Sure. So, I'm actually still working at Keon I'm going to, I'm doing transfer credits to get a, it's like a two plus two transfer program we're trying to the Citadel. Once I get to the Citadel I want to get my mechanical engineering degree. And I honestly I still want to work for the same company so I hope I can either be an IE or a design engineer at Keon. Those are all some impressive plans Evan do you know the plans for your, your son, I believe. And he's hoping, you know he's still in school is senior, like I said so he's hoping that he'll get an offer from companies with, and he's still contemplating. Continue with that career path, or staying with that company, and potentially doing like what Drake said, the two plus two potentially engineering with the Citadel as well. The 17 year old son is contemplating, you know what kind of pizza to get on Friday so just to set the bar. He's wonderful I'm very proud of him by the way. So I'm going to move to some, some questions from the from the audience but I will say personally that that's it's very impressive even that you all can articulate what you think you want to do or where that path you're headed on. So I think that at your stage and age can't do that so again, congratulations on getting to that step. The audience has all sorts of wonderful questions and wonderful things to say about you all. You're also impressive this is me reading questions you're also impressive. And let's say Jill wants to know how did you navigate the scheduling process for related instruction like figuring out which classes to take and when obviously that's that's going to be complicated. Do y'all have any advice on that or reflections on how that was, or is. So, for the youth admin, the youth apprentice administered I think I believe it was Ellen coffin. I think that's her maybe, but she set up every semester she set your classes up for you and then she emailed you all the classes you were taking and then she'll either call you or email you or something like that and be like, um, let you know your schedule so send you a screenshot of your schedule. And she'll ask you like, is this okay with you like this is the courses you'll need to be taking. So she'll set every she set everything up for me. And, you know, my classes registering all that she handled. I just had to show up and be there to take the class she but she did all like the, you know, other way. Other folks and I'm going to just jump in with other questions too so you can respond to that or a related question which is another figuring out how did you all figure out transportation. Did you all drive yourselves or take buses or get rides or how did you get to all the places that you needed to be. Yeah, I just wanted to shout out Miss Kaufman real quick because I relied on her a lot and like she would always email about like any breaks or anything like that so shout out to her because I really appreciate that but as far as rides, I ended up having to buy my own car. Which was good for me because you know, like a lot of parents do, you know, you appreciate it more when you buy it yourself, you know is how they say but I really did end up, you know, appreciating it more so I really am grateful to her for making me work. You know, for that but yeah, it was good yeah. When I first started the program, I had my permits I couldn't drive alone. So that was kind of tough because both my parents work and my dad works pretty much all day for morning tonight. I was heavily relying on my mom to take me to him from, and then my older sister. She, she had her license but she had a job as well. So just catching a ride from my mom and my sister was how I was how I had to, was how my transportation was. And whenever they weren't available, it was catching a ride from either my neighbor or my friends but eventually I did end up getting my license and my dad did get me a car so. To continue to say folks just jump on in anyone that wants to parents as well. If you have every reflections on your own kids or experiences. Was there stigma from friends or family members or, or anyone really about your chosen path of apprenticeship instead of traditional college. And maybe even Sonya I would actually ask you from a CTE director perspective, you know what your thoughts are on that but Evan I see I see you go ahead. Okay, I guess I'll go. I was just going to say, these opportunities weren't available to us when we were our kids age. So I think that a lot of people around us, maybe family members don't understand, and it's our job as parents but it's also the students job as the student as the apprentice to really explain and to showcase show off what they're doing because I think that they get a greater understanding a better understanding of what it is they're actually doing. And for for us, you know I work at the college. It's great for us for all of these young people this the students to showcase this to talk about it, back at their their schools and the community churches and gods whatever, so that it encourages other people as well because there's so many opportunities that are probably going on tapped. I don't know the numbers I know that our do enrollment people some of them are here as you know obviously on the call. But I'm sure I feel like there's probably a lot of opportunities that are still out there for many of the teenagers in our community high school students that are out there and, and there might be that stigma from adults in the area not really stigma but that lack of understanding from the parents because these opportunities weren't there when we were there. I would definitely say the same thing. When I explained the apprenticeship program to my mother and just to give you a little background. My parents both went to for your college. And I did. And so even on my husband's side is the same way so trying to explain this to my mother for her to understand. You know it was a little challenging and then sometimes people say well we he's not going to college. No, he's in college he's going to school, but he's also getting the benefit of, you know, working in his area while he's going to college. I have even I started talking to Jordan about different opportunities very early on and how people receive their education. And I will even tell him my daughter went to a four year school and I and I think he's better off than she was because she went just to school and some of the things that he's experiencing in the workplace now and has worked through. She's just now going through that. So he's going to be so much further advanced in that that area. So I think like Evan said, making sure that we spread the message I know I've been trying to do my part, talking to people talking at, you know, to people at church and at different organizations about the amazing opportunity that this is and how it can propel your child to their to their future goals. We're going to have to wrap up in just a few minutes but I want to end with another last last question, which is really about how to expand awareness about this. It's building off of what you just said, Sonia. Do you all have suggestions and I would look to the apprentices let's hear from you first about how to get the word out some of you found out about apprenticeship by chance. Some of you had parents that were, you know, pushing your supporting you're telling you about it. What about your peers your friends the people you know at high school other teenagers in your high schools or other high schools. How would you get the word out to them. What do you think would be most of the most effective way of sharing this. Go ahead, Drake I saw you go in. Yeah, I was just so I guess I was kind of like a late bloomer to this because I heard about it like the last couple months of my senior year. I think if it would get pushed, because like my guidance counselors they always kind of push the four year degree. I think if it was pushed more on the front end a little bit earlier in high school and like, like, for my high school at least there was posters about it and then the kids understood a little better. So when you have that two year free thing that really kind of set my mind to it. Yeah, I think if it was pushed a little bit harder in high school, it would have got a lot more people. How about the rest of you Jordan carry ambers back. What would you suggest. I think it would be best coming from like people who are actually in the program right now or like who have been through it because you know I know teenagers and they they aren't going to listen to you know, adults who are like oh yeah you know you should do this because it's good for you, you know not every teenager is going to respond to that but if you know someone who's still on their level, you know, just like comes them be like, this is what you should do, because it's free. And I'm saying it like here's why because you can learn so much and you can like just really grow and you know build your future based off of that so yeah I think that'd be really important. I think like what she was saying that exactly. At my school, or at my high school I'm all high school wonder, you know we have meetings in the PC sometimes which is like the auditorium I think maybe if you set up some like presentations like a quick presentation or get some students in there tell them about it. And I think, honestly posters or flyers would help a lot like posters in the school for the actual apprenticeship with like, because kids are looking at the walls are blank because something there the kids are going to look because it's you know it's like what's that because the walls are always blank. So, I really think posters will bring a lot of awareness in the school, because the poster that my teacher had up that I saw it wasn't even like a real poster was like. It was like a print offline about it was like an information sheet that she marked up and she made it like you know grab our attention with the highlighter and the marketing stuff. So I really think maybe like presentations if you go to different high schools maybe talk a little bit about it could be quick and posters would help a lot. Last words Jordan there's act you have anything to offer on how to how to get the word out. I basically said everything I was going to say on posters on one of the stuff, make sure you go to school because some of there's a small school you know I'm saying nobody really goes up towards something like that across or something like that small schools you know I'm saying, so it's really got down walls and stuff, posters and everything. I would just say try and get people to go to the information session that try and tech holds for the program. There are a few students speak there every year, it gives them more information about the program you know, it only, you know, it's not it's not that long. Even if, even if schools would even if you know you could go to schools and do something like that that would be beneficial. Excellent thank you all so much. We're going to wrap up now but again my deepest appreciation that you all joined today that you were willing to share your stories. Thank you so much for your patience y'all and how far you've you've gotten and good luck to you and all your future endeavors parents to thank you so much for joining and sharing your perspective. It's been great. Thanks so much. Thank you again to our moderator Elena Silva and thank you to all of these inspiring and impressive youth apprentices and their parents for sharing their experiences. Thank you to join us at 130 Eastern time for our next panel where you'll get an opportunity to hear from the employers from finding talent to developing it the employers case for youth apprenticeship, which will be moderated by Eric cells now the senior advisor and director of JFF Center for apprenticeship and work based learning. Well good afternoon everyone or good morning depending upon what part of the country you're in. Welcome. My name is Eric cells now and I'm with jobs for the future and very happy partner in the Paya project nationally, JFF is a large national nonprofit that works at the intersection of education training and work we've been doing so for almost 40 years and I lead our Center for apprenticeship and work based learning it's been operation in four years and we do a ton of work with states and locals and boards and colleges and employers and a whole lot of other work in for the center of apprenticeship and work based learning. Well this will never be as exciting as having a bunch of apprentices on like the previous section which was outstanding by the way kudos to you guys for that one really smart young people but it's almost as cool because we have real live students here and people who work with these young people and provide them opportunities and I'm going to guess and you can disabuse me to this notion. I'm going to guess you've been totally impressed by many of the apprentices that you have had as youth and we're going to talk a little bit about that today. So I've got a series of questions, and I'm joined by a ranger folks in the South Carolina Charleston region. I don't know all the names of your company so you're going to have to help me with that but as I go through I'm with Debbie McLeod, Don Drake, Donald Smith and Hendrick Otto. Who else do we have here. David Brown with Kion group on Roxanna with HCA healthcare and the rest of the introductions I'll let you do but we've got a great group of folks here who provide. Certainly opportunities to students that are helping out young people advance developing a pipeline of the future. They're spreading good skills throughout their community, not only with their job but certainly maintaining work skills and work values and really is a big issue in training our next generation of workers. So folks around the country would do with the Charleston region has done but I always tell people across the country where we go that. So a lot of programs out there that are doing youth apprenticeship look at Charleston first that region. Great relationships with employers, a good central intermediary with tried and tech and arrange a very good partners from K to 12 community college system, employers and business Association so with that I'm not going to waste any more time. The users of this session might want to give me the hook or a warning we've got about five minutes left because I know the end of this group will love to talk about this issue and can talk about it for a long, a lot more time we have scheduled today so give me a heads up if we're running over but Thank you, Melissa and Mitchell and all the other folks that tried and for helping organize this session. So let's just jump in it right I mean we talk about apprenticeship as being employer driven, whether it's youth or adults. We in the apprenticeship supply side of things need to make sure we understand what employers issues are what their concerns are what their skill needs are what their future workforce challenges are so we really need to get the employers point of view on this. And then there's the other side of what the system can do and providing appropriate students to help the employer solve that problem so we want to sort of address the history how your programs came together. Tell us a little bit about your company in the program. How's your experience been to date and we want honesty we don't only want to hear good things if you had a student who had challenges and you had to sit him down for a while that's fine too that's part of the process, but we do want to hear. Very much how the how these things operate so in other parts of the country we can sort of replicate some of those themes that you're doing so I'm just going to jump right in here and I think I'm going to start with Debbie McLeod Debbie with. All right, Debbie tell us a little bit about your company and what you do for your firm, Deborah. Okay, so I'm Debbie McLeod from the cloud information systems, and I'd like to say thank you for having a having me on today. We are a cybersecurity company, we're one of the first in the state of South Carolina to put a registered apprenticeship program in a cybersecurity business. The, I am the president of the company I'm also the apprenticeship director. And the reason that we chose to do this is because of the job shortage there's approximately three million short worldwide in cybersecurity so we, my husband and I collaborated and we decided that it would be beneficial for us in the industry that we're in to grow our own pipeline. I love that term grow your own. I often use that with apprentices because you're in fact doing that. And cyber is a really interesting space to get to there's a number of cyber apprenticeship programs across the country at various stages because I think it's still all being worked out. So you looked at the job shortages you looked at, which is very situational right pandemic related post pandemic you don't know where you're going to get your workers from. So you decide to grow your own. So, what did you do how did you connect with this system. And did you know how it was going to turn out when you started. What I did, because I have my histories and education. I knew that schools have intern programs. I was, I was in one myself. So, my first approach was to contact the local school district about having interns, and I got no reply so I decided to investigate that a little further. And in my investigations I came across apprenticeship Carolina. Who came sat down they brought the local school district and we sat down and we talked we explained what we wanted to do everybody agreed that it was definitely needed. And they, through doing that, we partnered with tried and tech for the educational portion of this program. So, so that's an interesting experience. Was it tried and that you've so apprenticeship Carolina is known for having a column navigators but apprenticeship consultants located throughout the state usually attached to a community college which is great. Was it a tried and consultant that reached out to you at first or just another one from apprenticeship who then ended up connecting you with tried. I really approached apprenticeship Carolina and when they came, and they understood that the local school district hadn't replied, and we wanted to start out at the high school level, specifically the underserved population. So, once we sat down and we put all the pieces together on how this was going to come together and what we wanted my program to look like. That's when they referred me over to try to technical college. That's great. So apprenticeships are far different than internships I was also a high school intern and a college co op student and apprenticeships are far different. I think you've made out on the deal with that right. I mean it really is, you know, a real way to integrate integrate a possible pipeline of workers where in terms are mostly just for the experience of the student. Did you encounter any unexpected challenges or problems or was it like you were discovering new and interesting things every day that worked for your program design. I haven't had many challenges and in reference to the internship. The purpose of that is with cyber security we wanted a limited amount of obligation from the student. So the internship program, let's them know and let's us know is this a good candidate for an apprenticeship. That's the purpose of doing it that way. But through the whole program, we really have not. Everything has been pretty much what we expected except for what we did not expect is everybody who works in the company wants to participate with the apprentices. Everybody sees that as the most energetic and exciting part of our company. So that was a little unexpected and then how much we love what we're doing, and how much we have seen these apprentices grow through the program. It's been way more rewarding than what we expected. I've heard that before Debbie that's an excellent proposal, excellent. Comment to make we're working with a healthcare is a hospital up in New Hampshire, and the staff are actually fighting over being assigned the apprentice because it sort of changed their organization, you know they describe a very similar to you and it, it juiced up the staff and everybody wanted to help out, you know, I mean as far as recruiting future students what a great welcome for them to have everybody interested in them. So, so how long have you been doing this and how many students have you been able to bring on a, you know, there's a lot of questions about scale, oh did you bring on 100 students to bring on 10 students. You know, and there's a lot of policymakers and politicians like to say we want 10,000 apprentices, but the reality of the workplace is not everybody's going to absorb a huge number and that's fine right. But, you know, as long as you're doing that sort of work with somebody so how long have you been involved in it how many students have you been able to serve. So we've been involved in this for a little over three years, and we have, we just took on our third apprentice. It's relatively one each year what it's been equaling out to. We are a small business so we have to take these new apprentices in as the funds become available to do so. So our goal is the more we grow the business the more apprentices that we have. Right. Well look and even if you only get one one a year right in five years you're going to have five highly skilled people in your office right in 10 years you're going to have 10 so you know they do expand over time, and that's fine. In terms of an investment sometimes we hear employer employers oh my goodness there's a lot of startup costs I don't want to be associated with that. I want to find something else. It sounds like you had a lot of energy a lot of focus and some effort and trying to find the connection. Was there a lot of investment upfront was it a onerous process upfront, or once you found tried and things work pretty smoothly for you. There wasn't a lot of investment on our part. And as I just spoke at international conference last week to cyber security people across the world. And that was one of the things that I mentioned to them as whenever they were looking at the ROI perspective because that's always something that it seems to want to throw up constantly. And my response to that was a response that I had heard IBM make which is you either invest now, or you lose now, or you lose later, because right now we have a pipeline emergency, and you're either going to spend that money training them up front, or you're spending that money in the rear training them afterwards. So you pick which pathway you are wanting to lose, but you're going to either lose now or you're going to lose later so as far as an ROI we personally feel like it. We already see in that growth, and whether we see it in dollars, we are, or it's more so that we see it in the lives being changed. And that to us is way more rewarding than seeing the dollar signs. So let's talk a little bit about the logistics of this and working with Trident and doing something called a registered apprenticeship, which seems to have a lot of mystery myth and me perception surrounding that term around the country but you know how was it working with your local colleges Trident. And was it a burden, if you will, and registering the program here lots of employers say oh my goodness the paperwork was terrible and it's so hard and I usually hear that from employers who never tried it. But I'm wondering how that experience was for you was it onerous was it easy. I wouldn't say that it was exactly easy because there was the cyber security education outline had to have quite a bit of tweaking, but and that had to come with us sitting down. Once we got that put in place and I wouldn't say that's exactly tedious and labor some, whenever you already have in mind what your expectations are and you already know what your career field demands. That makes a little bit easy easily accomplished Trident was very helpful they're they're still helpful as far as anytime we have questions or just if something needs to be done. Through the Department of Labor they're quick to let me know hey we need this part, you know, and it's so no I wouldn't say that it's been onerous and I would be more towards it's been a little bit more easily done. That's great. That's great. All right, I'm going to the last question for you I can actually continue this conversation WL day I do think cyber is a really interesting space, your comment about having to tweak the curriculum at your local training provider is exactly how the system is supposed to work. If, if a training provider educational institution cannot meet your needs, but are willing to, then you need to tell them the skills and the curriculum and the things you need to student to have. The job as practitioners in the space is to meet that challenge and to be able to customize an apprenticeship program to your needs so I'm sure the college made out on your contributions. You did and certainly your apprentices would my last question to you Debbie is, if you had to sort of had a group, a room full of employers, what sort of recommendations would you make to either employers or other community based partners who are just starting out. In the cyber employers or employers in general. Any employer starting an apprenticeship program I'd love it if you lean towards it and cyberspace but you know any employer who's getting ready to get involved in this because we have employers from all over the occupational and industry spectrum. So the one thing that I'm consistently, I repeat myself. All the time is when you're looking into these programs, especially if you're going to start with the youth programs. Do not overlook your title one schools and your underserved populations because, especially in it they they tend to lean towards wanting the cream of the crop, thinking that they need to go into the magnet schools or the charter schools, but within the walls of these underserved schools are students that have a lot of potential who just need those doors of opportunity to open for them. So that is the one thing that I'm consistently repeating over and over and over. Do not overlook them, you need. You need students from each of those categories to balance out your program. Many times I tell employers, you know, at minimum it should reflect the demographics of your community, your apprentices. And, you know, look, it's, it's, you know, there's, there is oftentimes where people say, oh, we want to go to the, you know, the magnets or the gifted talented programs when there's talent right in front of them from a lot of other places. I will tell you, though, from an employer point of view to have you leading with that is really important, right, because many people are trying to figure that out but you as an employer saying, look, we want to make sure everybody in our community has access and opportunity to enter apprenticeships and certainly it and cyber probably male dominated for the most part anyway probably racially dominated by whites versus others and actually the data would tell us that so. So good for you that gets you a lot of bonuses, many different ways so thank you Debbie I'm probably going to come back to you so don't go anywhere thank you very much. I think that we led with cyber security. Alright, who do I have next, going to ask similar questions to Don Drake, HMGI Charleston. Hello and good afternoon everyone. Hi, where are you I see everybody on my screen but. Oh, there you are. Hey, hey, how are you today. You're fine thank you. Good. Tell us a little bit about your company. We're a 32 year old company or restaurant in a real estate holding company, mostly in the South Carolina area. Are you in the Charleston region or all over. We are we're in the Charleston region. So tell us a little bit about now my last visit to Charleston happened to visit another number of culinary apprentices it's my favorite thing to do when I'm on the road. Tell us a little bit about why you entered into this apprenticeship we know the hospitality tourism industry is a big thing particularly in the Charleston region. I'm assuming that's what drove some of this but tell us a little bit about why you got involved in this apprenticeship work. We've been involved with apprenticeship programs now for roughly about 30 years. And having, you know, previous experience with the larger corner schools like you know, CIA Johnson Wales and, you know, excited those schools court on blue and New England so we've been have good practice with the apprenticeship programs. Three of our former employees are actually chef instructors down at Trident, and we have to chef instructors the local high schools. So, we've got a really good feedback when Mitchell approached me about this new program. We're really excited about it. Everybody else were experienced, you know, labor shortage and you know, the last visit Charleston you're well aware of the numerous restaurants and open consistently in Charleston area so labor pool was pretty tight. But it was pretty easy. It was pretty easy fit for us having you know, many, many years of experience with the other apprenticeship programs were involved with. And are they. I'm sorry. The apprenticeship programs front of the house back of the house chef and cooking are there other occupations or, or where have you settled in on your occupation mostly there in, you know, and let's say probably the majority of probably 85% are in the back of the house the other 15% are in the front of the house. But in our apprenticeship programs we rotate. You know when we get when we when we're approached by the students or we approach the students that you know they're assigned a mentor, and then the mentor takes them through their particular area that they specialize in and then we hand them off to another mentor. You know street communicate see what kind of progress they are, and then always switch them on but it's, it seems to work out well for us, you know, the apprenticeship program we are but by the time they'll leave us even though if you're in front of the house or back to house, you spend time in all areas. Right. Right. So, how many, you know for for the Trident program, and I realize that you know in your business, particularly if you're have many properties and many, many locations, you need to have a number of people coming in to train and you work with some of the colleges or post secondary institutions on this. So when, when you first started talking to Mitchell about bringing high school students in. Did it make you gasp, did it make you stop and think were you worried about alcohol on premise where you're worried about kids showing up, or, or what what what was I can't say that I was worried about all the above. For sure, especially when you know that like the first ground we got, you know they're really young, you know someone were 15 to 17. And you know you were, you know, have children of myself my own and I'm like, oh, because you know restaurant can be, you know, it can be a, you know, it's a really fast paced movement environment. There is all the stuff you mentioned, you know, involved with this atmosphere. And so, I'm pretty protective of them. I really really get before we start any kind of communications, I sit down with the parents and the kids. And then we talk about the job, what's expected of them, how this is going to work transportation school work, all the above, and then we let it we let it roll for a while and then we sit down again with them, make sure that you know they're keeping up on their grades. You know, everything's going well at home, along and on and on the work front. And that is a really smart thing to do your sort of helping, helping set the expectations and the guidance for those young people to follow up because they'll they'll need that. Yeah, I think I'm really great with it. It's really really important, especially with the younger kids that we get the parents involved with it. We take this thing as a whole but it's just seen phenomenal results with the younger guys mean they're just they want to learn they want to learn and like chair was the other room. They're like a sponge they suck up any information you send to them. And then the parents relate to you know they're trying different stuff at home and they're cooking for their parents are cooking for you know company want to come over so it's been real exciting not only us but to see the parents as parents to see the kids grow in the field already so quickly too. So, so your concerns that you had initially, pretty much have gone away because of some of the experiences if you've had and some of the systems that you set up so you're not hesitant anymore about bringing in 16 year old for example. Oh no not anymore. Well, we do limit now we do limit the time frames that they do they can work and they do work. You know we stick to most of the time you know if depending upon the grades you know the easy work and weekends. And you know and reason with most time to work turn it. You know when it first begin to work on in the daytime hours, you know under, because we have more of an older crowd in the daytime in all of us are you know, 3040 50 so they have a lot of you know multiple parents around. And so we keep a good eye and watch them until we feel comfortable with them. And then you know they make some progression and then we switch them a little bit more to more different areas. So this question may be better for Ron or David or or some of the others are done but any concerns about liability on your end you're taking this responsibility. I'm sure you had to sign something. You know, you have meat slicers probably have hot stoves any concerns about liability that you had. And if so how'd you address it. So first we always, you know, stress safety in the kitchen and then you know, when it comes to the differences. You know any kind of workman's conference stuff is covered by the college. And so it's under the contract you know they sign with those guys, which you know take some of, you know, some of the liability off of us, but we always you know stress, you know, a safe environment, but I don't really have any concerns because everybody practices good you know work practices, you know, in the kitchens, because you know, again, you know, it's, we try to keep everybody in safety level so it's been working out well. I don't have any concerns. That's great. And can you estimate of, well I had a CEO in Switzerland's apprenticeship program say to me look if they apprentice for me that's great. If they go on to one of my competitors that's fine it's good for the industry. And if they leave me and go back to college that's fine because it's good for the country. How do you feel about hiring the these folks stay with you after they go do they spread their wings and go on for other jobs tell us a little bit about what happens at the conclusion of an apprenticeship. I do, especially the ones that come from, you know, the calling shows directly. I'll find out if you can get them in their last quarter of their education, and then you go into your apprenticeship program. Usually we have probably 100% retention rate. It's an easy stay with us for you know probably two or three years. A lot of a lot of them have a, you know, career, you know, stay with us, you know, for the, for as long as they, you know, until I got out of college. But, you know, always, always stress, you know, being you know I did my apprenticeship myself, you know years years ago. You know, I encourage everybody to you know to come in, learn as much as you can, and then go on in your field and learn from the next guy you think is you know who can. You know somebody you know I try to learn on the best if you can and go to the next chef and learn the best you can because you know, we get an opportunity to open your own place. We only get one crack out of it go hey mom dad can you lend me some money to open our own restaurant, you know, usually only get one, you need one to be successful so we have a, you know an excellent track record the people who graduated from our apprenticeship program and we've left, you know, our restaurant group are, you know they have their own restaurants some of them have you know corporations themselves multiple restaurant so whatever doing you know and with the help of Mitchell and his crew has been really really successful. You know, I think we've contributed to field you know where they, I think when you leave Magnolia is our group. I think you can work at any restaurant in the country. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's some serious restaurant business down your way. All right, and lastly, before I go to Ro, Roana is what recommendations or advice to have for anybody in hospitality. We're really any employers who are just starting out on this we're working with sites all over the country and the hardest thing for many of them is to get started so what sort of recommendations or thoughts to have. Like in the speaker for myself is you know you want to tweak your program to fit your needs is there's not one set program. A to set parameters and then you tweak yours to fit whatever your needs are whatever your establishment is what type of food you're doing, but it works out well but you know what we've doing now we're working on is, just like somebody mentioned before you know the underserved or the minority community is that we have a lot of the restaurant workers who realize that you know they never really graduated from from high school you know they. The reason to error their way so now they're they want to want to get a certificate they want to get their education so we're really working on that program now where we're putting through our apprenticeship program. They want to get their education so at least they're getting a GD they're coming out with a working certificate so they're feeling a lot better by themselves and we're giving a reason to further pursue their career, because you know it's hard to pay the, you know it's hard to pay your rent and your bills, you know, a minimum wage so we try to give them a, you know, a way out and with that program, you know, you guys out there thinking about it. It's such a win win situation for your local community, the people that you serve, they can come out you know it with a, with a high school education with a journeyman certificate and with a college education pay for without owning any college debt student debt. It's, you know, it's a win for everybody, how they encourage you guys to get involved and get started, you know, choose you can. Great. I'm going to edit this cut that out make a commercial out of it that you're absolutely right no college debt. And to me these programs are not second hand they're not alternatives to college there. Everything in my view is equal to the preparation that two or four years can give you in the, in the workplace in the marketplace so. Very much so. Yep. So, Don, thanks so much. Stick around we may come back to you. I got a bunch of questions for all of you I'm sure they're going to give me the hook to not too soon, but Rowan am I pronouncing that right Rowanna pain with HCA health care. Yeah, it's Rowanna Rowanna. I've seen you before we may have had this conversation before. Anyway, thanks for joining us Rowanna tell us a little bit about HCA health care if you would. Well, we are tried at medical center here in Charleston, South Carolina, which is a subsidiary of HCA. We are about a 300 bed hospital. We are in acute care trauma hospital, and we have had apprentices with us now for five years. So, we started out, Mitch and I were friends away from work, and he approached me away from work just socially chatting and telling me about the program and asked if we might be interested in having youth apprentices in our patient care tech program. I said, sounds good. I'm going to run it by HR got to talk to the CNO, you know, do the C suite and make sure everybody is happy with what the idea and Mitch and I pitched it, and they said go for it, and the rest is history. So the moral is never go out to dinner with Mitch because he's going to hit you up for apprentices. We talk about everything. And it was a good segue. You know, Mitch did the right thing and laid some creativity and I'm not sure but I believe we are the first hospital in the Charleston area to use the patient care tech apprentices, and they've repranded us to pre nursing apprentices now instead of patient care tech. And the other hospitals have since jumped on board as well. Wow. That's yeah I've seen that happen in communities. You know, you can't get the upper edge on the competition because you all are are challenging you're all struggling for the same talent, right in the same labor shed so. So it's tough. So, you know you've been doing this for five years you've obviously had some apprentices that have completed their work with you. And if you look back on the last five years. How is that worked out have they stayed to continue to work with you and they advanced on the college have they dropped out and gone to see Don and work in a restaurant what what sort of reflections do you have now at the last five years. We've seen the gamut. We've seen some that have started and have just flat out said this isn't my cup of tea and have left the program. We've seen some of those from a scholastic standpoint that could not keep the grades up to make the program work. We had others where parents were pushing them through the program and they did not want it and finally spoke up. And then we've had the opposite end of the spectrum where we have had the folks go through, go through the program completed go on the nursing school and come to work with us so that creates a nice pipeline. The advantage to us in health care is if we can get them as the high school kids that are truly interested in health care. Then their enthusiasm and willingness to work hard to become a better caregiver go up. So we get a better product when they finish. They go through with the apprenticeship program. They go into the nursing program. They stay with us working as patient care tax in the hospital. Then they come to us as graduate nurses. And so their orientation and onboarding process at that point becomes a little quicker, because they already know the system, and they start at a little bit of a higher salary than somebody with no experience coming in as registered nurse. So we sort of made the same point that Debbie made earlier, which is, you know, growing your own, or, you know, spending time and investing in these workers, you know, you really get to customize it to your needs right to what the values are of HCA health care, right. You know, people talk about buying and building a workforce, right, you can go out on the market put out an ad and buy a worker, right, or you can build a workforce through things like apprenticeships which it sounds like, you know, both you and Debbie were sort of talking about how that works. So, so here we have a major health care facility, and we have 16 year olds and 17 year olds working in there and around patients isn't that dangerous, dangerous isn't that risky, don't, you know, do people. I mean, these are not candy stripers, right. These are people who are working and getting paid, but they're young how do you trust them in a hospital environment process starts when they complete their applications with Trident tech. Trident tech does a fantastic job screening and eliminating those that are not meeting the criteria or not completing applications, and then they send them over to us, and we review them, and then we interview them. We put them through a hiring interview just like I would any other employee, and we selectively pick who we're looking for, and we tend to not wane towards the 16 year olds we're looking for somebody that's a little bit more mature, and believe it or not there's a difference between a 16 year old and a 17 year old, and we tend to pick rising seniors into the program because of that maturity level. Now, we also make sure that they understand that they're not going to get to work in specific areas within the hospital for a disability standpoint. We only allow our apprentices to work in the med surge adult units, so they can't work with women's they can't work with children they can't work in the ED or behavioral health, and that's a safety process for them, as well as for the patients. They also complete a CNA or certified nursing assistant curriculum before they even get to set foot in the hospital and start orientation with us. So that sets these kids up a leg above a lot of other people that apply for patient care tech positions, because they're working with a solid knowledge base already that we're just going to continue to build on. So that helps cut down on our liability. The other thing that cuts down on our liability is we lay expectations before them, just as the other folks have said, they've got to keep their expectations up. You may wind up having to give up going to the problem, because you're having to work on a weekend to get your hours in for us. They cannot work past 11 o'clock, because they're not adults yet. And so we're concerned about their safety as well. And some of these kids are still on driver's permits. So we have to be very mindful about how they're getting to and from work. So we do take all of that very seriously. So what I hear you saying is, and this, you know, this happens in manufacturing to where there's a lot of dangerous equipment, you're managing your apprenticeship system right certain things you can do certain things you can't do, but those expectations and the way to manage that. You're not going to get in trouble because you have sort of a guide and outline to what they can and can't do right. So that's fabulous. So, I'm running short on time so I'm going to move on but but how would you talk to. So healthcare is a really interesting field for apprenticeships right healthcare has always had practicums and clinicals and things like that but rarely had apprenticeships that apprenticeship like things for nurses or, you know, physical therapists or whatever but but what advice would you have for the healthcare industry which is looking more and more apprenticeship all over the country. A few are doing youth apprenticeship. You're definitely a trailblazer here but what what advice would you have for any of those employers employer sorry hosp healthcare systems that are interested in apprenticeship for youth. The first thing you have to do is make sure that you've got the support of your C suite, your upper level management. To understand that these kids are going through a hiring process a little bit differently than a regular employee, and they have to understand that we have when they're accepted into the program. All we're doing is the cursory work to make sure that the background check is okay that their issues with their drug and screen testing and all of that stuff is the way that it should be. Once we get them hired, we've got to make sure that there's a well defined orientation process with one person coordinating the entire process that follows up with them to make sure that they're meeting their hours the way that they should be that they're meeting their check off list for skill sets that they're keeping up with what Trident needs to know in regards of the things that they're doing taking care of the patients they have a app that they're typing in what they're doing to care for the patients. And that has got to be all kept up and we keep them on orientation a whole lot longer than we would somebody that is coming in as an adult into the role so we keep them from August all the way through till December on orientation before we give them a little bit more autonomy. So you've got to just keep a close watch on them and be very supportive and communication is the key. Great. So I have one more question for I'm not going to let you off though quite yet so, by the way audience feel free to ask questions or chat them or actually we have a Google sheet in which you can send your questions on the Q&A tab or link but right on what. So there's a question from Jill here that says, besides the fact that she says you all are so impressive. How did you navigate the scheduling process for the related instruction how did you make sure that they got off to go to school that they were finishing their high school classes that they were going over to try to take classes. It must be one heck of a matrix you did but how did you figure out the timing and scheduling of students. That was easy. I did truly out of out of everything that was the easiest part because try to attack tracks their grades for us. Then as they finish their coursework, I get their grades and anybody that does not pass a course, then it becomes my decision through the hospital to determine whether or not we're going to keep them on through the program. Are we going to wash them out of the program and let them stay on as a patient care tech. So that piece was fairly easy and what I do is sit down with the kids when they start and they tell me what times that they can work. And I build their schedule based on what they tell me that they can work and some of these kids choose to work. A 12 of our shift on a Saturday and maybe an eight hour shift on a Sunday, or they'll work for five hours after school in the afternoon and we've got the support of our managers on the med surge units that allow these guys to come in and work those type of hours while they're on orientation. And once they come off orientation in January, then it becomes the manager's responsibility to manage their schedules with them and they're meant to meet the expectations of what's required of the patient care tax on those floors. Okay, that's great. That's great. And Debbie and Don do you have scheduling problems I mean particularly in the restaurant business you guys probably have scheduling that changes every week or two. Just real quick because I need to get to Don first. And then David but Don any scheduling problems in your industry. For me. No, not, not really. We've got you know, I don't really have any schedule problems with them you know like everybody else. The restaurants are busy during the holiday seasons. And you know, you take that a consideration a bit because you know, you know everybody wants to have Christmas off or it wants to have Thanksgiving off Easter all the stuff like that. If anything that's probably the only time really have scheduled issues would be during the holiday season. And then we just deal with that you know, as best we can. And Debbie how about you you're, you're pretty I assume you're mostly a nine to five operations scheduling an issue with you. We're mostly nine to five so hours are and scheduling is really not an issue for us. Okay, great, great. Yeah, hospitals, you know 24 hour operations are a little bit more challenging. Let's talk to Don and then I will wrap up with David and Don Smith with who are you Hendrick auto is that who you're with Don tell us about that. I'm Don Smith with his automotive group I'm director of community relations and then the guy to go out and hire the apprentices. All right, so how big is your organization you have multiple sites and dealerships and all that are just one central how big are you and how many apprentices do you take on a year. Well basically we have nine stores a body shop in a in a facility business office Ian Charleston, and we have 105 stores nationwide. So, why, I mean I think I know the answer to this but I don't know why how and why did you guys get into apprenticeships it's a, I mean it's a terrific industry because there's, it's always changing there's new things people need to learn, whether it's sales or finance or body shop or, or mechanical so tell us a little bit about why you got involved and where do you focus your apprentices on. Okay, basically, I was in the GM of the bubble store here in town for 20 years now found out that we had to go out and recruit technicians. And basically, after a couple years I realized we have to grow technicians. So when the youth apprentice program came about. We just signed up, because we say we got to grow apprentices so the best way to get them is out of high school and right into the dealerships. So, before then, we was in the high schools doing a lot of volunteer work so we started talking about the youth apprentice programs and get people interested in being technicians, but most people who are technicians with a dirty job they didn't, they never been a NASCAR and seeing how clean the floors are and the settings are and everything in the automobile business going to computer computer driven so they didn't know that. So we saw that the whole time was in high schools. Yeah, it is it is so far different than it was 10 years ago or even five years ago. So what again it can be a dangerous location and auto body shop if you don't know what you're doing how do you manage risk and liability and where do you focus your time with the students is it on mechanical work or other sorts of occupations. Basically, we make sure we we we've had a mistake when we started in four years ago. I was recruiting everybody I could could anybody wanted to be a technician. I say just sign them up to be a youth apprentice technician. So the first year I fell on my face because we get in 10th and lem freighters ahead. No clue about it. And then we found out some 10th and lem freighters and hit driver's license so they couldn't drive apart. Right, you know so after the after that fall on my face for a while. We kind of focus on serious 11th graders who was serious of being a technician. And I talked to their parents, I recruited them I recruited their parents and make sure that they want to be apprentices, and then for 12th graders when they graduated. And then I recruited them because they got driver's license. They don't have to worry about the prongs they didn't have to worry about football games baseball game basketball game. They out of school so we will. Now we mostly 12th graders ready graduate. I love hearing good things you've done but also hear about mistakes that are made because I think that's how a lot of people can learn and there's a lot of pressure just to throw students, students into jobs. It's a little bit more specific it's not on the list that I have but but I'm running into this all the time so you have nine stores do you have apprentices at all stores. We have apprentice in all stores but Volvo and Volvo get their apprentices from the Volvo plant. Okay, they run their printers to the plant. So one of the really important things about apprenticeships is that the site location has a supervisor mentor has somebody who gets it who can not only supervise the student make sure things are safe. Also provides support and encouragement is needed. How do you spread that across nine shops. I mean that's not the easiest thing to say okay everybody we need to get you all on the same page with this apprenticeship work because you might have somebody who's been around for 40 years who's probably bothered with some kid or other people who don't quite understand what you're doing or are in the same position how do you deal with with spreading that culture across online online sites we get that a lot. Okay, one thing, every store looking for techniques means a technician shortest like everybody else have a shorter. Another thing that if you live in Somerville or North Charleston of Goose Creek, you work in the North Charleston area, because you cannot get to West Ashley from Somerville in the morning to get the work. Now found that out by mistakes. You live in Mount Pleasant or johns Island James Island West Ashley, then you work on the Savannah highway stores. So that's how we kind of focus it, but everybody want me, like our Toyota store right off street and tech, try to take to your store they do the best job out to your store does the best job and training youth apprentice, and they want all of them just like I want all the youth apprentice to come through try and tech, but you can't have it you got to spread the love to everybody. Great. So, what do you guys are new car dealers for the most part. What we said we knew car dealers when we sell new and new cars new and used okay so there's there's plenty of work to go around. Okay. So what recommendations would you have whether it's the automotive industry or anybody on that supply chain or really just any employer. When you start out what would you tell them to avoid in the first year what would you tell them to focus on in the first year. It's going to be different and restaurants and hospitals and in the automobile business because like I say, I focus on 12 graders ready graduate because I know these serious, and then I still talk to all the parents. You know, because I got us. I'm selling everybody, because this is career, you know, if you'd be a technician technician stay with you forever. We've got technicians that have been with Kendrick for 35 36 years and one manufacturer. So I sell hard and say this is career. You know you start off this what you got to do you got to go to school. You got to work. Why are you in school you making money you making good money with some of your friends are going to college and they they still living off mom and dad. You know, I have a lot of you know we have 35 youth apprentice that we recruited. We have nine youth apprentice that dropped out of program, but we out of the nine we have five to stay with the dealerships, you know, couple of them became service writers I had one sky does a service writer and he's our number one service writer in town. Um, then the other other four guys are just lube and tech guys, they just change will rotate tires, and that's good because that's what we need. And then a couple, couple people that we had to fire, because they wasn't doing the right thing, like any other employee. That's probably like any other employee, you know and they said, you know the danger is somebody says oh my print I had to fire an apprentice I'm done with them while you do that with your other employees to exactly. Absolutely. Well Don Smith with Kendrick auto thanks so much in the interest of time I'm going to move I say the best till last David Brown, sorry to make your way but I'm really interested to hear about key on tech and a little bit about your apprenticeship programs tell me about your company if you could. Well thanks for setting a high expectation. Eric, thanks for hosting us to this is a good discussion. So I'm with Keon North America, we're part of the Keon group, which is a company that's headquartered in Germany, worldwide about 38,000 employees. This is the second largest company in the world manufacturing material handling equipment so you think forklifts pallet jacks reach trucks is, and we also have a very large business and what we call supply chain solutions which is automation sorting so we do everything that can, if you think about like an Amazon warehouse, which everybody's ordering from these days, we can supply all the hardware software and equipment to make that building run. So that's where our company does and in Somerville, which is a suburb of Charleston is our North American headquarters. We have about 300 employees in North America right now probably going to be 500 within the next year and a half to two years. And how did you get engaged with apprenticeship did it. Well, you know, Eric, I've been in the company for five years, and I came from another very large German manufacturing company that had an adult apprenticeship program or regular sort of true apprenticeship program where we grew our own folks to become mechatronics technicians, mechanics electricians, etc. So I was familiar with the concept from that experience. And then, and also that company that I was previously with had a very tight relationship with Trident Tech. So shout out to Mitch and Rob Wiggins and those guys over there. I was in Keyon in 2016. I saw the opportunity, not only to tap into the youth apprenticeship program from a labor supply standpoint, but just as much as a community outreach program. So it is sort of it's two ways. Number one, it helps the company. But number two, it's helping to support education in the community. So, so we started back in late 17. So we've had about four years of experience. We've had some ups and downs, but overall it's been a very good experience for us. And the, and let's see here, Don, I know you have a meeting coming up. So when you do have to go just sign off. Thank you very much for your time. So, so David, what, what are you focusing? How many do you take a year and what are you focusing them on? We usually take maybe two a year. We're not a huge company. So in most of those folks work in our manufacturing processes. We do have one gentleman who I think was on the previous panel who came in with a clear desire to go to four year ME type degree. So we got him on board and he is completed his apprenticeship and will begin finishing his last two years for a mechanical engineering degree at the Citadel here in South Carolina, beginning next year. He'll end up hopefully becoming one of our star mechanical engineers that supports our manufacturing operation. And in manufacturing, any liability issues for you guys or do you just manage it away from hazardous work? We do a, well, first of all, you have to be 18 to operate a forklift. We make forklifts. So that's kind of a dichotomy for us. So we also like I think Don or someone else mentioned we try to steer more towards the folks that are seniors or even post grads, maybe just graduating from high school, so they may already be 18. But we appreciate Trident Tech providing the liability insurance for us. We have had one case of a youth apprentice that engaged in some, let's say, I guess you could call it horse play, which ended up costing him his job because it was a safety incident. Those things happen, you know, and it could be a 38 year old kid doing it or it could be a 38 year old person doing it. Right, really important lessons in the reality of the workplace I might add, which is the other byproduct of apprenticeship right it's not just to figure out the skills and the occupation but how to get to work on time, how to get along with people and how not to horse play. Absolutely. So do you have any trouble with your apprentices getting to the jobs or transportation issues we got a lot of questions about that. Or do they make it okay. I always know they all make it, you know, obviously we have attendance standards that are in place and in one thing that Trident Tech does which I would commend to other parts of the country is they have. Last year did not have but in typical years they have like a recruiting event on a weekend in February where there's like a job fair on this so in the students attend with their parents. At that point they get to go around and see different companies and meet with reps from the companies and we get to talk not just with the students but with the parents to find out, you know, is this student going to be able to make it are they reliable can they get. Do they have transportation, etc. So to me that's one of the greatest value as the Trident gives us here in Charleston. Did you, we're going to have to wrap up in a minute or two I don't know they're probably going to give me the hook yep I got to wrap it up, but real quick, if I could, David. Did you have to sell it up the chain to your leadership, or are you the leadership who had to sell it down the chain to the onsite supervisors online supervisors. I had to sell it whatsoever, because the people that I partner with that are my peers, it also worked in other companies that had engaged with apprenticeship so in our company has a lot of new leaders in it, a new meaning, relatively short company. I also saw this is a great opportunity to try to mimic some things that we've seen from our previous lives. So it was great. It is great. It is great. And, you know, there are a lot of foreign companies, Switzerland, Germany, etc, who are familiar with apprenticeship so it's not a big leap with those companies as well. I'm going to have to sign off but Debbie I got one quick question for you because I think it's a good one. When you. I'll get back but Debbie did you get when you had to talk to an international cyber audience, were they saying youth apprenticeships are you nuts. Did you get any of that or were they fairly well accepting of it. surprisingly they were very well accepting of it. There was a lot of questions coming from other employers concerning that and yeah they were very receptive of it. That's great. That's great. So I guess security clearances will become a very important thing for their future and they better watch what they do so they don't blow their security clearance. Exactly. Great. And David, you know, I just wanted to talk about, you know, the, you know, college college colleges to call we all get you gave a great example of a young man who came to the apprenticeship program that went on to be a mechanical engineer is trying to become one. Do you feel that any of the students feel like they're less than college material or do they do you think they're getting they feel they're getting an advantage over college. Do they see it as a second rate program do you think or they see it as a top rate program. Absolutely. I don't think people see it. I think the people that are interested in working in a company like mine are realizing that you know you go to try to detect for free or nearly free pay for. And then you finish your apprenticeship and if you want to hang on you can make a very, very nice income at a young age and have zero college debt. I think that's a real calling card for folks these days. I would agree with that. And I'm going to get the hook I probably should have hooked off about two mid to three minutes ago but I want to thank you all for joining me. Debbie with cyber Don with HM GI Charleston. Who else everybody else Don Smith with Hendrick David Brown with Keon. I'm sure I forgot Rona with HCA healthcare anyway. Thank you all. You guys got an incredible employee employer culture down in the Charleston region I know in a large measure. That's to the foundation that our friends at Trident has laid and some of the key partners they have including employers so I want to thank you for your time I do this nationally. I have to tell you I'm always so impressed with the folks in South Carolina and Charleston. With that, I'll sign off thank you sorry I ran over and let's continue on to the next session. Take care. Thanks Eric. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone I'm Shelton doll I'm a program associate with the pie team at the Center on Education Labor in New America. Many thanks for our amazing employer panelists for sharing their experiences and insights with us into our moderator Eric sounds now. Join us at 235 Eastern time for our next panel creating seamless credentials and careers, aligning K through 12 and higher education system through youth apprenticeship, moderated by Mimi Lufkin from the National Alliance for partnerships and equity. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I'm Mimi Lufkin CEO America at the National Alliance for partnerships and equity and I have the great pleasure of getting to facilitate or moderate today's panel. And I'm mostly interested in hearing from the panelists myself so it's my intention here to get on to the Q&A part of this as quickly as possible. But before we begin what I'd like to do is to go ahead and have each of our panelists introduce themselves if they would where they are from the role they play in the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program. And maybe they could tell us one thing in one sentence that you love the most about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. All right, so I'm going to start with Sonya. Why don't we start with you. Good afternoon. I'm Sonya Addison Stewart and I'm the career and technical education director for Berkeley County School District. And I work with the apprenticeship program, as far as encouraging students to participate and also, you know, creating a seamless pathway between our programs and opportunities that the students have in the youth apprenticeship program. And you said one thing I love about the apprenticeship program. One thing I love about it is that, you know, I was on a panel earlier and I've seen the panels of the students to participate in the apprenticeship program is just the growth and development that I see in these students. And how they have just grasped the skills that our employers are desperately saying that they need to see and so to see these students actually practicing and practicing effective communication and understanding those work and life skills is gratifying to me. Thank you Sonya. Mark, how about you. My name is Mark Blacklock. I work for Dorchester School District to the career and technology coordinator. And like Miss Stewart I work with recruiting kids for the youth apprenticeship program. And I think the biggest thing for me is just the quite honestly the surprise that a lot of kids have of how great the program is. You know, even their parents and the opportunity they're provided. And then as it transitions into the program, just all the different skill sets that they learn soft skills, technical skills, and how prepared they are once they complete the program for direct employment. And along with all the, you know, benefits of, you know, getting potentially some college paid for and some, you know, work experience and different things. I think, overall, it's just a great opportunity and I just enjoy working with it in the students. Thanks Mark. Well jump to Robert next. Hello everyone, my name is Robert Elliott and I'm the Dean of manufacturing and maintenance at Trident Technical College. Within my division, as far as apprenticeships are concerned, I have industrial mechanics, air conditioning, refrigeration welding automotive technology and machine tool technology so a good number of apprenticeships within my division. And one, I would say one thing that I really enjoy about just being involved in this program is just providing that exposure and opportunity to students that wouldn't, wouldn't ordinarily have this opportunity. A lot of students aren't four year college bound, and to be able to give these students these skills to go into the workforce. I think it's a great, it's awesome program. Thanks Robert. Thanks. Let's jump to Richard. Good afternoon I'm rich board and executive director of CTE with Charleston County School District. You know, they stole my thunder a little bit I love all those things about the apprenticeship opportunities we give our kids and watching them succeed. I think my favorite part about apprenticeships is the recognition ceremony at the end of the year. When you see the students go up on the stage, their families are there, their business partners are there, try to technical colleges there, and it really feels like, like a family event and we're all part of the same team to see young adults succeed, and whatever that looks like. You know, many of these students go into the workforce but many go to the two year schools, technical schools, and, and, and some go to four year schools as well. So there are multiple exit ramps on this highway. But by far, I mean that recognition award ceremony is is fantastic and that's my favorite thing about the apprenticeship building. Great thanks Richard. And Trisha. Hi, I'm Trisha we on the director of school counseling at King Bay High School. And so, you guys took everything I was going to say but my favorite part truly is seeing the excitement on the kids faces and the parents faces, especially when they come in in the summer and they know they're now going to be a use apprentice and working on that schedule and, and just talking about you know their career goal and how it's going to match and just seeing that piece of it. And that's probably the most exciting part. Great. Thanks Trisha. Well, what I love the best is the fact that that all of you talked about the fact that it's really about the transformation that happens for your students and that's the focus of your efforts and, and I know that today's presentation or the panel title for today is creating seamless pathways to credentials and aligning K12 and higher education systems through youth apprenticeship. So I have some questions I want to talk to you about a variety of groups of people who are impacted by this work and how, how you play a role in either a leadership role in that or a facilitator of those of those relationships. And the impact that that work has on your own institution. And also, you know, whether it's students, parents, faculty, even systems within your institution. So I'm going to start Robert with you first. I'd like to think about the youth apprenticeship program as though it's a three-legged stool and that there are there are three partners in this work. Certainly the high school districts that you work with on Friday Tech is a very is really, you know, the center of that three-legged school and of course the employers that you're working with as well. What I want to know is how do you balance and manage the relationships between your high school partners, your employer partners, and how has this work been a benefit to the college and what challenges has it brought. And how have you overcome those challenges. So that's about three or four questions all loaded in there, but I'm hoping that you can think about that holistically and approach the answers to some of those as we go along. Okay. Well, first, it begins with effective communication. What effect effective communication between the districts, the college and the employers, you know this program wouldn't be would not have been as as success as it is. From an, from an educator point of view. Basically, the two supporting offices that's that that basically I report to they assist us from the school district side, and then from the employer side. So we go, they're like the hub in the wheel for for us. Any questions I may have, or any communication from the industry comes through the office of school through the office of apprenticeships and business partnerships for industry, and then for the districts is for the school and community initiatives office. So as the educator side, you know they communicate a lot with us about what the needs are for its industry, and as well as the districts. And that's, that's the balance. I think that works between everyone, you know that effective communication, and you said three legged stool and you said three legged stool to success. What are some of the challenges that you've experienced and and how you know how have you overcome those. Well, some of the challenges in the beginning was scheduling, trying to schedule the students, high school schedules, along with the college schedules. This has been ironed out and, and, and pretty much flows very smoothly right now. In the beginning that's where it was, but other than that there's really, it's not much of a challenge out there for any student looking to get into this program, and you spoke about benefits. I think the greatest benefit is that the college has the opportunity to work closer with the school districts and industry partners, all all of us working closely together to benefit these students to impact our community. I feel before the apprenticeship program. There was a little disconnect between, I think the technical studies and some of the school districts. On the technical side we already had a relationship with our industry partners, but didn't really have that strong partnership with the schools, the school districts. And now that we started the apprenticeship. It's like we're all basically communicating together, coming up with new initiatives, new programs to get these students out there, getting them exposed to to different career sets that that are available. And you said overcome challenges. That was the last one I believe. Um, basically I said it was, it was just scheduling. And I think we have that pretty much down now so now it's just the program just runs pretty much seamlessly and smoothly. That's great. Great. Thanks Robert. Um, Richard, I'm going to jump to you next. I want, I want to sort of play off to something that Robert mentioned, which was how the startup of this. The youth apprenticeship work has impact. It sounds like it's impacted college in terms of growing new programs and new initiatives and sort of the spin off that have occurred from that work. I'm curious how becoming a partner in in the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program has impacted even systems in your district or programs as well. And has the experience of doing this work caused you to look differently at the way you operate other CTE programs in the district. What what's sort of been the spillover of the this effort. Well, it has significantly impacted the systems. I think regionally and specifically also in Charleston County School District as well. As you can imagine the youth apprenticeship model or that program is, you can say the pinnacle of what work based learning experiences can be. You know, if you look at the continuum of career awareness when the kids start an elementary school, maybe they have guest speakers or a job shadowing event. Maybe some career fairs even elementary into middle school summer career camps is as popular with kids get from career awareness to exploration, and then finally in high school we look at career preparation. There are some CTE classes, there are some clinical experiences, internships, whether they're during the school or summer, or of course, apprenticeships like the apprenticeship model that we have. It really gave us a mindset as to we're going to begin this whole process with the end in mind. So we wanted a student to participate in youth apprenticeship. What does that look like as the child articulates from kindergarten, all the way through high school and even articulate to technical school as well. And to do that we had to provide access and opportunity, and I'll go back to that as many times as I can. And I know Robert talked a little bit about that is, do all the students have access to these high impact career clusters across all of, you know, not just manufacturing, but health science and STEM, you know, and transportation and logistics and there's many more, you know, but it starts with, can kids access those opportunities, and do they have that opportunity to take that coursework and to participate. So really how does we think or just actually look in the mirror and say, what are we doing and how can we do it differently and more effectively. Then when we notice that we can do it better than we put we implemented a whole bunch of changes in the district that I believe are better for, you know, for the betterment of students for their families and for the community, like our career centers, like CTE completer programs, certification programs that align with those apprenticeships. So it really changed a lot about what career readiness, college readiness or like I just like to say future readiness looks like for all of our students, but some all of our students have a future ready to go college or career, you know, they're all going to get to that point of, I got to get a job, I have to earn a living, you know, so how do we get that to that point, and whatever that looks like. So that would really help us change not just these high impact clusters, but all of our career buses throughout Charleston County. Sounds like it's been more than just a spillover it sounds like it's really shifted and changed the way that you're looking at career and technical education and the, and career development. For you to be talking about work with, you know, kindergarten K through 20. You know, that's, that's a different mindset about how these kinds of programs can have that impact. I'm going to jump next to Sonya and ask Sonya. One of these programs impacted your, your students. What are the benefits of students experience and, and how also have has those benefits affected their families. Have you seen things like improved academic performance persistence graduation transition to post secondary education employment way during anything on that spectrum. You know, we talked, we've talked a little bit about the partnership impact. We've talked about how this work has impacted systems. In your perspective, Sonya, how, how is this work impacting your students. I think the youth apprenticeship program is impacting our students because as Rich said is giving them access to opportunities that are in high demand. Sometimes students may have an interest and, you know, just don't have the, the knowledge or the way to get there. But giving them information about the youth apprenticeship program where they could start in high school where they still have a strong support system there to help guide them through that would help lead them to that particular lifelong goal that they may have. I think for our students that participate in the apprenticeship program, definitely a seamless transition. They have so much support within the youth apprenticeship program. Everyone that works in that program really support students and that is key for students to continue on and the students that typically don't have access to certain programs. Or may not participate in certain programs is because they don't have that support. And I think in the youth apprenticeship program, they do have that so they've gained that they've gained access to careers. And we also find out that the skills again I spoke about this earlier, the skills that the students develop that are youth apprenticeship that are youth apprentices are phenomenal. You know, when you hear them speak, when you hear them speak about their growth in regards to like managing their time. These are skills some adults don't really have at this particular time, you know, learning how to communicate working with others as a team. Those are skills that are so very much needed in our students today, and the youth apprenticeship program definitely helps our students to develop those skills. So I think, and all of these things lead to lifelong success to the in their future goals. So it really helps to build a foundation for our students to help propel them to where they need to be. I think I want to become a youth apprentice. Sounds like sounds like great things for anybody. I'm going to jump to mark, you know, we look at this from a systemic perspective and now showing you comments about student impact. Um, Mark, can you tell me a little bit about how being involved in the youth apprenticeship work has impacted your relationships with employers and how have employers affected the quality of your CTE programs. Do they have a, you know, the back and forth about the input and relationship to improving CTE programs at your district. Excuse me. Have employers been involved at all in developing educator skills, learning more about the industry, any kind of professional development opportunities. And of course, how do employers engage with students and support students to ensure their success. So if you think about this, in terms of the employers you engage with what do you think happened or how has this impacted them. Sure. I think, you know, from the onset, it's strengthened our partnerships with our local businesses and industries. No doubt. You have these partnerships that you've already developed district wide school wide, you know, throughout the region. And, you know, when those folks are able to come in, albeit not so much recently due to, you know, our, our pandemic situation but even through a virtual platform and stuff and really start engaging our students early on. Mr. Gordon hit on it perfectly when he mentioned, you know, the K through 12 kind of initiative that we have. We do have your your elementary students really just becoming aware, your middle school students really trying to explore and then at the high school level when when we implement these, these different programs to work based learning, especially the youth apprenticeship program. That's, you know, you're hoping that you've got a student that's been exposed and been interested in a particular pathway for their entire educational career. You've got these business partners that's been around and they've had students that have come through the program. They've learned just as much as we have, as far as you know how to tweak certain things and, you know, how to develop the, you know, the way that they interact with the students but, you know, it's just really exciting to see that kind of grow. And, you know, you mentioned, as far as, you know, professional development not necessarily on a technical kind of official global effort but you do see teachers and programs reaching out to those partners, that especially ones that are new that have come in and and maybe weren't, you know, a business partner that we had, you know, for a long standing relationship but a new partner that joined, because they had you know they were interested in becoming a part of the part of the apprenticeship program and working with our teachers to help kind of cultivate and fine tune some of the skill sets that we teach in our courses. Of course we have our state standards that we're going to hit and that we're going to, you know, model our course after but especially when you talk about regional needs and things that employers are looking for in our region. That's potentially different all across the country and so when they can come into our classrooms and really have a good dialogue and communicate with teachers about what they're looking for when the students get to, you know, graduate or get involved in the youth apprenticeship program or any type of work based learning. That's really powerful because now we've really tapped into what industry needs, and we're trying our best to be able to implement that in our classroom. But when it comes to the employers kind of reinforcing student success, I think, you know, like Mr. Elliott said at the beginning that communication is key from the beginning. If we can have clear communication and expectations, all the way through the program. Now we've, we've at least created that dialogue that if, if a student does start to struggle or has challenges, you know, we have a comfortable dialogue with with our partner, we'll be able to discuss that and vice versa and you know you have great mentorships that kind of come out of this too if a student isn't necessarily involved in an apprenticeship. You know you can have these business partners become mentors for other students in our buildings. You know it just it opens up really again going back to what Mr Gordon said, just that plethora of work based learning that we always try to provide all students no other circumstance no matter what the career pathway is, there's something out there for every student at quite honestly at every grade level. And you know when when you just have that open line of communication and you're building those relationships, you're supporting your students, you know the great things can happen out of that and we've just been very grateful and I guess to some degree very lucky and you know that we've got such great partners and great students in the program. Yeah, I mean you know it's it's a give and take but you know in the end we just want our students to have the best opportunity possible. And we've just been, we, I feel like we've been very successful with that. That's great. I'm sure there's, you know, the benefits of this work is probably as much for you all and your students and the employers benefit from it as well. I would imagine, and mark you can tell me if I'm accurate about this but that I think that providing youth apprentices in some of these companies and and businesses has changed the workplace has changed the relationships and employers are having with young people and I'm, I'm kind of curious as a quick follow up. Is there any pushback from the beginning when the program first started from employers about. I don't want these people in like you know, sort of. Well, I think, you know, there's, again, setting aside the whole pandemic and the obvious concern there. I think a lot of it had to do with, you know, when you when students are going through the process and getting interviewed by our counselors and starting the whole process, soft skills has always come up in every conversation we've ever had with with industry and business partners. You know, are you guys teaching soft skills, do you have a curriculum for that. And yes we do in Dorchester County we use a an online platform microburst to to help with some of our soft skills training. It hasn't been very effective but again it's one of those things where you really need to be able to put it into action. And so when you get on the job and when you're in these programs that the the technical skills they're going to teach our students and some of our students know a lot of the technical skills but they're going to be able to hone those skills on the job. It's those soft skills that we are constantly trying to to push trying to emphasize. And so I think that's the piece that was that was always, you know, across all pathways and clusters and, and industries, you know, everybody wanted to, you know, get the the assurance that we were going through that with our students before they were going out there and and yes I mean, we have that in place. Again, we've had great students that have participated in the program and I think they've really shown that, you know, what we're doing on our side at our level is is everything we can to help prepare them to be successful when they get on the job and and I know that our business partners really appreciate that, you know, like Mr. Richard said, hey showing up to work on time that's a skill set and being able to manage your time that you know as adults we have it quite mastered so to have a student who's at least aware of that, and can really put in those, you know, those positive habits and those positive habits that you know that that that's the first step, once we can get, you know, to work on time and we're behaving on the job the way we should, you know, that's when the learning and the experience can really can really start and kind of kind of blossom so yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that mark. Tricia, I want to have you tell us a little bit about how being involved in the youth apprenticeship work has changed the way you market and recruit students into this program as a as a counselor and a person who works with counselors across the region. I'm wondering whether or not the strategies you've employed to engage students in this work have changed over time or that you're learning new ways to do things. You have some advice for those who are listening today about how, how to do this. And I'm also curious about the issue of parents, parents and student bias about what it means to be in an apprenticeship and frequently many of these manufacturing programs, you know, many of the trade programs have, you know, an image of that needs to be addressed so that people understand how high tech these fields really are now and they're not, they're not your grandfather shop program right. Yeah. Yeah, well, I was going to say I'll start with that last one first. Yeah, it is. It was, I should say was in the beginning, a very hard sell to some parents. Because they do see it as back in the, you know, in the day when Grandpa worked at a factory or and so they they had that picture of what a youth apprentice was. But I think we're fortunate in that we do individual graduation plans and like all the districts have been talking about this seamless transition from elementary middle to high. Working with our kids helping them identify, you know, what their, what their skill sets are and helping them identify potential careers and then when they hit the high schools and are here with us as counselors. We get that individual time with them to be able to talk about their, you know, what their career goals are have their parents and discuss the youth apprentice programs and so they those came about at a perfect time as we were kind of revamping and going back into those, looking at those trades. So it's easy to me as a counselor to work that into our conversations and as long as we can show the parent the connection between what their child wants to do and you know happiness in the future and their career goals and how it's right down the street and they're going to have, you know, a job with an employer in the local community. And they're going to get some of those skills that they need, even before leaving high school. In the beginning it was a hard sell but now we have parents that just come in and that's all they want to talk about. They want to see how the youth apprentice program can be connected to their child's goal. So, you know, I think, and Sonya was in the beginnings of this when we first started them in Berkeley County. And so we really focused hard on training all the school counselors, not just high school, we reached down to middle schools, making sure they understood what they are. So we can take our personal biases out of it, you know, we can take our personal opinion out of it and actually speak about youth apprentice programs from the benefits of the student. And so the counselors all receive training every year. We make sure that's part of our IGP process and what we talk about and then we, you know, try to detect as a great job educating our parents. They do yearly meetings with our parents we push that information out we have parents calling in August to know when is, you know, when is the youth apprentice meeting. So we can go down to try and visit with the employers and hear more about the programs directly from Trident. So do you, would you say that over time the strategies that you've used to do outreach to youth youth in this program, have you used some sort of non traditional resources to get to students and who are in communities as that may not necessarily have access to this program. Access to this effort or may not be as well informed. Do you find out a challenge. Yeah, well, yeah, I open that to everybody if anybody else can address this first but maybe everyone else can think about this a little bit. Yeah, I, we find it a challenge I know in Berkeley County we're such a large county and some of our high schools are so far from try to tech and transportation is an issue but you know we've been working through all of those issues and all those concerns to try to help, you know, get those students there. So I think just, you know, I think we've done. We've just honed in on the conversations with our parents and actually making our IGP meetings purposeful. More so and those are individual graduation plan meetings then just check in a box with a parent. So we make sure we have enough time, especially with 10th graders. Because that's the year we're really talking about them really recruiting and trying to get them in Accu place or and all the testing that required, you know that's required for it and laying out their coursework. So if, if you know the biggest challenge I know in Berkeley County we've had is the transportation issue. If we can jump that hurdle then then you know we do so much better with some of those kids. So can anyone in the group give some examples of ways in which you have jumped that hurdle or there's some avenues that you've used to try to provide whether transportation or other barriers that students might face to accessing the program how you address those. I would say in regards to transportation I think when the apprenticeship allowed students that were graduating to participate opened up doors for more students to live out in the rural areas to participate. My son is a youth apprentice. We live you know in a rural area St. Stephen which is a good little ways away and understanding that he would need to do high school and travel to try that. Even though he had transportation it would have been a bit of a challenge so we knew that if he had this opportunity you know when he graduated it probably would be a little bit easier for him. And also with the program and then reaching out to find employers even closer to some of our areas has been very beneficial. So students may not have to travel as far to work. If they live out in a rural area so that has been really beneficial trying to hone in on some additional lawyers that are closer to where those students live who are out in the rural area. Yes ma'am. I think number one, the messaging and getting the word out is still our number one obstacle. We have hundreds of school counselors throughout Charleston County School District. And one of the panelists just mentioned about the IGP process. All IGPs are not created equal. Some counselors are very CTE forward. Here are CTE courses, career readiness, internship, apprenticeship, they roll with it, they drink the Kool-Aid. And what we need to do is to take that and bottle that and mimic that so that all six, well about tens of thousands of CCSD students get a similar experience, similar message. I understand that it's not the only thing that has to be put out during an IGP conference. I understand that I've been in them as a parent and also as an educator at the school level. But like I said previously or earlier in this panel, every child has a future and a career, we hope, unless of course they're independently wealthy and maybe they don't have to work. But for most of us, we have a career, whatever that means, and it's hard to argue against an apprenticeship. It really gives the kid a competitive advantage. Can you imagine on your resume? You know, a two-year apprenticeship with Boeing or Bosch or Nywhip, Mercedes-Benz, I mean, and a recommendation from one of the supervisors at the corporation. That is worldwide, and it just opens up so many doors and puts them at an advantage compared to others. And so, again, it's that perception and getting that messaging out continues to be our two biggest obstacles in Charleston County. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when we talk about access, you mentioned this earlier, Richard, this notion of, you know, making sure that all students have access to programs. And it's more than anyone can enroll or, you know, you open the doors and say, y'all come, right? A lot of people can't even get to the threshold. And so part of your part of the responsibility here in terms of really looking at equity in these programs is how is it that I reach into my community in order to be able to bring students, you know, into this in whatever way it might be, whether it's addressing this from a cultural perspective, an image perspective, you know, a financial perspective, you know, trying to break down all those barriers so that students can have access. Mark, you wanted to add in, jump in here, please do. Well, yeah, our big initiative this year, and our district is smaller than Charleston and Berkeley County. But it doesn't mean that we offer anything less. So, you know, we don't have quite the student enrollment, but we still have and are proud of all of our programs. And, you know, we'd like to think that, you know, no matter where a student is in the region, they're going to get the same opportunities that being said. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing as Mr Gordon, you know, getting the word out. Our initiative this year has been to really have CTE and our counseling department communicate more than they've ever had before. We've had some transition in our district and so we felt like this was a great time to kind of, you know, invigorate and reinforce that relationship between CTE and our counseling department. And so we've made, you know, we've got several meetings on the books to be able to go out and meet with counselors at our middle school and high school levels, especially to really try to get our counselors excited, and just get them as much information as possible, because that is a extremely difficult job to have, I guess, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of an IGP meeting, and you're trying to not only get a student to graduate and take care of all the requirements they need, you know, just to be successful in the school but also try to plan out, you know, the potentially the next 40 years of their life through a career 4050 years and so, you know, my appreciation for the counselors is extremely high. And I just, I felt like it was really a good opportunity for us, while we look at all these opportunities, especially one like a youth apprenticeships that's so involved and requires, you know, a real commitment from the family to be able to explain that as best we could in that IGP because while I would love to be in all of them to push CTE, that's not possible. And especially for our neighboring counties with all the students they have, you know, we all face that same challenge but I think that's important to really, you know, take care of it on our side, as far as getting information to our folks, including our teachers I mean counselors but our teachers as well. We need to be as informed as they can, especially in their particular area and pathway and have conversations with their business partners in their pathway, you know, reach out talk talk to them with, if you don't have a business partner that, you know, is as engaged as you feel you know as a teacher and start those those conversations and that's what we're here for is to really help with those and to be able to, you know, answer any questions that they may have from that side as well. Robert, I wanted to ask you a little bit about and maybe you're, you know, all your secondary partners here can address this as well is the challenges around articulation across systems. You know, I have to, I'm looking back again at the title of today's panel, and I want to make sure that we at least address this question somewhere in this conversation, which I think we are in many ways, but this notion of alignment between all of the systems in this conversation is to, one, make sure that students have a seamless path through the program to employment, and you all have done some, what I consider to be some pretty amazing and creative things in order to make that happen. Robert, you know, maybe you can talk a bit about from the, from the college's perspective what's that, what does that look like how, how has that been for you and, and maybe some advice to folks about how to make that happen. In partnership with the three school districts, local school districts, we developed a workforce pathway from basically the high schools to the technical college. We came up with a advanced placement agreement. So students who took welding or machine tool at the high school will receive advanced placement into our programs at Trident Technical College, even if they're not, you know, they don't have to be in the apprenticeship, just taking and completing the welding and machine tool programs at the high school level, they transition right into the college and an advanced placement. And basically they'll, they can knock off almost maybe a semester worth of coursework. What we did is we aligned, we got with the instructors at the local school districts and exam both of us compared our course level outcomes and the competencies needed for those students and aligned basically our curriculum to meet those competencies. And once we did that, we figured out, okay, we can award credit for these particular classes once they take and complete their program. And I assume and you all can validate this that that is a great incentive for students to participate in this in the apprenticeship program. And do they see it that way. You have to sometimes you have to jump up and down and do tricks to show them that that you can get high school credit you can get college credit. You can get paid in certain situations. You know, so there are those extrinsic motivational factors that that that hooked some of them. For us, most of the interest comes from they self identify with the career cluster. You know, when I always wanted to be an engineer. I always wanted to work in the culinary field. You know, I always wanted to be a nurse, you know, and I'd like we talked about starting at an early age, you know, when they first learn about occupations maybe they thought their teacher was the only job that there was on planet Earth, but that's who they saw every day. Or you know, maybe a mom or dad did, or perhaps they know fireman and policeman, you know, because of the uniforms. So at early ages they're learning those those that the career awareness that's what we call that. But for us, it's mostly, yes, that is a hub, but they have to kind of it's in the heart that really gets them to end their parents to the parents have to believe it. You have to hit their heart before you can hit their mind. So if you can convince the parents and the kids. It goes from there. Yeah, I was going to say I was going to follow up with you. I'm telling it to the parents. I know we as counselors that's been. That's been the probably one of the bigger hurdles was just helping those parents understand that because your child's choosing to go through youth apprentice doesn't mean that later on in life they may not change path and go somewhere else but getting the parents. If we can get the parents to believe in it, then, you know, it's an easy sell to me, or at least in this school to our kids. And usually the parent that gets the, you know, that has more questions and a little hesitant and, well, they were going to go to Clemson or they were going to go to, you know, and so it's that cell, it's that cell with parents. That's the hardest. Yeah. And you can still go to Clemson or USC of Georgia Tech, even with an apprenticeship. In fact, it makes your application a stronger application when you have those experiences. I agree. Anything in particular to encourage non traditional students to access the youth apprenticeship programs like, for example, young men in your health care programs or women in your advanced tech tech programs or the manufacturing areas. I mean, I've visited churches. I go to career day events before prior to code. But I'm just trying to get the word out, you know, and believe it or not, some parents and kids still aren't aware of it. But just trying to get that word out like say I, I sing the praises all the time on the program. Yeah. And maybe that's not the right term I should use. Have your students represent the program in whether it's your high school students go down in the elementary school and visit with with other kids and talk about what they're doing or show them what they're doing. Do you do you use the students who are in the program to represent and promote the programs as well. We typically have students that will serve on panels or do different activities will bring in students that are going straight through the CTE programs will bring in students are doing apprenticeship programs. And to really to speak to younger students they participate in career fairs or career days at the middle school, because we found that, you know, the younger students really look up to the students they're in high school and listen to what they're saying. So we have used those capacities. Yeah, you know, student voices and incredibly powerful thing, you know, peer peer to peer. I'm counseling almost can have big effects. But we're getting close to the end here and so what I'd like to do we have about three minutes left is for each of you to like we did at the start I asked you to tell me one thing you loved about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. I'm going to ask each of you if you would to share one thing one, one piece of advice out there to the folks who are joining us today or may watch this recording in the future about things keep in mind. If they're going to launch a youth apprenticeship program in their community or to join yours in the in your region. So I'll start with Robert will start with you. Um, if, if different regions wants to, you know, they're going to start a youth apprenticeship program. I would say, go to your industry, lean on your industry, find those skill skills gaps that are there. Tailor it around your industry and let that be the focus. It has to be industry led because at the end of the day, those students have to go into that workforce. So find what's needed in the community. Thanks Robert. So Mark, how about you and we have a little longer than I said I apologize I was jumping the gun a little bit so. Mark go ahead. I, of course I agree with Mr Elliott, you know you want to start with your industry partners but I want to go back to just keep working on getting the word out in the education of our program to our parents. Again, I think the quickest way is through an IGP. But you're only hitting one family at a time. So, you know, be creative and how you promote it. Again, we start as early as middle school talking about, you know, really our work based learning experiences that are very exploratory and this falls right in line. I mean, tried in tech last summer had a great opportunity for a pre apprenticeship program through culinary and I think that was a fantastic opportunity, because now you're hitting students in the eighth ninth grade. And they're seeing, you know, some of the advantages of that and really just getting hands on, you know, being a part of it, you can see it and then you can, you know, you can see yourself there. So just be creative on how you get the word out. But yes, I agree with everybody, you know the selling of the program to parents and to students and getting that family buy in and then now the students have that support, not only, you know, the drive, but they have that support from their family is huge. I think our regional youth apprenticeship program is very successful from its inception. It has been successful since the inception because all the parties work together to make it happen. You have the employers, you have the K-12 partners and the post secondary partners. We all work together from the beginning to develop and to devise this program. So we're all at the at the table. It would have been different if it was developed by an outside source and the information was just given the K-12 for us to promote. We wouldn't have the buy-in. We wouldn't have the insight or the knowledge behind it. So I think that has been key to the success of the program that we have here. So that's the one piece of advice that I would give out to people who are interested in launching a program is to do that. And just as, you know, Mark and Robert has said also, you know, think about how you're going to create your brand and how you're going to promote it. Because again, that has been really successful for us as well. Thanks, Sonia. Richard, your words of advice. I would say find a champion of work-based learning in your school district. Maybe it's a principal, could be an associate superintendent or a director of instructional programs. Someone who believes in it and who can practice it at their level. So if it's a principal, maybe in their school and they start small with a small cohort. One of the reasons is it breeds success. When it works, everybody else wants to find out about it. Everybody else is hearing about it. And then you have to celebrate it. So, and that's a good way to get the word out. And that, so then this year you have 13 and next year you have 26 and then 52 and 104. And well, that's pretty much our reason and how that happened. It's a recruiting and a retention mindset. I tell people the best CTE teachers are ones that have a head coach mentality. They're good at finding kids, recruiting them, and they're good at retaining kids. And it starts at elementary middle school. We talked about how to get them more involved. It's bringing them to your career centers to CTE programs. And then, and then, you know, just putting out a little C. And then once we can get them in our career centers, once kids and parents see what CTE is in the classroom, I think that's where it makes a significant impact. But it starts with finding a champion and someone that really wants, that really knows the power of apprenticeship and then practices it and actually executes it. And then that's a great way to launch off of the platform. And Trisha, how about your words of advice? So you know what mine are going to be? Train your school counselors. Have them as a part of this from the beginning. Do really specific purposeful training with them so that they're comfortable talking about youth apprentice. They can be the champions you're looking for, for those programs. If they believe in it, they're going to sell it. They're going to sell it to the students and they're going to be able to sell it to the parents. You know, give them tours of the programs, you know, go visit the manufacturers, go visit the employers. But we are, you know, we always say this, we're the boots on the ground, so we're the ones selling the programs specifically to the kids. So if you can get your school counselors involved, I would do it from day one. And I think that's the success of this region is because we were involved from day one. We made it a point to be involved from day one. Well, I want to thank all the panelists for your exceptional engagement here today. Clearly, you all have a tremendous passion for this work and it's about the students. You know, every time you all talk about something, it always landed in the end of the statement about making this work for students, making sure they have access to these programs, eliminating barriers to get them there and helping them be successful all the way through to their placement and employment. I can't thank you enough. I want to encourage everyone to consider youth apprenticeship as a significant investment in your youth and that the opportunities that I've seen in these programs are amazing. I was lucky enough to be able to come and visit Trident Tech when the Pathways to Youth Apprenticeship programs activities started with New America and I was amazingly impressed. I would also, I would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to go check out our website at NAPEquity.org. It's a great initiative we're doing around women in manufacturing. Lots of good resources for educators, recruitment videos and posters and all kinds of strategy documents. Check it out and and go for it. I think, you know, my sample of approval. Youth Apprenticeship rocks. Thanks everyone. I want to thank the representatives from Trident Technical College and the Parker School Districts for participating in this panel and to our moderator Mimi Lufkin for that insightful discussion. Join us at 340 Eastern Time for our final panel of the day, the Future of Youth Apprenticeship Policy Systems and Sustainability. It'll be moderated by Pia National Director Taylor White and we'll get a deeper dive into how we can continue this work after this event. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to our final panel of the day. Once again, I'm Taylor White, the National Director of the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship. Thank you for joining us for this final panel, the Future of Youth Apprenticeship Policy Systems and Sustainability. Over the course of the day today, we've had an opportunity to do a deep dive into the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships, a regional program that's experienced significant growth since its launch in 2014 and continues to serve as a resource and mentor to countless other partnerships looking to learn from their approach. But, well, there's been a lot of interest in youth apprenticeships from communities across the US, many of which are on the line with us now. Youth apprenticeship remains an underutilized strategy in the United States as you've heard a few times today from multiple different speakers. This afternoon on this final panel of the day, we're going to talk to three leaders to understand what it's going to take to make models like the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships more mainstream and how each of their organizations is playing a role in making that happen. So on the panel with me this afternoon, I am very excited to introduce John Ladd, who's the administrator of the Office of Apprenticeship within the Employment Training Administration at the US Department of Labor. John, thanks for being here today. I'm also happy to welcome Amy Firestone to the panel. Amy is the Vice President of Apprenticeship Carolina, which you've heard referenced by many folks on the call today, so she'll have an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about what Apprenticeship Carolina does and how they are supporting the growth and sustainability of youth apprenticeship across the state. Last but by no means least we have Melissa Stowasser, Assistant Vice President of Community Partnerships at Trident Tech. You've heard already from Melissa today, but we'll be asking her to put a slightly different hat on during this panel to think a little bit about what it's taken over the last several years not only to grow the program that Trident leads, but also to help other communities around the country learn from and replicate elements of their success. So, without further ado, Melissa, I'm going to kick our first question over to you. Help us understand a little bit about how the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship has grown since it launched in 2014. What steps specifically have you taken to grow the program locally? What's been critical to your growth and what have been some of the barriers that the program has experienced from in either practice or policy that makes it difficult for you to expand even further? Well, it's a simple question to start. Absolutely. Easy one. As we discussed earlier today, you know, we were fortunate to be approached by a company who wanted to start this and were able to start a sector partnership to make it sustainable over time and I think that that was a really critical decision early on. Another critical decision early on that enabled us to grow this was to get all of the partners and players at the table to create it together from the very beginning. So that everyone was engaged in what this could look like and they were buying into it because they were a part of the inception of it rather than having something thrust upon them that someone else created and then being told you need to manage this aspect of it. So I think those are two really critical pieces that enabled us to grow. Another thing that enabled us to grow was that we when we started having conversations with our industry leaders because of course they were leading this charge this is their program and we wanted to keep it that way. And they got excited when we got to the table and they immediately started saying, Oh, and we need this and we need this and we need this. And we were able to say, Oh, let's slow down and let's do one. And let's really work to craft one very well. Don't overdo when you start out and I think that was critical to so we started with one pathway and we had six companies that hired 13 students. And from that it's just grown exponentially. And I think it was partly in due to those pieces where we really collaborated together from the very get go to do something well with a small start, and then scale it from there. Something folks should take in mind. I know that when you start creating similar programs for little different programs within the region as these apprenticeships are going to look different from that. Your partners will look different your regions are different. We find that across our state and you'll talk about that. I'm sure a little bit in the future but just because your region is different from us and just because your partners are different from us and just because the group that you may stand up as your intermediary looks different from us doesn't mean you can't do apprenticeship. It just means it'll look different from others that can be equally successful and so I want to say that as well. So, that was the mindset we went into this with we also went into the mind with into this with the mindset that it was a collaborative regional program, not our program or your program it was collectively our program. And I think that that's a critical component to helping it grow as well. So, beyond that we began to reach out to more and we get the more employers should get on board the more sectors who want to do this work, the better off you're going to be so after the first year we strategically started at reaching out to other sector groups. After that it starts growing itself sector group start coming to you and saying can you do that for us. And I think that's a critical piece in the growth of it as well. Finding funds you know one of the barriers we had was that in the state of South Carolina dual enrollment was not covered by the state. And so it was up to the individual family to pay the cost of the educational expense. We wanted to level the playing field. So it was really critical for us to decide upfront that we were going to raise the revenues to cover those expenses. In our region we didn't want to put that cost on the employer. And one of the reasons we didn't want to put that cost on the employer was because we were approached by small companies. And we were asking them to pay the wage of the students who's not yet skilled. We were asking them to provide a mentor to train them on the job and so we felt like they had an investment. The community also needed to invest. And so we did not put that educational expense on them. So over the years we've really been lobbying for system change and we've got more assets coming from the state to help with the educational component, the funding of that piece. Dr. Firestone and her team work tirelessly to pull down federal dollars to assist us in making that slate clean so that all students can participate when it's equitable. I think you also asked about barriers that we've had. COVID was a barrier. Surprise, right? COVID sneaked in and kind of caught us by surprise just as we were really accelerating and so it slowed down the growth of our program but didn't stop it because we had all of the pieces in place to continue the work even through the worst of the pandemic. Another thing that has been a barrier for us is that we have a real mismatch. We find we have, for example, a tremendous number of students who want to apply for IT programs and yet we've not been able to get many employers to offer IT positions. So we've got to really work to make that so that there's a match between the number of students who want to apply for the programs and the jobs that are available. And I know, again, apprenticeship Carolina has been really helpful in trying to lead that more as a state initiative to get more employers from certain sectors on board and engage. So that's a problem and barrier for us. Transportation creates a barrier for some students and it's one we're still trying to solve. We do have philanthropic organizations who provided us dollars but now we've got to figure out how do those dollars that we have convey to the student in a way that helps them solve that and only to those students who really need that for the equity piece. And in staffing, you know, you're going to find that staffing is sometimes an issue. We started small with basically two people running the show. We've grown over time. We have more people participating. We've also gotten philanthropic organizations to fund staffing. So we have a group that is actually funding a youth apprenticeship specialist to work along with our coordinator to really oversee the support systems that are available for you. No, that was really helpful. That was great. Thank you, Melissa. So I hear I hear a whole bunch of actionable lessons for folks I think a couple of really interesting things that you said one was start small to go big sometimes there's a a tendency to say let's meet everybody's needs all at once as quickly as we can this thing moving and you all have taken a much more deliberate approach to start small do it right and expand over time. I also appreciate your pulling in ref the kind of balance of philanthropic funds with the state investment and I think that's one of the things that we see is really important to scale is finding ways that we can create funding models for these programs that leverage both existing funding within existing systems and where that funding you know can't cover things like for example additional flexible funding for staffing or sometimes these these really sticky transportation issues. We know that other sources of funds can be really really helpful and important for continuing and maintaining the momentum of program growth so thank you for touching on all sorts of things. One of the many things that you referenced. That's been I know very important to your work and has also allowed you to play a role in supporting the expansion of youth apprenticeship in South Carolina is the important role that the folks at apprenticeship Carolina play so I'd love to ask Dr firestone Amy a quick question for your part. So tell us a little bit for folks who are unfamiliar with your work in your organization, what apprenticeship Carolina does across the state as a statewide intermediary, and specifically also when and why you all have decided that you've apprenticeship is a priority for the state. Thank you so much for limitation to be part of this important panel. So apprenticeship Carolina is part of the South Carolina technical college system so China tech is one of the 16 technical colleges that's part of our system. Apprenticeship Carolina is actually a state agency so we are state government, but we support the 16 colleges with apprenticeships and that looks very different depending on the college there's 16 colleges I like to say 16 languages and 16 different countries because they all operate very differently in terms of apprenticeships but a lot of other things as well. So just to tell you a little bit more about us we've been in existence since 2007. And we were the main intermediary for the state with helping employers develop registered apprenticeships. And so our team helps develop all of the apprenticeship standards and we work collaboratively with the companies, and with the technical colleges and other providers whether they're K 12 or other vendors that the companies may wish to use we help them put it all together ship it off to our South Carolina DOL director, so that they get registered so the process is very seamless and that really been our bread and butter since 2007, however in the past few years, we really expanded beyond just helping work with the colleges and employers on that process to helping work with companies with implementation of their program after had been registered helping train them with rapids 2.0 which is the database may many of you may be familiar with, and also helping work with potential apprentices and current apprentices and that's a really new terrain for us. There's a lot of ground to cover there but we work collaboratively with tried and tech similar to the other colleges so when there's a company that is looking at apprenticeships as as a potential model. We will meet with them with tried and tech and then whatever their college it might be, help them design the standards and then the meet your Smith on our team he's the apprenticeship consultant working with tried and tech. Make sure all the programs are set up and get them shipped off to DOL so the process has been in place, you know, for many years and it's quite successful because companies don't have to worry about the paperwork we take care of all of that for them. And we have many different models and samples we work from so we really have a good system in place for getting registered apprenticeships established and I wanted to mention that in South Carolina all of our youth apprenticeships are registered with DOL. So that is something that we have worked really hard with employers whether it's in the Charleston area or other areas of the state on developing and we see, you know, more companies kind of looking at registered apprenticeship for youth as a model. But usually they'll start with an adult apprenticeship program kind of get their feet wet wet with an adult program and start like Melissa said very, very small. So that's a little bit about our role. We are statewide. So I think you can go any corner in South Carolina and find an apprenticeship Carolina staff member we really spread ourselves out throughout the state with the different roles we have. Thanks to funding from the US Department of Labor we have actually doubled in size and our team we have more apprenticeship consultants supporting rural areas. We have registered program specialists and I'm excited to announce that we'll have a bilingual registered program specialist working with Hispanic owned businesses. Finally we have youth apprenticeship coordinators I know that's a mouthful but whereas at China Tech they have some internal staff at the college. Most of the other colleges don't really have enough staff to support all the functions for youth apprenticeship so apprenticeship Carolina handles really all of that process so we are expanding and have a lot of great opportunities but Taylor was there anything else that could help me answer. No, I think you covered a lot I mean I guess one if maybe one quick follow up question I'm given that we're focusing on, I get policy and scale in the session if you had to name what you think apprenticeship Carolinas, most important kind of function for promoting scale or sustainability of youth apprenticeships in the state has been to date. What do you think it is what's that sort of secret sauce that you all have or or the kind of magic piece that you have that that you think is important for supporting the growth and scale. I think it's the one consistent approach and message for the whole state so no matter if you are, you know, let's just say a automotive supplier located in one part of the state or you are the parent company another part of the state and you want to do a youth apprenticeship or an adult apprenticeship you get the same approach from apprenticeship Carolina which is somebody from the team will sit down with you bring in the technical college and other partners, develop the process and get it squared away very quickly so that's one message one approach. We take away all the burden and we have funding to back it up so no one's really having to pad a pocket. That's great that's really helpful and I couldn't agree more that that consistent approach is important we've had panels all day today where folks have mentioned some of one piece that's important for promoting growth of youth apprenticeship is sort of helping folks understand what it is and not just sort of assuming that people see its value on its face in the way that many of us who worked in the space for a long time do, and that goes for educators that goes for employers that goes for youth parents etc. Having that consistent approach and that consistent message can really helpful in in sort of helping to raise awareness of what apprenticeship can be and can do for our communities. Well, thank you I am sure we'll come back and pick up on lots of things that you mentioned but before we do that. I want to pose a question to john who is on the line with us. Like apprenticeship Carolina the US Department of Labor has shown an increasing interest in supporting youth apprenticeship over the past several years. We heard this morning from your from your colleague. Thank you, Deputy Secretary Hanks who talked a little bit about recent investments from the US Department of Labor, for example in youth apprenticeship Amy has referenced one that South Carolina team received the youth apprenticeship readiness grants. So we've been very excited to see that and promote that across our networks. But I'd love to hear from you john as as you play out such as significant role in the federal government's actual activity to modernize the apprenticeship system. And for the Department of Labor to be interested in modernizing the system and how do you fit into it. Oh, sure. Thanks Taylor and thanks so much. Really want to extend my thanks to tried and technical college in New America for hosting this important event today and really excited to be on this panel with Amy and Melissa, who are doing such great work. That's a great question. And, you know, it's an important question for the system moving forward. There has been such an evolution in apprenticeship really and one of our former colleagues referred to as the apprenticeship Renaissance that's been happening here. It's been almost 10 years but really took up steam in about 2015 2016 when the federal government started making investments in apprenticeship for the first time. The Department of Labor made an investment in the American apprenticeship initiative, which was soon followed by congressional investments and apprenticeship so it's been an exciting time for for apprenticeship. With that increased funding has generally called for goals to expand the program and grow the program. And to do that, we really do also have to modernize certain elements of the program. But as well, I'm sure I'm going to talk a little bit later, we want to make sure that as we modernize the system that that doesn't mean any loss of quality or rigor that we're really want to hold true to the core elements of apprenticeship so you know there's a couple of things we could probably touch on here, but this is one of those important questions that we've actually asked our advisory committee on apprenticeship to also help think us think through this issue with us. But there's two really kind of big elements that that I certainly think of what is around flexibility. We want to make sure that our policies and regulations allow for different models and and approaches, but we want to hold to those core elements of what it means to be a registered apprenticeship program, which is employment, OJT, and classroom instruction, progressive wages, credentials, strong labor standards, including EEO. So, you know, we really want to balance that that rigor, and that consistency of what apprenticeship means, but recognizing that that apprenticeship can look different in the construction industry versus it that youth apprenticeship might look a little bit different than apprenticeship that's primarily serving adults so one of the things we really focused early on was kind of opening up the model to different approaches and and different models, different partnership structures. There's many different models, you know, Amy talked about the particular model in South Carolina, there are a whole range of models and we really want to support and encourage those those different approaches while holding, holding true to those core elements. I think another area and you know Amy talked about this as well is, you know, how do we leverage technology streamline processes provide the right kinds of financial supports to really make it easier for industry to start an apprenticeship program. It shouldn't take months and months to stand up an apprenticeship program, it should be easy. It should be an easy to understand process of how you get started with support available. You know it should be driven by by the industry for their particular needs. And we really want to make sure that, again, you know, we want that consistency we want that rigor, but we don't want it to feel like it's this overwhelming burden for for an employer or an industry group to stand up an apprenticeship This is an area that we've made a lot of investments to support, whether it's at the state level with the work that's like the work that South Carolina is doing but also industry intermediaries that could be that go between playing that role that the technical college system plays in South Carolina. We've set up TA centers this this summer in four critical areas to help on really some pain points in the system whether it's around data and information sharing whether it's around building equitable programs whether it's about the technical areas of the system we've we've invested in building competency based framework so we don't have to reinvent the wheel and we don't have to wait until someone develops a program we've got curriculum and designs ready to go off the shelf that people can use so that those are some of the things we we think about when we talk about modernization. Well, it's an awful lot of things so. I want to pick up on something that you reference kind of at the top of your comments john because I, I related to a question we get all the time, and the work in South Carolina is has committed itself to registering youth apprenticeships we don't see that everywhere so you said very early on in the comments that you the US Department of Labor is trying to think about how to offer flexibility while holding to core elements. This is a question first for you but I'm sort of curious to hear also from Amy and Melissa and apologies because I didn't prep you exactly for But what do you say to folks when they say you can't register a youth apprenticeship or how on earth, am I going to take this adult apprenticeship that has 2000 hours of on the job learning, sorry, OJT, and hundreds of hours of related instruction requirements how on earth do we adopt that for you to be done. What is the answer to that question that that you give john first but I'm also curious Amy and Melissa how you tackle that question. That's a great question, and I think there's some, you know, good policy discussion that needs to happen in that space. You know, as, as Congress is debating reauthorizing the National Apprenticeship Act. I think that that is an area that folks are looking at but but I would say that, you know, we see tremendous demand for youth apprenticeship and tremendous growth in youth apprenticeship and register and when we say that we mean registered apprenticeship. That's what we support that's what we provide funding to support. But the number of youth participating in registered apprenticeships have doubled over the past 10 years. Now, over 68,000 youth age 16 and 24 are in apprenticeship programs and represent 25% of all apprentices. That is some tremendous growth that's just happened here in the last 10 years, when we put out the, as you mentioned, the youth apprenticeship readiness grants. There's a tremendous demand for for for that funding opportunity. And, you know, this is clearly another area that we're going to look to invest more in in the future. But we know there is just tremendous, you know, huge demand for registered apprenticeship programs serving youth either high school or out of school youth as well. You heard it here and no uncertain terms you can indeed register youth programs. Melissa or Amy are there. And isn't there anything you'd like to add for that from your regional or state perspective when you get that question no we can't wait there's no way we can do this. I'd be happy to respond to that. You know, when we sat down with our employers and they wanted to register a youth program, we really let them leave the conversation with that and what that could look like. We had some employers who were in that initial group who had adult apprenticeship programs which were much much more extensive and took them much further. But they saw value in starting a youth program that would take them to a point where they had skills enough to be employed but maybe not as far as the adult program would take them. So when we designed the apprenticeship programs we designed them around those certificate programs that we offered at college in a career specific areas that did make them employable. The students go through their certificate but they're not going all the way through an associate degree. And so they're finished and they are employable at that point. But again we're building them with a ladder of progression so the particular company I was mentioning then ended up hiring students out of that program into the adult program and they were halfway through already. So students that they really liked from that particular program that they wanted to see progress were able to move on through the adult program. So once then we've had companies like McLeod you saw Debbie McLeod earlier if you were with us for the employer panel. And they have a really interesting structure because they're bringing in students as interns from their high school in the summer, and giving them exposure and that the student and the company feel that this is a good match. Then they're putting in them into a youth program that takes them through the certificate program, they're registered, they're employable at that point. And they're doing extremely well they go on into their adult apprenticeship program and they move on through an associate degree and they're looking to go on even to baccalaureate degrees in cybersecurity. So you can register youth programs and you can build them as a ladder of progression in conjunction with adult programs that exist. Amy would you like to add more to that. Yeah, and I'll say as we're in like a full expansion mode for youth apprenticeship in the state. COVID is extremely challenging right now to get new companies on board for apprenticeships in general, but specifically youth apprenticeship and just a lot more concerns about liability, but what I did want to say was looking at the individual area that you're in see which companies this is what we're doing are willing to hire 1617 18 year olds in general, and I'll say that right now a lot of manufacturing companies are kind of skittish about hiring people under 18 just because of the challenges that they face in general, but looking at some of the auto industry. A lot of dealerships are looking at youth apprenticeship hospitality and tourism here. That's where we've had a lot of new youth apprenticeship start in the past few months because of the gaps that this industry is facing they really need to get creative. Look at ways to grow from, you know, grow their own talent so I would say look at the industries right now because years ago it was a little bit different but now there are fewer companies that are ready to dive into youth apprenticeship, youth registered apprenticeship who don't already have an adult apprenticeship program, but consider those industries that are really hurting for employees and are looking at creative ways to build their own. So like I said we've had luck with hospitality and tourism recently because they have such tremendous gaps in employment so youth apprenticeship I had one company. Last week in the upstate area said sign me up for five occupations for you to apprenticeship I'm ready our hotel needs to bring in new talent. Other you know manufacturing companies they're just not quite ready because they're trying to deal with their own workforce right now and the covert challenges that it brought on. So I said I would highly suggest for registered apprenticeship. Look at those industries that are really facing the most immense challenges and they may not be the ones that, you know, a couple years ago you would have been looking at also the public sector we look at the public sector as well as a great place to engage in new organizations for youth apprenticeship so thinking kind of outside the box by looking at what companies are even willing to hire you in general is the best starting place that we've seen. So I want to play devil's advocate for a second and as we move to our next question on this last point. I think that there's a lot of wisdom in going to where there's demand from employers. And that there can be a risk at times and growing to grow so quickly that you lose sight of quality. And, you know at PIA we believe firmly that apprenticeship can be an engine for expanding economic opportunity and creating pathways to good careers for youth furthest from opportunity, but programs have to be designed really intentionally and occupations have to be selected to be sure that that the wages that young people are earning the sort of long term career opportunities that they can have following an apprenticeship are there for them at times, when employers say we need this talent now those jobs that they're trying to fill in the short term are not necessarily the sort of long term jumping off points for careers that we might like to see for young people not Amy I'm not saying that that's what's happening in South Carolina. I'm just naming it as a risk for really rapid growth in any sort of system. And John alluded to this I think in his open his first few sentences, but I'm curious for you all what you see is some of the greatest risks and expanding youth apprenticeship really quickly we want to see it grow we want to see it become a more mainstream opportunity but of course growth for growth's sake sometimes has its limits. So, what do you see as some of the risks in expanding youth apprenticeship really quickly and what steps steps have each of your organizations taken to ensure your support and growth in high quality equitable apprenticeships rather than just growing for the sake of growing. And anyone can dive into that easy question first. Start off Taylor if you'd like this to piggyback on. I think that with our model I just wanted to mention that by doing registered apprenticeship. We won't we don't really run that risk because no matter if it is the hotel associated with registered apprenticeship for 16 year olds or the maintenance mechanic they're all following the deal well standards of an approved occupation so they all have those high quality elements of the, you know, starting wage the wage increase. And really the whole process is the same for adults so I don't think if you follow the registered apprenticeship model you still have that standard quality, no matter if it's you third adult so I wanted to mention that just to help the audience understand that they're not going to be, you know, dipping into low quality if they if they do go rapidly and I would also say that the one thing is the mentorship we were just in on Friday with the Embassy of Switzerland we visited Swiss Krono which is a manufacturing company in the small rural area in South Carolina very impoverished area. They started out with two registered youth apprentices. I think this was last year, and they had tremendous success and they said you know what we're going to have nine, we're going to aim for nine we're going to look at different high schools that we normally don't engage with. And they said you know I don't think we can get a lot bigger because the mentorship, and I think that's the risk is that with youth apprentices they need to ensure that there's a really great mentor available to coach these students the mentor we met with at Krono. He mentioned that he even helps them learn life skills I mean they're in a small rural area he helps kind of be that great community figure for them so I think that's the biggest risk is making sure if it's a registered apprenticeship you need a mentor, making sure that mentor is is available to handle the volume of multiple, you know individuals who are who are under 18. Yeah that's an important an important part point and not one that I think folks think about when they just think of creating more opportunities. John I saw you and me you want to get in with an answer there. Yeah, I was going to say, Amy so my thunder there a little bit, the checks in the mail Amy appreciate the support there but yeah, exactly I think by focusing on on registering these programs you have a lot of protections in place. I would add though that I think we continue to emphasize and we're going to continue to emphasize probably even more strongly moving forward through our funding opportunities that you know there's really a strong emphasis on equity and quality and labor standards in the kinds of programs that we want to invest in moving forward so I think that's another place where there's some additional protections to make sure that folks are thinking through the kind of kind of questions that you're raising here. And Taylor I would say that you know for us we're really really fortunate in our region to have a chamber who's heavily engaged in talent development space. And one of the things that they do is a talent demand study. And so the talent demand study really looks at where are the jobs and where are the jobs projected to be in each of the industry sectors. And it also looks at where are we producing graduates from K 12 from any level of post secondary to fill those jobs and where is the gap. And so we're strategically looking at those programs that would be those that would lead students to a family sustaining wages that fall within the need for our region and where that gap exists where we know they're going to be high quality jobs available. So we use that as a guide. And I think any kind of resource like that that you can draw from in your region to figure that out really will help you guide and sort of alleviate that risk. And then of course we work with Amy and her team very closely to make sure they are registered to us DOL standards, so that they're getting that high quality. The other thing that we've done is, as we sit down with our industry leaders and we talk about what are what do you need them to achieve. We map out high school courses and college courses that help them achieve what they need academically, but also lead to a ladder of progression for the student. So that they are engaging in some side of sort of post secondary credit work as part of that apprenticeship that can lead them on an upward trajectory should they choose to embrace it. And so I think all of those things together really help to alleviate those risks. This is a perfect example I said in my opening remarks of how sometimes it's hard to see the PIA principles in action if you just read them but there is a perfect exemplar for folks on the line of the importance of portability this idea that students are earning credits that they can use after their apprenticeship concludes to earn additional credentials additional degrees and move upwards and onwards in their careers over time whether that's right away or 10 years later they have that sort of currency in the education marketplace that can be really important. So we are nearing the point on this panel where we will move to audience questions but before we hand it over to them I have a couple more things I'd love for this group to talk about. One of the things that's been really interesting and hearing you all talk is how often, and you have unwittingly or not helped prove my point that I wanted to make in this panel a little bit about the importance of connecting systems and so Melissa has referenced how the state intermediary apprenticeship Carolina has been very supportive to their work locally Amy has shared the work that apprenticeship Carolina does around the state to build and support other partnerships that are trying to launch and run and grow youth apprenticeship programming and john has made reference to a number of ways that the US Department of Labor has supported the growth of youth apprenticeship and will moving forward. So I think folks can see that there are ways, sort of different levels if we think about these folks in their organizations aligned vertically across the apprenticeship system that these different actors are working together to sort of reinforce one another's progress and opportunities. So it's really exciting to see here. I would love to hear from you all though that's I made that sound like it's really easy and it all works very smoothly. But I'm curious if we could do one sort of lightning round for all of the panelists if you had a magic wand that you could wave and make some sort of change whether it's in policy or practice or in mindsets around the country. What is one change that you would love to see that you think would be important for promoting the continued expansion of high quality apprenticeship opportunities in this country. And anyone can get in here no one seems to be chomping up. Who wants to take that first, you limit us to one change, and that just makes it so difficult to come up with fun to see everybody. Melissa, if you talk fast, you can get more in. I would say it's really, really critical to do relationship building, I think that we need a structure that really enables us to embrace partnerships across the different levels as you've discussed you know the local level to the state level to the federal level but also within our regions, and that supports the work of partnership development and intermediary. Intermediary action that enables these to take place, we need to be funding and standing up really strong intermediaries at the local level at the state level because they both are critical in making this work become a statewide system and at the federal level to ensure that all states are working together in a collaborative way to ensure a national level of high quality apprenticeship. I guess I would go for it. Yeah, I would build on that I mean I think this is such an important question around kind of the evolution of the national apprenticeship system right. The apprenticeship is different than we owe it's different than then secondary and post secondary education has a different structure, a different approach. It really requires that employer engagement and industry engagement to thrive. You can have an apprenticeship program with a single employer, and that can work right the employer could provide everything the employer could provide the classroom instruction the mentorship, but that's really hard right that's really challenging for any single employer or any industry group to be able to do that so so to Melissa's point, you know we we really are starting to move from the idea of the system being pretty much just the federal government state government and industry groups right that that sponsor these apprenticeship programs and we now have this much more rich complex ecosystem of partners stakeholders and players that have that really you know previously hadn't existed, but how do they all come together and form a coherent system. How do we, how do we clarify what roles, each entity is playing what roles they can play, allow for local and statewide, you know flexibility and customization to leverage the players that make the most sense but, but, but really articulating the this new vision of what the national apprenticeship system looks like and who's part of it right and and making that as inclusive as possible, including equity groups and CBOs that can that can provide a pipeline of talent into these programs. But I think that's some of the really exciting work that kind of lays ahead here of trying to better define what the national apprenticeship system can look like moving forward. Yeah, that's exciting to hear I think that's that's something that we really enjoyed seeing and learning about through our work in PIA is just the number of different organizations that make up these partnerships and the different roles and responsibilities they take on. It's been a huge area of learning for us and we're excited to be able to share some of that with the field to encourage new and different actors to take on new and different roles because they think you're right to really reach many of the industries and communities that really haven't been able to take advantage of the apprenticeship in the past, it will take some creativity and some different names and faces in the crowd but exciting to hear your change ideas Amy last but not least might sneak in a couple to Taylor. I would say the most critical part are the businesses. We have a lot of resources in South Carolina for funding right now for the apprenticeships. We have a lot of staff, but it's really the businesses and any incentives that the businesses can receive to help train their trainers I think with businesses being short staff, especially looking at youth apprenticeship that mentor piece I think any incentives for apprenticeships and then also we haven't really talked about pre apprenticeship and kind of the power that they can play and help increase equity and diversity and apprenticeships by there being you know more funding and more support for pre apprenticeships and having those count as kind of part of the overall system I think those would be critical elements. Okay, well, Amy, you didn't mean to but you walked right into our first audience question. I'm going to take, take your final comment as a segue. What is, as you see it the definition or the difference rather between a pre apprenticeship and a youth apprenticeship I know this varies in some places but from the South Carolina perspective please give us yours. I should get like $100 every day I answered this question because I get it every day from somebody, either in the state or outside the state but in South Carolina as I mentioned all of the youth apprenticeships are registered with DOL so that's anyone 16 and up and technically it's really for high school students but now we're working with a little bit older youth as well. Pre apprenticeships can be for anybody and this is where the technicality comes in. If they are working in a pre apprenticeship getting paid for work they have to be 16 and up but if they're just doing the classroom hands on they can be 14 and up and so we've done a lot of work to develop a pre apprenticeship process. So trying to attack was actually one of the first colleges in the state that went through our pre apprenticeship standards. Certification process. And so any entity in South Carolina can actually do that and we had the Urban League of Columbia developed their own pre apprenticeship and submitted to us we have companies that do that technical colleges. Pre apprenticeship is really the preparation for the registered apprenticeship and we actually require that any pre apprenticeship registered we call them certified with apprenticeship Carolina has letters of support from companies that have a registered apprenticeship. So China Tech had done that this past summer with their culinary arts program for high school students and it is quite different because a few of those students and Melissa can tell you more were successful in entering a registered youth apprenticeship. And once you did their pre apprenticeship so those are the technicalities and glad to share kind of how we came up with that process with anybody it was a very long process but it has proven to be very impactful. That's great and I can be important hearing about the certification process I know it can be important for quality I will underscore there a piece of your answer Amy which is just that in part of your model is requiring that pre apprenticeships be connected to a registered apprenticeship program there for their preparation for a registered program, not separate from. And I know I don't know if john you have any comments on that just from the DOL's perspective on the model but I know that that's a that's a key piece that we often remind folks of it's not a replacement for yeah yeah type of program. Yeah that's exactly right I mean that's like critical component that that ultimately there's some kind of articulation agreement or agreements between that pre apprenticeship program and the registered apprenticeship program. I mean obviously the idea would be you want the exit requirements for our pre apprenticeship to match up with the entry requirements for a registered apprenticeship. And that there is that clear articulation, I mean there's lots of forms of work based learning there's lots of forms of experiential learning. But I think, you know, for folks who want to use that term, you know, I think it does convey a lot of expectations on the on on the part of the participants and I think we want to be really clear with people that pre apprenticeship really does lead and has opportunities to enter directly into a registered apprenticeship. Yeah, and Amy if I just quick word. If I can just piggyback on that you know yeah we were asked about doing pre apprenticeship when we started doing apprenticeship and my response to them was, you can't have a pre anything until you have to anything. And so we really had to build a new apprenticeship program, and then back up from that and so we built the pre apprenticeship and culinary as you mentioned this summer and got it certified through apprenticeship Carolina. And it's for 14 and 15 year olds to give him exposure in the culinary industry so they did three week intensive classroom experiences in the culinary Institute. So determine whether or not they want it to apply then for registered apprenticeship at the age of 16. So, have you apply and we're hoping for more next year from that group. That's great and I love that I'm definitely going to steal that. You can't have a pre a pre anything if you don't have an anything so so good for you I like that one. We have a couple other questions here from the audience I'd love to throw your way one is a real easy one and Amy I'll direct this one at you. How many staff does apprenticeship Carolina have. I think we are 21 and growing. So we have close to 30 when we finish hiring folks. Okay, so, so not a small operation. And getting bigger by the day. So statewide intermediary soon to be about 30 Melissa as a as a regional slash local intermediary how many staff do you all have working on the Charleston regional youth apprenticeships. We have 10 to well if you count me 11, but we will count you many many many other roles within the college running $3,000 3000 student enrollment programs and other employer engagement but 11 people who will expend their energies in that space as needed. Very helpful. Thank you both. So we're the registration issue seems to be of great interest to our audience will have one more. And then then I'm going to try to squeeze one last question and after this we'll see how I do. But from an anonymous audience member is their value in registering apprenticeships at both my State Department of Apprenticeship Standards and the US Department of Labor, and what would the value of registering with both be. I'm going to let you take that one. Sure. I mean, generally wouldn't be necessary. Once you're registered at the state level or with us do well. There is reciprocity with the rest of the country and other states. I mean, we do see areas where national employers want to register nationally with us do well. But we also then there can be times when those programs should also register at the state level if they want to access statewide benefits that might be available but generally kind of if you're just operating in one state, there really shouldn't be any particular benefit to registering both at the state level and nationally. Both are portable. Okay. Thank you for that. One last question here. This is this is less to do with registration. But I believe really any of you could this could be relevant but how do you make the case and explain the importance of that sort of small and intentional growth to stakeholders and political offices who are pressuring for larger and larger cohorts. So I suspect this is someone who's dealing grant funding or political support but how do you make that case for small and intentional growth. I mean, we see it I mean it's true at the national level to right I mean, you know there's going to be significant expectations with potentially large national investments that could be coming down the pike. I think South Carolina is just a great model of how it can work. South Carolina didn't grow overnight it's been steady incremental progress since the early days of this initiative. And they've been able to sustain it and grow grow every year so I think, I think that's just a really good example of how you can do it. So we have to be in this for the long term apprenticeship programs take a while not only to stand up but to have a cycle of apprentices that go through to start to see the impact and see the results. We need employers to be thinking long term apprenticeship isn't, you know, a short term fixed to, you know, the current supply chain, you know, crisis or some other immediate need, where you're trying to plug in skill labor really quickly. That's something where everyone's got to have kind of a longer term view of it. But with that being said I think there's still lots that we can do. Again, so that the process of establishing a program should not take months or years that that should be simple that should be easy. That's something that with the support of organizations and intermediaries like apprenticeship Carolina that you know we can get you into an apprenticeship program, you know, today or you know this week it really shouldn't be a big lift. There should be plug and play options for people for folks. There should be large scale programs consortia programs that employers can join so you're not establishing a new program you're joining an existing program. This should be many many options that make it easier for for people to get involved and I think when you bring systems together. You know, I think the other success from South Carolina is you're leveraging an existing system, and you're leveraging all of that capability and capacity. I mean, think if we had every workforce board sponsor one apprenticeship program if we had every high school district sponsor an apprenticeship program right you could grow fairly quickly but but again all the structure and infrastructure has to be in place and all those protections to make sure that we're growing good programs as well. And I would just say if you start to large, you're going to to put your resources too quickly, and it's not going to go well. And if it doesn't go well, then it doesn't grow. One of our greatest accomplishments was starting with 13 students one of whom got a job right out of high school and bought a house at 19 and others who were equally successful. And it was there going back into their schools and back into their communities and telling their stories that caught fire for other students and parents. You have to give it time to catch to catch fire. You have to give it time to market itself. If you start with the vision that you have to start out huge, you're very very likely not to get. Yeah, we hear sometimes two from employers or from partnerships around the country that because it's such a big ask of employers to take a take a chance on young adults that doing it really well and making a good impression the first time is the way to keep them coming back and that sometimes if that first experience with a youth program doesn't pan out employers are more hesitant to come back to the table. And I don't know if those kinks are fixed or addressed, just because it's it seems like a bigger ask for them and I can understand that perspective to. So we have just two minutes left here and I'm going to ask one final question from the audience here. I'm going to add to it a little bit. Any one of you can feel free to claim this one, but can a program sponsor simply amend their standards to change the age requirements to accept youth into existing apprenticeship programs. And to that I will add, even regardless of what your answer is, what do you think the biggest change adult serving programs need to make when they begin accepting youth, or they adapt their model to work for you. Yeah, I can take the first one and maybe Amy Emerilist would take the second part. Yeah, that's a pretty simple process to amend your standards. You know you may want to think about your selection procedures in terms of whether there's an impact there. And how you're drawing students into the program if they're if they're being referred from high schools and other sources. That's a different selection procedure than you might use for adults but it generally should not be a complicated amendment to an existing set of standards. And I'll take the second let's go for it. Yeah, I'll take the second part of that and say, if you do that and you start engaging younger students you need to put in more supports for those younger students. You heard earlier today if you were with us students keep talking about Ellen Kaufman Miss Kaufman Ellen Ellen Ellen. She's the youth apprenticeship coordinator here and now we have a specialist who helps her because she engages with the students and parents. She is the hub for them the support system who ensures that all of their emotional mental needs are met. She interfaces back and forth with a K 12 system to get the supports from their school counselors. And we've heard our folks that employers need to know that something's going on or find out from employers when things are going on. So, the kind of support you give those students is different to get them launched. Yeah, I'll just concur with both John and Melissa, and then also kind of go back to that mentor piece. So having a really strong mentor not just somebody on paper is really important for working with you the premises at the company because that's where kind of the the biggest challenges will be with learning new equipment kind of managing that on the job expectations. Strong mentor is really really important there and as john said updating the programs is really really simple we do that every day for companies. Okay, well believe it or not we've already expended an hour of time together. So I know that this is a little bit of an awkward thing on virtual panels, our audience can't thank you and clap, but know that I'm doing it here for you alone in this room. So I just want to say a big thank you to Melissa Amy and john for sharing your perspectives and insights with us during this panel. So folks who are on the line you've heard about supports and policies that can support local program growth and success. You've heard about state resources and strategies to promote growth across regions and states, working with different types of employers, different types of institutions serving in that intermediary capacity and different ways that the state entity can deploy itself and support of this work. And finally from john we've heard about strong federal standards and policies both current and potentially future from the federal as part of its work to modernize apprenticeship and find ways to make this work more efficient and more flexible so that it can continue to grow and reach new corners of our country. Thank you very much for joining us today and sharing your perspectives. Careful what you wish for will probably have you back again someday. But thanks very much for your time and for being with us this afternoon and of course for all the work that you do to expand high quality and equitable apprenticeship opportunities for young people. Thanks so much. We're charged now with giving our official end of summit. Thank you to lots of folks. So first I'm just going to give a big thank you to all of the panelists who have joined us today to help us understand the many, many, many things that go into making the Charleston regional youth apprenticeships and innovative and effective regional partnership that delivers results not only for its employer partners, but for the young people and education partners that make it tick. I'd like to thank the pie and national partners and funders who support our work to make events like this possible, and also to thank everyone who is on the line with us today. I would love if the folks who are behind the scenes could bring up our very last slide for the day so that I can share with the folks who have stayed with us to this point in the afternoon. There are a couple of ways that you can remain connected to pie in the pie network over the months ahead. First, I would like to let folks know that National Apprenticeship Week hosted and organized by the US Department of Labor is coming up in just a few weeks. We'll be pie and pie partners will be hosting a number of events for National Apprenticeship Week. I've included just a couple of them up here on the slide. On November 16 our partner JFF will be hosting an event called a vision for the future a plan for today. Information about that event is available on their website in soon hours as well. On November 17, New America will be hosting an apprenticeship Twitter chat. So we can share some information about that and you'll see some of that on Twitter in the weeks ahead too. And on November 18, the pie will be hosting the pie equity solutions lab workshop hosted by New America. There is information about that event available on our website now. So enjoy learning about the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships today. We encourage you to consider joining the team on April 4 and 5. For the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program Development Workshops and Conference that will be an opportunity to do an even deeper dive into the work that Charleston Regional Use Apprenticeships leads. And we look forward to planning and hosting and sharing more information with you about that event in the months ahead, but please do keep those months. I think the slide here says second through fourth it should say fourth through fifth so apologies for that. And last but not least I want to let folks on the line know that on a monthly basis we host through PIA a network learning series they are typically webinars or office hours that feature national experts or practitioner experts from around the country. You can subscribe to the PIAs monthly newsletter using that link on the screen. Sorry the URL that's on the screen there, which I believe has been shared with you via the resources button on your screen. Please do subscribe to that we advertise those events there and we also share resources and tools and updates from across the field via that newsletter, and anyone is welcome to subscribe. This is our very last offer of ways to stay engaged is on our next slide so if you could move to that I'd like to invite you and your partners to join us in a virtual networking event that we're going to host over the next 30 minutes here. You'll have a chance to meet in small groups with other folks who are interested in youth apprenticeship to share ideas resources contact information so that we can continue this conversation and continue our collaborative and collective learning about how this field is going to grow and quality and equity in everything that we do. So please join us there's a URL on the screen I believe it is also shared with you via that resource button that you can see. And last but by no means least we'd love for to get your perspectives and feedback on the day via our post conference survey which is also here on the screen, we're going to leave this slide up so that if you would like to go to either of these links the event or the survey you have a few minutes to jot down those URLs. But otherwise we'll hope to see many of you in just four short minutes on our networking event and please know you can join that and drop in and drop out as is convenient for you we know on the East Coast it's nearing the end of the day. So we look forward to seeing many of you there and once again thank you to everyone who made today possible, most especially the new America events team, who don't get praise on these calls very often, but Angela and Narmada Jason Shannon, and everyone who's on the line Thank you so much for helping us get to this day and making it all possible we appreciate you. Thanks so much.