 All right. Good morning everybody. Are you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Do you have enough pollen in you yet, or do you need to take a walk out there with all of our Canada geese? It is a pleasure to join Taylor and to welcome you this morning. When you look at the roster of attendees, it's exciting because there's a lot we're gonna learn from each other today and tomorrow, and it's a pleasure to be here. I'm curious. How many of you have been to Charleston before? Stand up. Let me see if you've been to Charleston before. You've been here before. That means that those of you seated have not been to Charleston before, right? Let me make sure that's right. If you've not been to Charleston, would you stand up? Okay. All right, it is working. That is working. Yes. So more than half of you have not been to this city. I hope you get a chance to see something. Many of you have been here because for years we've been known for fine dining and tourism, but we've also become a hotbed of manufacturing in the last decade. When Boeing came in 2009 and brought OEM manufacturing, it changed the whole landscape. We're honored that you're in Charleston. We're honored that you're at one of the campuses of Trident Technical College. If you look around, you will notice that everybody, all employers are trying to hire people. I say trying, trying. That is one reason the youth apprenticeship programs are so important. They're trying to hire. Some of you asked me how things were here. One of the reasons they're not terrific is a lot of employers are upset with us because we can't give them all the employees that they would like to have. Again, the youth apprenticeship program is the way we'll get there. Your first presentation, as Taylor said, is the Charleston youth apprenticeship program. Notice, it does not say the Trident Tech youth apprenticeship program. It says the Charleston regional apprenticeship program. We're a partner in something that is way bigger, way more important than just we are. And we all came together because we had a problem that I was could solve and that is a critical workforce shortage in our region. I don't know what your unemployment is, but in this county, it's less than three percent. We serve three counties. It hovers around three percent for all three of those counties. They're all looking for workers. And we need to address their need and prepare the next level of workforce for them. Our Metro Chamber and many of them will be here over the next couple of days. They delight in telling you how many people are moving into this region every day. And that's great. But they agree with us that our first duty, our first duty is to provide opportunity for those students that already are here so that they are not left by the wayside. That is our challenge. Taylor told you that I'm an old fart. If you did the math, I've been here since most of you weren't even born. I've been president 28 years. I've seen an awful lot, an awful lot. And the Youth Apprenticeship Program is the most exciting solution to most of the problems facing community colleges in our country right now. And I don't know about you, but the older I get, the more I want to work with people who have fire in their bellies. Because if you don't have a sense of urgency, you'll do it tomorrow. And you've left behind the student of today. And that's not good enough. I want to work with the Jareeta Pasta Wakes. I want to work with the Brad Mises. I want to work with people who have fire in their belly. And you can sense it within five minutes, can't you? And it has nothing to do with age, does it? So again, I want to welcome you here. I am going to introduce the Mitch and Melissa show and tell you, boy, do they have fire in their bellies. Would you welcome Mitch and Melissa? Taylor said it best. We don't do anything without the vision of the woman who just ceded herself at the table in the front. This very visionary woman is the reason that we were able to move very swiftly and very quickly within our region to respond to the needs of our employers when they asked. Back in the 1990s, when dual enrollment started rolling in our state, she very quickly recognized the vision for the future. And she said, I need somebody in this college whose role is totally K-12 facing, who goes out and builds relationships with our K-12 partners so that we can build seamless educational programs for students. We have always been a college that is workforce mission-based. But in 2007, wasn't Mitch? In 2007, she realized that she needed somebody strategically who worked with businesses and industries to build apprenticeship programs. And she created the Office of Apprentices and Mitch became it. And so he was facing the industry to develop programs for them and for the students that they needed in their employment. So whenever he was adult apprenticeship programs, by the way, whenever he was approached back in the fall of 2013 by a small German-based company, German-based, that's a clue, because they were scared to death that Boeing had come to town and they were sucking up all of the skilled labor in the region, they asked him if they could do a youth apprenticeship program. And so Mitch, without hesitation, said, sure we can. And then he reached out to me because he had no idea how to interface with K-12, that was my role. And together, we started holding hands and became dance partners. So that's how we were able to quickly respond because we were able very quickly to pull in all of those partners, our K-12 partners, business and industry leaders and start thinking about what a youth apprenticeship program could look like. So the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program was born. And it was born, as Dr. Thornley indicated, as a collaborative partnership. It took all of us collectively working together to really move this forward within the region, to do two specific things, to solve those critical workforce needs that those employers had, but also to mentor that next generation, Dr. Thornley was talking about so that they could get the really great jobs that our region has to offer. And so we began to pull partners to the table. I'm going to very quickly run through the partners on the left hand as you're looking at the slide. But I'm not going to belabor them because they're going to be talking to you over the course of the next couple of days and you'll be able to do a deep dive into what they bring to the table and how they help us collectively to serve the students in the region and the employers. First of all, you notice the Charleston Regional Employers. You cannot have an apprenticeship program without employers getting on board. We are blessed in our region. We started out slow with just a few employers, but now everybody is jumping on board to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. They actually employ 16, 17, 18-year-olds, put them to work in their plants, mentor them on the job, and so they're a critical piece and you'll see how critical later. We also are blessed in our state to have an amazing organization as a part of the State Technical College System, Apprenticeship Carolina. You're going to hear from them, too. Their role in the state is to really move apprenticeships statewide by working with businesses and industries and providing guidance and support to them and their community and individuals within the community so that they can move these apprenticeships into the companies that exist. They also interface with them with the DOL and that's a huge piece because all of these programs are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor. Then in the box, you'll see we have five K-12 partners, four physical school districts and a statewide charter school district. And all of them work collectively to really change the narrative, to get the word out. You're going to hear a whole panel of them in just a few moments, so I'm going to let them tell you what they do and why they are impassioned by this work as well. I'm going to skip the next two partners and go down to Trident. Trident Technical College delivers dual enrollment courses to the students, so the students enrolled in this program are actually taking the same college courses in career-specific fields that the adults would be taking or are taking at the college at the same time. We also serve as the intermediary. There were so many people and we had the structure in place to be able to serve as that intermediary. But when we began putting this together with our partners, we realized we had one critical problem here. The state of South Carolina does not fund dual enrollment for students. It's at the expense of the students and their parents, and so how do you make it equitable? And that was critical for us. We are fortunate to have an incredible chamber of commerce, the number one chamber of commerce in the nation right now. You're going to meet Tina Worth from the chamber later this afternoon. And they are very much engaged in talent development. They believe that that's crucial to really moving the economy forward. And so they're very engaged in that space. So we approached them and they agreed to help solve that problem. Initially, they funded it at 100 percent, raised scholarships to pay tuition books, materials, $500 knife kits, whatever the students needed in order to take advantage of the program. And that leveled the playing field so that every student was able to participate. Since the growth has been so exponential, it's no longer possible for them to sustain that on their own. So they're helping us build in new partnerships and they're beginning to advocate for sustainable funding sources that will enable us to grow this not just within our region but across the state as a whole. And that's a huge component. So the one that you see next to them is our latest partner and that is the Daniel Island Rotary. Our Rotary Club is raising revenues and they have adopted the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program and provide funding support to continue that equity piece. So those are the partners in the initiative. We're going to go very quickly through a lot of other information today and we want to culminate with a video at the end. So we're not going to tell you everything that you want to hear but we promise that we will be here for two days and we will answer any of your questions. Also if you will note in the back of your name tags you'll see a little card that card is a flash drive believe it or not and it has all of our resources and materials included on that so that you can take them home with you very easily. We won't load you up with a lot of papers today. All right so to give you a sense of what this program involves and what the students gain from the program I'm going to turn it over to Mitch for a few minutes. You know as Melissa mentioned we got started when we had that small German manufacturer reach out to me and said they wanted to start a youth apprenticeship program. You know that is vital and when we go out and give presentations we typically talk start off with that story because you can't do an apprenticeship without an employer. Okay you can try but it's not an apprenticeship and the reason why we point that out is if we didn't have the employer we couldn't put together the three core components of an apprenticeship and when you're talking not only starting an apprenticeship but hiring kids at 16 you really need to be someone who is visionary and back then when I was approached by that German manufacturer they agreed to put these three components together. In other words they agreed to do the job relay education which is fairly easy for most people who are looking at starting an apprenticeship program because it's like what we do here at Trident Technical College already. But those other two components the on-the-job training and mentoring and also the paid wage those are sometimes the hurdles because employers worry about liability and things. I often get asked how do you get so many employers to start youth apprenticeship programs and pretty much you know I tell them you've got to find a champion. Eva Ratorian North America was our champion. They were the ones who actually stepped up to the plate and said we'll do this. In fact when we actually had a luncheon the CEO at the time invited other manufacturers his competitors to join but he said you know irregardless we're going to do it. Once we got five employers on board to actually start their do agree to start the program we actually had to figure out how to do it. You know as Melissa says sometimes we're flying we're definitely flying the airplane while we're building it not only back then but sometimes even now. We had never done this before so we actually started bringing the employers together every two weeks for about three months and we developed the two-year model which you're going to learn about today. But we also decided that they're going to be able to achieve four things when they complete these programs. The first thing was they were going to get their high school diploma which was the most important thing. The second thing was they're going to achieve up to 27 college credits from Trident technical college and a certificate that could lead to an associate degree if they continued their education afterwards. The third thing was that they were actually going to receive a United States Department of Labor apprenticeship credential if they achieve competency and all of our youth apprenticeships are competency based. And finally they would have two years of work experience not working in fast food not say there's anything wrong with that but working in places like manufacturing IT health care etc. If you'll notice the young man on the screen here you're going to when you see the pictures in this presentation I want to point out that they are all our youth apprentices. This is one of our youth apprentices who is going to charm you this afternoon. His name is Byron Porsche receiving his journeyman credential from his employer. So that's pretty exciting. So we started out in the fall of 2014 at the request of the company. There were five manufacturers at the table at the time. We launched this with a signing day event and it was covered by the media and that evening during dinner it was shown and one of the wives of one of the CEOs for another company in the region smacked her husband and said why is Cummins not on this list and so they joined us the next day. So that's why this slide says there are six because we started with six true story six companies 13 students one pathway in manufacturing for industrial mechanics. If you will look down the slide within five years we went to 17 pathways and nine industry sectors last year we had over 130 registered companies willing to hire students and we had 92 youth apprentices at the start of the year. This year we are still in process. We have 18 pathways which may be 19 soon because Berkeley County School District approached us with another partner who wants to add an additional one and we may be adding that before the fall. So it may be 19 soon. We have over 150 companies who have registered youth apprenticeship programs within the state within our region rather and we have had 74 applicants so far. We do a major information session at the beginning of February and within five weeks we have 74 completed applications. We have about 20 others that are in pieces and parts. They won't go to the employer until they're actually complete. So it is growing extremely rapidly. I also want to point out the young man on this slide that is Mark well Rolex malls. Mark well is a student from a rural school district. He is a from a single parent household. He wanted to go to Clemson University and major in mechanical engineering but his mother was concerned as an administrative assistant at the high school that she could not pay for that educational experience. He decided to do the machining program. So he went through machining. He became a CNC operator. He took a CAD certification. He got his associate in science degree with us. He is a rock star. His company loves him. He works with them all of the time and he is currently at Clemson University majoring in mechanical engineering with the support of his company and money in the bank. So it opened doors for him to get to where he wanted to be. He is an amazing young man. He comes back to see us every time he's on break. He's coming next week sent us an email saying had something to show us. We told him it not better not be a diamond to put on some girls hand where we're ready for that yet. So this is Mark well. All right. So we said we have nine industry sectors. So you'll know this is what they are. You can look over those quickly. And while you're looking over those I'll just kind of go around the pictures on the sides. This is Jared and in information industrial mechanics. You may see Jessica. She's working at snob and may still be at snob this afternoon. One of our culinary. Tyselia. Tyselia is also from a single parent household. She went into industrial mechanics and is now at Clemson University in mechanical engineering having raised fifty seven thousand dollars in scholarships to get her there based on her apprenticeship experience. Then we have Antonio in automotive. I'm going to skip the next two. Charles is with the. He's in the EMT with the North Charleston Police Department. Absolutely. These young ladies are with Trident Health. So is the young lady right above. They are CNA to pre nursing with Trident Health. You're going to hear from Trident Health this afternoon as well. And then you're going to meet Shannon Brennan in a little bit via video. All of them are apprentices. I skipped the ones down in the center because I want to tell you whenever you're doing this to think out of the box. The two at the bottom were hired by Trident Technical College. We wanted to get an IT program launched and so we started looking for not IT companies but people who needed IT personnel. And so the very first IT launched with the city of Charleston Trident Technical College and who else a bank Heritage Trust Credit Union. So not necessarily you don't necessarily have to think about your employer as being the traditional employer in that particular career set. We like to point that out as well. So Sarah and Marquise were hired by Trident. These students represent all of our school districts and a private school as well. And these are the occupations the students can pursue. We just added welding. So those are the 18. We may be adding electricians. So it may go to 19 soon. But one of them I want to point out is the engineering assistant pathway. And I want to point that out in particular because that one's a really interesting collaborative effort and it has two educational pathways to it. Not just one. A year ago or a little over a year ago year and a half ago we were approached by the U.S. Department of Labor and Project Lead the Way. They wanted to do a pilot program with youth apprenticeships. We helped them design it and we have launched the first Project Lead the Way engineering assistant program with two educational pathways. So students who take project lead the way courses in high school can become the engineer in a two plus two program if they're that strong calculus based student or they can become an engineering assistant. If they're a good algebra student really like working in that space because there are a whole lot more engineering assistants needed for every engineer within our region. So that was critical as well. And so here we have two of our students. I think this is Noah and Jerry who are out there working now. You are going to meet a Project Lead the Way youth apprentice who is at Boeing this afternoon. So SKF and mobile communications. OK SKF and mobile communication. There you go. So that was a really interesting. We designed two pathways and educational arena. All right. So people ask us how we ensure equity. And I'll be honest with you when this started we have the six companies and we just created it and we said OK school districts work with us chamber tell everybody about it. We got out there and we started just casting the net. We didn't target any specific group. But I'll be I'm happy to tell you that doing that we have had two hundred and thirty two youth apprentices hired to date. Forty two percent of them have been students of color. Forty two percent our region the persons of color within our region are at thirty six percent and it's sixty six percent male which is huge for us in post secondary because two thirds of our population are female. The post secondary the male is not tending to go on to post secondary and specifically the male who is a student of color or African-American male. So we find that to be huge. But every time I talk about the US this the US DOL wants me to spend it the other way. They don't want me to talk about the sixty six percent who are male because in the apprenticeship world it's the female who's not becoming an apprentice. Thirty four percent are apprentices and that's compared to what is it Brad ten percent nationwide something like that or less than ten percent nationwide. So anyway you look at this the students who are attracted to this are the students we most want to serve so we're excited about that. I've also been pressed for quite some time about what the outcomes look like and I kept saying wait we only had 13 students the first year it's a two year program. You got to give us time to have enough students complete the program to have some significant results. So we've had a hundred and three students now complete the program so we thought that was a pretty decent baseline to start with and this is what we discovered as a as an overview. We have a sixty five percent completion rate for youth apprentices as compared to thirty two percent of a traditional students in the exact same programs during the exact same time frame. That's huge. That speaks to the value of the mentoring experience to capturing them young to building the partnership that wraps around them. So we're excited about this. We like that sixty five percent. I'll be honest but we are also not satisfied with that sixty five percent. So it is our goal now to really dig into this data. We're sorting it demographically. We're sorting it by industry. We're sorting it by school and by school district. We're sorting this every way that we can sort it so that we can have our council really look into this and figure out where do we really need to improve the program. There's no use to take data if you're not going to use it for continuous improvement. So that's where we are right now. And now I'd like you to meet Shannon Brennan. Shannon Brennan was in our very first youth apprenticeship group in industrial mechanics. She was one of those first thirteen hired by Cummins Turbo Technology. And I want her to tell you her story. It's about ten minutes. Please enjoy. You heard Shannon say that she bought her house. I'm here to tell you that we are now on the fifth home being purchased by youth apprentices in their late teens and early 20s before the 20 age of 22. I'm also here to tell you another outcome we did not expect. We've had two engagements. And so you are actually going to meet one of our engaged individuals this afternoon who is buying home. And so it's amazing what can happen when you work together to move the needle. Yours is not going to look just like ours. But we know yours can have as much power as ours is having. And so we're delighted to be able to share today. Don't hesitate to ask questions along the way. With that I'll turn it back over to Taylor.