 I just want to make sure that our Dean is here. I don't, we see, okay, I just want to make sure I saw you. Okay, so I want to welcome everyone here. I'm Aura Peskovits, I'm president of Oakland University and I want to welcome everyone here today. It's really such an extraordinary event. I'm so pleased when our university can bring together government and industry leaders to explore our workforce needs. And this is really particularly true when our leaders come from defense, government, commercial and other sectors in our economy. It's just wonderful to be able to host you here at Oakland University. And so I want to offer a hearty Golden Grizzlies welcome and thank you to New America, Michigan Talent and Economic Development, TED and Automation Alley for partnering with us here at Oakland University to convene this wonderful event that I think is really aptly named the Augmented Workforce, Michigan Designing for the Future. So let's give everyone who's organized today's event a round of applause. You know, we here at Oakland University are a public institution and we're charged with developing what I believe is our country's most precious, precious resource in the nation. And that is our young people. And we take that responsibility really seriously. And what we do with that resource is that we help employers like many of you, entrepreneurs and others develop that resource for the nation's best use. And ultimately that's to help the economy. And we do that with enthusiastic support for events like this, which brings together economic stakeholders from many, many different industries like defense, transportation, government and education and other sectors in order to ultimately discuss, strategize, brainstorm on the most effective ways that we can move forward to collectively determine what the best goals are to help one another. So I am particularly proud of the role that our School of Engineering and Computer Science plays in facilitating this discussion, especially today. We have an extraordinary Dean, Louie Shammer. Louie, please stand to be recognized. Thank you. And wonderful faculty and staff who engage our students in cutting edge technology and engineering concepts that not only prepare our students to lead in the 21st century, but ultimately to be the workers of tomorrow. And just one example of this is that recently the San Francisco Business Times named our students, our future leaders, as fifth in the nation as in the industry of driverless cars. And that is ahead of many of the institutions that you would think of as being ahead of us. Places like Purdue, the University of Michigan, MIT and elsewhere. So that's here at Oakland University right where you're sitting. And we're very, very proud of that recognition. And this aligns well with today's theme, the augmented workforce, Michigan designing for the future. More fundamentally, it's consistent with our goals and objectives in charting the path forward by elevating bold experiments and collaborations that present right now, but more importantly, are projected to be key and productive, competitive things that we expect to happen in the future, in particular in the area of automation. So I want to personally thank New America for pioneering this new and forward looking civic platform that connects research, technology, solutions network, media, and this as a public forum. Because I think that when we have a community of innovative problem solvers that come together like we are doing here, we can combine core expertise in research and analysis and data science and in human centered design. And when that happens, when all of that happens together, it's sort of like what happened when the big bang happened. All kinds of sparks get together and we start with creation. And that's what I believe is going to happen here. And so I am really honored that Oakland University is the place where we are starting this creative process. And I am delighted that it is happening here now. And so with that, I'd like to turn things over now to our Provost, Provost Jim Plantini. Thank you very much for being here. We are proud to be your hosts. Thanks very much, Aura. And good morning, everyone. How many here in the room for the first time in this space? A lot of you are welcome. Hardy, welcome to you. And I hope you find your experience here on campus and certainly in this building, which really just opened a few years ago. Very exciting. We're excited about it. It's caused a lot of new energy to happen here on our campus. So when I saw this topic, New America augmented workforce, Michigan designing for the future, and looking at the topics inside the discussions that will be taking place, I got pretty excited about it because it really is up the alley of everything that we talk about here on campus and certainly within the area of engineering and computer science. And some of the phrases in there, pivotal point in history of technology, society, and security as the next industrial revolution. And it couldn't be more true. The work around automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, all those things taking place, really our students thinking toward the future really need to be capable, educated, and adaptable to all the new and evolving technologies as they unfold, which is hard to keep ahead of. But I think you'll find here that we are staying abreast of automation and all the great work that our engineering faculty do. So what does this mean for our students? What does it mean for our future economy? I think for universities, for those in the education business and partnering with you, making sure that we are training our students, educating our students for what is taking place now and what will take place in a few years from now and many years from now. And this is a, while it's a task that is not an easy one, I think we have the kind of faculty members here that can help make that happen. Mobility is very important. The internet of things, as I mentioned, cybersecurity, all things that we are involved in and developing programming for, developing curriculum for. So when you think about the opportunities already here at Oakland, for example, we work very closely with the defense industry and our faculty in engineering computer science, working with the defense industry, attracting a pipeline of students. And I know, I hope you get to hear from our Dean during your time here. Dean Chalmers done a great job with his faculty of getting that pipeline built. So over the summer, the way will correct me, there's something like 1500 youngsters coming to our campus from middle school age to high school age, getting a taste of engineering, getting a taste of what might be possible for them and the energy around that, the STEM camps and things like that that happen on our campus. This is the kind of thing that is helping engineering right now is the enrollments in Michigan you may know at universities. It tends to be flat. It's kind of a challenge in this state but not in engineering, not here in engineering anyway. Our enrollments are skyrocketing, going through the roof. So in fact, Louie caught me in the hall and said, hey, I need some stuff, which he does very well. And he does because of the increasing enrollment, increasing excitement and the increasing need for exactly what you're talking about at this conference and at this session. So we're really excited about that. And I'll just mention one other thing here and that is something like 99%, I was gonna say 97 but I just found out 99% of our students get employed or move on to further education after they leave here. This is the kind of thing happening in the workforce now. And we think that's very exciting and 97% of those students stay here in Michigan. So we are really educating a workforce for those people around us. I know that you probably saw out in the hallways that I think there are some opportunities for you to share your ideas about what might happen going into the future. Please do take advantage of that. We're excited about having you here with us and sharing ideas with you. And with that, I would like to turn it over to a video from US Senator Debbie Stabenow. I think we're ready for that now. Good morning. I'm so glad you're attending today's discussion on such an important topic. I wish I could be there with you. The future of Michigan's Automotive and Defense Workforce is a very important topic for all of us and something that we're all focused on. Auto and defense manufacturing have long been an important part of our economy, as we know. In fact, a recent study found that 96 of the top 100 North American automotive suppliers has a presence in Michigan and 62 have their headquarters here. And that's terrific. And Michigan is home to nearly 4,000 businesses that serve the defense and aerospace industries. And these businesses support more than 108,000 jobs and growing. One of the areas I'm most excited about is autonomous vehicles. Michigan truly is a national and world leader. And I'm pleased to partner with you to advance the development of safe self-driving vehicles. We all know that one of the biggest challenges though is creating the skilled workforce we need for today's and tomorrow's jobs. And that's why you're here today. Today's workers use more robots than wrenches and more mind power than muscle. So we need to make sure they have the specialized training they need to succeed and you have the talent that you need to succeed. That's why earlier this year, I introduced my new skills for new jobs agenda, which builds on Michigan's new jobs training program. 147 local partnerships have already trained 20,000 Michigan workers for high-skilled jobs. And I wanna make sure that federally we can partner to make that an even bigger and more successful program. My agenda includes legislation to help schools hire more career counselors as well as other support for young people who are considering technical careers and skilled trades. One of the things I've found out in looking into this issue when it was raised by businesses and educators is that we have in Michigan, one of the highest student to counselor ratios in the country, unfortunately, with 729 students for every one school counselor. The recommended average is 250 students for every counselor. So we need more people in the schools that can partner with you, know what's happening, what your needs are, and be able to talk with young people about all of the options for them, not just for your college, but the ability to go into a skilled trades or technical career so that we give young people the full range of options for great careers. My agenda also offers new incentives for school districts and employers and colleges to create high school career technical education partnerships and expand on good things happening across Michigan. And it would also offer tax cuts of up to $5,000 per employee for increasing the number of employees enrolled in federal and state registered apprenticeship programs. I know there's a lot of great focus now, both from all of you from the private sector, from our state government, community colleges, schools, universities, and we're all now coming together to really focus on the fact that as things are changing in Michigan and manufacturing and how we manufacture them, we know that we need skilled people to be able to make things, build things, grow things, and that there are great career opportunities in these areas. It's not just for your college, it's opportunities in the skilled trades and technical careers. And our young people need to be asked not just where you're gonna go to college, but what do you wanna do? What do you want for a career? And they need to see all the options, all of the options that are available to them and the things that we need to build Michigan's economy. So I'm so glad to see all of you, leaders from so many different sectors coming together today to discuss how we can meet this challenge. I wanna thank you for what you do. I'm anxious to continue to be your partner in whatever role I can play, both federally, but frankly, also just talking about this and using the bully pulpit to be able to help bring people together, to focus on how we move Michigan forward with new opportunities and new skills for our people. Have a great conference. Okay, good morning. And we're ready to get started, very excitingly. This first panel is the panel that is looking at how employers think about the skills that they need going forward and will focus particularly on the ways that we can all prepare across different sectors the kinds of things that the workforce needs. So without further ado, I am honored to introduce my co-panelist, Mark Hackel, the Executive Director of Macomb County, Andy Ho, President and CEO of Amgen, Tom Kelly, Executive Director and CEO of Automation Alley, Major General Clark Lamasters, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Tank Automotive and Armaments Command, and Ivy Simmons, Executive Vice President of the National Business League. If you can all make your way down to the stage, we'll get started with our discussion right away. Thank you. First of all, what an honor to be with this panel. Across the board, there's expertise on everything from what we need in the military and what we're thinking about and transitioning military to civilian roles to what we're doing at the county level to think about the ways that we can train, identify talent and connect people with the resources and technologies that they need to succeed to a variety of different perspectives. So I think I'll direct the first question to the full panel and have everybody jump in with a brief answer that talks a little bit about your own perspective and the perspective that you'd like to share going forward and then we'll launch it into a discussion among all of us. So first of all, what do each of you think that is the defining characteristic of some of the qualities you'd like to see in an employee today and how do you think that's different from 15 years going forward? And I said in the first seat next to her. So I would probably say that the skill that we need to look for most is adaptability and the ability to work with one another but still think clearly and critically for oneself. You know, when you get into kind of group thing people tend to kind of follow as opposed to stopping and assessing, clearly assessing logically what's taking place and what may need to happen in the micro and as well as the long-term macro sense of what they're working on. That's the biggest thing in terms of defining oneself and one's perspective, researching it and then being able to apply it out and work with others. Great, thank you. Yeah, it kind of goes along with the adaptability. It's problem solving. Being able to solve problems that come your way in a variety of different things. And again, I tend to look at people and kind of get a perspective of not just in their professional life but even in their own personal life. So as an employer looking to hire somebody, I kind of look at the person kind of holistically. Everything about them or the type of person that really is willing to tackle a problem. And have they found what they're looking for is their passion. Is this something that they're very passionate about and if they are, I think that problem solving comes as a natural as a result. So yes to both of what my colleagues had just mentioned I would also say as I look at it from the government sector, it's that dedication to serving something other than just yourself, selfless service that always many of our employees have as they look at the mission that they provide to support soldiers and ensure they have the capability and the wanting to be part of a professional organization to grow and learn and then to be flexible as we change in the government. So from our perspective, I think to just give you a little bit of background and context, where AM General is, is both a commercial automotive manufacturer and a military automotive manufacturer. Even on the military side, over 80% of our production goes to allies and partners around the globe. So even in that, in a business that you would think would be largely focused just on the US, it's critical that we have people who understand the global context of the world they work in. And the way work is evolving today is no one for a long time has done their job in isolation. Everything we do is part of a team and increasingly everything we do is part of a global team. So we need employees who can bring the specific skill set to a team that you would expect to bring to a team and then have the context to work in that team at a global scale. Work with not only their employees right here, but work with people around the world to solve those problems. So that teamwork in a global context is what we're looking for. Great, so I'm Tom Kelly with Automationally. We represent hundreds and hundreds of manufacturers and technology companies in Michigan. And I'm gonna take a little different tack and say that the high skilled labor that we have such a shortage of is critical. But when I'm out talking to dozens and dozens of CEOs as I know Mark is and General Masters and Andy, I'm hearing that also an acute need is on the low skilled front, you need somebody that can show up at eight o'clock every day, Monday through Friday. Eight would be late. It would be late, right? So I hear this pain that it's not just we need all these really brilliant people to work at brilliant companies. We need people that have the skills to show up, right? And I know it sounds crazy, but at 3.9% unemployment, that's the thing we're trying to scoop up too. So it's kind of a problem on both ends. And I think the training, which we'll probably talk about a little later, exists to take someone with low skill or no skill and turn them into a skilled employee. That training exists today. What we need is the work ethic to say, I'm gonna change what I've always known to be and I'm gonna show up eight to five. And if I could play off of that, make it more conversational, it's interesting. The general and I kind of share a common bond or common theme in law enforcement, the military law enforcement, there's this, if you will, this loyalty that you have to an organization. And it's kind of based upon the mission that you're out there trying to create. Transferring over from law enforcement to get into this county executive form of government, going to the manufacturer and seeing what's going out in other industries. It's interesting, because as I look at that and I'm watching and I'm talking to these companies, just as was mentioned by Tom, there's less of a loyalty to organizations today that I've noticed, but still you see it in the, whether it's in the military or law enforcement, it's still there, because I think they're ingrained into this passion they have working with one another. But for some reason, there's not the loyalty to stay with a company or a business, but yet there still might be with the military and law enforcement. So this talent attraction thing is what I'm very interested in. It's something unique for me, being in law enforcement, that you don't really see that loyalty to the company. They're looking for the next opportunity and a lot of the head hunting, I guess, if you will, goes on, where somebody will grab somebody, pay them something better and they're willing to just pack up and go, so. So that's a really interesting concept, Mark, and interesting to me for two reasons. One, that everybody on the panel and this really smart, interesting panel that deals with high tech jobs. So Adoree will get you everywhere. That deals with lots of high tech jobs in lots of different ways, mentioned personally driven skills as the thing that they need. Adaptability, entrepreneurialism, dedication, the soft skills of being able to show up on time. Those are all things that are individually driven and we see that in our work at New America, too, in looking at the broad landscape of the future of work at large, that more and more people these days are starting to think about work in terms of responsibilities that fall on the individual. Whereas in previous generations and in previous approaches, people went to a job or a field and stayed there for 15 to 20 years and worked their way up through that career. Now, more and more people, particularly in younger generations, are jumping around to different parts of their sector, different companies within that world, different using their skills in different ways and in trying to find those opportunities for themselves and then develop their own skills. So for all of you, and you don't all need to answer down the road, we can do this as a conversation, like do you think that that means that in the corporate world, in established types of professions or sectors, that we need to start thinking more holistically about what it means to be a good employee, what loyalty means, what recruitment and retention means, and that we need to start thinking about those things as part of the community of Detroit or part of the community of the defense world or something else, rather than having the loyalty be to a particular company or police force or something like that. So from a government perspective, and again, just the context, at Detroit Arsenal, there's not a bunch of folks in uniforms like me, you know, a workforce of about 7,000 people, men and women of all kinds of skills, from a Dr. Hitchcock who you'll hear from later from TARDAC engineers all the way down to admin, there's about 160 people that wear uniform out there, there's about 6,500 that don't. And I think one of the things inside the government is it's still, even from a military perspective, it's a very family-oriented business, people get in it and they, to the opposite of what you're saying, they don't, maybe it's security, maybe it's, you know, some calling of higher service or selflessness or whatever belonging to a professional organization, they don't tend to leave the government service, they put in a lifetime of work there, about 40% of our workforce, our former, they have served in some form in the military, so back to Mark's point, they bring with them that organizational loyalty and it stays with them. I think it's just a little bit different on the government side, I'm not saying that people come in and no one ever leaves the government, in fact, Dr. Hitchcock will probably tell you from an engineering perspective, the ability to keep that high tier, very skilled, very demand set, particularly in this area, when there are a lot bigger employers and a lot more salary associated, but it's very difficult to retain them in the government and maintain that level of expertise that allows it, so I think it's a little different from a perspective of the government when you look at it from both the civilian and military side. And I wonder if that would change, because as the general mentioned, you have like a limited workforce, if you will, in public safety and law enforcement in particular, but when I look at what's going on right now with the various industries and we'll say manufacturing, in Macomb County across all the sectors, there's 17,000 jobs available right now in Macomb County alone. I mean, it's gotta be magnified if you look at it region-wise or if you look at it statewide. So the question becomes, is it because they have opportunity to do that? In other words, another company realizes there's somebody that's good at what they do and they decide to hire an engineer from another company or they put it out there that they're looking for somebody and the person that feels less of a loyalty to that company than they do what they're about to make at some other organization. But there are so many jobs to fill, the question becomes, are we just attracting a workforce that we're just kind of shuffling around the region or are we trying to attract a workforce to come from other states to come here to fill these jobs so there'd be less of that opportunity for people to want to, if you will, jump and go to a different company if these jobs were filled. And you may want to also, if you flip loyalty on its head, the flip side of loyalty is flexibility, the uberization of everything, right? The ability for people to jump in and out of work and make money when they want to make money and do what they want to do when they want to do it. Loyalty implies you're stuck with me from eight to five and for a lot of people now, the way their minds work around a cell phone and the short attention span, that's unpalatable. It's just not in there what they want to do in their lives. And so we have to figure out a way, I know Kelly Services is one of our members, one of the big things they're working on, I mean, they do augmented workforce in small chunks. They're figuring out how do we gamify work so people can jump in and out of Kelly and say, hey, tomorrow you're showing up there for three hours maybe. The uberization of real work, that's very, very difficult in the manufacturing plant because of processing quality control, but it's not impossible. Think what the world will look like if you could have 3,000 employees rather than 300 and they're checking in and out. It's a dream, of course, but. Yeah, I think with that. I think the concept of loyalty is a really important one, particularly for employers and developing talent. I think that the single most compelling organizing construct of loyalty for employers though is their families. And if we don't recognize the fact that people who spend a lot of time making themselves, going through the training, making themselves talent are gonna seek the best opportunity for themselves. I think the challenge we all face is right now there are lots of companies chasing a few talented employees and we're shuffling the deck chairs right now and the concern I have is that the economy is doing well, particularly Michigan, the country and the state of Michigan are doing lots of things to attract business and grow the economy. And if we're wildly successful in doing all of that, we'll come up short because we just simply won't have the talent necessary. We're trading off, frankly, right now, we're trading off high skilled experienced workforce and we're not pulling into the workforce, the young talent that we need at all levels. Both in skill, the average hourly wage right now for a welder is really good. If you can light a weld torch, you can work pretty much anywhere you want right now and that's great for current welders, we just need more of them. So that's a great point though. So in what are the ways in which we can expand the population of people that are potential employees, either people bringing them in from outside of the region and getting new blood, new thinking, new creativity into the conversation from populations that are either entrepreneurial right now or small business owners that might want to plug in to the larger either corporate world or government world or in some other way. Or Tom, as you mentioned, the populations of people that are low skilled right now but are willing and able to up skill if given the right kinds of training and opportunity. So what are the ways that jump out at all of you right now in thinking about that? So I think there's a couple ways I want to touch back to what they were saying a moment ago. When we look at creating workspaces, I don't think that typically employers up until now have looked at how it could be mutually beneficial. Studies have shown people do not have to work eight hours a day to be productive, to be engaged and to understand the company culture and really be a asset. So I think a lot of times we stay locked into these modes of how we've done business and it's not accessible to people, it's not what they want to do. So speaking back to that uberization, if I can work three days a week at six hours each day and do the same output as someone does at 50 hours a week, I shouldn't be held accountable to being in the office for those 40 hours, right? And as we look at how to pull in different communities into our workspaces, there's a lot of folks that get lost in our communities if they didn't graduate from high school or they graduated but they never went to college or started community college. So they're stuck in these low skilled jobs we're not grabbing them up, we're not grabbing returning citizens who may have not done anything horribly, horribly bad but they had a bad break and they just need to be retrained. I've heard a number of people talk about how internship programs can be great but a lot of times when you have first to college or first to work in corporate environments, people don't understand how to dress, how to talk and how to export themselves in a way that ensures that they're respectful of the culture, they understand the culture, and they're able to do the job in a way that they feel comfortable. There's a discomfort that happens. I've spoken with a professor who has a business, she's a professor at a PhD, was in Techdown and has successful business owner but still didn't feel comfortable in that space, right? Because it wasn't made welcoming. So when we bring in interns, we bring in new hires, how are we ensuring that the culture we're creating is welcoming and accepted? It's still teaching people how to operate in our community but we're creating a bridge to their new experiences as opposed to isolating them and expecting them to jump ahead as opposed to walk into where they need to be. Part of what I think as well, and I shouldn't speak because it's out of my lane because the government doesn't do this very well, is the ability to customize the way we recruit. I mean, many of the tools and applications that are out on the internet that allow an informed workforce to go and see what's available and what skills they're looking for. We talk about augmentation technology and how do we take those to the next level? Where is these things that are out there watching your signals? I know it's got a really bad connotation right now with some things that went on from the election but these things that are watching your behaviors on the internet answering questions, it's like these dating sites, you answer some questions and it kind of goes out and it finds you and it says, hey, AM General would be really a great place for you to come to work at. So that would be the connected workforce piece of it but to get to where we need baseline blue collar skilled laborers, how do you do that face to face contact more effectively and then broaden that just outside the greater area here and get it nationally. Hey, come to Michigan, see this, we got great work or Indiana or wherever we're working at. It's interesting, I can't help but go back to the jobs that are available right now and the moving of chairs or shuffling and I was just talking earlier out in our lobby here with Tom Janji, city manager, Auburn Hills and we were having a conversation about what we're talking internally within the county and we're saying to ourselves, how do we attract from outside people to want to come here to this region? I mean, people call it an image problem, I call it a reality problem. We got a great urban center and that's downtown Detroit, the things that are happening there, it's exciting, it's vibrant, but the reality is the concerns that are happening in the neighborhood are what are always publicized, they're the lead story and it's a reflection on the region here and so people when you talk about it saying, why don't you, when you graduate college, from another state, think about job opportunities that are here because they're incredible job opportunities and they're available and if you think about the weather and the quality of life and the other assets we have and it's very affordable if you will, if you think about what we have here in this area. But why is it that we talk about Pure Michigan to kind of brand ourselves as an area to come and recreate? Aren't we doing that around the country to say, this is a place you ought to pack up and move and if you are from here and you went someplace else to college other than Oakland University or Wayne State where you should go and you decide to, that was for your aura. So, is that good? But why not try to get them to want to stay here if they're here and understand what we have because if you stop, think about it, outside the neighborhoods of the city, Detroit, they're challenged. They're extremely challenged and I say that because you look at the population, we've benefited in Macomb County as a result of those challenges but it's not good for the region. What do I mean? It's a redistribution of population. Since 2010 census, on average, 12 people a day have made Macomb County their home but it's not because they've come from California, they've come from Texas, they've come from someplace else. It was a redistribution of population in the region and that's not helping anyone. The question becomes, why do we start marketing ourselves as something that is of value to people when they graduate or they have these skills to want to come here? Whether it's a blue collar worker, whether it's a white collar worker or what we call in Macomb County and we're kind of taking this tag, the new collar worker, the people that are looking for those jobs of the future that we're trying to, I guess if you will, train them in. So, I think there needs to be more of an effort or emphasis on getting people to want to come here, to this state, to this region, if you will, the Detroit region. No, I think you've hit on a great point and again, I think the workforce tomorrow is gonna have an organizing construct around their families and that means it needs to be a whole package. Yep, there have to be employers that are offering jobs, they're attractive for them to work. There have to be schools in the area that people are gonna want to bring their kids and put them in those schools or it needs to be lifestyle and an activity around them that is as good or better as they can get anywhere else in the country. And I think, I get the sense that there are pockets of trapped work populations in the US that you could get access to if you could just bring them in and bring them here and get them out of the geographic location where they are and into where jobs are or start matching that up. And then we go a long way towards increasing the overall population of the talent that we need. And from my view, that's really the issue is because we're gonna run out of the experience workforce that we have pretty soon. If we're not backfilling that with the younger generation that are able to and willing to do the work that we have today and that we have going forward, then we're gonna get trapped. And so it's, but it can't just be what the employers are doing. It can't just be what the communities are doing. It can't just be what the schools are doing. If you don't put all of this together, then you're just not attracting them in where the jobs are. So. I and Tom both look like we're ready to jump into it. I guess I would like us to pull back a bit on this. We have to import people to Michigan. We have so many people here that are unemployed. I know we have the state at 3.4%. But that's not the same for communities of color. That doesn't include those who stopped looking for work. That doesn't include those that thousands, one thousand have taken bio packages from all of our major corporations in the past five years. That would love to do something. They might have been bought out at 45 or 55 or even 60, but they weren't really ready to retire. But they're like, okay, this might be the best bio package I'm gonna get. The next one's gonna be pretty slim. So let me take this one, but they'd love to keep working. So we need to reorient them and find them and bring them back to the farm. No, that's exactly my point. They're right here. Yeah, I don't want us to look outside of our own state. I think we have great resources here. And there's a real world example of that. So, and it ties into the gamification of work these days. So DTEs having a heck of a time getting linemen, right? This is a job. You go out, you work the polls. You make sure that down lines, you go repair them. What they did was they partnered with a company called Vector Form. Both members of Automation Alley. We worked through this problem of how do you train them in a way that's exciting for an 18 to 24 year old man? And what they did was they put them in virtual reality and they created a game of how you repair down power lines. And what was fascinating was the guys loved it and the gals and they all had a great time and they got trained. And so they've been able to create an unskilled to a skilled person in a way that's very exciting. And what was most interesting was they said, we were concerned that when we train them through partnering up an apprenticeship, they really learn because they have that sense of fear when they're out working on a real down power line and they understand this is a life or death situation and take it seriously. They said when we put them in virtual reality we get the same visceral response. We get the same sense of fear because of the way they've done this. And now there's no prerequisites required. They say, come on in, put these on. If you have a blast, great, let's train you up and then let's get you out on a truck, right? And that's a totally new mindset. Do you think about how they do that? So the 18 to 24 year olds are thrilled. They think, wow, this is a cool company. Then you gotta go work the line. So there's a downside. But you know, it's a great way to do it. So Tom, that is a great point and one that I was gonna ask the panel about across the board. What types of technologies do you see either out there that are in experimental use that you'd like to see being more widespread or are things that you think need to be developed that haven't been developed yet? Anybody wanna jump in? Maybe I'll start and take it down the line this way, automation alley, right? So I think what you're gonna see in the future is a number of technologies that are all merging together. I think the reason why we need such high skill and high talent is because technology is immature. In other words, you need a high skill to interact with technology, except when it's transcendent like an iPad or an iPhone. Nobody gets trained on how to use an iPad or an iPhone. They download the apps. They learn how to play the app. They master the app. It's not just play apps, it's productivity apps. Look what Uber's done. Look what all of these business models that are coming out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere, there is zero training required. I jump in the car, I download my Uber app, I'm a driver for Uber and I get paid based on that. I think if you think about a manufacturing environment, the reason why we have such high skill is we have to up skill people on how to push the right buttons at the right time. If technology can come to the point where you're wearing augmented goggles and it's telling you that button right now. Set this to 2.5 degrees. Set this over here, watch this. When you see this turn red, I'm gonna give you a graph on your eye. This is what's coming to take people that have zero skill and put them in an environment where they know exactly what they're doing because most of skilled training, whether you're an engineer or a lineman, is based on prior knowledge and information. If you have that information and knowledge at your fingertips, that changes everything about what's possible. Rather than being gloom and doom, that technology is gonna leave everybody behind, I'm hopeful that technology will transcend and bring everybody together. So that's what I maybe would open with. So I'd mentioned that I thought the critical aspect that we needed out of the workforce for tomorrow is that teamwork and collaboration so that the technology that we're focusing on is how do we get a team more effective and more collaborative? And we're a geographically distributed company and a geographically distributed workforce. Our main manufacturing campuses in Mishwaka, Indiana where we do final vehicle assembly, our powertrain plan is in Franklin, Ohio and our engineering and technology center is here. The first shift starts at all of our manufacturing plants at five a.m. You know, at 5.15, we've got a part that doesn't fit from the engine plant that doesn't fit into the vehicle. Guess what? I gotta get a lot of people together talking and solving that problem. And the traditional way it went was you pass a piece of paper over here and somebody would email somebody else and this. And I think everyone intuitively knows the best way to solve problems is get everybody who's involved in that problem sitting at the table looking at the same piece of paper talking about the same subject. How do you create, how do you use technology to create that same event in a geographically distributed workforce and you can get the person on the manufacturing line in the vehicle final assembly plant, the manufacturing line in the engine plant, the quality engineer that's over up here in Auburn Hills all talking together at the same time because line goes down for half an hour. That's a lot of money, a lot of lost efficiencies. And so that's what the technology we look at is how do you get teams working together? And then that's the augmentation of the robotic system that's doing the lift assist on the line. That goes down, who's responsible for that? And that collaboration and teamwork is where we're focused on the kind of technology we bring in to solve the problem. So men and women continue to be the fundamental building block. It doesn't matter whether it's government or any organization. The technology or the tools that enables them to do exactly what Mr. Hobe's talking about and it's the same I believe on the government side. The government is inherently distributed. The small footprint that we have at Detroit Arsenal, the 3,000 folks that belong at TACOM, I've got another 8,000 located and all the way from California to Alabama and it's the ability to use the tools and technology for us. It's the implementation of a SAP-based enterprise resource planning technology called the Logistics Modernization Program that allows us to see our business and make decisions. So it's those tools and it's the idea of teaming with the technology to make decisions, to collaborate effectively. And the negative part of that is there is a culture out there of laziness that technology generates. An action pass, an email sent, a button pressed, a block check requires no follow up or anything. I'm done. I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to do the other thing. We start to work very hard on the tactile portion of that, the human piece of that, which is that, well, we're not making progress. So I got to do what makes a lot of young people uncomfortable. I got to call somebody on the phone. Not text them, but call them on the phone. Or even what makes them more uncomfortable. Kind of forgot to look at them. Yeah, or even worse, I love to do this as a leader of my organization when somebody does something right and wrong is I like to go to their workplace. Oh my God, physical contact and eye-to-eye contact. Really, it's amazing what their young employees, they actually squirm in their seat to sit across from someone and actually have to communicate and brief them on information. But I think that's a very important piece that we've got to continue. And I agree with everything that's been said. It is an enabler force. We've got to use it. We have to be, as we said earlier, flexible and adaptable to the technology. You know, it's something that Automation Alley brought up but we're fully aware of is the question of kids that are entering school today. 65% of the jobs that they're gonna be working and don't even exist today. So the question becomes, how are we preparing them for these jobs and the work that we're doing, you know, whether it's for next-generation learning that we're doing up in the Romeo schools, you know, what we're doing with the Frasier educational institutions to try to get these kids to understand these skill sets. And again, I gotta believe many of you here in this room probably thought this at some point in time. I know I did when I'm in school and we're talking about algebra, chemistry. You're reading or you're looking at the stuff and you're thinking to yourself, what is this gonna do for me when I get older? You know, I'm even studying this stuff. You know, I'm helping out a sixth grade nephew who lives with me and I'm reading his stuff and I'm still thinking the same thing. Why is he learning this stuff? Well, what we're trying to do with some of these other programs is now getting kids connected to those careers. In other words, the curriculum that they're working on right now we're working with for next-generation learning so they can actually understand what career opportunities are there. So while they're learning this, how does it apply to job opportunities and getting them connected to thinking about what they might want to do? I go back to my experience in law enforcement, started as a dispatcher. That's all we had was punch cards. And by the way, those years that didn't realize that there was no such thing as 911 when I first started. It was a little number you pushed and it was called zero, the operator. And a person actually answered the phone and you'd get directed as to where you needed to go. But today, I walk into a dispatch center in fact our contact facility and it is unbelievable when you walk in there. It's almost overwhelming. Today I don't know if I could actually sit at one of those councils and run it because of the technology that is there. They're actually virtual police officers. They can see what's going out on the street before the police officers even get to the scenes. What's happening in a school that there's somebody that's taking over a school? Obviously trying to harm the children. We can see inside the schools now and that's a dispatcher that's doing this job with the technology that's available to them. So are we giving kids the opportunities in the schools and that's what we're working on. But I still have to go back to the workforce itself that we have currently available. The numbers don't show that those 17,000 jobs available are gonna be filled with what we have right here in our own backyard. I say that because the majority of our population right now in Macomb County are senior citizens. They're retired. An overwhelming percentage of people that are living in our community are senior citizens now. And so the question becomes, where are we getting this talent? We're getting great support from our community college to help people that want these jobs to try to figure out how do we recruit them to retain opportunities, to have the skill sets available to do the jobs. And even with our partners like Oaken University and Wayne State University working in Macomb County to connect them to this. But there's still gonna be a void. We're not gonna be able to fill all of these jobs that are available. And I'm telling you they're available today. I got problems. Like at Amazon coming with a thousand job opportunities on 23 mile road Shelby Township. And they're questioning where they're gonna get the jobs. And I got another manufacturer coming in wanting 500 workers that everything you've put the building up yet. And I'm thinking where are they gonna get these jobs? And that's what they keep asking me. The talent attraction thing is such a critical need right now in industries across all sectors. And we simply don't have the answer here but we're trying to figure out how do we grow those job opportunities for people that want them in and around our neighborhoods. And again, we still need to concern ourselves as to where we're gonna get these folks. I'll give you an example of what one of our suppliers is doing is that he's actually during the process of creating his own high school. So it's his business is highly technical. So he's calling on his fellow suppliers to fund it. They're not looking for funding. They're doing it themselves. It's swore high skilled employers. It's kind of vocational, kind of technical. And if those students wanna then move on to college and become engineers, great. But if not, you will have the skill set to get jobs with companies like his own where they're having a problem. We're creating a talent pipeline where we're connecting folks from internship all the way up to the C-suite because you can get people employed as an intern. You can get them employed as a new college alum. But that gap between first tier manager to C-suite, especially for people of color is huge. And that's for suppliers themselves as well as for corporations. So we are working start with HBCUs and then Hispanic and Native American colleges around getting students of color opportunities and then graduate students opportunities as well. And then all the way up to how do we mature and develop and really refine corporate employees so that they will scale up within the organization. That sounds like a great model. I'd love to learn more. I do wanna leave a little bit of extra time for questions though. So we have probably- Can I add to that real quick if I can? Cause you make a great point. There are companies that we're finding out that are starting to do that themselves. They're recruiting people that is internships and trying to train them. They're even coming from the high schools. But we're starting to see more CTE programs coming back into the schools which kind of left us for a while. And what I find very fascinating is there are some companies and those of you that are from some manufacturing companies or whatever, come to realize this. They're looking for people to volunteer to help out with some of these programs and teaching. And even if you allow it as a company to have somebody go there to kinda help and educate and train these kids in particular cyber security, there's a tremendous void there. But if you had somebody there that's in that classroom and you're watching them cause I've got to go around to manufacturing facilities all around the county. I go, it's like, probably if I'm not in one or two a week, I'm misstating this, okay? To see what they're doing to get an understanding. But as I go to the schools and I see these CTE programs and I see folks that are there that are actually helping out from a manufacturer, what a tremendous opportunity for them for recruiting. And I call them scouts. I used to teach in a police academy. I did that ever since I became the sheriff. Well, I did that for years and what I would do while I was in the academy because I was there so much and I was intimately involved with those kids to see what they did. I was picking. I was grabbing these kids and giving them their applications to hire them into my organization because I realized what they had beyond just their skill set or what they did on a test. I could tell they were passionate. I could tell they had an interest. So my offer to you if you're a manufacturer is get involved in what's going on in these schools CTE programs because you can become a scout for your company and find folks that you really think are gonna match what it is you need for your organization. So I apologize for interrupting. No, thank you. That was great addition. Do we have maybe two or three questions though? Yep. In the state of Michigan, Governor Schneider's proposed in the Marshall Plan to address some of the concerns that Mr. Hackl just mentioned there about getting corporations engaged and getting a new class of teachers involved with CTE education programs. But I do wanna dovetail into what Ms. Simmons said about the underrepresented population. In the city of Pontiac, which is in the middle of Oakland County here, there is close to 17% unemployment of people coming right out of that high school. And I don't find that there's a lot of corporate engagement for workforce development. There's a lot of engagement for picking up trash, building houses and doing social service type work but not for workforce development. I think the same can be said is true in Detroit at a larger scale, although there are some examples of like the Randolph Academy. How can corporations free up their already stretched thin workforce to engage in corporate philanthropy in helping these underserved communities? Well, I think you break up a great point. That's where the workforce is right here, right now. That's, we ought to figure out how to get them back into the workforce. If we have a basic workforce population gap, then the first thing we ought to be doing is looking at every untapped opportunity for the workforce to increase just the broad numbers coming in there. And if there are communities like Pontiac with 70% unemployment coming out of that high school, solve that problem. And I think you're absolutely right. Corporate America ought to be looking at that, that particularly from a regional geographic point, that's where we ought to be looking first and it's gotta start earlier, right? It's gotta start, frankly, probably needs to start in middle school so that they're coming out with the skills. And it's not, certainly you need technical training, but you gotta get the basics right, right? I mean, it's teamwork skills, it's communication skills, it's human interaction skills and all that, you get that and the ability to learn and adapt and get that. So I think you're absolutely right that particularly for this entire region, we gotta be really focused on getting the untapped workforce that's already here back into the workforce. Once we get that done, then we recruit more people into the region. And that's a good point. A question becomes, what is it that they're doing with school districts? RISD in Macomb County is working with every school district in Macomb County. We have the largest manufacturing day celebration than anywhere in the entire country. I love bragging about that kind of stuff in Macomb County while I'm here in Oakland County. But that being said, but it's not a one day event. What we have done with our schools is connected and directed with those manufacturing for that very reason so that those kids that maybe don't know about job opportunities or things that are out there because maybe their parents aren't talking about it or there isn't the pair of connection at home or maybe the parents have a different vision of what's going on in manufacturing today like we did. In other words, the manufacturing facilities of yesteryears are not the same. I mean, it's very high tech and they're very clean and it's amazing what's happening in these facilities. But I don't think a lot of parents really realize that and they tend to sometimes shy away or if they don't think their kids of value enough to go to college, they probably are ignoring the opportunity, so we're connecting with our schools and the school districts are bringing in these, if you will, programs, like I said, for next generation learning. But every one of them, through their CTC programs and our ISD are fully engaged with our schools today. So I find it surprising that maybe there isn't that connectivity with Pontiac in getting those kids to see job opportunities that are out there and engaging them with the manufacturers. It can't be just the government trying to figure out how to solve this problem. The problem is there's employers out there, manufacturers that need the workforce. So the question becomes how are they getting out there? How are they reaching out and connecting with those schools because there are kids there to get them to see these opportunities? I mean, I think it's everybody has to be involved and I tell you in Macomb, our planning department along with our manufacturers and our educational institutions and partners, it done an incredible job of making that happen. The Marshall Plan, I found it interesting when the governor started talking about that because we're doing that in Macomb County already and I'm gonna be with him in about 20 minutes at our CO manufacturing in Macomb County and we're talking on a very similar panel like we are right now about what we're doing in Macomb County to try to give all those kids an opportunity to see what they might have a passion for in the future. I think it would be interesting to see and to really have a conversation with your business community around what their needs are. Like is there a direct conversation? And we talked earlier, as colleges and universities, they have a direct conversation with corporations. What are your needs? What are you looking for in your employees? That conversation can still be had at the ninth through 12th grade level because you're preparing them. Yes, we need to have that conversation. Sixth through eighth, can you kind of give introductory conversations around what work is like? What kind of life do you wanna have where the opportunities are? But ninth through 12th, you can actually do real training of those students based upon what your regional corporations are looking for, what they need, what are those skills, what are the experiences they need to have, and you can incorporate them into the school year, but also what are the summer programs that you can create and how can you build in some experiences for them? So New America as a civic platform also is working to connect leading edge cities like Detroit with others around the country who are looking at this exact thing. So if you have specific suggestions and wanna chat about it later, would love to do that offline too. Time for one more question. Yep, back there. Hi, I meet with McComb County companies day in and day out and one of the things that a lot of advanced manufacturers don't, I don't think fully understand is what the next generation needs and as somebody who is a millennial and I'm very much all about culture and that's why I've left other jobs due to a lack of culture. Do you think some of these advanced manufacturing facilities and organizations need to really kinda look at what the culture of their organization is nowadays because that same worker that they need can easily go to Quicken and have a fat head and have candy all over their table every day and I think it's really, they can really make great money at doing a manufacturing or a skilled trade position but I think a bigger conversation is we never talk about the culture and how that really plays an impact on attracting new talent. So yeah. I think it's interesting. I love listening to adults talk to kids in school about what they should do and their careers and all this kinda stuff and this is exactly the thing that's missing though. Do we really understand what the kids are looking for? What is it that they want? What motivates them? What's their passion? Is a kid growing up? I didn't have a connectivity. I had a brother wanted to be a judge and he is. I had a brother wanted to be a doctor, he is. I was a kid in the middle, didn't have a clue what I wanted to do but I was fortunate because I got to touch something and it was law enforcement as a dispatcher. Took a job just because I didn't know what the heck I really wanted to do but when I touched that job and I come to realize I like this, it became my passion, I fell in love with it to the extent that I actually ran for sheriff and people actually voted for me. I actually became the sheriff of something and I adored it but the question becomes and I'm looking at some of these kids in school, many of them aren't gonna go to college and some of them shouldn't go to college but they gotta touch and feel something to find out what their passion is so how are we doing that? How are we making that connectivity and when you find what it is you're looking for the next question is how does an employer keep you there? Even though it's your passion, how do they keep you there so that you're not gonna say you know what I like this job, I'm making pretty good money but I can make more money over here because there's something else they have to offer whatever it is, a fat head, a ping pong table or slushy machine. What is it that really gets these kids going but you're right, that's up to the companies to figure out how do they contain or retain people within their organizations but I think the biggest void we're having right now is giving kids that first opportunity to find their passion and that's what I think we're trying to do with our schools right now is getting them connected with something that they get amped up about or excited about. And the number one thing we hear is with millennials is they want a sense of purpose. They wanna know why they're doing something. We have a lot of millennials at Automationally and the number of times say I need this report, why? And you got reactions, don't ask me why you work for me but if you understand they wanna be a part, they wanna know that there's a reason for why we exist and what we do and that they're not just collecting a paycheck. A paycheck is uninteresting to them and so you have to find a culture that says I understand why you're doing what you're doing. That's so important. I mean, what most successful organizations have a way to see themselves and to understand, kind of look at what you're doing. I think the truly successful ones are the ones that have a mechanism to initiate change and to kind of take leadership and I'll say old guys because I'm an old guy. How do you make the old guys not do what you just said? It's a great point is don't ask why I just execute but how do you change that culturally inside of a trained leadership mid-level management? See yourself and then potentially, I think there's misperceptions in what organizations are and how do you communicate that to the future workforce that you have. All right, well on the importance of communication we will wrap this one up. There's a quick break and then back to the group at 9.30. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, so if everybody could please take their seats we're gonna go ahead and get started with our second stellar panel here. All right, lots to talk about, lots to talk about. Okay, yes, I guess so. Well, you've got another one coming up. So, but it is, it's good to see people connecting. All right, is there, I need like a, I need a whistle or a, okay. So maybe if we could, I wonder if we could close the doors in the back that might help. Yeah, that'd be great. There you go, there you go. Thank you. Thank you. You get extra credit points for that. Okay, great. Hi everyone, we're back and my name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I direct the Center on Education and Skills at New America. So first a big thank you to everybody here at Oakland University and to all of the amazing partners here and to my colleagues at New America for putting on this excellent event and this incredibly important conversation. So we're gonna continue the conversation before we do, I wanna just sort of set the stage a little bit about, we've spent the first part of the morning hearing from some industry experts just about what it is that companies are looking for and some of the qualities and skills that they need. Now we're gonna talk a little bit about how the education and training sector, what they can do to sort of develop those workers and create those pathways for those. And thinking about those issues of education and training and where they meet the labor market is what we do at New America Center on Education and Skills which is what I direct. The center sits in our larger education policy program and it focuses very specifically on this point of intersection between our traditional formal education systems at the secondary, the high school and college and university level and then our systems for workforce development, for job training, for career preparation, for career and technical education which came up in the earlier panel and where these two systems sort of intersect and right now our traditional education systems and our job training, workforce development and career preparation training systems really don't play well together. They're very siloed from one another. Somebody said in the last panel something about the CTE program sort of being gone and then coming back and it's true they never went away but they did get very siloed and sidelined and marginalized in our schools and they are making a big comeback. So that's a lot of the work that we do is how do we stitch those systems together better because the fact that these systems don't speak to each other very well means that it can be very difficult for folks who want to get access to sort of practical, high quality skills training below the bachelor's degree level often have a hard time finding those programs. It makes it hard, the way our systems are organized it can make it hard for universities and college to sort of imbue more practical skills training at the early ends of their degree programs before again before the last two years of a bachelor's degree. So we think a lot about what are new ways for example to design degree programs so that there's much more emphasis on practical skills training at the beginning of a program and that there's opportunities for people to acquire skills at work that then can also counter that degree program. We also think about credentialing policies and practices that can also aid this sort of closer connection between technical skill acquisition and degree attainment and what does that look like? How do we embed for example industry certifications into our degree programs so that people get a nice both set of credentials when they leave but also get exposed to a lot of different ways to both develop and assess their skills. And then we also do a lot of work on apprenticeship which I know we're gonna talk about today too and thinking about again how do we take this incredibly effective model of teaching and learning and mainstream it into our education system so that rather than it being something that kind of exists out there for those students who didn't go to college or who sort of went someplace else and they become an option for every college student or every young person or even people who find themselves having to transition into new careers in the middle of their lives or who need to upskill. So we think a lot about apprenticeship both for high school students. We think about it for college students. We think about it as a tool for immigrant integration. We think about it as a tool for upscaling and also for building on ramps into the labor market. So hopefully we'll hear a little bit more about that. So this is an incredible honor for me then because we, as I said, these are the issues that the Center on Education and Skills focuses on but you all are actually here on the ground making things happen in Michigan. And it is just a pleasure to be here with you. I'm gonna just quickly just go down and let you know who I'm sitting with here and then we'll get started with some questions. So to my media left is Dean Louie Shamra who is the Dean of the Oakland University School of Engineering and Computer Science and our host today. So thank you Dean Shamra. Then next we have Michelle Orestes who is the Executive Director of the Workforce Intelligence Network and also former Mayor of West Bloomfield. So you can call her Mayor Orestes, which if you'd like. We also have to her left then Dr. Jennifer Hitchcock who is the Executive Director for Research Technology and Integration at the US Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center called TARDIC which I think we heard from her colleague on the first panel. And then we have Kristin Gichek who is the Vice President for Research at the Center for Automotive Research. So we've got some researchers and we've got some practitioners. So Dr. Dean Shamra let's start with you. You know when lately particularly in the last couple of years often we hear that higher education institutions of higher education really aren't preparing students the right way or they aren't preparing them for the workforce in the right way and that they're becoming part of the problem. I actually see lots of innovation in the higher ed sector and I think there's lots of innovation here at Oakland University but let me ask you first is this whole skills gap thing, is this all your fault? Well I always speak the truth and maybe we are part of the problem in higher education that we're not evolving fast enough to actually train our students and we've been teaching the same method for hundreds of years basically where we do 16 week semesters and we don't leave room for innovation. All of a sudden right now we're talking about MOOC and online delivery but then we found out that online courses is mainly majority of them or for local students and it's not for everybody but here at Oakland University I really think I wanna stress the fact that we prepare our students for lifelong journey and careers program and we have to learn from history especially here in Michigan what happened in 2008, 2009 recession, lot of people were out of job and lot of people were very hard to retrain because of their education, because they're out of high school and I really think everybody and I wanna stress the fact that we have to learn from our history in order to move forward. There gonna be a lot of disruptive technology coming up down the line like autonomous vehicle whether it's a ground transportation or aerial transportation that's gonna put a lot of people out of job. We're talking about the industrial or digital revolution that's going on right now and where a lot of people will be out of job too. I know politician would love to talk about trade skills but at the same time let's be careful here. We are going through transition. We need trade skills in the next five years but then what happened after five years? We need to train them for the next 10, 15 or 20 years so we need to build the program where while they're being welders we have to give them opportunity to further their education and maybe attain that undergraduate degree. Here in Michigan by 2025 probably 80% of the jobs in Michigan they're gonna require at least a bachelor's degree because advanced manufacturing, industry 4.0 we're integrating digital and physical and automation together. For Auckland University we're looking into multiple innovation in terms of delivering curriculum. This fall we're gonna deliver in Macomb County actually very first accelerated information technology program where we're gonna offer it eight weeks semester instead of 16 weeks and student can graduate with a bachelor's degree in information technology in two and a half years from freshman all the way to the senior year and this is important because initially what we found out is majority of the people interested in the program are 35 and older, basically non-traditional student and I really think this is very important because we have a lot of people out there where they have some college education but they don't have the opportunity to come back because it takes too long to finish degree five, six years and we need to shorten that period. We need to look into, we're looking right now into maybe a stackable certificate where we can bundle the freshman year as one certificate and the student can go and work in the industry then they come back the junior sophomore year, junior year and senior year and then they complete these certificate they can get a bachelor's degree too but we give opportunity for people to while they're working they can come back and take these 30 or 32 credit and do finish undergraduate degree while they're filling the immediate need for industry but more importantly five years ago or six years ago we made the conscious effort to focus on applied engineering where we work directly with industry and we established program actually where industry needs certain talent and we have a program where the student every Friday or every week they talk about metal forming and within two years they're expert in the area and they hit the ground running because I cannot develop a program where specifically for industrial robotics or specifically for clean energy we're already limited for 128 credit and of course you see in the news bachelor in clean energy but you dig deep into it they're only offering two elective classes on clean energy but we establish actually supplemental program here at Auckland University where we work with industry and we have a program in metal forming we have program in industrial robotics we have program in powertrain we have program in cybersecurity where every week these students hear about these metal forming or powertrain and for two years they do internship every summer on powertrain so by the time they graduate they already know everything and they work immediately with powertrain but so far FCA have hired every graduate from our program so it's working in addition we can work with the industry about senior design project all our senior design project right now are sponsored by industry and in terms of our graduate because we work closely with industry 65% they have two job offer before they even graduate so I really think and by the way I'm not talking about 100 students here we graduate last year 480 students here in engineering completion science five years ago we were 900 students on the graduate right now we are 2700 on the graduate student so we are growing and because of the industry around us but we need to work together I really think community colleges higher four year colleges high school we need to work with them and we have a program all the way to elementary school where we bring them to Oakland and we establish a STEM program for them we work with Detroit we work with Pontiac we work with Flint we work with the Native American community in terms of bringing them basically here in Michigan we have the huge capital human capital basically instead of outsourcing job we really need to work together industry and higher education K-12 community colleges and four year colleges where let's bring everybody up to speed and no community should be left behind and everybody we need to work together where Hispanic, African American, Arab American everybody white American let's all work together to develop that talent here in Michigan and personally keeping job in Michigan is as important as attracting a new one thank you yeah that's fantastic okay so again here at a traditional four year university there's a lot of innovation and nine traditional things happening right so two and a half year bachelor degrees program supplied engineering certificate program it's exciting Michelle why don't you take us to the next thing you're doing a lot of work at the workforce intelligence network but one of the things is on one of these models that we can think of is very traditional apprenticeship but I don't think there's anything traditional about the apprenticeship programs that you're doing can you tell us a little bit about them and the other work that workforce intelligence network does okay yes the workforce intelligence network just to give you some background is a nonprofit organization and we are uniquely comprised of 10 community colleges and six Michigan works agencies we are known as an employer convener we listen to employers every day on their needs and we convey that to the colleges so that they can develop a curriculum that will respond to employer needs additionally the state of Michigan just awarded when a million dollars under the Marshall Plan for Talent the career awareness portion of the Marshall Plan for Talent for the My Bright Future program the My Bright Future is rests on the career cruising platform and it allows employers to connect with 147,000 students so far in southeast Michigan and it will be statewide but employers can on it's complimentary for employers to go on the My Bright Future portal it can be accessed through our website on winintelligence.org and load their employer profile and really develop the messaging to our students every day that's our talent pipeline so they can create an employer profile and key messaging provide all their occupations that they are hiring for and work-based learning opportunities on that portal and reach our students and future graduates directly we also have an American Apprenticeship Initiative grant it's a four million dollar grant through the Department of Labor and we developed the Advanced Michigan Center for Apprenticeship Innovation the apprenticeship ecosystem through that four million dollars that we built here is through the MyApprenticeship.org website we developed the MyApprenticeship.org website and the state just shared with me this week that they are going to essentially adapt that website for the Marshall Plan for Talent and market that website they will announce publicly at the MEDA conference the Michigan Educators and Apprenticeship Training Association conference in Traverse City, May 22 through 25 details about their efforts to create a talent hub and new branding and messaging as it relates to apprenticeship they've done some apprenticeship studies and they're addressing the studies by way of a new messaging and marketing campaign for apprenticeship to generate more interested in apprenticeship programs but by way of the AMCHI program our colleges and Michigan Works agencies will train 853 apprentices within four years we're halfway through that process and we use braided funding through the Michigan Works agencies in order to provide that training we've also developed an apprenticeship and a day initiative it was piloted on April 10 very successfully our colleges and Michigan Works agencies brought in four employers two were actually signed one or more occupations as registered apprenticeships the same day so yes apprenticeships are perceived to be very cumbersome to get approved but our MWA's and colleges are working with the employers ahead of an apprenticeship day initiative we have all the parties necessary to get a registered apprenticeship signed same day meaning we have state officials from the DOL federal officials from the DOL meet a representative, SEMCUB, Michigan Works and of course the authorized signer add an employer and they will sign one or more occupations same day out of the four one was signed two days later they just did not have their authorizer there so again at that Michigan educators and apprenticeship training association the event coming up May 22 through 24 we're gonna have the first official offering of an apprenticeship and a day we're gonna actually sign 15 to 20 registered apprenticeships through 15 to 20 employers at the event the state is already promoting it quite a little bit it's gaining a lot of interest we have an IT apprenticeship program we just received one and a half million from the Ralph C. Wilson Junior Foundation they just invested in the IT Apprentice Program as it addresses medium middle-skill wage and middle-skill jobs in southeast Michigan it is based on the Washington Technology Industry Association model and we are excited that we will be offering the first cohort in Washtenaw County because apprenticeship is employer-driven in June so they think the first cohort we hope to wrap up in September we're also talking to Henry Ford Health System they're very interested in the IT Apprentice Program and we are also at the same time looking at developing working collaboratively with the LTU Collaboratory and Steve Kouchman from SteamVox to develop an artificial intelligence registered apprenticeship program the initial discussion was artificial intelligence technician but now everything apprenticeship related is employer-driven so you need seven employer support letters to create a new apprenticeship occupation as we know there are 1300 registered apprenticeships recognized by the Department of Labor there are none right now for artificial intelligence so we would have the first in the nation but when we brought these employers together who have a need for about 1200 to 1600 new hires in this artificial intelligence ecosystem they wanted to really do things systematically and start out by developing a machine learning apprenticeship which essentially is the science of teaching a computer system how to learn through data okay without programming it and then a data curator application and then an artificial intelligence technician artificial intelligence professional artificial intelligence 3D so five separate artificial intelligence registered apprenticeships when it's all said and done our data team has done some of the initial legwork they identified 51 unique occupations within artificial intelligence we're developing performance-based objectives PBOs for each one of these skill sets and to develop that work process schedule through the DOAL as I said these eight employers have to define that competency-based system on the job training the related technical training that goes along with that for each one of these occupations and of course we know IT Apprentee is the building block it's those skills those basic IT skills that are needed for artificial intelligence artificial intelligence is just a way to apply a lot of those same tools and there are additional tools to that that is really exciting and I would say registered apprenticeship and artificial intelligence sort of really pushes the boundary of what we think of as something you do with apprenticeship it's really apprenticeship meeting the future of work at the cutting edge of that so that's exciting let's now go to Dr. Hitchcock who is also doing some cutting edge work and can you tell us Dr. Hitchcock what you're doing in the public sector and at TARDEC in the government sector to sort of keep up and what are the innovations that you all are adopting and where are you pushing the envelope? Great, thank you yeah so at TARDEC we are the Army's Research and Development Center for all Army ground vehicles and we have about 1700 engineers and scientists everything from laboratory technicians I could really use the AI ones as we are moving in autonomy very quickly and we have lab technicians we have chemists, biologists, engineers, computer scientists and it's a very competitive workforce there we are in terms of leading on technology what we're working on one of our largest growing areas is autonomy we are quickly moving on various levels of autonomy into our platform starting with our ground wheeled vehicles and that is requiring that the pipeline for that workforce is very small there's a lot of skills needed in that area everything, because if you think about an autonomous system it's things that we haven't traditionally done before it's human agent teaming how do you team with soldiers? how do you bring in the psychology? how do you learn machine learning? it really has to be a collaborative team sport there other areas, other technology areas where we go are more active systems so where we've had armor protecting our systems in the past passive armor we are looking to make those more active again that software that's computer scientists that's those types of needs and we still need the mechanical engineers but our growing number of need areas is the software and computer science engineers and then it's really the technicians and the skilled trades because we do have quite a few of those folks too at TARDEC that have to learn how to do the welding and the fixing of the systems and all of those things I mean how do you maintain an autonomous system? it's a, we don't know and how do you protect it? how do you protect it from the enemy? those are two big areas right now that we're struggling with and so you're having to sort of design training programs and education programs today for problems that you don't necessarily know the answers to and so these are folks who are gonna have to figure out the answers to those questions and what does that career path look like and what training do you need? how do you set up and work with folks like Dean Sharma to say okay this is what's coming down the pipeline this is what we're seeing today that we're having problems with how do we build a program to build those skills very difficult and then it's even more difficult because it's very competitive in the you know we're a non-profit government right? I can't compete with some of the big guys in terms of bringing in new talent so there's a lot of issues like that that we struggle with on a daily basis as we're trying to because in some of the areas we are leading the edge we're leading the edge it's the government's science and technology investment that helps a lot of these folks lead a lot of the companies and industries we work with push that leading edge so we're all gonna face this but sometimes we see those problems first because we're out there and we're like what do you do? where are those folks? where were they at? so you know and you can't retrain people in your workforce so if I lose a commas because our funding for that water line goes away I can't just retrain them to a computer scientist right? so it goes to the skills some of the skills that we really need to build in our workforces that adaptable lifelong learning right? you need that chemist to be able to skill up themselves to a certain extent and have the ability to do that and be flexible in it right? so and we're seeing that today as our space is changing some of the folks that we have in those other skilled areas we're struggling so these are big challenges but it's exciting to hear how everyone's embracing it and maybe let's go next to Kristen G. Check and Kristen you're coming a little bit more from the research community and the data community and maybe you can help us understand I mean these are tough problems and tough issues that all of these folks are dealing with of trying to figure out how to design programs to meet the needs of the future and to prepare these young people to be able to go out into a much more uncertain economy what can you share with us about what you're finding about all these things about what skills are gonna be in demand, whether the skill gaps are there any help get us grounded a little bit in that? Well, so that's not a small order and you've got five minutes and I've got five minutes, okay great. So I, you know, in all of the talk about really advanced technological progress really changing the nature of work and the nature of people's skills you know, it's just things are moving really quickly I come to an article that I like to share with folks it talks about welders and it says in the case of welders, technological progress has been so rapid during the most recent period the last six years that a welder unemployed since 1929 is now outmoded. This is an article from the Washington Post in 1935. No apprentices are coming along to fill the gaps caused by deaths or shifts of personnel to other industries or back to the farm. It goes on and on in this article about all the problems that industries are talking about today except for drug testing that one's not in here. But a real, we've been to this place before and if you look in the recovery periods throughout US history you'll find exactly this article in top newspapers over and over and over again. So what do we do about this technological progress? You know, the auto industry's been really automated for a long time. The first automated robotic arms were deployed in an automotive factory in 1963. It's moving ever more rapidly now. I was just in a plant a couple weeks ago they're doing 3D printing in the plant in an automotive assembly plant. They have folks where they had automated their jobs and they turned those folks into data analysts for the job that they had once done. And what's really interesting about that is if you did that job with the machines but you were in a more manual fashion and you're trained to be a data analyst you can see those patterns and those problems that you knew from when you did the job yourself. And that history and that background was really important for having a robust understanding of how the manufacturing is working. I look to German apprenticeships for example. The apprenticeship for a printer in Germany. Printing's all digital now but you start with Gutenberg type. You start with the fundamental skills. When we talk to automakers about what they're looking for in skills in people and the different suppliers and automakers think differently about this but there's one that said I want them to be able to do as statistical process control chart manually. I want them to draw a circuit manually. I want them to know and understand what exactly is going on behind all of the automation and technology that they'll be using. And then we talk to other employers or like if they don't know version 5.1.3 of this particular software we're not interested. I think through all of this what's really come about for what automakers are looking for in suppliers is people who are thinking in a systems manner. It's not just I'm a chemist and I have to think about just the chemical properties and somebody else is gonna think about the mechanical properties or the business case or some other things. Automakers tell us in suppliers that they're looking for a candidate who comes to them not just with a university education or a community college education but that they've done something multidisciplinary. Our schools are set up in very much in silos. I'm an industrial engineer. I also have a policy degree. Those two things never talk at the school that I went to. And it was very different. But the employers are looking for people who have done something like formula SAE or they've done solar car challenge or they've gone to a university like Rochester Institute of Technology or Kettering where a practicum is part of your schooling. Where you do that multidisciplinary work. You understand that yes you could engineer the most whiz bang cool bang and you can get a hundred miles per gallon in a car but nobody can afford that. And so you need to work with the bean counters and the other folks in business to develop within a constrained system. So that systems thinking is a thing that is permeating all of the needs for employers that we're talking to. And if you think about these technologies that are advancing really very rapidly the people who invent them don't have a degree in them. The people who invented hybrid cars, hybrid car technology. One of them was a sociologist. They don't have that. But as those technologies become more mature and more robust then we start developing hybrid engineer programs or artificial intelligence technicians as these things become more pervasive then you start to need these programs. But through all of it systems thinking and a route in the basic understanding of what is going on behind your work is really very critical. I mean a lot of really I'm thinking about lots of things now about systems thinking but I think I know I think we wanna go to some audience questions. Is that right now because we're running on time. So while you all wanna encourage everyone to think of some questions for our panel about some of these really cutting edge innovations and new ways of thinking about delivering education and training I was really pleased with the question and answer period from the session before because I learned something. I did not know what a fat head was. So I hope that we get another great question that allows me to go back with a new nugget of information but any questions out there for our panelists? I have one. So you guys are talking a lot about systemic training and systemic education but I'm from a dimensional engineering firm so we are of course very interested in dimensional engineering both from a CAD perspective and from a manufacturing perspective and what we're really in need of and what we really would like to see integrated more into an educational curriculum would be something like an ASME certification in GDNT. Some of these industry certifications could really be incorporated into a curriculum so that when you graduate you don't just have an undergraduate degree. You also have some kind of certification which you're already learning GDNT in school. You're already learning Six Sigma or statistical process control. How could that be, is there any kind of initiative or interest in the academic world of taking that maybe one step further and incorporating some of these certifications into an undergraduate or maybe a graduate degree that would allow college graduates to then have already an industry level certification on top of their degree to make them more competitive? We already do that and actually in industrial and system engineering we work closely with Siemens and we use their tools and we incorporate them into our curriculum. However, what I'm proud of here at Oakland University that our faculty we work directly with the industry and actually every program we have an industrial advisory board and they come with the industry and they tell us how to revamp our curriculum. So if you have a suggestion that you wanna come and talk to us I'll be happy to work with you and with the faculty because here at Oakland curriculum is driven by the faculty so I really think what this differentiate my faculty than other schools that we are nimble, we listen and we incorporate them immediately. So if you have a suggestion or recommendation for us please reach out to us, we'll work together and see how we can work with you whether in any discipline and how we can incorporate especially at the master's level because we have a lot of more freedom at the graduate level than undergraduate. And here at Oakland University actually majority of our graduate program is our student when they graduate they work with the local industry and close to 60% of our master's program is our student working in industry. Especially right now a majority of industry they pay for their tuition. So it's a great way for retaining talent in Michigan and furthering education of the workforce. So a lot of companies once they tied the student with the master's program they guarantee they're gonna stay here for at least three or four years. But if you have a program that you need to work on we'll be happy to work with you on this program incorporate them into our curriculum. Let me take this opportunity for one thing about what was said earlier that a lot of innovation happened for people who outside engineering and let's not fall into the trap of exceptions because a lot of students come to me and say look Steve Jobs did not finish college or Mark Zuckerberg did not finish college they drop out. These are one out of a billion. Majority of our workforce has to be set in such a way work hard and get to that level bit. And majority of innovation and technology happen in our automotive industry, our energy industry, in engineering and computer science and we have to be methodical how we teach our students to get to that point. We don't build our program based on one exception out of 0.00 percent. Yeah and I'm just gonna quickly do one quick shameless plug. We have a paper coming out later this summer that is actually looking at based on some research around institutions that are embedding certifications into their degree programs and as Dean Chalmers said it is complicated for a bunch of reasons about around data and around financing and about which ones you pick. But there is a college in Florida called Broward College that has an institution wide strategy of embedding as many certifications into as many degree programs as they can and it's institution wide. So it's a very interesting approach and we'll be showing that to all make sure that folks here get that paper. And there are high schools that do this as well. The city of Nashville, the public schools in Nashville everyone who graduates with a high school diploma also has a Microsoft IT certificate or welding certificate. They are tracked to make sure they do all the testing they need to do and they take all the courses they need to do but they're in an academy model and they all are, the goal is to have everyone graduate with a certificate. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening here. Okay it looks like we've got another question here and then one here and then we'll probably have to wrap it up then. Good morning, I'm a little confused here. The first panel talked about really broad non-occupation specific skills. Things like being able to learn, things like being able to communicate, passion, collaboration and things like that. And now we're getting into a discussion about very specific occupation related skills. Can curriculums in the education system both at a K through 12 and secondary education handle those both? Well on behalf of my college institutions I would say yes as a matter of fact by way of our DOD grant and our Michigan Alliance for Greater Mobility Advancement we're engaging with employers every day that provide their specific needs in very targeted areas. Quality assurance, quality control was the common thread with all of the magma short courses but certainly it has resulted in creating some targeted training programs that we are going to, we're developing a model to be able to provide this largely by way of our wind network. But yeah, our college institutions they are very dynamic. They respond to the needs of our employers every day and it's not just advanced manufacturing it's information technology, it's retail. We have a retail hospitality program that we meet with everybody in that industry every day. So it's very broad and it's the out of necessity to address the talent shortage that is across every industry. Our labor market data team developed all the data for the Governor's Marshall Plan for Talent. We're looking at 811,055 jobs that are gonna go unfilled between now and 2024. 270,000 of those are in IT. 109,000 are in manufacturing. 212,000 of those are in healthcare. So we just, we have to rely on our colleges to really have the programs to close those skills gaps. Can I add on? So you're absolutely right, right? We require these technical skills in these areas but we also need those other skills. We need social skills from the new folks entering the workforce. The new generation's different than we are, right? Just like General Lamaster said, they don't wanna talk to ya. My workforce wants me to tweet now. This was two weeks ago. I don't know how to tweet. Kim's gonna have to figure it out for me. I don't know how to tweet. But that's how they communicate, right? So they have to somehow within the high schools and the colleges these days, we have to get these kids involved in the life skills and the social skills to get up and show up to work. It's very difficult when I go out and I talk to these young folks, they don't wanna talk to me. They're like, why are you here and what are you doing? So it's very critical that those skills are built throughout high school and even before, right? Being part of clubs, being part of sports and the college, getting involved with the groups that are in your field, in your area. It's building those networks. I don't see a lot of that today and I believe that those are extremely critical skills because no matter how technical you are, if you can't collaborate and work together and work across the cross disciplines, it's going to not be a good for the workplace. Well, that's exactly why employers are finding those extracurricular programs as the proxy for those skills. Somebody who's, if you're on solar car team, you have to raise a lot of money. You have to go out and speak in public. You have to talk to people and ask them for things. You have to learn how to do things. You have to work with other members of your team who are doing the marketing, who are doing the support, who are doing the technical parts of it and that's where employers in the auto industry are saying that's a proxy for the things you're talking about. Somebody who shows up, who's motivated, has passion, can communicate, has teamwork skills and all of that. That's why they're looking for those as the proxy. You know, I was surprised with the first panel about what they talk about life skills and because our educational system in the United States in general, everybody forget that we require at least minimum of 30 general ed education where they have to take English composition, one and two, technical writing. They have to take psychology, sociology, economics, regardless of your major, whether you're in engineering, physics or we have our educational system in the US and that's why it's still thought after everywhere in the world because we base it on life skills. So for the panel to be here to tell me that we don't teach our student that, I was really surprised because whether I'm an engineer or a scientist, I have to learn how to take risk, I have to learn how to accept failure, I have to learn how to communicate and here at Oakland, our engineering program is so unique that we have a common core regardless of your major in engineering, you take the same classes. We have close to 19 student organization. Then about internship and co-op, every engineering school in this country, if you don't have that internship and co-op on your resume, there is no way you can find a job. So the catering model and Lauren Stack model and all of this, it's not unique anymore. All engineering program participate on and the senior design project here at Oakland, it's not for a specific area, it's a multidisciplinary team we bring industrial, mechanical, electrical, computer science, computer engineering. They all work together on that project because this is what is gonna be in real life. So life skills, it's embedded in our curriculum in the United States, whether you go to Michigan, Oakland or Texas or MIT. And so I was really surprised with the first panel talking about life skills and people how to talk and how to learn. We need STEM, we're falling behind the world, behind our STEM education. We don't challenge our students anymore. Okay, so let's go. I think we're gonna have to go to our, to our, I'm getting the hook from our folks here. So I know we have one more question. So how about if we hear your question and then we'll see if we can do a lightning round answer of 15 seconds or less, okay? Yes, yeah. Was that you who had the question? Yes, I have a question. So fast question and super rapid answer. All right, I will try and really quickly to ask my question. So two of the most widely cited studies on the impact on the future of employment are the Frey and Osborne study and the McKinsey study, right? Which say that up to 60% of the tasks of specific jobs can be automated, but maybe not the whole occupation. And so I'm wondering what our community colleges and workforce training providers doing to adjust to the fact that big parts of certain occupations may not be needed anymore. How are we looking at and adjusting for those realities that may not be here today but are certainly on the horizon? That's a perfect, like really easy question. So I know somebody's got like a 15 second answer to that. One. 15 seconds for me is we need to restart retraining people now for the future, basically. Let's not fall into the same mistake we did with advanced manufacturing and robotics. In 1963, we had the first automated arm and now we're still talking how robots are taking jobs from humans. We have 50 years to train people. Truck drivers, we still need truck drivers, but we call them truck pilots instead of truck drivers. So we need to start working together to train and educate people for the future instead for the next five years. And when does have a $6 million America's Promise Catalyst Robotics training grant that our colleges and Michigan Works agencies, every single one of our member organizations, 16 organizations are working hard to deliver in Southeast Michigan? So it looks like, and that seems like a good question to follow up in maybe in the break and afterwards, but can we give a big hand to our panel? That was an excellent conversation. And what's next, Margaret? Just a break? Okay, break, break. Everybody's taken their seat. Well, good morning everybody. How's everyone doing? How's the panel doing up here? All right, so this is the wrap up panel, the third panel and staying on track, current innovation in action is the title of it. And this panel is intended to bring together the first two, which had leaders having a discussion about investments and game plan and political leaders and educators and the speakers we have today come from totally different vantage points, different generations, I won't say who's in which generation, but different generations. And they're going to talk about their success stories and showcase examples of concrete actions and talk about obstacles and limitations and things that all of us here in the room think about and should be thinking about. And I also wanna give a nice shout out to New America for their action here. It's an interesting think tank and I wrote about it for the Detroit Free Press a few weeks ago and I'm probably writing about this as well. So as we're videotaping this. Enlisting a new generation of policy leaders and think tank people and people who are at the cutting edge to look at things like what we'll be doing five years from now, which is quickly as technology is changing or 10 years or 20 years, what are the best way to empower people, workers with the skills and the opportunities and the support that they'll need and how is work going to transform the communities that we're all living in. So let me take a moment and just give a quick introduction here to our panelists and then we're just gonna dive in with questions and as the other two have gone, we'll have time for audience questions too. So to my immediate left right, if you're looking on camera here, is Taylor Van Dyke. She's a dig manufacturing engineer for Fiat Chrysler automobiles and alum of OU class of 2015. So a little applause for Taylor. Next is John Katona, who's a throughput analysis and simulation engineer for General Motors. Also an illustrious member of the class of 2012 and working on his masters as we speak. Sonja Stepoban is co-founder and CEO of Our Office Incorporated. And Ed Colito is a senior deputy director for talent and development of Michigan talent and economic development, also known affectionately as TED, not to be confused with a teddy bear movie, TED, right? Alrighty. So we're gonna have a little conversation here, but I think whenever you have a conversation, it's good to have just a quick understanding of the backdrop. So I'm going to start with you, Taylor. Just tell people quickly in a minute or two what it is you do over at Fiat. I'll make this quick. So graduated in 2015, I was hired on immediately with Fiat Chrysler automobiles. I entered the manufacturing leadership development program two years, six four month rotations in powertrain stamping and assembly, manufacturing operations and logistics and safety. I finished that and now I'm a digital manufacturing engineer. So I work with Autodesk and Siemens products, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality proof of concepts. And I do a lot of implementation of new technologies at Fiat Chrysler. And John. Same question? I graduated in 2012 from Oakland with industrial and systems engineering degree and then started working at General Motors doing throughput simulation, which is basically a digital model of the assembly line. And we do mostly future programs. So I personally work on the new SCV. So modeling that process so we can fix it before we actually bolt the robots down. Sanya. Hi, so I'm an engineer by training. I won't tell you which year I graduated. But I was for a long time in aerospace and defense, most recently at General Dynamics, right here in Detroit. And currently what I'm doing I got involved with a lot of startups who were talking about entrepreneurship and how everything is going in that direction. So I was very involved in mentoring, investing in startups. And then it occurred to me that there is actually a startup idea that is AI powered about a very big topic that everybody talks about, diversity and inclusion. There's a lot of discussion about that, the issues, and there are a few solutions, but not enough solutions apparently to fix that. So what we're doing at our office is building a SaaS platform where you can have comprehensive analytics and benchmarking, but also the solutions to diversity and inclusion. Whether it's mentorship or training, coaching, different kinds of approaches, but applying AI to it to see what actually works and doesn't work. So that's what we're focusing on right now. And Ed. Thanks, basically what I do is I'm a liaison between the Marshall Plan, which is the initiative from the governor. We'll talk about, probably already heard a little bit about, and what the Workforce Development Agency does underneath the Talent Investment Agency for the state of Michigan. And mostly what that is is all your Michigan works offices and all the job skills training we have going on around the state. One thing we wanna do is make sure we're not duplicating efforts, and we wanna make sure that the Marshall Plan is well integrated into job training that we already have, as well as into the new areas, which I'm sure I'll have a chance to explain in a bit. So because I know we're gonna be hearing a lot about the Marshall Plan, you haven't had, have there been a lot of discussion of this? Can you just give us a thumbnail? What is the Marshall Plan? I know it's very long, but if you can, I'm asking you to sum it up for us. It's innovative grants put out there to support, to get seed money for new or expansion of current programs that are innovative, that are revolutionary, connecting business, employers, industry with education, both K-12 Community College and four year institution, so that in a career exploration down to, even at the elementary level, up through 40, 50, 60 year olds. I mean, it's about true lifelong learning and changing the system to a credentials-based, skills-based, not time-based system that people can go in and out of throughout their whole career as things change. So because we're coming from different points of view up here on this panel, let me start with you, Taylor. You're a couple years into your career, you're going to be working another 10, 20, 30, 40 year, whatever you wanna do as far as that goes, but you'll be working, you're at the starting point of your career, in other words. When you hear the conversation here about all the things taking place, how confident do you feel that we are, as a region here in this area, being real parochial here, to have the skill sets we need to be successful to continue our growth as a manufacturing leader and mobility leader and that sort of thing. You're involved with autos. How confident do you feel right now? As a new entrant into the workforce, I look at five years or younger, I definitely perceive the industry as being proactive instead of being reactive, where you have on-the-job training, you have integration of new technologies and bridging that gap between the historical methods of operations, for example, in manufacturing. And I think they're doing a good job at looking at the different facets of people like me who are millennials, but can make eye contact, and teach how to take our data. Thank you. How to take this data and use it to our benefit, but integrate past and future into the present, because we have to learn now, and I do believe we're doing a good job taking our technology, teaching us in friendly ways so that it isn't as daunting as it could be, as a, let's say, women in manufacturing coming into the plant and working 70 hours a week, and integrating how to take the problem and make a solution out of it. So I think we're doing a really nice job so far. And, John, you're in the same generation here, as opposed to the rest of us up here. How do you see, from your standpoint, again, realizing you're over at GM, not in GM as one of the oldest corporations, certainly in the state here, how do you see it from where you are in the corporation? Well, I think GM's actually one of the more progressive companies with Mary Barab, being our CEO. She's really amazing. But yeah, there's a lot of opportunities, and anytime there's a training that I wanna do, all of my management says, let's me do it, and I'm here now, and can do these types of offense, and there's a lot of outreach that we do in the community for STEM, for high schools and middle schools. So I know we're trying to be a part of the community as well. But yeah, so there's a lot of opportunities for me, and then we want to show younger generations that there's opportunities for them as well. So maybe not General Motors specifically, but as a region, looking outside, I won't hold your feet to the fire on GM, just in general, when you look out at other employers, startups, and so forth, how do you see how progressive the region is embracing this new world order of how things are changing? Again, because you're gonna be the ones living this 20, 30, 40 years. We'll be retired, but you folks will still be working. Well, I think they have to change in ways to bring younger people in, because I have an opportunity to work kind of wherever I want right now. I get job offers all the time, not even trying to get them. I think people really need engineers right now in the area. So everyone's competing for us, we're valuable. So I think they have to do things to make us want to work for them. So either pay us more, or make the work life balance better or keep a keg in the office, or whatever it is. I know startups do stuff like that, but yeah, I think it's changing a lot because with lowering cubicles, so we don't have cubicles and shared spaces and all of those types of things too. So Ed, you're dealing with this. The Marshall Plan, which was announced by Governor Snyder here in Michigan, we know there's a huge talent gap, particularly the technology fields. Every time I talk to the governor, the number of jobs available has gone up, there's I think upwards of what, 100,000 jobs that aren't able to be filled because they don't have the skill set here. So the young folks who are much in demand, they're in great positions here, but overall, this is a chance, and it's not just Michigan, this is an international problem. How do you see where we are and what kinds of things, besides talking about Marshall Plan and so forth, but what other things from employers and community standpoint education, what kinds of things do you see needing to be done to help bridge this gap? I think maybe two or three things that need to be connected. And that's when we're talking about a consortium of employers and education working together towards what these needs are. I think they need to be flexible. We've got a couple of new careers started right here. You have no idea where you'll be in five or 10 or 15 years. The technology, the way it's going, the speed of change, the speed of business within 15 years, we don't even know what to train people on for that. So if we don't design a flexible system, that can change as we go. I think we mentioned earlier, a 100 year old system educationally we're working with right now. Those 811,000 jobs, that's almost $50 billion in our economy. And if we don't do something about it, it's gonna be another state's economy that gets that money. So the jobs are there, whether they come to Michigan or not, is yet to be seen. But to talk a little bit more about that flexibility of the program, we're talking about like a tiered system of stackable credentials, basically skills-based, industry-recognized, not time-based, something that now, instead of saying, well, I'm gonna go to get my four year degree, maybe I'll say I'll go get my first certificate and I'll work my way up through a tiered system. That tiered system's also gonna allow flexibility. For example, say you're a single parent with a couple of kids and you're making 50 grand, you're probably doing pretty well. But if you had a system that you could go back into easily, not for another two year degree or something like that, you're much more likely to keep going up that skill. Are you talking about trade, trade school sorts of things here? Like electric? What is it when you talk about? Skilled trades that even move into engineers. And I'm guilty of this as a high school, as a school K-12 superintendent. We will prepare them academically and we'll send them to college where they'll figure out their career and they'll get their bachelor's degree. Cause we were chasing a bachelor's degree and rightfully so, but we have the ability to take that career and bring it down into the elementary. My eight year old right now swears he's gonna be in the NBA. I'd love to have him swear he's gonna be an engineer. So when the math gets hard and someone tells him, well, I wasn't good at math either, he still has the passion to do it because I try to convince him he won't make the NBA, but he's all in. And if you're all in for engineering and you go through, you'll meet your challengers and you'll get there. So we've got to bring it earlier. We've got to bring it so you can come in and out of it much more easier. And that's for the whole workforce. Even some of the under employed or the people that have stopped looking for their jobs. And real quick to Ed's point, we have to have that conversation early on that you don't just have to pursue that college education. A couple of my very close friends are skilled trades and they're afraid to admit that they're skilled trades because that's not exactly the conventional way of method coming out of high school, the middle school to high school. So that conversation in the education system needs to be had that it's okay to become a skilled trade in our generation today. Sonia, you have reinvented yourself, had corporate careers, entrepreneurial careers. You've watched how this has developed. Your thoughts about having a degree because this is a very deep conversation about do you need a four year college degree, not that we want to put Oakland University or any of our other 15 wonderful public universities and colleges out of business here. But how do you feel about that? So, look, if you look at the data, right, it just shows that we need more tools in our toolkit. Universities are certainly necessary. I loved what Dean Shamber was saying about the stackable degrees and the eight week versus 16 weeks and what you just mentioned. I think we need just more and more of that. You look at the McKinsey reports just for some of the new technologies that are out there of the three billion workforce globally, right? They estimate that there will be about 20 to 50 million new jobs, jobs that we don't even understand today, right? That will be coming available by 2030. There are going to be more importantly, 75 to 375 million jobs that will have to be changed. So these are jobs that are not getting eliminated. They're not brand new, but they're just going to be different. So how do we train for that? I think it's to the point that we need some systems and some tools where you get maybe that basic foundation initially made with a two year program or something or four year program, whatever it is, depending on the complexity of the training that's required. But then gives you the opportunity to keep going back in and keep learning new skills. It's almost like a cultural mindset of education. A lot of people used to be way back in the day where your parents or grandparents went through and started working for General Motors, whatever, and then got to job out of high school, didn't necessarily need college, whatever. Now, continual education is paramount to what we're doing, even maybe whether it's going back to college or going to other things. How is you're looking at your careers knowing you're gonna probably need new skills along the way? How do you plan for that? What kinds of things do you do to keep in touch? Maybe, John, you can start, keep in touch with things, besides getting your master's what you're doing right now. Well, I'm starting a new position at GM in July and part of that is within the first year you have to get your green belt for design of experiments and then you have to get your black belt within two or three years. So there's these milestones that GM, for one, makes everyone do, so they're still being trained and learning skills. And then there's a certain amount of training that you have to do each year to stay relevant, learning the new softwares and all of that. So whether it's learning new software or we have conferences, so right now I'm part of a Michigan simulation users group. So we have a conference every year where we bring together a bunch of people across the state that all do simulation work and our whole group at GM goes to it, but a whole bunch of other companies around. I'm going to assume that both of you were good in math and science growing up. This was something, or did you have to fight your way through to learn to be good at it? You were good at it. Yeah, I was good at it. Because what do you do? A lot of people, like you say, get psyched out about it. They take a class, it's like, oh my gosh, there's no way I can get through this algebra. I can't do this. And then it's just, they fall off. Yeah, this is where in these STEM areas, particularly with young women, these STEM jobs are going on so many still open and particularly with young girls, which in the adolescent years, and there's the trend of them not pursuing it as much for whatever reason here, not being cool, whatever. And so I think that's part of this disconnect though, isn't it? I certainly think it's a disconnect. Math is just like any other language. It's something you have to learn. So when I was in Spanish in high school, my Spanish teacher took the time to set the fundamentals. Math is the same. Setting up the fundamentals ensures your success. And breaking down those obstacles of, math is not this black box that you're unsure of and how to proceed. There are steps to math to learn, just like there are steps to Spanish to learn Spanish. And in particular for young women, I think it's an obstacle to attack the STEM majors. Only because it, like you said, might not be cool or my friends aren't doing it or I am not well-versed in what I need to do to become an engineer. Me personally, I fell into engineering. I was looking at the medical industry because that's what I knew that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the challenge of biology and science and I really wasn't sure about the math side of things. So when I came to Oakland, I'm also from out of state, one of the like small percent tiles that comes into Michigan to go to Oakland University. I had a great discussion with Dr. Vantill from Industrial Engineering and he told me that there's a large gap of women in STEM and that there's an opportunity to make an immediate impact, something that I don't think a lot of young women realize. And so with that being said, I took a leap of faith into engineering. I was afraid I was going to be stuck in a cubicle all day, but with that being said, I wasn't. Early on in my education, I was challenged with the pace and rigor of adapting those STEM fundamentals as well as working collaboratively and it really brought down the obstacle of coming into a STEM field and feeling comfortable with the education and that transitioned into my work today. I'd add something too. I think it's very important. It's interesting what you described there, Taylor, about how you got into engineering. And I think a lot of great efforts are being made. I also like to talk about keeping those women that go into engineering in engineering because it is actually a fact that only 50% of women who are in STEM fields, graduate with a STEM degree, 10 years out into their careers that they are still in a STEM job. And that's really befalls industry and companies to do the right things and to really figure out what works and what doesn't work for them. Well, I think that's a big part of the reason why many women, particularly in some of the manufacturing companies go in and stay it for a while, they top out, they don't get through the glass ceiling and they leave oftentimes starting up companies too. That's a huge trend that hopefully with the Mary Barrows and others making a difference here, but to try to help keep up with things, where you're talking about processes and things here, and let me start with you Ed down there, since you have the global overview from the statewide standpoint here, but also interested in the local too, what kinds of things would you like to see happen? What suggestions or novel ideas to try to help continue this conversation of creating a nimble and a flexible workforce from the employer standpoint, employee standpoint, because you're kind of bridging the gap there with what you folks are doing at TED. I guess I'll go to the core and that has to be relevant. I've got an example from a couple of high schools up in the UP and they have a class called geometry construction and the kids, after they take that class, they score better than the advanced geometry class on the standardized test because they can apply it. She said she had one guy he couldn't get the paperwork, yet in the shop he made a complex cut when they were doing a roof and she explained to it just like you did in shop yesterday and the light bulb went off and he got it on paper from there on out. That connection, another connection and we had a question at the last round here, the soft skills, there's a district on the west side of the state, they have four competencies they want all kids to have and this is for all jobs no matter what, attendance, cooperation, collaboration and productivity and what they've done is they integrated this into their school discipline system, their PBIS positive school discipline system. Discipline's gone down, a school of 1500, high school 1500 kids they had 50 discipline problems last year, that's it and they're relating it to work habits so it's repetition. Every day the kids are gonna come out with this and then by the end their senior year they're also teaching them how to market these skills that they've had but then they get into specific CTE courses too where they then to get the technical skills that you would need for the specific job but in general those two examples when it's relevant to someone it makes a difference and that's the same with the Kettering or the OU or the LTU model of internship while you're getting that degree it makes it relevant and then you really know your stuff which is just what you were talking about, your poor friends that don't feel like their skilled trades job that's getting that internship almost so that if they attain a bachelor's degree become an engineer eight years down the road maybe it's not for they'll have so much better skills than a person that went right away to get that four year degree. I think another thing that's really required is a national conversation, my head is off to Michigan and learning about the Marshall Plan is just really awesome so there's states that are really ahead and I would include Michigan in that but then there's states where there's really not that much going on and where the kids are still being taught really outdated skills. I was really encouraged to see the White House event yesterday, the AI event that they had. Other countries in China, France, Canada they've actually identified AI as a key area that nationally they want to put focus on and they want to make progress in and so when you look at our national competitiveness but also really safety and security ultimately we have to have a national conversation. Now some of that is going on but I would say even states that are a little bit ahead or are way ahead like Michigan I don't know how much conversation is going on I guess it's a question that I'll throw out there and perhaps you know is how much is there reaching out to at least the Midwest region or to other regions because everybody is doing some good things but there's not yet a rising tide in terms of you know I heard like the AI apprenticeship I was on the last panel I was really delighted to hear that and for example the data curation job there is a job humans have to actually explain to machines what everything means in the real world so that the machines can actually do the thing that they do right so that is actually a job and I was delighted to hear there's a apprenticeship program for it being created but you go to some other states or some other places and you talk about that and they'll just look at you like you're out of your mind they don't know what you're talking about you know I think we have time we have some audience questions too if anyone has questions here raise your hand there we go if you can identify yourself too that'd be great. Hi I'm Lori Cowey and I work with McComb County Planning and Economic Development so one of the projects I'm working on right now is very similar to the Marshall Project but it's with Ford Next Generation Learning in Romeo so everyone in this room knows we need to do something by our workforce and get more businesses in the classroom and the four year degree is not necessarily what you have to do because you can work and get it at the same time so what are we gonna tell the parents that are sitting there telling their kids you need to get a four year degree how are we changing that image? So that comes up all the time and that's a paradigm shift I mean if you look at what happened in the late 80s and early 90s and everybody went to Texas and that's when robotics really first took over manufacturing now we need people because we have to take care of the robots as well the baby boomer generation is all retiring so we've gotta fill that gap as well but there is a stain a stigma attached like you were saying with that skilled trade job and it's from a parent's perspective sometimes because they were burned in the past or they just want their kid to do better than them and get that degree it's not an easy battle and it happens in the trenches it doesn't happen by the governor proclaiming that you gotta stop thinking that way it happens when schools get involved when schools have real examples and we don't just talk to students or anybody about what's your passion job we also have to say who's hiring for that job when they find out the demand and the wages and the benefits that come with some of these jobs I think we're gonna start changing that but again it happens in the trenches with relevant data not because we say you've got to change your mindset and let's not forget that a 17 or high school age it's very daunting to decide what you wanna do at that age if you wanna go to college if you wanna go into skilled trades if you want to simply maybe take some time off and decide really what you wanna do I cannot emphasize enough the exposure to multiple opportunities I grew up in a farm town I did not know what engineering was we did not have any engineering opportunities in my town but I was fortunate enough to stumble upon engineering a lot of my high school colleagues went into a college and maybe got a liberal arts degree of communications but they weren't exposed enough to multiple opportunities especially in the STEM field regardless of what that is if it's an opportunity where you're working on robotics every day or if you're programming for future launches the exposure in the classroom the exposure for field trips the exposure of parents getting that knowledge to better understand what opportunities there are out there for their children and ultimately putting the decision in the children's hands to make that educated decision because they're well informed I know there also was a big event here that was introduced manufacturing day which takes place in October and it's a national thing I started back during the Obama administration and Mary Barra and Andra Rush and others have been very involved with having these events where they open the doors for young people but also their parents and others again for this exposure to show how much again just manufacturing, advanced manufacturing it's not your old automobile plant things are very different in the manufacturing world and there's some very high tech very high paying jobs in there too but I'm sorry you were going to say something so I would just gonna go back to the beginning of today when we opened with some of the opening remarks I liked what Senator Sabinoff said about counselors at schools I think a lot of it like regions where there's not even maybe the kind of industry in the neighborhood where people even get any exposure it is so important to have counselors that are really aware of what other options are out there and really educating the kids if you tell a kid I mean this is all just Bureau of Labor statistics if you get a degree that is in STEM you're earning potential over just even if you just do a two year degree or you do a four year degree certainly but even if you just go to it like a boot camp I have countless kids that come out of Ivy Leagues but getting like liberal arts they can only make like 40, 50 grand they go to a four month boot camp and they come out they can make 80, 90 grand all of a sudden right I mean if a counselor makes a kid aware of this I think some of it is the kids can go back and educate their parents you know a lot of times I learned a whole lot more from my kid these days than you know he learns from me I'm sure so I think that's very very important at schools also to make sure there's that visibility I agree with you 100% and the only problem is and we heard it earlier as well the counselors are one to 750 no I know that's why it has to change another initiative we have is what we're calling teacher externships and that is as a teacher has to keep up their certification they need to get something called sketches which is basically clock hour training that they have to track 150 every five years keep their certification so we're looking at getting them out into industry so they can see what it looks like today because you're exactly right it is not your father's shop I went on manufacturing day to a number of businesses and they were like hospital they were so clean I was shocked yeah so I'm looking any more audience questions raise your hand here we've got the microphone here we go Ron up here hold on hold on to bring the microphone to you Ron Hi I'm Ron Stefanski and I work for Penn Foster which is a skill trades education company and my question is you know you guys are all talking about this at a time when Michigan's seeing the lowest unemployment in recent memory and so we have and we have a declining participation in the workforce so it seems to me we have to get at some of the people who've been chronically underserved you know returning citizens returning warriors veterans and that and so I'm curious just your perspectives on how we do that because I think there's an absolutely exciting opportunity to bring those people into greater participation in a lot of these mid-skills and to your point Ed a lot of these skill trades jobs or mid-skill jobs where the college education isn't required but something beyond high school is that ties to a certification or an industry recognized credential I love that comment that's where diversity and inclusion comes in right I mean diversity and inclusion is of all kinds I mean veterans, disabled you know all kinds of and there's just not enough focus on that I also like an earlier comment that was made on one of the panels you know let's focus on the people we already have right and let's make sure that we're leveraging and giving the opportunity to people that are already here to really maximize their potential you know and so what works and what doesn't work be honest with you that's why what I'm focusing on today is machine learning and AI you can, there's so much data out there about successful programs that you can look at that and what works and what doesn't work that's what machine learning is great at you know looking at all that data and then telling everybody hey focus on this kind of a program you know so that you know not everybody has to do it by trial and error and figure that on their own so the question too goes and we've talked a lot about manufacturing because we're automotive based here that is still the core of our economy though we've diversified it's still automotive but we also have, speaking of McComb we have a strong defense industry here and particularly out it seems to be centralized in McComb but there's other parts of the state as well how we're talking about being prepared for that this is another area here so maybe if you wanna share some thoughts about that and better able to bridge the gap of what the needs, the workforce needs there and our marketplace might be Part of what we're looking at doing is with that credentials based, skills based accomplishments say you're coming out of the military and you can weld instead of going to an 18 month welding program if I can go there and demonstrate my capabilities and I can get that certification I'm into the workforce quicker and secondly as we look at grants for the Marshall Plan for the career technical education programs that we're gonna do with K-12 setting well guess what that equipment does in the evening sits, right, cause kids are in school till usually three o'clock so we're also having a component in there where get that out to the community and get those under skilled or people that have lost stop looking for work develop a program to get them in with your community and train them on that equipment so that we can double up the use of something we've already got often times that's the biggest hindrance to training people is the equipment Since I had a long career in defense I feel like I should say something about that it is very critical and I really like that you brought it up Carol because there are very specialized skills that take a lot to train people in and this departure of baby boomers is really a very big problem for defense it's not a sexy thing to there's not kegs under no some of that and so it is very difficult to actually attract the millennials into these fields and yet it is an absolute necessity it's absolutely critical for our national security so I think that we should think about that very broadly I like I guess I get a shout out to AM General for example yesterday I was at their plant and the way they've just organized the plant and the way that the offices look like it's just to me it was just so amazing that they had taken the step to make it I told them I said it looks like a startup it looks like one of these co-working spaces you have to get out of what attracts people anymore and you millennials can talk to that more is not like they said the paycheck is uninteresting somebody said earlier today and so we have to make sure that we can get more than anything millennials into defense that's like an absolute critical thing we must do To your point there are things that are becoming unconventional in the industry so for manufacturing from my short term experience we're changing our plants to have glass I guess offices so you can interact with the floor and still be doing your paperwork but have that separation of sound so you can still be monitoring as a supervisor and still be completing your paperwork on time we have desks that John said are lower we're integrating new ideas into the work environment because let's face it the cubicle is outdated for us as millennials and coming it's very prohibited to collaborating with coworkers when you have to look over the desk and see if anybody's sitting there turn around the corner to see if they're present and find out that they're not so I think there's some opportunities in the non-sexy maybe areas of need that have to have new labor coming into their workforce that need to be addressed which I think the industry defense transportation automotive are addressing and it's in transition at this time that's what I see so we're talking about all things proactively to do and you've all have different experiences in your own situations maybe not specifically to your job but you've seen it maybe you have a friend of a friend type thing but limitations to having some successes here in this obstacles that come up to help make these things happen and so on you know why don't you maybe talk about a situation of limitations or something that prevented something proactively in this area of workforce flexibility that got in the way I think it's the mindset really more than anything and it's exposure I mean people when they don't have exposure I think somebody said earlier you know it's not just about oh it's going towards AI and machine learning and this and that and so everybody has to be a PhD from Carnegie Mellon you know there are new jobs and some of them were mentioned you know robots need managers there's a company called Cobalt Robotics for example in Palo Alto all they do is actually they have these trained managers of the robots so that they can you know take over I mean just like people they need managers too and then for people to also interface with the customers who are using the robots you know how do you introduce it how do you make them comfortable with it you have designers for the robots for example you have people that have to take options that a machine learning tool gives you and then operate on that there are shortages in those areas and the people that can be retrained for those jobs do not have to have any kind of actually technical degree I mean most of these are non-technical degrees so while STEM is very important I'm passionate about it I'm an engineer there are a lot of non-technical support jobs without which all of the AI and all the robotics and all these new future positions frankly won't be very useful so and it will be a limiter to us so there's a whole ecosystem I would say we need an ecosystem approach for these new roles of the future so John you have been in the workforce for a few years now and I'm going to assume you're one of the younger people in your department and whatever here just from observation I read somewhere that the only person that likes change is a baby with a dirty diaper people don't like change I'm on cultural changes here particularly when you see other employees probably older people again it's a change of a mindset whether it's a four year degree it's changing the mindset which is critical to this whole conversation here how do you see that and from what your experience has been of watching these things yeah it's interesting so when I started I was the youngest in my group by 15 years maybe there was one other person but everyone else was at least 15 years older than I was and had been in my group for 10 plus years so they really didn't like change and I came in fresh and I would see some things and question why like the folder structure why do we have these folders like this we have to click 300 times to get to any document can't we just keep all those things we go to every day at the top and you're like well this is the way we always do it how are we going to find it if we change it but it's bad so dealing with that kind of stuff and we talked about going from one software to a new software we were just talking about this and they don't want to switch softwares even though the one we're using isn't as good just because they know it better so there'll be a short period of time where it'll be painful but then it'll be better and they don't want to go through that painful period and now there's been a lot of change over over the last couple of years with I would say to everybody here listen to the young ones I do this every day so for example how many of you Slack okay so like Slack is a bad thing it's like you're Slack off but Slack is a good thing in the new terminology how many of you use Google Hangout on a regular basis so see everybody should be using these things and frankly when I left my corporate job because these things were like it has to go through IT and oh my god we can't use this we have our SharePoint or whatever old version why use and I'm like Google Hangout is like completely free you know Google File System you know the way that you can collaborate is completely free you know all these things are available but corporations and companies don't take advantage of them simply and new people come in and say why aren't you doing this and go but it's not approved by IT you know it's not something you know we don't do it this way here just listen to the young ones we're Skype we use Skype and no one, everyone's afraid to use their camera which I don't get at all like everyone covers it up with like sticky notes just turn your camera on if you can communicate with and see the other person why do we not use the cameras all the time I don't get it but this sounds like a deep philosophical question here what are people covering up their camera there you know what I find interesting is the baby boomers complaining about the millennials because if you go back to the 60s and the 70s I could hear my dad yelling at my sisters for all the stuff they didn't do in fact I read a little excerpt of complaining about the youth and it was dated 700 A.D. and you'd have thought it was talking about today so this the biggest lie is to say this time it's gonna be different it's a cyclical thing that happens we've gotta get used to the new generation the thing I would add to that though the difference with 700 A.D. is that the generational pace of change was not as fast right I think now so even if you didn't listen to the young ones you know you could maybe get by I think you just can't get by today if you don't listen because the pace of change is so fast and to Sonia's point it's being open about the communication I don't know if you guys saw I was on my phone during the first and second panel I wasn't on YouTube I wasn't searching I was taking notes on my phone in which I then sent to myself I don't know if any of you guys do that but that's more of a excellent thank you and so it's just a different way of paying attention and staying involved so finding out how the different generations are communicating with each other I think is really critical because then somebody won't look at me like I'm slacking off but I'm still involved I'm 100% vested but you might not see that because that's not how you are doing things so I try and have conversations with my colleagues on how they're taking meeting notes how they're learning new technology either training, reading or teaching others or doing on-the-job projects that help them elaborate on a new skill set such as Skype and using the camera but with that being said being open is a very key trait to that so as we wind down this panel here I think the headline is talking about my generation it's a song from way back when anyways but I wanna thank you guys so much for sharing all your thoughts here and I know that you wanna make a few comments here as we wind this down and appreciation here for the panel and thank you so much and thank you so much for participating with us and thank all the panelists from the panel now to the prior two panels and a special thanks to Carol Kane who's also talked about all this even two weeks ago in the papers and I personally found today's conversation really, really interesting we had such a great conversation and I think it's a great opportunity to talk to you guys and I think it's a great opportunity we had such an interesting mix of people from different disciplines with different missions and that's exactly what we have in mind at New America we're always interested in bringing together uncommon conversation because ultimately what we really care about is that we surface some ideas we help surface some ideas because the ideas are right here which can cause activities to go forward this is not just about another conference this is about the beginning of an investment in certain ideas that can come up because you've got people saying on the one hand, hey, I really need more talent on the other hand, hey, 10 miles away we've got kids graduating with no jobs so I'm gonna go through a couple of items that I thought that I picked up that I would love to follow up on and I'd really welcome a continuation of conversation our Twitter account is up there at New America should be up there and I can also hand out business cards and you can find us on newamerica.org before I go to some conclusions let me really stop and give an enormously special thanks first, AM General AM General straddles a couple of states in many locations and has seen really interesting conversations happening has seen what leadership can do and is investing in Michigan in that thought leadership and beyond and so thank you very much AM General for supporting us and coming here and really supporting everything that you have seen today an incredibly special thank you to Oakland University Dean Shamra is just really a leader and is thinking way ahead and has been an incredible partner to work with and while on OU frankly we could not have done this without a few people like Jane Dietrich and Brian Beerley and John Young I just feel like a shout out to them is really important as well as Ted, you know bringing the state's power to this is really important and mentioned earlier and certainly up there Automation Alley, Madcat and the Engineering Society of Detroit who was here with us at 625 AM making sure that everybody was getting through the lines and the couple of things that I thought I mean there was so much today but you know I thought there were a couple of really interesting points where it's on the one hand on the other hand and how do we solve these things so soft skills or certificates which are important I kept hearing both but how do we do that together what is that parallel track and some folks are doing it really well high schools that are graduating students with a high school degree and a certificate that's one of the answers I heard Louisville and Nashville and other places that are not so far away from the neighborhood that might be doing some things that Michigan could look at and certainly vice versa because another thing that I heard both today and frankly in all these months of talking to Dean Chomrah and going through these labs upstairs which are amazing which is that you do not innovate without having the tactile knowledge of what it means to produce physically and that is that is a Michigan story 101 right and that's something I'm not an engineer I wouldn't know that but that's the kind of thing that I get to learn here and because New America is in a bunch of different places around the country we could maybe bring somewhere like California where that's not necessarily the background of the way they think other like just you know the questions that be double us all the time why are kids in a high school in Pontac what like 10 miles away having trouble on the other hand OU is placing 99% of their graduates in jobs 97% of their graduates in jobs in Michigan what's going on there's a need that Andy Hove talked about for talent and you know the aging of the defense sector workforce that Sonya talked about General Hitchcock talked about on the other hand we know that there are people who are being kept away from that talent pool and what is that about and these are like the really critical places that I think we all want to find the innovative thing somebody is doing to crack open that code and then surface it and keep sharing that around different places so that's where New America comes in that's what we see as our responsibility is we're not gonna like you know is it the SAP commercial we have not invented it but we are looking for the people who are inventing it and who we can connect to others we have a few reports out there the shift commission report please feel free to take it that was work done nationally on the AI and future of work including here in Michigan and that was the precursor to some of this kind of deeper conversation and really please keep on participating this is just the beginning and again thank you thanks for getting here early thanks for sticking with us for over three hours I personally learned a lot again thank you