 Barbara, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your reflections on why Siemens USA believes so strongly in apprenticeship as an education and training model, as well as sharing your exciting and inspiring vision for the future where youth apprenticeship is really available to so many more people. Again, we so appreciate your support and the support of the Siemens Foundation for all of this work. So our next panel will continue on with the theme of why youth apprenticeship works for employers. As Mitch said earlier today, you can't run a youth apprenticeship program without employers, so hearing their perspective is really critical as we work to expand this strategy. So it's my pleasure to introduce the moderator of this panel, Eric Sellsnow. Eric is a senior advisor and directs JFF's Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning where he works to further the organization's goals of advancing innovative workforce policy and programs. Eric is contributing to JFF's work on apprenticeship, reentry, and sector strategies. Prior to joining JFF, Eric served as deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration under Secretary Tom Perez. During his time at ETA, Eric focused on implementing the Obama administration's vision for workforce development, skills training, and registered apprenticeship. Eric just told me I can stop whenever I want, so I will take that as my cue to stop. Eric has a wealth of experience in these areas, which is literally the sentence that I was about to say. So, again, it's my pleasure to introduce Eric, who will introduce our next panel of speakers. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you very much, Megan. I appreciate that. My esteemed and august panel, if you'd come and join me up here, I'll introduce them momentarily. It's a pleasure to be here today. I was talking to Dr. Thorneley earlier today. Last time I saw Dr. Thorneley speak was in 2008 here, and I was not lying when I said I remember that speech like yesterday, and to see that you're still at it is amazing, so thanks for having us here today, really. And to see all the work that's gone on here in Charleston and in South Carolina generally has been incredible to watch over these last 10 years. And I really want to thank New American, the funders for bringing JFF in as a partner to this work, really important. Before I introduce my panel, I just want to say a couple of things. For many of you in the audience like me, you may feel like you've just come to a different planet, right? You just sat through a panel with senior-level education administrator superintendents, deputy superintendents, who were talking the language of apprenticeship. Really amazing. Everybody in this room from Charleston is understanding dual enrollment. They understand that leadership matters. They understand that organization matters. And most of all, I think they understand that employers matter, and we're going to be drilling into that. But really felt like it's a little bit of a different planet. Can you imagine in your area, and I know some of you can because you've done great work, that you can have multiple schools, superintendents, and districts, and counselors from multiple counties within the same region of multiple high schools, even reaching down to the middle schools, putting people on a pathway to apprenticeship, careers, college, and a lot of other things. Pretty amazing stuff. So when you've traveled to Switzerland, or Germany, or Australia, or the UK, you say, gee, can I do that in the U.S.? And then you come here, and you say, gee, I've now been to Charleston, can I do that in the U.S.? It's happening here. There are people who get it and come together to do that work. So pretty amazing stuff already this morning. And I think you'll see that it's not just, we love Mitch. Everybody loves Mitch. Mitch will be the first person to say it's just not about Mitch, right? But there's this intermediary role of glue. There's this other glue in the superintendents and the school systems. And there's some more glue coming with the Chamber of Commerce and employers. So without further ado, let me tell you who my fabulous panel is and who we're going to speak with momentarily. I think everybody's in the correct order. So I'll go with Tina Worth, Senior Vice President of Talent Development at the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce. You heard a little bit about them this morning. We'll be hearing from Tina pretty soon. Tina was with other chambers in Florida and Jacksonville and elsewhere and has been in workforce development for some time. Next to Tina is Karen Winningham, Human Resource Specialist with Robert Bosch, LLC. And I had the pleasure of sitting through Karen's tour last time I was visiting Bosch. And Karen has been around with Youth Apprenticeship for many years and is a senior HR business party for the Charleston facility. Next to her is, everybody's got their order right, Nisi Lowell, Nisi's employer and public relations officer with Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union and works in employer and public relations with that credit union. She's worked with hundreds of businesses to promote their products and their proud partner of the apprenticeship system here. Lastly we have, oh, not lastly, I got another page to turn, Mendy Arnold. Mendy is the Corporate Communications Director for Column Services, HVAC and Mechanical Engineering Company here in Charleston and serves as now as the Director of Human Resources but has worked her way up through the ranks of that organization. And lastly, Rowanna Payne. Rowanna Payne is the Clinical Education Specialist at Trident Health in Healthcare and Nursing and works with multiple students in this program. We've got more we can say about them. I think their bios are in your panels, but I want to start off this conversation. I'm going to come sit down in a minute, Tina, but before I do that, we heard a little bit about the Chamber's role this morning, but the Chamber of Commerce here in Charleston has a deep and rich history with apprenticeships here, and you were one of the beginning partners and founders, so I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how the Chamber got involved and what some of your role is today. Sure. You know, we discovered several years ago, as many Chambers of Commerce have, that talent is really what's going to drive our region's economy. And so in 2013, the Chamber took a trip to San Antonio, Texas along with college leaders, and saw something in place there that looked really compelling, which was part of, I think, the birth and origin story of the Youth Apprenticeship Program. But to the larger issue of talent overall, there have been gaps in misalignment for years. So in 2014, we took a look at what the supply of workers coming through the pipeline was going to be, compared that with the employer demand, and really identified some gap areas. So our most recent talent demand study, which was just updated in the latter part of 2018, shows that we have a gap, we have 30,000, 35,000 new jobs that will be coming into the market in the next five years. That is a 30% increase over the last projection we did two years prior. So the pace of the need, the unmet need continues to grow. 80% of our jobs are going to grow in just 10 occupations, and those occupations align very nicely with Trident Technical College's Pathways for the Apprenticeship Program, and we see it as a very powerful tool to address those particular gaps. So something was said this morning about the chamber helping fund the student, the dual enrollments, I believe that was one of the initial things. So a chamber funding the dual enrollment process, that's unheard of. Can you tell us a little bit about that, how that sort of has worked over time and how that works today? Sure. I first have to tell you, I stand on the shoulders of a woman who carried a great deal of social capital prior to my joining the chamber. So really a lot of this work and the origin story lays on someone else's shoulders. That said, chambers of commerce can be a little self-involved. We're a chamber, we do chamber events, we do mixers and those kind of things. But we knew a while ago, about eight years ago, that we had to ask our members to make a deeper level of investment, and they had to invest deeply in talent and in government relations. And frankly, our government relations work aligns with talent as well. And so we asked that of our members and we specified that a certain portion of our funding was going to be dedicated to talent development. And in particular, the youth apprenticeship program, so that all families would have access to the tuition and supplies and the costs associated with the program. So that's where we were. We started as sole funders. But today we are major funders, as the college continues to expand the number of apprenticeships, and we can't be the sole funder at this point anymore, but we're very happy to still be in the mix. And so employers in scale are investing, putting their money where their mouth is, quite frankly, to support the region and support economic development and job growth and support these students and the education they get. Yeah, and we've got two types of employers in terms of engagement. We've got employers who hire the youth apprentices, but we also have employers for whom they're not going to see a direct personal gain, but they understand that they're creating an ecosystem of talent development in the region. So they invest, even though they may not have an immediate gain to it, they understand that they are still building people who may eventually become part of their workforce. So how do you sustain that interest? How does the chamber sustain that interest? Initially you had to encourage it. You still have to encourage it and sustain it today. I imagine that's quite a bit of a challenge dealing with all the employers that you deal with. Talk a little bit about that. Well, I kick them. I kick them real hard, and then they give. Other than that? You know, what's been fascinating is when Melissa and Mitch shared the statistics earlier this morning about the success rates of the youth apprenticeship program, boy, the proof's in the pudding there, isn't it? When you have twice as effective an outcome rate for young people when they are connected with an employer experience, you know, for some students, college for college's sake isn't a compelling enough argument. And so when you have the employer component tied in there, college and education for earning's sake is a motivator and a key driver, and so having the employer connected to that experience yields better outcomes. We're thrilled with the outcomes. That's great. So a lot of folks in this room are probably saying back in there, you know, how do I sustain this in my community? How do I sustain this at my college? Or I'm an intermediary, how I can sustain this? So this is one model. And I'm not sure you can cover all the costs of all the students, but a substantial part. Is that right? Is that an ongoing challenge for you? Of course. I mean, messaging and maintaining momentum and support is going to be a challenge, I think, in any community. What we do get a chance to say as a chamber is, you know, we had a component of youth support that didn't include an employer component. It was just outright scholarship. We have some evidence now based upon the first three cohorts that have completed through that employer connection piece is vitally important. And when we take a look at systems change that's going to yield the kind of outcomes we need for all students, there's a really compelling argument to be made there that the initial data sets are showing. Wow, that's outstanding. Again, an interesting model. I've heard some other models across the country where chambers are involved. This chamber has sustained this over time with investment. So a very interesting model. We'll come back to you in a little while, Tina. So let's go to Karen, Winningham, a senior human resource specialist, technical training at Bosch, LLC. I got a lot to follow, man. So I got a lot to follow. Yes, you do. You all have a lot to follow. So tell us a little bit about your program. Just spend a minute framing it for folks what your program is. And I have some really hard questions for you, Karen. Well, at Bosch, we've been doing apprenticeships since the mid-'70s. So Bosch knows apprenticeships. We've been doing youth apprenticeships. We were one of the first organizations that sat around the table. Right now, we have 11 youth apprentices employed with us. We've had several graduates. We had one graduate go to Clemson. And he is now coming back every year as a cooperative student. He's a great student. Later on today, you're going to meet one of our students, Stephanie Walters. Please remember that name and remember that story. She is the epitome of what apprenticeship is about. We've talked about a lot of things, but Bosch made sure that we had the teachers involved. We made sure we had career counselors involved. But something else we did is we made sure we had parents involved. Don't forget that piece of the puzzle. These are young adults. They listen to their parents more than you would believe. And one of the things we did with the parents is we flew open after parents come in. This is where your child's going to work. We did that for the first two or three years. We don't have to do it as much. Typically, the parents are now coming at graduation. And I will tell you we talked about a lot of things already, but please talk about that mentor relationship. Each of our youth apprentices are paired with a mentor and a coach and a trainer. At our last youth graduation, one of our graduate students told that mentor, you were going to retire when I got here. You hung on for another year and a half. You made a difference. My youth was crying. My mentor was crying. So not only is there the great partnership there, you're going to find some of that legacy knowledge hangs around a little bit longer because they want to make a difference too. So Karen, let me ask you a couple of mechanical questions. So who at the plant, who do you interface with? Who connects with you about hiring students, about evaluating students? Who are you talking with on a day-to-day level? At the plant? Well, until a couple of months ago, me. Right. Who outside? Outside of the plant, I talked to Mitch a lot. We talked to parents a lot. We talked to career counselors a lot. We talked to other companies. We sat around the table. We invite other companies to our facility. We go to their facility. We go to high schools. We've had high schools come to us. If there's an outlet there, we're trying to get involved. And about how many students are applying specifically to come to your program each year? And then how many are you able to take every year? This year, we're just about to open the enrollment. But I will tell you, two years ago, we had over 300 applicants. And God bless you Trident Tech for filtering the majority of those applicants for us. So a lot of interaction on a day-to-day basis with the mechanics of this with Trident Tech. Did I mention I am an apprentice graduate? I didn't. Glad you did. And so what if there's a problem with a student? I mean, we hear these great stories. That's great. But occasionally, I'm sure somebody comes in late. Somebody has some poor skills. Maybe it's not working out with a mentor. Maybe it is. What do you do if you have a problem? Well, it depends on the problem. Our mentors and coaches, they also do a lot of tutoring. If that's needed, they will tutor. Our students tend to look up to these mentors and coaches a lot. There have been a time or two where they've had to come and say, hey, Karen, this relationship just isn't working. The first thing we try and do is find out what the root cause is. And sometimes it's as simple as just the personalities didn't get along. Other times, it's been more severe. Mitch keeps calling me the mom. I give my mom speech periodically. Mom's out there now. That gets a lot of attention real quick. Most of we found, though, that these students really, really want to succeed. And if they feel like they're disappointing the company or their mentor, coach, and trainer, it turns around real quick. The key is to let them know their expectations upfront. Do not leave a youth guessing. If they know what they're getting into and they know the expectations, they really strive to reach them. I was going to say, there's a pretty robust orientation and onboarding process that you all do, right? Absolutely. We invite, again, we invite the students. They have to interview. And it's a typical interview, just like you would interview anyone else. But while the children are interviewing or the young adults, if you will, many times we'll have the adults or their parents touring the facility in the background. We've had their guidance counselors come in and tour. We have guidance counselors call us, hey, your program's opening. I've got Jane, Mary, Joe. How are they going to get there? Excellent. So there's probably a number of folks in here. A common question that comes up across the country is, OK, so how are you dealing with a 17-year-old worker? They're not 18. There's workman's comp. There's liability issues. Oh my god, it's a crisis. We can't do it in our area. How can anybody ever do that? You figure that out here, right? Well, they figured it out for us again. For the employer, that's the easy part. After we sat around the table, we figured out what the student needs to know, what the outcome should be. But getting the student there with the insurance and those these guys out here. So you tried and took care of that. Your intermediary took responsibility for it. When they say there's a partnership, it really is a partnership. I kept hearing y'all say it takes a village, and I kept hearing the handshake. Well, if you're going to start a youth apprentice or if you're going to have a youth apprenticeship, it's more than your traditional handshake. You need to learn to shake up here and shake down here and shake like this because we all have to come together and we all have to do our part. But it is well worth it. And the students are the winners. Again, another great example of things that an intermediary can do in this space. Thank you, Karen. We'll come back to you. Nisi Lowell with Heritage Trust Federal Credit Union. Oh my gosh, a credit union, the financial service industry is doing apprenticeships. How about that? I believe it. Unbelievable. Tell us a little bit about it. So we joined in with Trident Tech in 2016. And we used our information technology department for our apprentices. So we have two students. Actually, one is now a full-time employee because he went through the apprenticeship program, graduated, and is now an employee. I believe he's been employed with us for six months now. The second student is finishing his apprenticeship and will probably apply and will probably be hired. So we're in the process now of looking for a few more to continue the relationship. So at some point, you or your bosses or somebody had to make an important decision to say, I think we're going to try this apprenticeship program. What led you to that? What was a pivotal piece of information that made you decide we think Heritage Credit Union wants to do this? It was a chamber. So we work closely with all of the chambers, but it was a Charleston metro chamber. And one of our senior vice president, Emily Reynolds, is over credit union development. So when they started dealing with and putting out the information about the apprenticeship program, she brought it back to our senior management team and our board of directors. And again, I believe that you said earlier, when we have potential employees come in and interview, especially millennials, they ask what we do for the community. And we thought we need to add the apprenticeship program to our litany of things that we're going to offer because it's so precise with what the employees are looking for now. They want to know what you do besides pay me a paycheck. Have there been any challenges in startup, any rough edges or mistakes that were made or anything that have come up that other folks in this audience need to know about, or has it been a pretty smooth process? It has been so smooth. I can't even think of anything. The two students we have, the only thing I would say about them is they're both super shy. And getting them to do an interview was a little bit challenging. But now they bop around the office. They also do their field technicians. They go to all 12 branches. Everyone knows them. They've come out of their shell. Their soft skills have really improved. So we actually, if there's been a problem, I'm not aware of it. So it's been a very positive experience for us. If you had, how many employers are in this room, by the way? I meant to ask that earlier. Employers raised their hand. I know there's a few of you out there. OK. But what advice, oh, there's a big employer. Yeah. What advice would you have for an employer? You're still fairly new at this. You're in those two years. What advice would you have for an employer who is thinking about this or things that they should do on their side of the equation? I would encourage all employers to not be afraid of stepping into this, especially if you have a partner like Trident Tech. Because honestly, like Karen said, they really do everything. And once you get your students' apprentices there, they're turned over to you. And it's really, we've not even had any HR issues at all. I think one maybe slept a little late one morning and kind of was tired during the day. But he's 17 years old. We kind of like, hey, yeah. Did one of those, huh? Yeah, had a mom vomit with him and that kind of thing. But they are so good on the phone. Especially when you come in on Monday morning and you're locked out of your computer and you have to call them. They love to help you. Because now they're getting back some feedback if I'm really helping someone. I would encourage all employers to take the step. Don't wait on it. If you have a partner that's willing to work with you, you will be so surprised at how simple it has been. OK, great. Mindy, let's talk about Column Services, your mechanical contracting firm. You yourself sort of came up the ranks in that organization, as I understand. So tell us about some of your mechanical contracting industry. Tell us about your decision to get involved in the apprenticeship program and tell us a little bit about how it's been going. Sure. So for Column, it was really a no-brainer. The biggest industry issue we have in construction is the lack of skilled workforce. And people who do have the skills that we're looking for are employed. They are well employed and they're well taken care of because the skill is so in high demand and small supply. So the only way that we're going to have a pipeline of skilled workers is to grow our own. So my biggest opportunity for recruitment, I spend a lot of time in the high schools. I'm in elementary schools. We were at STEM Fest on Saturday. So for Column, it was really just a no-brainer. So even in this tightening labor market, where 2.3%, where you could probably hire anybody who falls off a truck tomorrow, still a bit of a challenge. And you mentioned the term grow your own. So you're really interested in growing your own workforce the way you want to do that. How many apprentices have you had go through over the years? How many do you have now? I know I met one last year. It was pretty impressive, young man. So we have three active apprentices through the Youth Apprenticeship Program. We have hired, committed to hire another one who will start with us in April. We have been participating with the Youth Apprenticeship for three years. So Malik Miller, who is the young man that you met, is very well loved by the customers and he's getting ready to complete his apprenticeship. Column's apprenticeship program does take 6,000 hours on the job training. So a year past their completion of their certificate program, they are still considered an apprentice. He will get his Department of Labor credential. I'll be ordering that for him this summer. So very excited about that. Two young men that came to us last year are both doing a great job. We try to highlight their strengths, use them where they're the strongest and also give them positive feedback and reinforcement to help them grow. We've got one that's a rock star. I mean, he's hitting it out of the park on every aspect and another one that we've had some attendance issues with, but we've counseled him and discussed how important it is to be here on time and that we've got to be able to count on you and pointed it out as a, you can't let your team down and has really shown an improvement and really done a great job there. So as a former job counselor, he used to work with a number of HVAC mechanical firms. People need tools, people need stilted boots, people need driver's licenses, they've got to pass drug tests, things like that. Were those some of the issues that you've had to work with with students and how do they get their tools to even start working with you? So we have a tool assistance purchase program that we do allow them to purchase tools. The company will pay for it up front and we'll let them reimburse us through a payroll deduction. So that is key, but we also have started with apprentice packs. So we give them a little tool bag with a level and a tape measure and some of those kind of basic tools that they need. But it really hasn't been a problem. I mean, they're great. Like we heard earlier is they want to succeed. And you've got that mentor relationship, they don't want to let that mentor down. And it's really been great for our mentors is developing leadership skills in their part and being able to give back and meaningful purpose. Is it a big deal? Can you talk about that for a minute? And either one of you could jump in. Talk about any preparation for the supervisors or mentors. Have you had to do anything special? What impact has it had on your company? What is the payoff or some of the challenges of the mentor and supervisors? So I have an advantage. I've been with Cullum for 15 years and have kind of grown up through the ranks and we have a very high retention rate for longtime employees. We've got about 250 employees. I know them all for the most part. So I identify them based on what I know about the apprentice and what I know about the mentor and I try to pair those folks up with who's gonna be a best fit. And I've actually recently paired one of my problem children with an apprentice as a mentor and it has really, really improved his behavior because he knows that somebody's watching. We've given him a fine reputation to live up to and he is doing that job. Who's influencing who, right? That's right. That's right, they are, they do. The relationship is key and it's not just a professional development. I mean, you see bonds and I try to put diversity together too to help expand with that. So it's really been a great experience. We start all that by, there's 1,800 of us there and we start out by asking for volunteers. Do you want to volunteer? And then we send them through a series of coaching and training classes. Once they volunteer, you know, they feel like they have skin in the game now. And we typically have a little luncheon and we have some apprentices in there. We have some potential mentors in there. We sit and watch how they interact. Then we pair them up. Similar situation with you all? Yeah, we also have mentors as well and we also have a lead program and our mentor program within the company. But we also go outside of the information technology department where they can go shadow you and another like they've shadowed me and I've been out and introduced them to businesses. So they also get to see not only what they do behind the scenes with the network, what we do up front. So we definitely expose them to all areas of the credit union. I'm gonna go to Rowan in a minute. But before I do that, just for you two. So you have a couple of apprentices, you have three, but you're not going anywhere, right? You're gonna be with this program for a while. So over time, over the next 10 years, it's conceivable that you could have another six or eight people who've apprenticed into you. Is that right? And how many people do you think you'll apprentice over the next 10 years? My goal for 2022 is to have every mechanic paired with an apprentice. So it's been a challenge. I've got to get my training budget up so that with service work, you build a customer for the time. It all goes on a work order. So I've had a kind of a juggle and struggle with getting them to give me a cost code. So everybody wants to know, what's the cost code that we're gonna use for this? So I've just got to get my training budget beefed up, but that's my goal. But if you continue these apprentices, you'll have more and more in your workforce every year. And how many do you think you'll absorb over the next five years? We're actually looking at two more for information technology, but also our business development and marketing department. We thought if there was an opportunity for that, we would use that as well. Add that to the list. Okay, great. We'll be opening up for questions in a little while. So start thinking of them through, if you would. So, Ruanna, so clinical education specialist to try health. So tell us, you know, healthcare is a little bit challenging in a lot of ways. Healthcare has always done clinical work, so that's not unusual. But you've got HIPAA and privacy and math and science and blood and all these things in healthcare. So tell us a little bit about your program. I had the pleasure to tour your health sciences program last year, but tell us a little bit about where Trident is with the apprenticeships. Well, healthcare is definitely a big challenge compared to some of these other industries because we have so many different areas for the apprentices to go to. And we sat down and met with our chief nursing officer and she made the decision to limit the number of people that we brought in. So the first year we brought 10 apprentices in. And that was a little grandiose for us for our first year. So we brought them in, we screened them, put them through our hire process just like we do everybody else. They went through an onboarding process and we rotated our apprentices. We tended to keep them more in the med surge areas on the floors, the medical surgical areas. And they rotated the five floors for six months. And while they were rotating, I was checking in on them and making sure that what they were doing was coinciding with the courses they were taking through their CNA and patient care tech program here. So when they finished their CNA and their patient care tech program, then we started allowing them to do more and more things with the patients that they couldn't do as an initial CNA. At six months, they told me what floor they wanted to work on to spend the rest of their apprenticeship program. Then we reached out to the managers of the floors to determine which floor could take them as a quote permanent employee. And then we got them settled in and we're still following them. Out of the first year, we have unfortunately had some turnover. A couple of folks have moved out of the county and were no longer eligible to stay in the program. One withdrew on her own because she realized, hmm, shouldn't have picked this field, it's not my cup of tea. And we had one for scholastic reasons withdrawal. So that's gonna happen in any sort of program you do anywhere. So how do you all view it in terms of the long run? CNA is not an end game with training or apprenticeships. It's really a beginning of a pathway. So what do your students say about that? What do they think about where they're gonna go next on that pathway? Because it doesn't give them a great foundation to move on to anything. What sort of conversations do you have with students? When we interview them, we talk to them about what the options are as they go through the program. When they complete it, we participate in another program through HCA called the STAR RN program for nurses. So when they transition out of the role as the patient care tech apprentice into the student nurse role and they graduate, then they can come to us as an RN. So we're seeing the program as a way of growing potential staff nurses to get them excited and interested about Trident so that they'll wanna stay with us long term. Okay, and is this, all of them in the hospital setting or are they in clinics, hospital setting, long term care? Where are they mostly? They're exclusively on the medical surgical floors in the hospital. Okay, all right. So you said you were all excited and you took 10 apprentices your first year and then realized, yikes, that's a lot. Where are you now? How's that program settled? How's it adjusted? How have you dealt with challenges? Well, we're getting ready to start interviewing for our third cohort of apprentices and out of the first group, I've got two that are starting into the nursing program and the fall semester here at Trident Tech. I've got two that are probably gonna start in January. So we're doing well with that group. In my second group, we have four that are just now finishing their seventh month into the program and having a ball. They're really enjoying it. We're getting tremendous feedback from the coworkers and from the patients that they are doing a great job. That's excellent. So before we go to questions, I wanna sort of go to, well, I'm sorry. What advice do you have for folks here, particularly those in the healthcare sector? There's a lot of people who have an interest in this room. You have community college people and city administrators and educators. You have a lot of different people in this room and they say, oh, healthcare, that's an easy one. We'll do healthcare. What advice do you have for them? Make sure that your human resources department and your administration are on board together. Fortunately, we had some challenges when we first started because there were some misconceptions from our human resource department as to what the apprentices could and could not do. And once we got that cleared up and made everybody on the same page, then that solved a lot of the problem we had. And just getting everybody comfortable, realizing that these kids are not just here as a shadow, but they're here to learn and they can touch and fill and take care of patients just like the regular patient care techs and nurses do. And this issue around having a 17-year-old work around in med search floors and all that, was that a problem? How did you address that? Was that a culture change or did Trident College take care of everything for you again? It encouraged us to look outside the box as to how people were scheduled to work because now we're working around high school schedules. We're working around schedules for these kids for their college classes. And for the student itself, they have to understand that the commitment they're gonna make to us is such that they may not get to go to the prom or to homecoming or to that play that they wanna participate in because they've made a commitment to us. And we can't on short notice say, oh yeah, you can do that tonight. They're part of a team and we're counting on them to help provide high quality care for the patient. Really important reality check, I think, when you're putting these programs together at the local level, I think Brent has done some work on that. And people have to think differently about their traditional high school experience to do that work, so excellent point. So where do you see this going around here? It's just, you've been part of the growth and the acceleration. Tina, I'm gonna start with you first. Is there a strategic plan? Are you just feeling your way through this? How does the chamber plan to accelerate this and bring in more great employers so we can have four new ones like this next year? Although we always wanna have these guys here but we might have four new ones. You know, one of the big problems was alluded to earlier is just the fact that at the system-wide level, there aren't the kind of supports in place to allow this program to grow to the extent that it could. I'm coming from the state of Florida where there is a robust dual enrollment funding mechanism that does not exist here. Frankly, it's quite limiting because it allows for pilot level interventions but not to the degree that is possible given the employer enthusiasm here. So we've added it to our legislative agenda to say, hey, could we take a look at CTE-specific dual enrollment costs as being covered as a line item with the state legislature? Thanks to the fine work of the college in tracking the successful outcomes, we now have information we can provide to legislators that say, hey, look, this works. And if you actually applied some funding towards it, like all of our surrounding states do, then we could make it work to a much greater scale. So that part is critically important and will continue to hamper the ability to grow the program. So there is always gonna be, I think, an important public policy aspect to this work that needs to be supported. The second thing I would say is that you alluded to it a little bit, that the culture within human resources, for those of you looking to build employer networks, you really gotta go to the chief. You gotta go to the head visionary who says it's a good idea because human resources has a tendency to function a little bit like regulatory and compliance. And there just no is just far easier than saying yes. And so I think that if you get that messaging out, if you validate it at the highest levels, then the organization will figure out how to make it work. And then the third and final thing I would say is that with the 3% unemployment rate, if you are a company that is just consuming the available workforce, you will never keep up. So what do you mean by that? Well, employers have got to start participating in the production of their workforce. Youth apprenticeship is a prime example of that. But the reality is, is that the people who come and complain to us about not being able to find the talent they want, it's because other employers are at the table first. It's because Mendy got to them first. You know, and that really is the message that chambers of commerce and business organizations need to tell their members is to say, the reason why you're not able to find your engineering candidates junior year of college is because they were already in co-ops their sophomore year. Same thing here with associate degree pathways and same thing in the high school. You've got to reach students earlier. So excellent points, thank you. So I'm gonna ask you all to comment on this next thing. So across this country, there is a lot of noise about how bureaucratic and difficult and challenging it is to do apprenticeships. All of these programs are registered, is that right, Mitch? So yeah, you do registered apprenticeship programs, which are sometimes, oh my gosh, they're so difficult, we can't do them. There's so much red tape, there's so much bureaucracy. I already know the answer to this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. So why are you doing this? Is this is such a bureaucratic, tons of paperwork, a lot of red tape with the federal government because these are federally registered programs. So what do you say to that criticism of the registered apprenticeship program? Well, it's the right thing to do. Okay. It makes a difference. In healthcare, we have a shortage looming over us. And if we don't reach out to the younger generation and set those high standards that are necessary for those individuals when they come into the profession, the quality of care we're gonna receive is gonna go down dramatically over the years. And you don't deserve that, and your youth don't deserve to get a less than stellar education to set them up to be successful. But I'm sick, I wanna be able to go into the hospital and know that somebody is gonna take the best care of me that's possible and that I had an impact on that. It's the right thing to do, that's one answer. Karen? I'm gonna have to say you made an incorrect statement. Tell me why that's an incorrect statement. We also- Love it when people tell me that except my kids. We also partner with the apprentice Carolina who, like Mitch, with the Friday technical aspect and like Melissa with the dual credit aspect, we have apprentice Carolina here who, Karen, you tell me what your outcome is. You tell me what your outcome wants to be. I'm gonna put that together in a packet for you. I'm gonna send it to you. You sign it, you have the apprentice sign it and you take off. Not difficult at all. So it's not a bureaucratic nightmare. That was not a true statement. Not a true statement because you have an intermediary that helps with that. Absolutely, absolutely. Same answer. Same thing, I was gonna, is this a trick question because we really do not have to do anything other than pick the candidate we're looking for and they provide ample people for us. I have to say too that Cleveland with the Department of Labor is amazing to work with. He is very accessible, very responsive. The Rapids website where you do go in and register the apprentices is very user friendly. I've never had an issue there far and with apprenticeship Carolina is also amazing. Can you repeat that? Did you say the Rapids website is easy to get into data? Do you hear that? It is, yeah. It kind of does work this way, okay? Yes, it is. They're incredibly responsive. When we first went online with the registration process, I thought it was incredibly easy. Well, you're in healthcare, of course it's easy. It's much easier than doing insurance ones. Of course you would say it, okay. So it's doable, it's not rocket science. It doesn't disrupt your ability to attract and work with talent. Important point to be made, I bring this up for obvious reasons, but there is a lot of discussion about that. In some places it can be difficult. South Carolina has figured that out. Really at the highest levels with apprenticeship Carolina and Brad Nies and his team at the state and then more locally here with an intermediary who helps resolve and dress and do all the heavy lifting so you can do your program. So we want to open it up for other questions. So I'm gonna stand up for a little bit so I can moderate. I know there's tons of questions. If there's not, I'll make some more up myself. But I see a couple over there. We'll start over there. Yes, sir, from Colorado, I believe, right? Tell us who you are and where you're from. Yeah, Michael Michenski with Team Colorado who's here with Department of Education, Higher Ed, CareerWise, Department of Labor, Denver Chamber, Denver Public Schools. We have a great cohort here today. So my question I think is to Tina who's done a really great job of telling us about the importance that the Chamber made in financing or helping to support dual enrollment. And you've talked about business engagement but what we're still dying to know at this table is where did the businesses come up with the money? Did it come out of their operating funds? Did you do fundraisers? How did you generate the funds to make that success? And by the way, I'm coming to the Chamber of Commerce Youth Apprenticeship Golf Tournament in a couple of weeks. Ah. No, I'm just... Sorry, Tina, go ahead. But it's not a bad idea. Yeah, so the question was where did the funding come from? Yeah, so our members largely, we have positioned ourselves to say that your Chamber of Commerce membership dues cover our operating costs but that if you dig a little bit deeper this is almost more of a capital campaign framing to support the work. And so that's kind of how we positioned it. We're gonna re-up for our third year and that's the ask that we make. It's just part of the kind of menu of things that we support is providing some funding to cover the tuition and supplies for... So there's a membership dues and then there's a capital commitment. And there's an extra. There's an extra. And of all of your members... It's for advocacy. I'm sorry? And that covers that and so that extra piece is called Accelerate Greater Charleston and it covers our talent work and our advocacy work. And what percentage of your members participate in that? I'm gonna say probably about 30%. Wow, that's great. So we participate in the Accelerate Charleston and we have a senior level member, several on the Chamber's board there. So that's how really we keep in touch and keep up and feel like it's part of our sense here to belong and participate in the community. Commissioner? We're here tonight to try to give a mention for about policy and advocacy. One minute if you are anybody here, learning joint policy initiatives that you were lobbying for and trying to look for to make your lives easier as far as bringing up the friendship with the local regulations, very, very short, I don't know if that's still a lot of time. It's a great meeting to go on. So on our current legislative agenda, we do have a specific line item in there saying that this Chamber of Commerce as a large Metro Chamber of Commerce is says that there should be funding appropriated for CTE related dual enrollment classes. Now, the way that that ultimately happens behind closed doors is we know that we're gonna probably at a pilot level that's gonna be the ask, right? So it'll be this community, it'll be a couple of other communities and just sort of try at a pilot level and then see if that investment then yields further taste for additional investment. So that's the policy pieces. It's just around the funding and as a starting point, we're starting with a smaller ask than going across the board. And would that allow expansion across the state? That would be the vision. We have a state lobbyist at the Chamber who works full time, sessions in right now. There's a larger education bill that has folks a little bit distracted, but Ways and Means is currently meeting this week to take a look at the budget. So we're hoping it's gonna survive. Okay, right. Hi, it's J. Bood with the Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland. And I heard a couple of things here. I heard Sally and John Roeby and the parents. I've heard a few resources. So my question to the panel is what about some of the non-Sowering that is the point of the elderly who are the apprentices? I say that because of the mental age for individual retirement adults. So when I was 16 years old, I had this great idea, hey, we'll put 500 dollars in it. It was a good idea. Well, at Trident, they come in as what we refer to as PRN, staff, which means as needed. And that gives us more flexibility with their schedules to try and provide patient care balanced with their school schedules. When they finish, they go to the head of the class for the nursing program here at Trident Tech. And that fast tracks them into the two-year program to get them into our star RN program so that hopefully as we grow them as graduate nurses, they'll wanna stay. When they convert out of our apprenticeship program into a part-time or a full-time position, then we start providing tuition reimbursement to help with their continuing education. Sure. Cullum, these most, all of our apprentices have come to us as graduating seniors. So these guys are working a full-time schedule for the most part. They're fully benefit eligible, group health, and dental. I am working right now with open enrollment to change my 401k plan documents. Actually say you have to be 21 to contribute. I know it's not a law. You said there is no minimum age there, but for whatever reason, that is part of our plan document. So I can't offer that to them at this point, but I intend to come May 1st. Wow, great. Thank you. We offer, once they've been in IT for a while, they realize some of the perks, and some of them are being on-call. We really never get called, but you get paid for it. So once they've been there six months, they can have the opportunity to go on the on-call list, and that's additional money, and the kids like that. We offer tuition reimbursement. We offer all of the regular Bosch benefits to, as soon as our student apprentices graduate and become part of the Bosch family. We also offer and ask and require our youth apprentices to spread the word. It's all about spreading the word, and you would not believe how excited these young adults get about getting in front of you guys and telling you how great it is. They like that recognition. They like the pat on the back, and they do. We'll go to Jessica, then to Ambassador Susie, and then we're coming to the back. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. And I'm curious to know if your local workforce development board or American's job summit is a partner in this with you guys, and if not, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We'll talk to our panel first on that. Actually, Eckert Connects, which is a government-funded initiative for workforce development, receives a very large grant along with the Chamber of Commerce. They are sponsoring four young adult ages, I believe it's 16 to 24 teams, in our Build a Shed competition this year, which is our second competition. Actually, high schools put together teams and they actually come out and Build a Shed, and they compete, and they're judged based on their quality of work and all of that. So I would say Eckert, that there is grant money already helping support workforce development. Yeah, that has been our first engagement point with them in this market, and we are certainly looking internally to try to strengthen that relationship, but I can't speak to the relationship that the college enjoys or doesn't enjoy with the workforce board. Yeah, is the workforce board part of this, or not necessarily? Yeah, and I would just observe that workforce boards can be part of youth apprenticeship programs. They have a lot to bring to the table and a lot to add, whether it's funding support, articulation from youth programs to adult programs, funding streams. In some places across the country, workforce boards are part and partial to some youth apprenticeship programs. Not a lot, not yet. They're trying to figure it out, and a lot of their youth allocations in some of these boards are smaller than their adult ones, but they certainly could play a role, whether they need to be or not is a different story. And what we see in different parts of the country, there are different leaders, right? Sometimes it's a college leading it like it's here. Sometimes it could be a community based organization that's taking the leadership role as the intermediary who's bringing everybody together. Sometimes it could be a high school or like career-wise Colorado and Denver where there's a public-private partnership that is developed. So there's not one set model for all, but partnership is important. Workforce boards could bring a lot to the table on this and should be considered or included. Ambassador Suzy, I think you're next. Mike? Public rate is not 2.4%, but it is a lot higher. What can you do to institutionalize what you're doing so that it persists through those times so that right now it can pay well the sun is shining but how do you continue these programs even when what just gets higher and unemployment rates rise and labor is less probably shorted to? It's a great question. That's a cultural shift inside of the organization. Like I say, Bosch has been doing this since the mid-70s and we're an automotive market, so it's a very fluid market. We've never stopped apprentice programs. You have to understand the vision of tomorrow. You have to work toward tomorrow. If you work for today, you will be stuck in today always. Any other comments when things get tough? Will you still be doing it when things get tight? Jobs slow down? Will you still be doing apprenticeship programs? Is that baked into your cultural DNA of your mechanical contractor? I don't see how we have a choice. We still send our children to school when jobs get tight, right? This is school. This is school for the rest of their life. I think, so I'm sure some of you will be tweeting that out. Thank you. Excellent, excellent, excellent. And I've been a workforce a long time and I would say in times like these is where you make your relationships and your partnerships for when things, when times go bad and we know it's all cyclical, so now's the time to get that work and continue those relationships. Yep, back there. Who's that, Abby? Yep. We're disappointed. So that's a great question of scale and everywhere we're working on apprenticeship, we see this country is probably in the early stages of a transformation on this issue, but it is slow growing everywhere. It takes a while to get there. Anybody who's dealt with an employer on this, I think knows that from first touch with an employer about an apprenticeship program that often takes six months to a year to get them to do an apprenticeship program. So scaling is a challenge. So how do we get more? We're at 292 or something like that, Melissa? I don't know where Melissa went, but it's been on an upward, if you were gonna chart it, I think it would look like this, Mitch, something like that in terms of growth. Yeah. It's only the funding piece, which is huge, being able to set up those mechanisms to enable it to grow, but also the role of the intermediary. And you've heard of two intermediaries, and I wanna stress that because we have this incredible intermediary at the state level who really works to interface with the U.S. Department of Labor and provides supports for the communities and the industries across the state. But that local intermediary is where you're gonna have those intimate relationships that are absolutely key to pulling partners together like this. You mentioned his team are always interfacing with those business and industry folks, the school and community initiatives team is always interfacing with K-12. We have built-in mentors for them. We have a youth apprenticeship coordinator who pours out her mama juices every day on these students, just like the ladies up here say they're playing mama role. All of those intermediate pieces are absolutely critical. Absolutely critical. They won't necessarily look just like ours because your partners are gonna be different. Your communities are gonna be different, but somebody within your community really has to carry that role if you wanna scale it. You know, I'd say the holy grail in this work amongst many of us in this room is scale. And I think you saw this morning in some of the PIA principles and documents that scale really is one of the purposes of this. How do we get some scale, some models going that can be scaled? And I think some of the questions that will be answered not only with PIA, but elsewhere over the growth of apprenticeship in this country is what is the scaling model? A company hires, there's one company I talk to regularly. They hire six apprentices a year. They got 200 and some employees. Well, guess what? They've been doing this five years. They now have about 35, 36 apprentices as part of their workforce. So every year they're adding to that. So that's one way that they scale it. It's a slow, more methodical scale. But that remains like the big question is how does this get scaled nationally? Do we need an apprenticeship Carolina in every state? Do we need, what do we need to do this? Obviously the intermediaries play a huge role in making this easier for employers. Are there other models who hear something talked about at the federal level to sort of make it easier to scale it? But how do you scale it? How do you scale it and maintain quality? There's one question about apprenticeship at large. I think the other question is, how do you do this with youth in high schools? It's a whole other story. And so there's some great models going on. I think that's the purpose of PIA over time to get those models. But I think the question about scale is going to be important. You have governors saying we want 500,000 new apprentices in the next five years. Obama administration said we wanted to double and diversify. The Trump administration said they wanted to have 5 million. You have college presidents saying we want to do 5,000. You have a grant program driven by the Department of Labor that says we want to have 35,000. So there's all these huge numbers coming along. But it's slow growth, right? I mean, I think that's been all of our experience. Anybody seen massive growth in their first couple of years? Jessica John seen massive growth in apprentices? Massive. One point, massive. OK. So maybe it's the nature of the beast. Maybe there'll be some magic answer to that. Is it federal funding? I mean, I don't think the Swiss who do a great job would say it's federal funding that does that, right? Is it a cultural change of employers? Is it this model being expanded? It's an interesting question and a good one. All right, we still have more time. Thrilled to say for questions. So yes, ma'am. Hi, I'm Jenna. And I'm with the Oklahoma Office of Workforce Development. And Tina, this question is for you. Can you talk a little bit about when you first started or when the chamber first started to get involved? What translation was needed between your workforce system partners and the chamber for you all to kind of take this work on and be ready to go and make that extra ask from employers to invest in this? Well, when you start with employers who are experiencing a pain point, the conversation becomes immediately, deeply personal to them. So that part was easy. I mean, there's just an ongoing need. There has been, but we haven't had, to an earlier commenter's point, we haven't had an economic downturn. So I was actually very curious to hear our employers appear respond to that particular piece. A really important part has been, our chamber members, we've got 1,600 chamber members, their parents too, and they carry with them the same preconceived notions and hangups and messaging that they grew up with, that they're pushing onto their kids. So we also try to take an opportunity to educate our members about what youth apprenticeship is, what it can mean, the diversity of the pathways being offered by this college, speak to that particular opportunity. And I think that I really was moved earlier during the educator panel when they were talking a little bit about my answer to, what do I wanna do is go to college. Cause that's a vehicle, that's not a means to an end. And so, but I do think that, am I answer too long? Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. I think Oscar. Yeah. I'm getting played off. But I do think that messaging piece is really important. I think the word college, I had this particular struggle with the word college, which everybody has, which is yeah, when people say college isn't for everybody, they're thinking about one type of college. And so I wish that there was some way to move the conversation across the board to high school and, like what's your high school and, and to find a way to get that messaging more deeply embedded would be good because I think that there are a lot of kids being steered, not necessarily towards you, the apprenticeships who could be. Okay. We have the two minute warning. I wanna do a quick lightning round. Thank you all for those outstanding questions. I wish we had time for more, but we're just getting started. We got another day and a half of this. So plenty more to come. Karen, some final words, thoughts or suggestions to this group. Again, quick lightning rounds. Do it. Do it. Don't wait. Don't wait. It's worth it. The employer benefits, the community benefits, the schools benefit, the young adults benefit, the parents benefit. I haven't found anyone who doesn't benefit yet. Do it. So start gathering your partners, your chambers and do it. Like Karen said, don't wait. You will say, why didn't I do it two years ago, three years ago? Found the secrets off, partnerships. I think Tina hit the nail on the head. You find the employers that have the pain point and those are the folks that you get involved in. I challenge you to find one that doesn't have a pain point. Right, right, yeah. Excellent. Rowanna. I can't articulate it any better than these three ladies just did. Okay, great. So some really valuable lessons that we all know, but it's great to crystallize them. Strong intermediary to really help pull things together. Leadership matters at a lot of different levels. You heard that here. It's a school superintendent leadership. It's a CEO leadership, HR leadership, partners around the table all help. Being organized help, right? I mean, I don't think you could go out and talk to the business community as a provider on the supply side like many of us are and not have your stuff together for them, right? I mean, Trident has to have it together to get the confidence of these employers to get a partner like the chamber. It's all about having a great foundation and being organized and structured so it makes it easier for the employer. I will tell you, don't sit around that table for the first time and think you were gonna have all the answers. Go out and get them. They're there, but you've got to go get them. When we sat around that table for the first time, we were all scratching our heads going, what next boss? But we got there and it's growing by leaps and bounds every year. Knock on the doors, their doors are gonna open. It's what's needed, it's what's wanted. I'm gonna sit down and give the mic to Karen. Nobody does it better than her. I really can't thank you enough, all of you all, Tina from the chamber, Karen from Bosch, Nisi from the credit union, Mendy from Colum. Colum? Yep, and Roanna from Trident Health. Thank you very much for making your personal time.