Early College, Early Career: Bridging Education and Manufacturing for Ohio’s Youth

ECEC is an employer-led initiative with ten companies - including Swagelok, Lincoln Electric, Nordson Corporation, and Parker Hannifin - as the initial core. ECEC combines many different elements to create a comprehensive career pathway. These elements are built around the goals of heightening the awareness of manufacturing careers to not only high school students, but also parents, and educators.

Students, starting in the ninth grade, are introduced to careers and opportunities in manufacturing. MAGNET works with members of the initiative to offer plant tours, provide guest speakers representing diverse and under-represented populations, and create engaging online videos to introduce students to rewarding careers in manufacturing. In many cases, the same activities used to introduce students to manufacturing careers are attended by teachers and parents. To increase awareness about manufacturing in general and share different career pathways, MAGNET goes to participating high schools and presents to 10th grade students the ECEC program, explain the ECEC application process, drill down about what the program offers, and the commitment level that is required. Through a combination of self-selection, teacher recommendations, parent engagement, and employer interviews, students join the ECEC cohort. If school administrators or a teacher thinks the student is a good fit for the program, they provide a recommendation. Students work full-time in the summer between junior and senior year. During their 11th and 12th grades, students have the opportunity to earn up to 15 college credits taking courses that map to an Associate’s degree in Advanced Manufacturing Technology through community college partnerships. 12th grade students in the ECEC cohort spend up to 12 hours per week working in paid internships.

Students in the ECEC program are starting their career pathway while still in high school. Students have the opportunity to earn industry credentials through training and course work. The college classes are paid for through the Ohio state College Credit Plus (CCP) program. ECEC employers offer tuition reimbursement to employees to promote ongoing education, and students are eligible for this benefit once hired. Having costs associated with attending college courses covered reinforces the education to career path and removes the debt that often prevents commitment to higher education. The employers also treat the internship as a stepping stone into future employment. Companies see the two-year commitment to the student as an investment and a test run with a potential employee. The learning while working combination sets a new standard for what it means to be a skilled worker: ongoing learning is not only necessary; it is promoted and a great way to increase opportunities.

MAGNET’s staff - led by Autumn Russell, Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, Early College, Early Career, and Brittany Becker, Program Manager of Early College, Early Career - are responsible for building relationships across the manufacturing ecosystem. Relationships such as finding employers to offer internships, plant tours, be guest speakers, and mentors; engaging with high schools to participate in the ECEC program; and collaborating with community colleges and training centers who offer courses needed to work towards credentials and certificates. The relationship-building work requires many different types of engagement. For example, when working with high schools, some connections start with school district-level administrators who approach MAGNET, in other cases an individual school principal or career pathway coordinator learns about MAGNET and invites them to share information. Depending on who in the school is championing the idea, there may be a need to educate administrators, principals, and teachers about the value of the program and the motivation behind ECEC.

To navigate relationships with employers and students, MAGNET created the Internship Coach and Mentorship roles. The Coach works with both the student intern, making sure they are prepared with soft and technical skills, and the employer, acting as a liaison between the intern, the company, and MAGNET. They have regular weekly conversations directly with the intern’s supervisors about any immediate concerns and Autumn leads monthly conversations at a higher level, to find out how the partnership is progressing. This communication is vital to help manage expectations of everyone involved and to increase the likelihood of long-term success for everyone. If issues arise in the workplace that may come from culture clashes - between the employer and students - then MAGNET can coach the student and make recommendations to the company to address the issue(s). If issues arise outside of the workplace that are impacting a student’s ability to commit to the work, the Mentor gets more involved. Mentors are full-time MAGNET staff and responsible for tracking student engagement and academic performance as well as developing relationships, identifying barriers that students may have, and then linking students to resources to address those barriers. The internship Coaches and Mentors make sure students have what they need in order to be successful through the program.

MAGNET has also filled in other roles and responsibilities as the program has had early success and uncovered issues. For example, MAGNET provides transportation, taking students to work or community college, and their Education Coordinator organizes the additional training. MAGNET has also developed an understanding and links to the support networks in and around the high schools where their ECEC cohorts are learning. This allows them to connect students, and employers, to resources which help students stay on the career pathway.

Autumn Quote:

“We try to bring parents along, as we are educating and informing students, we're also doing the same for parents and for school partners. What we really want to do is get them to understand manufacturing and how it has evolved, how it's different, debunking some of those myths that manufacturing is dark, dirty, and dangerous and instead showing the advancement of the industry and the career opportunities.”

Collaboration is the first key to success from Autumn’s point of view. In the ECEC program, partners - employers and schools - are included in decision-making. This creates buy in and establishes accountability and sense of ownership of results. In 2020, MAGNET started having more consistent strategic discussions with ECEC employer partners to drive a continuous improvement process. Before any big decisions are made about how ECEC works, partners are brought to the table to give feedback to ensure an inclusive process. Individual teachers and parents are part of the collaboration too. They play a big role in the recruitment process because they are likely to see an awareness and interest in a student that would typically be hard to uncover just through an interview or application.

Ongoing improvement and data-driven decision making also plays a big part in MAGNET’s success. While all key components have been in the ECEC program from the beginning, they have gone through iterations. For example, from the beginning MAGNET had mentorship in a contracted role, and the mentor that would engage with 40+ students. MAGNET quickly learned that relationship development was very important with students. Now mentorship is an in-house position and more accessible and available to students more often. Another example of an improvement is the hiring and interviewing process. A representative from MAGNET and employer interview prospective students together. This has led to more inclusive hiring practices and helped make better pairings between talented students and employers.

Brittany quote:

“We want to make sure that the flow of communication is there, between a supervisor working with one of our students, the student, and MAGNET. Consistent communication allows us to address any issues, whether performance-based or cultural-based. There can be translation issues that stems from people coming from different cultures and generations.”

In 2020 MAGNET received a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a robust system to measure outcomes. MAGNET works with two external partners to access and track student data, as well as Ohio’s central repository for all employment, salary, and educational data. Reporting has shown that 84% of students who successfully completed the program are currently in manufacturing careers, college, or combination. ECEC participation also shows a significantly higher scholastic achievement and graduation rates compared to non-ECEC students. Research shows that high school students taking courses in-line with college curriculum and career readiness are more likely to apply to college and find early job placement. ECEC has not been in operation long enough to show big outcomes, but early data is in line with these findings. There are also positive outcomes for those students who explore other paths. Should a student not want to attend college and they pursue work somewhere other than where they interned, they have their industry certification.

From the start, ECEC built in a commitment to racial, gender, and socioeconomic equity to their program. ECEC is bringing educational and work opportunities to predominately inner-city, low-income youth, with 78% of ECEC students coming from low-income, predominately African American, communities. MAGNET has also improved its outreach to female students, increasing the percentage participating from 18% in the first cohort to 22% in 2019. In 2019, nearly 600 9th- and 10th-grade students learned about manufacturing careers in an intensive, culturally appropriate, and meaningful way. And 70 11th and 12th graders were placed in paid internship positions while also taking high school and college courses and getting professional development coaching. In the internship position, students earned an average of 10,000-$15,000, while training for their future.