Schools aligning studies with jobs

Manufacturers continue to move from manual operations to robotic ones.

The transition means manufacturers need technicians with strong math skills who can analyze and respond when electronic data reports indicate that equipment is down or products are not meeting specifications, said Larry Goodall, corporate director of human resources in Fayetteville for Superior Industries International.

“In reaching out and posting [jobs], trying to hire local people, we have not been real successful,” Goodall said. “We’ve had to bring people in from other states.”

Superior Industries, which has manufacturing and engineering centers in Fayetteville and Rogers, is among employers in Northwest Arkansas that often have job openings but toofew people qualified to fill them, said Kim Davis, director of education and workforce development for the Northwest Arkansas Council.

Through an Educational Excellence Work Group established in 2011, the council has worked to adopt recommendations included in a regional development plan for increasing adults’ levels of education and upgrading the skills of the workforce. Part of that plan is creating a stronger link between businesses and schools.

Superior Industries, which makes wheels for major car companies, has a representative on the work group and supports the council’s efforts, Goodall said. The company has worked to meet its immediate needs for workers by developing a training program with Northwest ArkansasCommunity College and SynergyTech in Fayetteville, Goodall said.

“Automation is the future,” he said. “With automation comes a higher skill set for our employees, which translates into a higher wage. I tell employees, ‘You have to constantly be reinventing yourself. You have to improve your skill sets. You have to look at your education. You have to take opportunity where you can.’”BUSINESS INPUT

Recent efforts to connect educators and businesses are evident in Davis’ work with Pea Ridge School District Superintendent Rick Neal. Davis helped Neal meet business professionals who were involved in developing a career-focused, district-run charter high school.

“He was a big piece of helping me connect with people throughout Northwest Arkansas,” Neal said. “We want business input. We want to build what they want.”

Otherwise, Neal said, he’s concerned about some students’ abilities to pay for college without accumulating large amounts of student loan debt. He said students would have a better chance of paying their way through college if they could earn $15 an hour as forklift operators rather than in lower-wage positions.

The Pea Ridge district has enrolled 120 students in the new Manufacturing and Business Academy, a school for juniors and seniors that’s set to open in August on the high school campus, Neal said. The academy has developed partnerships with eight businesses, including Nunnally Chevrolet, Bentonville Plastics and Wil-Shar Welding.

The school will train students in specific jobs that can lead to them being immediately hired when they graduate, Neal said.

The Northwest Arkansas Council helped Cheryl Pickering, career and technicaleducation coordinator for the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative, in organizing a meeting in March of 150 business leaders and educators in high schools and higher-education institutions. Davis led a panel discussion with industry leaders.

The council provided information about available jobs and which companies were hiring, Pickering said.

“We could see there were some shortages in certain fields,” she said. “We could see there are opportunities for our students.”

During the session, employers told educators that they want workers who have positive attitudes, are eager to learn and know how to work in teams, Pickering said. Employers want workers who have the computer skills necessary to create documents and spreadsheets and to make decisions based on reading data in spreadsheets, Pickeringsaid.

Pickering organized the meeting because she thought there was a disconnect between the labor market needs and young people’s skill sets. She said she heard parents talk about adult children in their 20s who had trouble finding good jobs after finishing college.

“We start talking to children about continuing their education beyond high school,” Pickering said. “We need to help them understand the specifics.”

Also, teachers can share what they learn about the labor market to help students make better decisions about whether a 16-week certification program or a doctorate would be better in meeting their career goals and desired levels of income, Pickering said.

SPECIFIC SHORTAGES

Arkansas Department of Career Education officials are reviewing the comments of business and industry leaders who attended the meeting to determine whether changes are needed in high schools’ career and technical training programs, Pickering said. She said she hopes to have more-frequent meetings between educators and business leaders and that those meetings inspire similar discussions elsewhere in the state.

“We want business and industry to stay in Northwest Arkansas,” Pickering said. “We want new industry to come to Northwest Arkansas. For economic development to take place, we have to have a strong education program.”

Mike Harvey, chief operating officer of the Northwest Arkansas Council, recently completed an analysis of skill shortages in information technology, trades and health care. He compared the number of classified job openings in Northwest Arkansas in 2012 with the number of adults who had completed the required training or education for those jobs.

Harvey’s analysis showed that in information technology, 120 adults had the required educations and training for 1,066 jobs. The median wages for those jobs ranged from $31 an hour for positions in computer systems networking and telecommunications to $38 an hour for positions in computer and information sciences.

In skilled trades, 87 adults were qualified for 1,070 openings, with median wages ranging from $15 an hour for truck and bus drivers to $18 an hour for industrial mechanics.

In health care, Harvey found that seven fields had more job openings than people qualified to fill them. In those fields, there were 1,413 jobs and 317 people with the necessary training to fill them, with median wages rangingfrom $14 an hour for a medical office assistant to $29 an hour for a medical office computer specialist.

Other types of health-care jobs with skills in short supply were in general allied health services, licensed vocational nursing, dental assisting, registered nursing and mental-health counseling.

Davis wants high schools to help prepare graduates for jobs in those fields, which pay more than jobs in retail or fast food, he said. He hopes those jobs will allow recent high school graduates to save more money, develop more skills and continue their educations.

“We are positioning them for a brighter future,” he said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 04/20/2014

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