KOKOMO — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ivy Tech Community College share a goal: to bring young people, and at some point more women, into skilled trades and manufacturing — from welding to electrical and mechanical work.
The vision, often expressed by FCA leadership, is an uphill battle, statistics show, but its one communities like Kokomo, intrinsically attached to the manufacturing industry, consider essential to avoid decline in coming years.
The fruits of that labor were on display Wednesday at Indiana Transmission Plant 1, where 19 area high school students — but only one female student — shared presentations on their 12 weeks spent at a Kokomo or Tipton FCA plant during a work-based learning program.
That capstone program — Integrated Technology Education Program — combines the resources of Ivy Tech, FCA and area high schools and career centers to offer “career pathways that feature technical certificates in high industrial technology fields,” according to an Ivy Tech media release.
The fields — students participate in ITEP at no cost through a federal grant — are chosen to establish a manufacturing and skilled-trade interest in high school students seen as the next generation of a workforce that could soon be hit hard by retiring baby boomers.
“We need apprentices. … I’ve got somewhere around 42 paychecks left at Chrysler. I’ll be 63 this fall, and I’m thinking about leaving. I don’t know if I’m ready or not, but I’m thinking about it,” said Craig Reed, an FCA machine repairmen and mentor for ITEP students who talked to students Wednesday about his backyard pool and opportunities with underwater ocean photography.
“Here we’ve got the new wave of kids. … We have to show them that this is not a bad job. That’s the number one thing. You know what? We go to work, we make a lot of money.”
There’s also a desire among Ivy Tech and FCA leadership to disabuse high school students of the notion their next route needs to be a standard four-year university degree, which often comes with a heavy burden of debt and without the immediate benefits of a skilled-trades job.
“I think, personally, I’m far ahead of my peers,” said Joe Johns, a Northwestern High School and two-semester ITEP student. “I know exactly what I want to do when I grow up, and what I want to do when I finish my first year of college. I want to go back and intern [at FCA].
“So I think I’m ahead of everyone personally [based on] workforce readiness and all that.”
No. 1 in manufacturing
Notably, Hoosiers without bachelor degrees earned a median amount of $55,000 in 2015 when working in “good jobs,” defined as at least $17 per hour in a full-time job for people under 45 and $22 per hour for workers 45 and older.
The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce also found manufacturing was the No. 1 industry in Indiana for non-bachelor-degree “good jobs,” with more than 203,000 positions and a median earning of $57,000.
Still, the National Skills Coalition, which advocates for skills growth in U.S. industries, reported in 2017 on Indiana’s “forgotten middle.”
The report stated that while demand for Indiana's middle-skill jobs, which require education beyond high school but not a four-year degree, will stay strong, the training to fill those jobs continues to lack.
“Middle-skill jobs account for 58 percent of Indiana’s labor market, but only 47 percent of the state’s workers are trained to the middle-skill level,” reported the NSC.
In response to such concerns, Bob Varsanik, general manager of the transmission and casting division at FCA, said Wednesday ITEP is meant to “get you involved, understand what manufacturing is. We need to do it with more students; we need to do it with more female students.”
Specifically, Ivy Tech Kokomo offers the opportunity to gain hands-on manufacturing experience while working toward an associate degree during a student’s last two years in high school.
By enrolling in the program, which has doubled in size since its 2014 start, students have the opportunity to earn certifications in manufacturing and gain industry experience through internships and work study.
FCA is one of the companies that routinely partners with Ivy Tech Kokomo to provide the industry experience. Students who get experience at FCA shadow mentors for 12 weeks.
During that time, students learn the ins-and-outs of manufacturing, and at the end of their time in the program, deliver a presentation to management teams.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m way ahead based off the internships I got through my home school … and the internship I got here at FCA,” said Zack Ashley, a Peru High School student who attended the Heartland Career and Technical Education Center.
“I’m far ahead, because I know exactly what I want to do. I already have everything lined up on what I want to do.”
Women wanted
But a piece of disappointment associated with this spring’s ITEP program was the lonely participation of only one female student.
“We need to get more women involved in manufacturing, so we’re really going to push for that next year also,” added Varsanik, who hopes to double the ITEP program next year.
Morgan Frye, who completed ITEP in a previous semester and subsequently moved into an Ivy Tech welding program, just finished her first year at the community college and sees a path for increased female participation in skilled-trade careers.
“If they see a girl in it that’s doing it and succeeding and making good examples, it’s easier to get girls in,” said Frye. “Tell them they can do it — go in and do it.”
A study released by the United States Census Bureau in October stated women make up nearly one-third of the manufacturing industry workforce in the U.S., and “play a number of roles in manufacturing from working on the production line to running their own manufacturing businesses.”
But with women making up nearly half of the country’s working population, at 47.5 percent, they are majorly underrepresented in the manufacturing industry, notes the Census Bureau – and progress has declined from a high of 33 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2016 for female representation in manufacturing.
Statistics also show women are drastically underrepresented in skilled-trade jobs like welding (4.8 percent); electricians (2.4 percent); pipe-layers, pipe-fitters and plumbers (1.6 percent); and tool and die makers (1.3 percent), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Also, median earnings for female manufacturing industry workers were nearly $14,000 lower than that for men – $35,158 to $48,849.
“And make it hard on them," Morgan Frye advised. "I know that sounds backwards … but people baby the girls. And we’re tough as nails. If you just throw us in it and make us do it, we’re not glass, we’re rubber. We bounce, we don’t break.”