Leadership from an apprenticeship program at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) explained the significance of the program to business leaders. Coordinators from the DELL Student TechCrew led the North Augusta Chamber of Commerce’s Good Morning North Augusta breakfast.
The program focused on the current partnership between SRNS and the Aiken County Public School District. Abigail Bowman, the college partner curriculum and pipeline development lead with the apprenticeship programs, said a program like apprenticeships cannot exist without partners, adding it has created a valuable workforce pipeline for students and the site.
“In the next nine to 10 years at Savannah River Site, we need to hire about 9,000 people, and so we needed to start like yesterday with this, because it seems like we’re already behind in developing these unique skills that we need on-site,” she said. “It’s not that you can go and find someone that’s worked in the nuclear industry that has these unique skill sets to do the things that we need to do to complete the missions out there safely.”
She said the program is vital to bridge the gap between staffing the facility and training students to join the workforce. Students in the program work onsite, getting real-world experience.
Tim Arnold, IT manager at SRNS, said the job seekers in the world today, and particularly the workforce of the future, must have training in cyber security to work at the site. However, some positions require additional training in other skills.
“We actually have quite a few people who do network engineering, server engineering, customer service, and they all have to know cyber skills, but they really need to have additional skills on top of that,” he explained.” My recommendation is that you actually get cyber training, but that you don’t focus solely on it if you want to make yourself more hire-able or more useful to the people who are hiring.”
Michelle O’Rourke, Computer Science and Business Education teacher at North Augusta High School, facilitates the school’s information services, as well as supports the Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathway for students. She said this is the fourth year the DELL Student TechCrew has been offered at North Augusta High, and it has opened doors for students.
“We have students, some that are now in college, pursuing information technology. Some are in the Army fixing the Army’s computers in Korea, and some are directly in our workforce,” she said. “We spend a lot of time not just learning how to fix laptops. They’re actually working with our district technology. So, these opportunities to do an apprenticeship at SRS, they know there’s an opportunity for them to get this opportunity as a senior in high school.”
She said another advantage to the program is it helps students decide if this is the right career for them, or what other opportunities onsite might be a better fit.
Jackie Starlings, an IT Manager on site, said students in the apprenticeship program are given tasks to complete. They learn to work in-house on computers, but they also work with the field support group and go on service calls to customers.
Although the students are learning from IT professionals, Starlings said they also bring unique contributions to the program.
“They bring motivation, they bring flexibility. Those are soft skills, but they’re skills that are needed to make us successful as well,” she said. “They have their own success stories that they had already learned at school. They have determination. They have their dreams, their missions, their visions of what they want to do, and we’re there to help them to fulfill those desires.”
Students in the apprenticeship program are getting paid while training. They graduate with a Department of Labor certificate showing they have the skills taught in the apprenticeship program.
