YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – To prepare students for the workplace of the future, Mahoning County Career & Technical Center Superintendent John Zehentbauer looks five years ahead.
He encourages staff to do the same.
“I think you make some guesses,” he says. “I always feel it’s a little bit like the stock market. You know, people look at trends.”
He points to electric vehicles. Projections of their growth a couple of years ago haven’t panned out, but what’s come out of that is battery centers.
“And what we realized is that training and that technology is a great crosswalk into anything you want to do in manufacturing,” the superintendent explains.
While electric vehicles haven’t taken off the way projections predicted, the technology has evolved.
“We’ve talked to all our staff: Don’t think about what’s happening today,” he says. “Think about what’s going to be happening in five years.”
To that end, a 39,000-square-foot expansion at the Canfield, Ohio, school expected to open next fall will help prepare students for the careers of tomorrow. The expansion also will allow 100 more students to enroll at the center.
An $11.4 million state grant is funding the project.
A second project at MCCTC is a $7 million Health and Wellness Center funded in part through a $5 million grant awarded to MCCTC by the Appalachian Community Innovation Centers program. It will serve as a school-based health clinic and a community-access facility for both physical and mental health care. It’s a partnership with Mercy Health and Cadence Care Network.
Besides providing health care to the community, the center also will strengthen health care training programs throughout the Mahoning Valley and will address shortages in health care personnel. Construction of the new center is expected to be completed in August.
Cues From Industry
The center also listens to its business advisory council members who come from industry to learn about their workforce needs.
The Educational Service Center of Eastern Ohio’s BAC offers feedback that helps it assist school districts in preparing students for the workforce too.
“Our business partners have been really active in implementing our industry recognized credentials and coming into the schools and talking about those industry recognized credentials and the jobs that they could get,” says Sandy Furano, director of the Mahoning Valley Regional Council of Governments and career counseling at the ESC in Canfield.
The ESC’s career counseling department started in 2016 when Ohio’s graduation requirements changed. The state added demonstrated career readiness through approved industry credentials as one of the graduation pathways.
The ESC then added career exploration to the list of services it offers districts through its career counseling department.
“When we started out, we had eight school districts,” Furano says. “We now have 29 school districts across five counties.”
Those are Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Portage and Stark counties.
Counseling services available stretch from kindergarten through 12th grade and include assessments to determine students’ talents and strengths as well as opportunities for them to connect with professionals in different fields either in person or virtually. The ESC also partners with Junior Achievement of Eastern Ohio to offer more career exploration to students.
Eighteen of the 29 school districts that work with the ESC offer a building trades preapprenticeship.
“Students that take this course and pass get an industry recognized credential in the building trades and the pre apprenticeship,” Furano explains. “And they also then have direct access to the apprenticeship program for the building trades.”
Communicating with employers is one way the Workforce Education and Innovation’s Excellence Training Center at Youngstown State University prepares workers for the workplace of the future.
“We partner closely with employers to upskill their employees in key areas such as industrial maintenance, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), robotics, additive manufacturing and machining,” Jackie Ruller, executive director, says via email. “By staying attuned to the evolving needs of industry, we ensure our training programs align with real-world demands. When our partners identify new skill gaps or emerging technologies, we work collaboratively to develop customized courses that meet those specific needs.”
The center, located inside Kohli Hall on campus, this fall launched a truck driving school at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport to address the need for commercial drivers.
“This initiative reflects our commitment to supporting workforce development across a broad range of industries – helping individuals gain valuable, in-demand skills while ensuring employers have access to the trained professionals they need,” Ruller says. “The result is a dynamic, industry-driven training environment that empowers employees to excel and helps businesses stay competitive in a rapidly changing technological landscape.”
Changes Implemented
Lawrence County Career & Technical Center in New Castle, Pa., also responds to the needs of industry.
“One major thing that we do throughout all of our programs is really counting on what our partners in industry are telling us they need and what they see coming, and in making adaptations to our programming from there to make sure our kids, when they leave our programs, are ready,” says Principal Ernie Orelli.
The center changed its computer and office technology program, which mainly focused on word processing, to a management information systems program in response to industry needs, he says. And the center added a robotics component to its manufacturing technology program for the same reason.
“Our teacher says it’s not your grandfather’s machining anymore,” Orelli says. “It’s not [working] in a dark, dirty shop hand machining parts. It’s more equations, more robotics, more understanding how to use the equipment.”
The career and technical center this year added a drone course open to students across all programs. Employees in oil and gas, commercial arts, building construction and other industries use drones to shoot aerial photographs, the principal explains.
Upon course completion, the students will be certified drone pilots in addition to the certifications they earn in their programs.
“I think the drone course is going to be big, and we’re all in,” Orelli says. “We’re looking at – what are the high need jobs going to be like? Is there a need to change some of our programming, to add some programming?”
On the academic side, LCCTC teachers are teaching students how to use AI properly – not to use it to do the work for them but rather to troubleshoot or to solve a problem.
The center’s enrollment has grown over the last five years.
“We just try to produce as many kids that are ready to go out into the workforce when they leave high school as possible,” he says.
MCCTC Expansion
At MCCTC, Zehentbauer leads visitors on a tour of the addition as construction workers labor inside the space.
Industrial robotics and automation, computer networking and cybersecurity, AI systems and software development and HVAC will fill designated areas in the new part of the career center. An additional area will be shared space where students from those programs and others can work together to solve problems.
A few months ago, MCCTC hired a career tech curriculum director, a new position, to work with instructors helping them to use technology in their respective programs.
It’s something that’s been done with core subjects like math, English and science for years.
“But for career tech programs and equipment and technology, we’ve kind of bypassed that,” the superintendent says. “We’ve thought that that’s a very important key here.”
The person selected blends a welding and machining background with engineering experience.
“They had to be that certain type of personality that really was forward thinking and [believes] that nothing was out of the realm of what students could do,” Zehentbauer says.
The new director reports directly to the superintendent but also works with the principals and directors.
“And if we get a new piece of equipment, he’s constantly talking to that instructor and saying, ‘What are you interested in? What are you passionate about? Where do you think the industry is going to go? He also speaks with business and industry…,” he says.
Pictured at top: John Zehentbauer is superintendent of Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, where students are gaining skills for tomorrow’s workforce.