LOWELLVILLE, Ohio – Members of the Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition on Tuesday were offered a glimpse as to how some young people are spending part of their summer vacation.
For these students, it relates to learning the basic skills of manufacturing, and then using these skills to enhance the quality of life in the community.
The MVMC hosted its quarterly meeting at the Community Literacy Workforce & Cultural Center on Struthers-Coitsville Road, where the Northeast Ohio Impact Academy was completing its three-week-long summer manufacturing camp.
“A lot of students I work with have never cut a piece of wood before, or don’t know what a Phillips-head screwdriver is,” said Ralf Urbach, director of the Impact Academy’s STEM program. “Through this camp, the students that have never worked these tools or been around this environment have produced seven benches and five tables in three days.”
Urbach said 25 students from Campbell City Schools participated in the summer camp this year. The program was open to grades seven through 12. The camp concludes Thursday.
This year, Urbach said the students spent time learning important manufacturing and construction skills such as measuring, working with blueprints, drilling and cutting to length pieces that eventually form a finished product.
In this case, students created benches and tables that were placed at a site on Robinson Avenue in Campbell that once housed company apartments for workers at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The houses have since been demolished, and the city and Impact Academy have partnered on a new beautification project at the location.
“Students prepared a real-life solution,” he said. “The benches and tables will be used to beautify the area. It gives students real-world experience.”
Urbach told MVMC members that it’s important that area manufacturers provide support by allowing students to tour their production facilities. Often, many companies decline to do so because of safety concerns and the nature of their operations.
It’s nevertheless important that young people get some sort of firsthand experience to help encourage careers in manufacturing and the industrial trades, said Mark Lamoncha, CEO of Humtown Products, which operates sand-core manufacturing facilities in Boardman and Columbiana.
“Factories need to be the classrooms of tomorrow,” Lamoncha said. “People want to know where we’re going to find our next employees – they’re right here,” he said, gesturing to the class.
MVMC members also delivered important updates regarding its various programs.
Among these are outreach initiatives such as the Cheers, Beers & Careers event sponsored by City Machine Technologies and hosted at Penguin City Brewing Co.; Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Night at a Mahoning Valley Scrappers game, which featured 20 vendors that drew the interest of attendees; Mahoning Valley Works hiring event in April, which included 92 local organizations and 350 job seekers; and several tours of manufacturing facilities.
In addition, this year’s manufacturing boot camp, which is directed toward educators, saw a boost in participation.
Anina Karlovic, career tech supervisor at Trumbull Career & Technical Center, also provided an update on the facility’s expansion. “We broke ground on the last day of school,” she said. “It’s going to be approximately 15,000 square feet, equipped with new lab space, classrooms. We’re really excited about that. We really want it to be a space that is flexible for students.”
Julie Michael Smith, MVMC project manager, provided additional information on the recently inaugurated Lawrence Mercer Manufacturing Coalition, a similar organization that was launched to engage the manufacturing community in Lawrence and Mercer counties in western Pennsylvania.
Among the new developments, Smith said, is the launch of LMMC’s youth-oriented platform in the fall, Talent Factory, which provides information on the organization’s resources, programs, high-priority occupations and opportunities for manufacturers, students and educators to get involved.
“We need to provide immersive experiences for students to really understand that this is what manufacturing is all about,” she said. “This initiative really focused on doing that.”
Smith also noted that LMMC is slated to launch a pilot program this fall – MFG Readiness – that is modeled after Ohio’s Work Advance program, which MVMC administers. The four-week program is intended to provide fundamental training for those with little or no manufacturing experience for entry-level positions in industry.
“We’re providing individuals with those basic skills so they are able to go onto the manufacturing floor in entry level positions, as well as having important life and soft skills, as well as job readiness and career support,” Smith said.
Pictured at top: Ralf Urbach, director of the Impact Academy’s STEM program, talks to students Tuesday.