Tag: Owens Community College

Read the full The Blade news article by James Trumm.

When CK Kramer talked with high school friends about going into the trades after graduation, they weren’t exactly encouraging.

“That doesn’t sound like a ‘you’ thing,” one of them said.

“My friends said it was a male-dominated profession and wondered where I would fit in,” young Kramer said. “They were also worried about me being in a toxic work environment. And I accepted that at first.”

But young Kramer’s friends are now more supportive as their classmate weighs the question of what path to take after graduation from St. Ursula Academy in May.

“I’m looking into everything,” young Kramer said. “I’m really interested now in operating drilling machinery.”

CK’s interest in the trades got a boost at the second annual Jill of All Trades event at Owens Community College on Thursday. The program seeks to provide young women in high school with hands-on experience in a variety of skilled trades, including advanced manufacturing, transportation, machining, robotics, diesel tech, auto repair, welding, crane rigging, pipefitting, electrical work, and other trades.

Founded in Canada in 2014 by Rosie Hessian, Jill of All Trades seeks to bring down the barriers that have kept women out of the skilled trades. It stresses hands-on experiences, said Ms. Hessian, the director and chairman of the school of interdisciplinary studies at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ont.

By the end of this year, Ms. Hessian projects over 1,800 students will have participated in the program that promotes awareness of, experience with, and opportunities in the trades.

“There are barriers to the trades for women,” she said. “Many of them don’t have the experience or confidence to try to get in the door. But we want to stress to them that good opportunities are available.”

A variety of companies were present at the event to discuss those opportunities in detail, including Rudolph Libbe Group, The Andersons, First Solar, Hancock Steel, Dunbar, Advanced Technologies Consultants, the Mechanical Contractors Association of Northwest Ohio, and Buckeye Broadband.

Jamie Hooven and Bailey Phommalee work for Dunbar, a mechanical services specialty contractor.

“We’re hoping to get women interested in STEM and the trades in general,” Ms. Hooven said. “The biggest obstacle is that these are male-dominated professions.”

Ms. Phommalee is a pipefitter apprentice who has worked for four years with Dunbar and Local 50 of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry. Her apprenticeship has one more year to go.

“Young people don’t see the trades represented in their schools,” she said, “but there are a lot of opportunities in this area. And we need young workers to pay the retirement costs of the older generation.”

“The most common question we get is how much money we make,” Ms. Phommalee said, “and the answer is about $50 an hour.”

Another exhibitor was Advanced Technologies Consultants, whose booth was manned by Chad Whited, the company’s director for business development.

“We like showcasing electrical equipment, automation, robotics, and augmented reality at these events,” he said. “We let the students play with the robotics and augmented reality stuff. We’re not really here to recruit employees for us, though. We’re here to build a bigger pipeline of people coming into these fields.”

Mr. Whited also talks to students about the stigma some people attach to the trades and jobs in the manufacturing sector… Read the full The Blade news article by James Trumm.