Sweet Home and Lebanon high school students took a break from the normal hum-drum of school routine to take a field trip to Albany for a chance to consider their future.
Linn-Benton Community College hosted a Manufacturing Career Day on Friday, Feb. 27, to present trade-skill opportunities that are considered to be in high demand.
Virginia Mallory, recruitment and admissions director at LBCC, said they hosted 16 schools with about 225 high school students to help inform them on which manufacturing-related jobs are available in the area.
Industries from the region attended the event to encourage students about what they have to offer. The college also provided a look at many of the related programs they offer that would prepare students for those jobs.
Those manufacturing programs, Mallory said, stay full.
Kiana McIntyre, a junior at Ralston Academy, didn’t hide her eagerness to see what programs and jobs might be available to her.
“I’m just excited for my future because I’m starting to see one, and I really did not see one for the longest,” she said. “For it to be right here, it’s a little exciting to see what my life can be.”
After speaking to someone representing “non-destructive testing” jobs, McIntyre said she already felt like that was more her style and her “speed,” as opposed to, say, welding. A non-destructive testing job might include the use of various tools such as cameras, ultrasonics or radiography to ensure the reliability and safety of an infrastructure.
“We absolutely know that there is a need out there in the manufacturing realm for students with the skills and disposition and some experience to be good employees in those fields,” said Deron Fort, of LBCC’s workforce department.
The schools also know, he said, there’s a “mismatch” that those who are interested in the fields do not have the necessary skills or preparatory experience to get in the door.
That’s why LBCC holds career days like this, to help pre-college students know what jobs are available and how to get there.
“We can place everybody that goes through our program in a job,” said Dale Moon, director of LBCC’s Workforce Development.
Like McIntyre, Sweet Home High School’s Memphis Gay, senior, was interested in the non-destructive testing idea as a job, but overall the career fair presented him “cool opportunities to learn and see how to get into stuff.”
Moon said the reason they offer these manufacturing programs is because the industry said “we need them.” The one program they’re missing, he said, is for water and wastewater treatment, which was dropped in 2018 due to the recession.
“It’s highly, highly (needed),” Moon said about the water and wastewater treatment program. “It’s the one I keep hearing all the time.”
Though Kaitlyn Gurule, a senior at SHHS who wants to be a welder, has been to several career fairs at the college, they always find it interesting.
“Every time, it’s more fun than the last and they always have more stuff to talk about,” Gurule said.