Graduates take their seats during the 2023 Spring Commencement ceremony for the Pennsylvania College of Technology graduation Friday afternoon at the Community Arts Center in downtown Williamsport May 12, 2023.
DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
Workforce development in urban areas of the state can benefit from trained graduates.
Pennsylvania College of Technology, with its steady stream of highly-trained graduates, is uniquely positioned to address rural workforce challenges, said Michael J. Reed, college president, to the Senate Majority Policy Committee.
The college offers about 100 science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or other STEM-related academic programs emphasizing hands-on, experiential learning.
The curricula enables the college to provide a steady stream of highly trained graduates to address persistent skills gaps in business and industry, Reed said.
“In more than 150 industry-standard labs on our campuses, Penn College students gain the real-world experience and skill sets to thrive and advance in a variety of high-demand career fields ranging from computer and polymer science, to heavy equipment and diesel, to aviation and automotive, to welding and metal fabrication, to civil engineering and construction,” he said.
“It’s why our overall graduate-placement rate is 96% — reaching 100% in many majors,” he said.
Penn College has over 2,000 industry partners, and, according to a 2022 Georgetown University study.
Penn College’s four-year graduates outpaced all four-year graduates at Pennsylvania public colleges and universities in both 10- and 15-year return on investment (ROI).
“We take great pride in the partnerships we have cultivated with employers in the region and across Pennsylvania, who are eager to hire as many graduates as we can produce,” Reed said.
That symbiotic relationship with business and industry has not developed by accident.
“It’s foundational to our academic mission and model,” he said.
Penn College has industry advisory committees for every academic program that act as recommending bodies to faculty and administration, partnering with the college for curriculum development, equipment acquisitions, and lab design.
“These industry partners hire our current students for prime internship opportunities and often bring them on as full-time employees after they graduate,” Reed said.
Additionally, nearly all of Penn College faculty members have real-world experience in business and industry, and they are eager to impart their knowledge and know-how to students.
Penn College students, on average, spend three hours in labs for every hour of classroom lecture with these industry
“There is no substitute for that type of insight,” Reed said.
Examples of success
At Penn College, students can complement what they learn in classrooms and labs and unleash their innovative and creative spirit in other ways.
For example, at The Dr. Welch Workshop: A Makerspace at Penn College,
students can collaborate with classmates or work independently to test theories, explore ideas, and expand upon their real-world skills.
Student organizations are another outlet for unbound creativity. A prime example is our Baja SAE Club, in which students compete annually in national competitions conducted by the Society of Automotive
Engineers, Reed noted.
The competitions require schools to design, manufacture and build a single-seat, all-terrain vehicle to survive a host of challenges.
Students from multiple academic disciplines work cooperatively to build the vehicles, and the payoff has been two consecutive endurance race victories in 2022 against an impressive slate of prestigious institutions like Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Cornell, Rochester Institute of Technology, Case Western Reserve, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Auburn, and Texas A&M.
In addition to designing the car, team members spend countless hours manufacturing nearly all of its components, assembling the 300-plus-pound vehicle and testing its performance at a quarter-mile track, cleared by heavy construction equipment technology students at the college’s Operations Training Site near Allenwood.
The Baja Club’s comprehensive effort encapsulates the best attributes of a hands-on Penn College education, Reed said.
This type of real-world learning opportunity doesn’t end at the country’s borders. For instance, Global Experience courses enable Penn College students to put into practice what they have learned at sites around the world, whether its Dental Hygiene students participating in clinical training in the Dominican Republic, or Nursing students assisting with a medical mission in Guatemala, or Human Services & Restorative Justice students developing and coordinating a summit on domestic violence in Alaska, Reed said.
Shannon Munro, college vice president for Workforce Development, said the focus is on providing training for companies and their incumbent workforce.
“Our training services, which cover many business sectors — clean energy, manufacturing, health care — are sought out by companies that know upskilling their current workforce is necessary to compete in a global economy, where change is the only constant,” Munro said.
Growing Pennsylvania will only occur when businesses, educators, economic developers, and stakeholders work together and focus on incremental improvements. Employers grow our economy, she said.
“We must respond to their needs, which Penn College does by providing a pipeline of graduates in degrees that align with employer needs and offering lifelong training opportunities for incumbent workers, which we do in Workforce Development,” she added.
Outcomes
An employer that invests in training its workforce creates a happier and more productive worker. Happier and more productive workers lead to better retention, which will be critical for employers.
A lack of access to and funding for training negatively impacts the ability of companies to grow and ensure that the state remains competitive.
Sometimes, their inability to participate in training is a direct result of the shortages they face, making it difficult to send their employees to training. To compensate for the ongoing worker shortage, employers must invest in upskilling their workforce to ensure that their employees are keeping up with the rapid pace of change.
While routine, repetitive, low-skill work is being replaced by robotics and automation, new, higher-value work is taking its place.
Automation creates many new career opportunities, but most of them require education and training. To program, operate, and maintain this advanced equipment and machinery takes a much higher skill level.
Whether a high school student chooses the path of a degree or certificate or goes straight to work, they cannot escape the need to learn continuously throughout their career.