Skills center helps meet growing demand for construction and manufacturing jobs in the Columbia Gorge

The Columbia Gorge Regional Skills Center in The Dalles offers a two-year certificate program in advanced manufacturing and a one-year certificate program in construction technology. The center opened in 2021 after administrators at the Columbia Gorge Community College heard from local employers such as drone manufacturers and construction contractors in the Columbia Gorge about what skills they were looking for among job seekers. The college also offers paid internships to help students quickly apply skills they learned in carpentry, plumbing and other trades on a construction job site after graduating. We hear from Ana Seymour and Ricky Rodriguez, two students in the advanced manufacturing program, about what they have learned so far and their professional ambitions. Robert Wells-Clark, the director of technology and trades and an instructor at the center, explains how the new center is helping develop a skilled workforce in a region where high-paying jobs can be difficult to obtain.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. A new skills center opened up at the Columbia Gorge Community College last year. It has programs in advanced manufacturing and construction technology. It was created after local employers said they were having a hard time finding or retaining skilled labor. We visited the center yesterday to get a sense for how it’s going. We started in one of the workshop classrooms. Ana Seymour is in her second year of the two-year certificate program in advanced manufacturing. I asked her to explain what she was going to do with a big machine in front of us.

Seymour: This is basically going to mill some metal. It starts with a large chunk and we’re going to tell the machine I need to take off certain chunks of the metal.

Miller: So this has been programmed to cut that big chunk of metal into some specific shape?

Seymour: Yes. It’s not up there, but he goes on to the computer and he prints it, gives it a code, tells it where I want to go, how I want it to look, and then its put on a flash drive, puts it in here, uploads the whole thing into here and then you have to do a whole bunch of measurements to make sure you’re not going to run your tool into the machine itself. There are lots of calibrations and stuff to make sure that everything is good before we push that green button, so that has already been all set up before you guys came here. We’re just going to do a quick rundown to just show you what it does, what we’re making for you.

Miller: Are you ready to push the green button?

Seymour: I think I am.

Miller: Okay. Can I push it? [laughter]

Seymour: Well, you’re going to push two if you want. Is that okay?

Miller: All right.

Seymour: You can push this reset button and then I’m going to make sure that my doors are shut since it won’t operate unless these doors are shut, just for safety protocol. We make sure to keep this door shut so you can go ahead.

Miller: I’m going to push the orange reset button.

Seymour: Orange reset button.

Miller: Okay, now cycle, start?

Seymour: Cycle, start.

Miller: All right, here we go.

Seymour: It’s going to change to the correct tool.

Miller: What’s being sprayed right now?

Seymour: That is coolant.

Miller: It’s sort of a mini car wash at this point.

Seymour: That’s what it kind of looks like.

Miller: Except a drill is coming down.

Seymour: I wouldn’t want to wash my car with coolant, but….

Miller: Here we go.

Seymour: Yes. The drill is coming down. We’ve told it where we wanted to go and now it’s going to start the process of . . . do you hear that?

[Machine noise]

Miller: Yes.

Seymour: It’s milling out tiny shards of metal and it’s spinning super super fast. I think it’s doing  5000 RPMs (rotations per minute) right now.

Miller: And the coolant, they’re being sprayed continuously so it doesn’t catch fire.

Seymour: It doesn’t get too hot. Something spinning that fast, creates a lot of heat and so you don’t want to melt your metal as you’re milling it and then the shards go off into the sides and there’s an auger down there that takes the shards and pulls them away. I think this is the thing that’s going to have your guys’ logo on it, the OPB.

Miller: You’re making an OPB logo for us?

Seymour: Yes.

[Laughter]

Miller: Thank you. Out of a huge chunk of aluminum?

Seymour: It’s not that big.

Miller: It was a big chunk and now it’s down to going to 2.5 inches by an inch and a half.

Seymour: Yes, they made them so you guys could have some paper weights or some fun just to have the experience.

Miller: Or a business card.

Seymour: Or a business card.

Miller: Why don’t we go sit down and learn a little bit more about this program and then when I leave, you can give that to me?

Seymour: Okay.

Miller: (Narration) So we went across the hall where Ana and I met up with one of her fellow students. Ricky Rodriguez is in his first year in the advanced manufacturing program, and Robert Wells-Clark was there as well. He is the director of technology and trades and an instructor at the new center. I had him explain why the center was created primarily.

Robert Wells-Clark: I think the big idea behind building the skills center was to provide local industry with qualified and professional employees that they can hire. And there are a lot of factors that go into that as well. So we think about the Gorge, in general, there will always be people coming and going. I always think about The Dalles at the end of the Oregon Trail and people either stay here or they leave from here. With that sort of cultural mindset of longevity in place, when we tie that all the way back to the skill center, how do we train really capable, highly-skilled people that will stay and work in the industries that are in the local area?

Miller: So, this was done in consultation with or partly at the desire of local industries. What did they say they needed in terms of a workforce?

Wells-Clark: Obviously there’s a deficit of skilled trades people, in general, so building this building was to help start filling that gap. And for us in manufacturing specifically, we heard two things from my advisory–a board made up of local employers–which was first, we hire someone, we spend a lot of time training them and then they move out to another area to take a higher paying job. So how can we train people who are already here as opposed to moving them in and training them?

The second thing that we heard that was really notable was that local employers in manufacturing would hire a six-year classically-trained engineer. That engineer would start here as one of their first jobs out of school and after starting here, they would get some experience and they would move out and we see that engineer in the local area doing many different roles. We were trying to break down going to the silos of manufacturing so there’s a person operating the machine, a person assembling. We see it as we can take someone, give a local that’s already here that’s tied to and loves area, we can take that person, we can train them to do a broad number of things in this spectrum and we can help retain the engineer by keeping that engineer within their area of expertise, while also giving someone a $50,000 - $65,000 a year job, which is a huge amount of money for them. However, if you pay that to an engineer, they will go at the first opportunity elsewhere.

Miller: Ana Seymour, you are now in your second year of the advanced manufacturing program, is that right?

Seymour: That’s correct.

Miller: Why did you start this last year?

Seymour: Well, I have a four-year old son and a husband. So for me [I knew] that I couldn’t make it in the Gorge without having some kind of college education. And I worked in manufacturing settings before and that was the most money that I had made at the time. When I started looking at programs that just seemed to mesh with what I was looking at. I was looking to go into a manufacturing place but making more money and coming in with more skills than I had as someone who’s just going to be off the street and fill in an application.

Miller: Can you give us a sense, if you don’t mind, the differences in money in terms of jobs you’ve had in the past and what you think you might be able to get once you finish your training here?

Seymour: And it’s also job security. Currently, I’m a waitress so I can make a lot of money on a good day, but I can also make no money. So it’s about job security and having the benefits that come with that such as the 401K, the medical, the dental, the paid vacation, and all that. When I had that manufacturing job that was what was given to me. Now I’m looking to start out at least, I would say, $20 an hour for my skill set for what I can bring to the table as opposed to $16.15 is usually what the average is for just an entry level position for what you get in. And I don’t mind  starting off there as long as I know there’s room for growth. I’m not above that.

Miller: Ricky, what about you, why did you join and you’re a little bit earlier on if I understand correctly? After working here last year, you’re now just finishing your first quarter in the advanced manufacturing program. Why did you want to take it?

Ricky Rodriguez: Well, for me it was more if I wanted to look towards a job that would be higher paying than what’s around here, really. And I’m also married so that made me want to look into more jobs to support a future family that I may have. I really didn’t know anything before about the opportunities around here and as soon as I got my GED here, my advisor gave me the option of coming here and I wanted to look into it and get a taste for it. And after a year into it, I’m still here so I like it a lot.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what you’ve learned so far since the fall?

Rodriguez: It’s a big, big step. Before this, I really didn’t know anything at all about how to use tools too much except for mechanical tools. I didn’t really know how to use an angle grinder or how to use a chisel and hammer, anything like that. So when I came here, it really gave me a feeling for how to use all these tools and it’s just a big game changer. I didn’t know anything about how to do things by yourself, especially building whatever you like. It’s really a big difference from not knowing how to use certain tools to apply for fabrication and now I’m able to kind of puzzle it together.

Miller: And what about you [Ana]? What are you most proud of learning? Maybe what’s been the most challenging thing that you have learned now?

Seymour: Both, the answer is the same: proud and challenging would be welding.

Miller: What’s hard about welding?

Seymour: Well, I’m a perfectionist and it’s just not going to happen. It was a really big lesson for me to learn because I’m really academically strong, I’m a 4.0 student. That’s just what I do. For me to come into something and not get it right the first time was very frustrating and it’s just going to happen, there’s no way around it, you’re going to lay down bad welds. You have to do 50 to get one good one, then you’re going to do 50 bad ones. So for me it was a lot of just learning that, but then the satisfaction at the end when you do lay down that really nice bead. You almost want to cry because you’re just, I have cried. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve cried many tears. It’s the thing I’m most proud of. I started out in this program never having welded a day in my life and just he’s just here you go, alright go weld.

Miller: And now you can do it.

Seymour: [Laughter] I did it.

Miller: Robert, what’s your goal for what students should be able to do after they complete the one-year construction program or the two-year advanced manufacturing one? If you’re making this pitch to potential employers, how do you advertise your graduates?

Wells-Clark: For our construction students starting there, we want them to be able to step onto any construction site and be able to fit into any of the roles. We literally start from the foundation of the house and work all the way through to the roof and everything in between: electrical plumbing, pouring concrete, doing the truss work, framing. So the entire house bottom up, they get their hands on all of it and they experience all of that along the way.

Miller: In one year in one year?

Wells-Clark: In one year, yes.

Miller: Okay. That seems like a lot to pack in in one year.

Wells-Clark: It is a lot to pack in one year. Both of our programs are very intensive. The construction is probably more so than the manufacturing. We get a little bit deeper into different areas of manufacturing, but the construction program in particular is super intensive and the students that come out of it do excellent work because they are dedicated to being there every single day and learning every single day, the different processes and procedures for being successful. And students that come out of that program really could get their general contracting license if they wanted to at the end of one year.

Miller: These are pretty new programs that are part of an existing larger program here, but do you have any data or even just anecdotal knowledge about what the graduates have gone on to do so far?

Wells-Clark: Absolutely. We had 11 one-year certificate construction students last year and all 11 of them were hired into the field. We haven’t produced a full two-year manufacturing cohort yet, but we do have students that completed the one year manufacturing certificate that are working in industry as well. We have several students that are working at various manufacturers.  And we have one student who’s actually started her own business.

Miller: Ana, traditionally the kinds of jobs we’re talking about have largely been done by men. Do you have a sense for the gender breakdown among students here right now?

Seymour: Yes. I think it was talking to you about it a little bit, but going into last year we had almost 50% admission for the women in our, so we had three women and then three men and then this year it’s two and four. So there are not a lot in the program, but I was very happy that I wasn’t the only girl. I was fully expecting to be the only girl in the program. When I worked at the other place, it was like, “There’s a girl, another girl, ‘Hi!’”

Miller: Someone, you have maybe nothing in common with.

Seymour: (laughter) No.

Miller: Except you are both women?

Seymour: She was something like 70 or something. So I’m super stoked about that. It’s nice to see, especially younger women, because some of the ones are either fresh out of high school or in their early twenties. It’s really cool to see women who are interested in that and just going for it. I’m in my mid thirties, my birthday’s next week…

Miller: Happy birthday! Happy Christmas birthday.

Seymour: Thank you. It took me a long time to get to this place where I was ready to go back to school and do something with my life. But that was partially just because I also have a kid and now I should probably do something.

Miller: Ana,what are your hopes or plans for a future career?

Seymour: Well, I eventually would like to own my own business where I do metal fabrication and art put together so all types of mediums. I have an example of something I made in my booth. I can show you guys if you want to look at it later. I’m an artist at heart. Metal and welding is really an art form and you can use it to make a door and the frame and all that stuff, but you can also use it to make really beautiful things. So it’s what my hope is, too, because there’s a lot of opportunity for that here in the Gorge as well. There are a lot of artists, there’s a lot of that kind of stuff. I hope if I can get my foot in that door that I would be able to someday own my own metal sculpture fabricating, welding, art business.

Miller: Ricky, what about you? What are your hopes, or plans maybe, for once you finish this program?

Rodriguez: Hopefully get a job. That’s really the main focus.

Miller: What’s your dream job?

Rodriguez: If I’m being honest, when I came here, I didn’t really know the field or what kind of job opportunities so I am kind of learning as I go. Hopefully this next term, I’ll ask more questions to see what’s available, but I really don’t know if I’m being honest, but I’m hoping to know eventually.

Miller: So you have some time to figure it out.

Seymour: You have people come up from the industry and also give him (Wells-Clark) opportunities that he will spit at us and say, hey, this person’s hiring. You just told us about apprenticeship opportunities, so that’s another cool thing.

Miller: So Robert, business owners come to you and say, hey, “we need someone to do X, Y, Z. Do you have someone you can recommend?”

Wells-Clark: Yes, absolutely. We have a couple of opportunities. The college will actually pay for a student $16 an hour to intern somewhere, so the business owner doesn’t have to front that cost. But also, just last week, the gentleman who’s running the local barge works came to us: “I will pay someone $25 an hour to MIG weld.” And that’s what we learned in our first term here. So I’ve given that opportunity to all of our students. We have one student who’s pursuing that right now and that’s going to be paid very well right away while they’re still in school.

Miller: What’s next in terms of what you think industry has told you or you can just see coming that is  the next version of career preparation?

Wells-Clark: I think the big push in manufacturing will be towards additive manufacturing. Right now the machinery that Ana just showed you is reductive. So we start with a chunk of metal and we cut out what we need from it. Obviously, there’s a lot of waste that goes into it when that happens. Our long term goal here is to have additive material metal manufacturing. Think about a 3-D printer, but you’re printing a part out of titanium.

Miller: Alright. Well I guess it’s time for us to go collect the OPB logo made out of aluminum that you all made for me. Thanks very much for that and thanks for sitting down with us. I appreciate it.

Rodriguez: Thank you.

Seymour: Thank you.

Wells-Clark: Thanks for having us.

Miller: Ana Seymour and Ricky Rodriguez are students at the Columbia Gorge Regional Skills Center at the community college here. Robert Wells-Clark is the director of technology and trades and an instructor at the center.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show, or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.