's, it's, you know, there's, there is oftentimes where people say, oh, we want to go to the, you know, the magnets or the gifted talented programs when there's talent right in front of them from a lot of other places. I will tell you, though, from an employer point of view to have you leading with that is really important, right, because many people are trying to figure that out but you as an employer saying, look, we want to make sure everybody in our community has access and opportunity to enter apprenticeships and certainly it and cyber probably male dominated for the most part anyway probably racially dominated by whites versus others and actually the data would tell us that so. So good for you that gets you a lot of bonuses, many different ways so thank you Debbie I'm probably going to come back to you so don't go anywhere thank you very much. I think that we led with cyber security. Alright, who do I have next, going to ask similar questions to Don Drake, HMGI Charleston. Hello and good afternoon everyone. Hi, where are you I see everybody on my screen but. Oh, there you are. Hey, hey, how are you today. You're fine thank you. Good. Tell us a little bit about your company. We're a 32 year old company or restaurant in a real estate holding company, mostly in the South Carolina area. Are you in the Charleston region or all over. We are we're in the Charleston region. So tell us a little bit about now my last visit to Charleston happened to visit another number of culinary apprentices it's my favorite thing to do when I'm on the road. Tell us a little bit about why you entered into this apprenticeship we know the hospitality tourism industry is a big thing particularly in the Charleston region. I'm assuming that's what drove some of this but tell us a little bit about why you got involved in this apprenticeship work. We've been involved with apprenticeship programs now for roughly about 30 years. And having, you know, previous experience with the larger corner schools like you know, CIA Johnson Wales and, you know, excited those schools court on blue and New England so we've been have good practice with the apprenticeship programs. Three of our former employees are actually chef instructors down at Trident, and we have to chef instructors the local high schools. So, we've got a really good feedback when Mitchell approached me about this new program. We're really excited about it. Everybody else were experienced, you know, labor shortage and you know, the last visit Charleston you're well aware of the numerous restaurants and open consistently in Charleston area so labor pool was pretty tight. But it was pretty easy. It was pretty easy fit for us having you know, many, many years of experience with the other apprenticeship programs were involved with. And are they. I'm sorry. The apprenticeship programs front of the house back of the house chef and cooking are there other occupations or, or where have you settled in on your occupation mostly there in, you know, and let's say probably the majority of probably 85% are in the back of the house the other 15% are in the front of the house. But in our apprenticeship programs we rotate. You know when we get when we when we're approached by the students or we approach the students that you know they're assigned a mentor, and then the mentor takes them through their particular area that they specialize in and then we hand them off to another mentor.  Right. Right. So, how many, you know for for the Trident program, and I realize that you know in your business, particularly if you're have many properties and many, many locations, you need to have a number of people coming in to train and you work with some of the colleges or post secondary institutions on this. So when, when you first started talking to Mitchell about bringing high school students in. Did it make you gasp, did it make you stop and think were you worried about alcohol on premise where you're worried about kids showing up, or, or what what what was I can't say that I was worried about all the above. For sure, especially when you know that like the first ground we got, you know they're really young, you know someone were 15 to 17.  There is all the stuff you mentioned, you know, involved with this atmosphere. And so, I'm pretty protective of them. I really really get before we start any kind of communications, I sit down with the parents and the kids. And then we talk about the job, what's expected of them, how this is going to work transportation school work, all the above, and then we let it we let it roll for a while and then we sit down again with them, make sure that you know they're keeping up on their grades. You know, everything's going well at home, along and on and on the work front. And that is a really smart thing to do your sort of helping, helping set the expectations and the guidance for those young people to follow up because they'll they'll need that. Yeah, I think I'm really great with it. It's really really important, especially with the younger kids that we get the parents involved with it. We take this thing as a whole but it's just seen phenomenal results with the younger guys mean they're just they want to learn they want to learn and like chair was the other room.  And then the parents relate to you know they're trying different stuff at home and they're cooking for their parents are cooking for you know company want to come over so it's been real exciting not only us but to see the parents as parents to see the kids grow in the field already so quickly too. So, so your concerns that you had initially, pretty much have gone away because of some of the experiences if you've had and some of the systems that you set up so you're not hesitant anymore about bringing in 16 year old for example. Oh no not anymore. Well, we do limit now we do limit the time frames that they do they can work and they do work. You know we stick to most of the time you know if depending upon the grades you know the easy work and weekends. And you know and reason with most time to work turn it. You know when it first begin to work on in the daytime hours, you know under, because we have more of an older crowd in the daytime in all of us are you know, 3040 50 so they have a lot of you know multiple parents around. And so we keep a good eye and watch them until we feel comfortable with them. And then you know they make some progression and then we switch them a little bit more to more different areas. So this question may be better for Ron or David or or some of the others are done but any concerns about liability on your end you're taking this responsibility. I'm sure you had to sign something. You know, you have meat slicers probably have hot stoves any concerns about liability that you had. And if so how'd you address it. So first we always, you know, stress safety in the kitchen and then you know, when it comes to the differences. You know any kind of workman's conference stuff is covered by the college.  I don't have any concerns. That's great. And can you estimate of, well I had a CEO in Switzerland's apprenticeship program say to me look if they apprentice for me that's great. If they go on to one of my competitors that's fine it's good for the industry. And if they leave me and go back to college that's fine because it's good for the country. How do you feel about hiring the these folks stay with you after they go do they spread their wings and go on for other jobs tell us a little bit about what happens at the conclusion of an apprenticeship. I do, especially the ones that come from, you know, the calling shows directly.  Usually we have probably 100% retention rate. It's an easy stay with us for you know probably two or three years.   You know, I encourage everybody to you know to come in, learn as much as you can, and then go on in your field and learn from the next guy you think is you know who can. You know somebody you know I try to learn on the best if you can and go to the next chef and learn the best you can because you know, we get an opportunity to open your own place. We only get one crack out of it go hey mom dad can you lend me some money to open our own restaurant, you know, usually only get one, you need one to be successful so we have a, you know an excellent track record the people who graduated from our apprenticeship program and we've left, you know, our restaurant group are, you know they have their own restaurants some of them have you know corporations themselves multiple restaurant so whatever doing you know and with the help of Mitchell and his crew has been really really successful. You know, I think we've contributed to field you know where they, I think when you leave Magnolia is our group. I think you can work at any restaurant in the country. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's some serious restaurant business down your way. All right, and lastly, before I go to Ro, Roana is what recommendations or advice to have for anybody in hospitality. We're really any employers who are just starting out on this we're working with sites all over the country and the hardest thing for many of them is to get started so what sort of recommendations or thoughts to have. Like in the speaker for myself is you know you want to tweak your program to fit your needs is there's not one set program. A to set parameters and then you tweak yours to fit whatever your needs are whatever your establishment is what type of food you're doing, but it works out well but you know what we've doing now we're working on is, just like somebody mentioned before you know the underserved or the minority community is that we have a lot of the restaurant workers who realize that you know they never really graduated from from high school you know they. The reason to error their way so now they're they want to want to get a certificate they want to get their education so we're really working on that program now where we're putting through our apprenticeship program. They want to get their education so at least they're getting a GD they're coming out with a working certificate so they're feeling a lot better by themselves and we're giving a reason to further pursue their career, because you know it's hard to pay the, you know it's hard to pay your rent and your bills, you know, a minimum wage so we try to give them a, you know, a way out and with that program, you know, you guys out there thinking about it. It's such a win win situation for your local community, the people that you serve, they can come out you know it with a, with a high school education with a journeyman certificate and with a college education pay for without owning any college debt student debt. It's, you know, it's a win for everybody, how they encourage you guys to get involved and get started, you know, choose you can. Great. I'm going to edit this cut that out make a commercial out of it that you're absolutely right no college debt. And to me these programs are not second hand they're not alternatives to college there. Everything in my view is equal to the preparation that two or four years can give you in the, in the workplace in the marketplace so. Very much so. Yep. So, Don, thanks so much. Stick around we may come back to you. I got a bunch of questions for all of you I'm sure they're going to give me the hook to not too soon, but Rowan am I pronouncing that right Rowanna pain with HCA health care. Yeah, it's Rowanna Rowanna. I've seen you before we may have had this conversation before. Anyway, thanks for joining us Rowanna tell us a little bit about HCA health care if you would. Well, we are tried at medical center here in Charleston, South Carolina, which is a subsidiary of HCA. We are about a 300 bed hospital. We are in acute care trauma hospital, and we have had apprentices with us now for five years. So, we started out, Mitch and I were friends away from work, and he approached me away from work just socially chatting and telling me about the program and asked if we might be interested in having youth apprentices in our patient care tech program. I said, sounds good. I'm going to run it by HR got to talk to the CNO, you know, do the C suite and make sure everybody is happy with what the idea and Mitch and I pitched it, and they said go for it, and the rest is history. So the moral is never go out to dinner with Mitch because he's going to hit you up for apprentices. We talk about everything. And it was a good segue. You know, Mitch did the right thing and laid some creativity and I'm not sure but I believe we are the first hospital in the Charleston area to use the patient care tech apprentices, and they've repranded us to pre nursing apprentices now instead of patient care tech. And the other hospitals have since jumped on board as well. Wow. That's yeah I've seen that happen in communities.  So it's tough.  And if you look back on the last five years. How is that worked out have they stayed to continue to work with you and they advanced on the college have they dropped out and gone to see Don and work in a restaurant what what sort of reflections do you have now at the last five years. We've seen the gamut. We've seen some that have started and have just flat out said this isn't my cup of tea and have left the program. We've seen some of those from a scholastic standpoint that could not keep the grades up to make the program work. We had others where parents were pushing them through the program and they did not want it and finally spoke up. And then we've had the opposite end of the spectrum where we have had the folks go through, go through the program completed go on the nursing school and come to work with us so that creates a nice pipeline. The advantage to us in health care is if we can get them as the high school kids that are truly interested in health care. Then their enthusiasm and willingness to work hard to become a better caregiver go up. So we get a better product when they finish. They go through with the apprenticeship program. They go into the nursing program. They stay with us working as patient care tax in the hospital. Then they come to us as graduate nurses. And so their orientation and onboarding process at that point becomes a little quicker, because they already know the system, and they start at a little bit of a higher salary than somebody with no experience coming in as registered nurse. So we sort of made the same point that Debbie made earlier, which is, you know, growing your own, or, you know, spending time and investing in these workers, you know, you really get to customize it to your needs right to what the values are of HCA health care, right. You know, people talk about buying and building a workforce, right, you can go out on the market put out an ad and buy a worker, right, or you can build a workforce through things like apprenticeships which it sounds like, you know, both you and Debbie were sort of talking about how that works. So, so here we have a major health care facility, and we have 16 year olds and 17 year olds working in there and around patients isn't that dangerous, dangerous isn't that risky, don't, you know, do people. I mean, these are not candy stripers, right. These are people who are working and getting paid, but they're young how do you trust them in a hospital environment process starts when they complete their applications with Trident tech. Trident tech does a fantastic job screening and eliminating those that are not meeting the criteria or not completing applications, and then they send them over to us, and we review them, and then we interview them. We put them through a hiring interview just like I would any other employee, and we selectively pick who we're looking for, and we tend to not wane towards the 16 year olds we're looking for somebody that's a little bit more mature, and believe it or not there's a difference between a 16 year old and a 17 year old, and we tend to pick rising seniors into the program because of that maturity level. Now, we also make sure that they understand that they're not going to get to work in specific areas within the hospital for a disability standpoint. We only allow our apprentices to work in the med surge adult units, so they can't work with women's they can't work with children they can't work in the ED or behavioral health, and that's a safety process for them, as well as for the patients. They also complete a CNA or certified nursing assistant curriculum before they even get to set foot in the hospital and start orientation with us. So that sets these kids up a leg above a lot of other people that apply for patient care tech positions, because they're working with a solid knowledge base already that we're just going to continue to build on. So that helps cut down on our liability. The other thing that cuts down on our liability is we lay expectations before them, just as the other folks have said, they've got to keep their expectations up. You may wind up having to give up going to the problem, because you're having to work on a weekend to get your hours in for us. They cannot work past 11 o'clock, because they're not adults yet. And so we're concerned about their safety as well. And some of these kids are still on driver's permits. So we have to be very mindful about how they're getting to and from work. So we do take all of that very seriously. So what I hear you saying is, and this, you know, this happens in manufacturing to where there's a lot of dangerous equipment, you're managing your apprenticeship system right certain things you can do certain things you can't do, but those expectations and the way to manage that. You're not going to get in trouble because you have sort of a guide and outline to what they can and can't do right. So that's fabulous. So, I'm running short on time so I'm going to move on but but how would you talk to. So healthcare is a really interesting field for apprenticeships right healthcare has always had practicums and clinicals and things like that but rarely had apprenticeships that apprenticeship like things for nurses or, you know, physical therapists or whatever but but what advice would you have for the healthcare industry which is looking more and more apprenticeship all over the country. A few are doing youth apprenticeship. You're definitely a trailblazer here but what what advice would you have for any of those employers employer sorry hosp healthcare systems that are interested in apprenticeship for youth. The first thing you have to do is make sure that you've got the support of your C suite, your upper level management. To understand that these kids are going through a hiring process a little bit differently than a regular employee, and they have to understand that we have when they're accepted into the program. All we're doing is the cursory work to make sure that the background check is okay that their issues with their drug and screen testing and all of that stuff is the way that it should be. Once we get them hired, we've got to make sure that there's a well defined orientation process with one person coordinating the entire process that follows up with them to make sure that they're meeting their hours the way that they should be that they're meeting their check off list for skill sets that they're keeping up with what Trident needs to know in regards of the things that they're doing taking care of the patients they have a app that they're typing in what they're doing to care for the patients. And that has got to be all kept up and we keep them on orientation a whole lot longer than we would somebody that is coming in as an adult into the role so we keep them from August all the way through till December on orientation before we give them a little bit more autonomy. So you've got to just keep a close watch on them and be very supportive and communication is the key. Great. So I have one more question for I'm not going to let you off though quite yet so, by the way audience feel free to ask questions or chat them or actually we have a Google sheet in which you can send your questions on the Q&A tab or link but right on what.  How did you navigate the scheduling process for the related instruction how did you make sure that they got off to go to school that they were finishing their high school classes that they were going over to try to take classes. It must be one heck of a matrix you did but how did you figure out the timing and scheduling of students. That was easy. I did truly out of out of everything that was the easiest part because try to attack tracks their grades for us. Then as they finish their coursework, I get their grades and anybody that does not pass a course, then it becomes my decision through the hospital to determine whether or not we're going to keep them on through the program. Are we going to wash them out of the program and let them stay on as a patient care tech. So that piece was fairly easy and what I do is sit down with the kids when they start and they tell me what times that they can work. And I build their schedule based on what they tell me that they can work and some of these kids choose to work. A 12 of our shift on a Saturday and maybe an eight hour shift on a Sunday, or they'll work for five hours after school in the afternoon and we've got the support of our managers on the med surge units that allow these guys to come in and work those type of hours while they're on orientation. And once they come off orientation in January, then it becomes the manager's responsibility to manage their schedules with them and they're meant to meet the expectations of what's required of the patient care tax on those floors. Okay, that's great. That's great. And Debbie and Don do you have scheduling problems I mean particularly in the restaurant business you guys probably have scheduling that changes every week or two. Just real quick because I need to get to Don first. And then David but Don any scheduling problems in your industry. For me. No, not, not really. We've got you know, I don't really have any schedule problems with them you know like everybody else. The restaurants are busy during the holiday seasons.  If anything that's probably the only time really have scheduled issues would be during the holiday season. And then we just deal with that you know, as best we can. And Debbie how about you you're, you're pretty I assume you're mostly a nine to five operations scheduling an issue with you. We're mostly nine to five so hours are and scheduling is really not an issue for us. Okay, great, great.  Let's talk to Don and then I will wrap up with David and Don Smith with who are you Hendrick auto is that who you're with Don tell us about that. I'm Don Smith with his automotive group I'm director of community relations and then the guy to go out and hire the apprentices.  Well basically we have nine stores a body shop in a in a facility business office Ian Charleston, and we have 105 stores nationwide. So, why, I mean I think I know the answer to this but I don't know why how and why did you guys get into apprenticeships it's a, I mean it's a terrific industry because there's, it's always changing there's new things people need to learn, whether it's sales or finance or body shop or, or mechanical so tell us a little bit about why you got involved and where do you focus your apprentices on. Okay, basically, I was in the GM of the bubble store here in town for 20 years now found out that we had to go out and recruit technicians. And basically, after a couple years I realized we have to grow technicians. So when the youth apprentice program came about. We just signed up, because we say we got to grow apprentices so the best way to get them is out of high school and right into the dealerships. So, before then, we was in the high schools doing a lot of volunteer work so we started talking about the youth apprentice programs and get people interested in being technicians, but most people who are technicians with a dirty job they didn't, they never been a NASCAR and seeing how clean the floors are and the settings are and everything in the automobile business going to computer computer driven so they didn't know that. So we saw that the whole time was in high schools. Yeah, it is it is so far different than it was 10 years ago or even five years ago. So what again it can be a dangerous location and auto body shop if you don't know what you're doing how do you manage risk and liability and where do you focus your time with the students is it on mechanical work or other sorts of occupations. Basically, we make sure we we we've had a mistake when we started in four years ago. I was recruiting everybody I could could anybody wanted to be a technician. I say just sign them up to be a youth apprentice technician. So the first year I fell on my face because we get in 10th and lem freighters ahead. No clue about it.  Right, you know so after the after that fall on my face for a while. We kind of focus on serious 11th graders who was serious of being a technician. And I talked to their parents, I recruited them I recruited their parents and make sure that they want to be apprentices, and then for 12th graders when they graduated. And then I recruited them because they got driver's license. They don't have to worry about the prongs they didn't have to worry about football games baseball game basketball game. They out of school so we will. Now we mostly 12th graders ready graduate. I love hearing good things you've done but also hear about mistakes that are made because I think that's how a lot of people can learn and there's a lot of pressure just to throw students, students into jobs. It's a little bit more specific it's not on the list that I have but but I'm running into this all the time so you have nine stores do you have apprentices at all stores. We have apprentice in all stores but Volvo and Volvo get their apprentices from the Volvo plant. Okay, they run their printers to the plant. So one of the really important things about apprenticeships is that the site location has a supervisor mentor has somebody who gets it who can not only supervise the student make sure things are safe. Also provides support and encouragement is needed. How do you spread that across nine shops. I mean that's not the easiest thing to say okay everybody we need to get you all on the same page with this apprenticeship work because you might have somebody who's been around for 40 years who's probably bothered with some kid or other people who don't quite understand what you're doing or are in the same position how do you deal with with spreading that culture across online online sites we get that a lot. Okay, one thing, every store looking for techniques means a technician shortest like everybody else have a shorter. Another thing that if you live in Somerville or North Charleston of Goose Creek, you work in the North Charleston area, because you cannot get to West Ashley from Somerville in the morning to get the work. Now found that out by mistakes. You live in Mount Pleasant or johns Island James Island West Ashley, then you work on the Savannah highway stores. So that's how we kind of focus it, but everybody want me, like our Toyota store right off street and tech, try to take to your store they do the best job out to your store does the best job and training youth apprentice, and they want all of them just like I want all the youth apprentice to come through try and tech, but you can't have it you got to spread the love to everybody. Great. So, what do you guys are new car dealers for the most part. What we said we knew car dealers when we sell new and new cars new and used okay so there's there's plenty of work to go around. Okay. So what recommendations would you have whether it's the automotive industry or anybody on that supply chain or really just any employer. When you start out what would you tell them to avoid in the first year what would you tell them to focus on in the first year. It's going to be different and restaurants and hospitals and in the automobile business because like I say, I focus on 12 graders ready graduate because I know these serious, and then I still talk to all the parents. You know, because I got us. I'm selling everybody, because this is career, you know, if you'd be a technician technician stay with you forever. We've got technicians that have been with Kendrick for 35 36 years and one manufacturer. So I sell hard and say this is career.  You got to work.  You know, I have a lot of you know we have 35 youth apprentice that we recruited. We have nine youth apprentice that dropped out of program, but we out of the nine we have five to stay with the dealerships, you know, couple of them became service writers I had one sky does a service writer and he's our number one service writer in town. Um, then the other other four guys are just lube and tech guys, they just change will rotate tires, and that's good because that's what we need. And then a couple, couple people that we had to fire, because they wasn't doing the right thing, like any other employee.  Absolutely. Well Don Smith with Kendrick auto thanks so much in the interest of time I'm going to move I say the best till last David Brown, sorry to make your way but I'm really interested to hear about key on tech and a little bit about your apprenticeship programs tell me about your company if you could. Well thanks for setting a high expectation. Eric, thanks for hosting us to this is a good discussion. So I'm with Keon North America, we're part of the Keon group, which is a company that's headquartered in Germany, worldwide about 38,000 employees. This is the second largest company in the world manufacturing material handling equipment so you think forklifts pallet jacks reach trucks is, and we also have a very large business and what we call supply chain solutions which is automation sorting so we do everything that can, if you think about like an Amazon warehouse, which everybody's ordering from these days, we can supply all the hardware software and equipment to make that building run. So that's where our company does and in Somerville, which is a suburb of Charleston is our North American headquarters. We have about 300 employees in North America right now probably going to be 500 within the next year and a half to two years. And how did you get engaged with apprenticeship did it. Well, you know, Eric, I've been in the company for five years, and I came from another very large German manufacturing company that had an adult apprenticeship program or regular sort of true apprenticeship program where we grew our own folks to become mechatronics technicians, mechanics electricians, etc. So I was familiar with the concept from that experience. And then, and also that company that I was previously with had a very tight relationship with Trident Tech. So shout out to Mitch and Rob Wiggins and those guys over there. I was in Keyon in 2016. I saw the opportunity, not only to tap into the youth apprenticeship program from a labor supply standpoint, but just as much as a community outreach program. So it is sort of it's two ways. Number one, it helps the company. But number two, it's helping to support education in the community. So, so we started back in late 17. So we've had about four years of experience. We've had some ups and downs, but overall it's been a very good experience for us. And the, and let's see here, Don, I know you have a meeting coming up. So when you do have to go just sign off. Thank you very much for your time. So, so David, what, what are you focusing? How many do you take a year and what are you focusing them on? We usually take maybe two a year. We're not a huge company. So in most of those folks work in our manufacturing processes. We do have one gentleman who I think was on the previous panel who came in with a clear desire to go to four year ME type degree. So we got him on board and he is completed his apprenticeship and will begin finishing his last two years for a mechanical engineering degree at the Citadel here in South Carolina, beginning next year. He'll end up hopefully becoming one of our star mechanical engineers that supports our manufacturing operation. And in manufacturing, any liability issues for you guys or do you just manage it away from hazardous work? We do a, well, first of all, you have to be 18 to operate a forklift. We make forklifts. So that's kind of a dichotomy for us. So we also like I think Don or someone else mentioned we try to steer more towards the folks that are seniors or even post grads, maybe just graduating from high school, so they may already be 18. But we appreciate Trident Tech providing the liability insurance for us. We have had one case of a youth apprentice that engaged in some, let's say, I guess you could call it horse play, which ended up costing him his job because it was a safety incident. Those things happen, you know, and it could be a 38 year old kid doing it or it could be a 38 year old person doing it. Right, really important lessons in the reality of the workplace I might add, which is the other byproduct of apprenticeship right it's not just to figure out the skills and the occupation but how to get to work on time, how to get along with people and how not to horse play. Absolutely. So do you have any trouble with your apprentices getting to the jobs or transportation issues we got a lot of questions about that. Or do they make it okay. I always know they all make it, you know, obviously we have attendance standards that are in place and in one thing that Trident Tech does which I would commend to other parts of the country is they have. Last year did not have but in typical years they have like a recruiting event on a weekend in February where there's like a job fair on this so in the students attend with their parents. At that point they get to go around and see different companies and meet with reps from the companies and we get to talk not just with the students but with the parents to find out, you know, is this student going to be able to make it are they reliable can they get. Do they have transportation, etc. So to me that's one of the greatest value as the Trident gives us here in Charleston. Did you, we're going to have to wrap up in a minute or two I don't know they're probably going to give me the hook yep I got to wrap it up, but real quick, if I could, David. Did you have to sell it up the chain to your leadership, or are you the leadership who had to sell it down the chain to the onsite supervisors online supervisors. I had to sell it whatsoever, because the people that I partner with that are my peers, it also worked in other companies that had engaged with apprenticeship so in our company has a lot of new leaders in it, a new meaning, relatively short company. I also saw this is a great opportunity to try to mimic some things that we've seen from our previous lives. So it was great. It is great. It is great. And, you know, there are a lot of foreign companies, Switzerland, Germany, etc, who are familiar with apprenticeship so it's not a big leap with those companies as well. I'm going to have to sign off but Debbie I got one quick question for you because I think it's a good one. When you. I'll get back but Debbie did you get when you had to talk to an international cyber audience, were they saying youth apprenticeships are you nuts. Did you get any of that or were they fairly well accepting of it. surprisingly they were very well accepting of it. There was a lot of questions coming from other employers concerning that and yeah they were very receptive of it. That's great. That's great. So I guess security clearances will become a very important thing for their future and they better watch what they do so they don't blow their security clearance. Exactly. Great.  Do you feel that any of the students feel like they're less than college material or do they do you think they're getting they feel they're getting an advantage over college. Do they see it as a second rate program do you think or they see it as a top rate program. Absolutely. I don't think people see it. I think the people that are interested in working in a company like mine are realizing that you know you go to try to detect for free or nearly free pay for. And then you finish your apprenticeship and if you want to hang on you can make a very, very nice income at a young age and have zero college debt. I think that's a real calling card for folks these days. I would agree with that. And I'm going to get the hook I probably should have hooked off about two mid to three minutes ago but I want to thank you all for joining me. Debbie with cyber Don with HM GI Charleston. Who else everybody else Don Smith with Hendrick David Brown with Keon. I'm sure I forgot Rona with HCA healthcare anyway. Thank you all. You guys got an incredible employee employer culture down in the Charleston region I know in a large measure. That's to the foundation that our friends at Trident has laid and some of the key partners they have including employers so I want to thank you for your time I do this nationally. I have to tell you I'm always so impressed with the folks in South Carolina and Charleston. With that, I'll sign off thank you sorry I ran over and let's continue on to the next session. Take care. Thanks Eric. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone I'm Shelton doll I'm a program associate with the pie team at the Center on Education Labor in New America. Many thanks for our amazing employer panelists for sharing their experiences and insights with us into our moderator Eric sounds now. Join us at 235 Eastern time for our next panel creating seamless credentials and careers, aligning K through 12 and higher education system through youth apprenticeship, moderated by Mimi Lufkin from the National Alliance for partnerships and equity. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I'm Mimi Lufkin CEO America at the National Alliance for partnerships and equity and I have the great pleasure of getting to facilitate or moderate today's panel. And I'm mostly interested in hearing from the panelists myself so it's my intention here to get on to the Q&A part of this as quickly as possible. But before we begin what I'd like to do is to go ahead and have each of our panelists introduce themselves if they would where they are from the role they play in the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program. And maybe they could tell us one thing in one sentence that you love the most about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. All right, so I'm going to start with Sonya. Why don't we start with you. Good afternoon. I'm Sonya Addison Stewart and I'm the career and technical education director for Berkeley County School District. And I work with the apprenticeship program, as far as encouraging students to participate and also, you know, creating a seamless pathway between our programs and opportunities that the students have in the youth apprenticeship program. And you said one thing I love about the apprenticeship program. One thing I love about it is that, you know, I was on a panel earlier and I've seen the panels of the students to participate in the apprenticeship program is just the growth and development that I see in these students. And how they have just grasped the skills that our employers are desperately saying that they need to see and so to see these students actually practicing and practicing effective communication and understanding those work and life skills is gratifying to me. Thank you Sonya. Mark, how about you. My name is Mark Blacklock. I work for Dorchester School District to the career and technology coordinator. And like Miss Stewart I work with recruiting kids for the youth apprenticeship program. And I think the biggest thing for me is just the quite honestly the surprise that a lot of kids have of how great the program is. You know, even their parents and the opportunity they're provided. And then as it transitions into the program, just all the different skill sets that they learn soft skills, technical skills, and how prepared they are once they complete the program for direct employment.  I think, overall, it's just a great opportunity and I just enjoy working with it in the students. Thanks Mark. Well jump to Robert next. Hello everyone, my name is Robert Elliott and I'm the Dean of manufacturing and maintenance at Trident Technical College. Within my division, as far as apprenticeships are concerned, I have industrial mechanics, air conditioning, refrigeration welding automotive technology and machine tool technology so a good number of apprenticeships within my division. And one, I would say one thing that I really enjoy about just being involved in this program is just providing that exposure and opportunity to students that wouldn't, wouldn't ordinarily have this opportunity. A lot of students aren't four year college bound, and to be able to give these students these skills to go into the workforce. I think it's a great, it's awesome program. Thanks Robert. Thanks. Let's jump to Richard. Good afternoon I'm rich board and executive director of CTE with Charleston County School District. You know, they stole my thunder a little bit I love all those things about the apprenticeship opportunities we give our kids and watching them succeed. I think my favorite part about apprenticeships is the recognition ceremony at the end of the year. When you see the students go up on the stage, their families are there, their business partners are there, try to technical colleges there, and it really feels like, like a family event and we're all part of the same team to see young adults succeed, and whatever that looks like. You know, many of these students go into the workforce but many go to the two year schools, technical schools, and, and, and some go to four year schools as well. So there are multiple exit ramps on this highway. But by far, I mean that recognition award ceremony is is fantastic and that's my favorite thing about the apprenticeship building. Great thanks Richard. And Trisha. Hi, I'm Trisha we on the director of school counseling at King Bay High School. And so, you guys took everything I was going to say but my favorite part truly is seeing the excitement on the kids faces and the parents faces, especially when they come in in the summer and they know they're now going to be a use apprentice and working on that schedule and, and just talking about you know their career goal and how it's going to match and just seeing that piece of it. And that's probably the most exciting part. Great. Thanks Trisha. Well, what I love the best is the fact that that all of you talked about the fact that it's really about the transformation that happens for your students and that's the focus of your efforts and, and I know that today's presentation or the panel title for today is creating seamless pathways to credentials and aligning K12 and higher education systems through youth apprenticeship. So I have some questions I want to talk to you about a variety of groups of people who are impacted by this work and how, how you play a role in either a leadership role in that or a facilitator of those of those relationships. And the impact that that work has on your own institution.  So I'm going to start Robert with you first. I'd like to think about the youth apprenticeship program as though it's a three-legged stool and that there are there are three partners in this work. Certainly the high school districts that you work with on Friday Tech is a very is really, you know, the center of that three-legged school and of course the employers that you're working with as well. What I want to know is how do you balance and manage the relationships between your high school partners, your employer partners, and how has this work been a benefit to the college and what challenges has it brought. And how have you overcome those challenges. So that's about three or four questions all loaded in there, but I'm hoping that you can think about that holistically and approach the answers to some of those as we go along. Okay. Well, first, it begins with effective communication. What effect effective communication between the districts, the college and the employers, you know this program wouldn't be would not have been as as success as it is. From an, from an educator point of view. Basically, the two supporting offices that's that that basically I report to they assist us from the school district side, and then from the employer side. So we go, they're like the hub in the wheel for for us. Any questions I may have, or any communication from the industry comes through the office of school through the office of apprenticeships and business partnerships for industry, and then for the districts is for the school and community initiatives office. So as the educator side, you know they communicate a lot with us about what the needs are for its industry, and as well as the districts. And that's, that's the balance. I think that works between everyone, you know that effective communication, and you said three legged stool and you said three legged stool to success. What are some of the challenges that you've experienced and and how you know how have you overcome those. Well, some of the challenges in the beginning was scheduling, trying to schedule the students, high school schedules, along with the college schedules. This has been ironed out and, and, and pretty much flows very smoothly right now. In the beginning that's where it was, but other than that there's really, it's not much of a challenge out there for any student looking to get into this program, and you spoke about benefits. I think the greatest benefit is that the college has the opportunity to work closer with the school districts and industry partners, all all of us working closely together to benefit these students to impact our community. I feel before the apprenticeship program. There was a little disconnect between, I think the technical studies and some of the school districts. On the technical side we already had a relationship with our industry partners, but didn't really have that strong partnership with the schools, the school districts. And now that we started the apprenticeship. It's like we're all basically communicating together, coming up with new initiatives, new programs to get these students out there, getting them exposed to to different career sets that that are available. And you said overcome challenges. That was the last one I believe. Um, basically I said it was, it was just scheduling. And I think we have that pretty much down now so now it's just the program just runs pretty much seamlessly and smoothly. That's great. Great. Thanks Robert. Um, Richard, I'm going to jump to you next. I want, I want to sort of play off to something that Robert mentioned, which was how the startup of this. The youth apprenticeship work has impact. It sounds like it's impacted college in terms of growing new programs and new initiatives and sort of the spin off that have occurred from that work. I'm curious how becoming a partner in in the Charleston regional youth apprenticeship program has impacted even systems in your district or programs as well. And has the experience of doing this work caused you to look differently at the way you operate other CTE programs in the district. What what's sort of been the spillover of the this effort. Well, it has significantly impacted the systems. I think regionally and specifically also in Charleston County School District as well. As you can imagine the youth apprenticeship model or that program is, you can say the pinnacle of what work based learning experiences can be. You know, if you look at the continuum of career awareness when the kids start an elementary school, maybe they have guest speakers or a job shadowing event. Maybe some career fairs even elementary into middle school summer career camps is as popular with kids get from career awareness to exploration, and then finally in high school we look at career preparation. There are some CTE classes, there are some clinical experiences, internships, whether they're during the school or summer, or of course, apprenticeships like the apprenticeship model that we have. It really gave us a mindset as to we're going to begin this whole process with the end in mind. So we wanted a student to participate in youth apprenticeship. What does that look like as the child articulates from kindergarten, all the way through high school and even articulate to technical school as well. And to do that we had to provide access and opportunity, and I'll go back to that as many times as I can. And I know Robert talked a little bit about that is, do all the students have access to these high impact career clusters across all of, you know, not just manufacturing, but health science and STEM, you know, and transportation and logistics and there's many more, you know, but it starts with, can kids access those opportunities, and do they have that opportunity to take that coursework and to participate. So really how does we think or just actually look in the mirror and say, what are we doing and how can we do it differently and more effectively. Then when we notice that we can do it better than we put we implemented a whole bunch of changes in the district that I believe are better for, you know, for the betterment of students for their families and for the community, like our career centers, like CTE completer programs, certification programs that align with those apprenticeships. So it really changed a lot about what career readiness, college readiness or like I just like to say future readiness looks like for all of our students, but some all of our students have a future ready to go college or career, you know, they're all going to get to that point of, I got to get a job, I have to earn a living, you know, so how do we get that to that point, and whatever that looks like. So that would really help us change not just these high impact clusters, but all of our career buses throughout Charleston County. Sounds like it's been more than just a spillover it sounds like it's really shifted and changed the way that you're looking at career and technical education and the, and career development. For you to be talking about work with, you know, kindergarten K through 20. You know, that's, that's a different mindset about how these kinds of programs can have that impact. I'm going to jump next to Sonya and ask Sonya. One of these programs impacted your, your students. What are the benefits of students experience and, and how also have has those benefits affected their families. Have you seen things like improved academic performance persistence graduation transition to post secondary education employment way during anything on that spectrum. You know, we talked, we've talked a little bit about the partnership impact. We've talked about how this work has impacted systems. In your perspective, Sonya, how, how is this work impacting your students. I think the youth apprenticeship program is impacting our students because as Rich said is giving them access to opportunities that are in high demand. Sometimes students may have an interest and, you know, just don't have the, the knowledge or the way to get there. But giving them information about the youth apprenticeship program where they could start in high school where they still have a strong support system there to help guide them through that would help lead them to that particular lifelong goal that they may have. I think for our students that participate in the apprenticeship program, definitely a seamless transition. They have so much support within the youth apprenticeship program. Everyone that works in that program really support students and that is key for students to continue on and the students that typically don't have access to certain programs. Or may not participate in certain programs is because they don't have that support. And I think in the youth apprenticeship program, they do have that so they've gained that they've gained access to careers. And we also find out that the skills again I spoke about this earlier, the skills that the students develop that are youth apprenticeship that are youth apprentices are phenomenal.  These are skills some adults don't really have at this particular time, you know, learning how to communicate working with others as a team. Those are skills that are so very much needed in our students today, and the youth apprenticeship program definitely helps our students to develop those skills. So I think, and all of these things lead to lifelong success to the in their future goals. So it really helps to build a foundation for our students to help propel them to where they need to be. I think I want to become a youth apprentice. Sounds like sounds like great things for anybody. I'm going to jump to mark, you know, we look at this from a systemic perspective and now showing you comments about student impact. Um, Mark, can you tell me a little bit about how being involved in the youth apprenticeship work has impacted your relationships with employers and how have employers affected the quality of your CTE programs. Do they have a, you know, the back and forth about the input and relationship to improving CTE programs at your district. Excuse me. Have employers been involved at all in developing educator skills, learning more about the industry, any kind of professional development opportunities. And of course, how do employers engage with students and support students to ensure their success. So if you think about this, in terms of the employers you engage with what do you think happened or how has this impacted them. Sure. I think, you know, from the onset, it's strengthened our partnerships with our local businesses and industries. No doubt. You have these partnerships that you've already developed district wide school wide, you know, throughout the region. And, you know, when those folks are able to come in, albeit not so much recently due to, you know, our, our pandemic situation but even through a virtual platform and stuff and really start engaging our students early on. Mr. Gordon hit on it perfectly when he mentioned, you know, the K through 12 kind of initiative that we have. We do have your your elementary students really just becoming aware, your middle school students really trying to explore and then at the high school level when when we implement these, these different programs to work based learning, especially the youth apprenticeship program.  You've got these business partners that's been around and they've had students that have come through the program. They've learned just as much as we have, as far as you know how to tweak certain things and, you know, how to develop the, you know, the way that they interact with the students but, you know, it's just really exciting to see that kind of grow. And, you know, you mentioned, as far as, you know, professional development not necessarily on a technical kind of official global effort but you do see teachers and programs reaching out to those partners, that especially ones that are new that have come in and and maybe weren't, you know, a business partner that we had, you know, for a long standing relationship but a new partner that joined, because they had you know they were interested in becoming a part of the part of the apprenticeship program and working with our teachers to help kind of cultivate and fine tune some of the skill sets that we teach in our courses. Of course we have our state standards that we're going to hit and that we're going to, you know, model our course after but especially when you talk about regional needs and things that employers are looking for in our region. That's potentially different all across the country and so when they can come into our classrooms and really have a good dialogue and communicate with teachers about what they're looking for when the students get to, you know, graduate or get involved in the youth apprenticeship program or any type of work based learning. That's really powerful because now we've really tapped into what industry needs, and we're trying our best to be able to implement that in our classroom. But when it comes to the employers kind of reinforcing student success, I think, you know, like Mr. Elliott said at the beginning that communication is key from the beginning. If we can have clear communication and expectations, all the way through the program. Now we've, we've at least created that dialogue that if, if a student does start to struggle or has challenges, you know, we have a comfortable dialogue with with our partner, we'll be able to discuss that and vice versa and you know you have great mentorships that kind of come out of this too if a student isn't necessarily involved in an apprenticeship. You know you can have these business partners become mentors for other students in our buildings. You know it just it opens up really again going back to what Mr Gordon said, just that plethora of work based learning that we always try to provide all students no other circumstance no matter what the career pathway is, there's something out there for every student at quite honestly at every grade level. And you know when when you just have that open line of communication and you're building those relationships, you're supporting your students, you know the great things can happen out of that and we've just been very grateful and I guess to some degree very lucky and you know that we've got such great partners and great students in the program. Yeah, I mean you know it's it's a give and take but you know in the end we just want our students to have the best opportunity possible. And we've just been, we, I feel like we've been very successful with that. That's great. I'm sure there's, you know, the benefits of this work is probably as much for you all and your students and the employers benefit from it as well. I would imagine, and mark you can tell me if I'm accurate about this but that I think that providing youth apprentices in some of these companies and and businesses has changed the workplace has changed the relationships and employers are having with young people and I'm, I'm kind of curious as a quick follow up. Is there any pushback from the beginning when the program first started from employers about.  Well, I think, you know, there's, again, setting aside the whole pandemic and the obvious concern there. I think a lot of it had to do with, you know, when you when students are going through the process and getting interviewed by our counselors and starting the whole process, soft skills has always come up in every conversation we've ever had with with industry and business partners. You know, are you guys teaching soft skills, do you have a curriculum for that. And yes we do in Dorchester County we use a an online platform microburst to to help with some of our soft skills training. It hasn't been very effective but again it's one of those things where you really need to be able to put it into action. And so when you get on the job and when you're in these programs that the the technical skills they're going to teach our students and some of our students know a lot of the technical skills but they're going to be able to hone those skills on the job. It's those soft skills that we are constantly trying to to push trying to emphasize. And so I think that's the piece that was that was always, you know, across all pathways and clusters and, and industries, you know, everybody wanted to, you know, get the the assurance that we were going through that with our students before they were going out there and and yes I mean, we have that in place. Again, we've had great students that have participated in the program and I think they've really shown that, you know, what we're doing on our side at our level is is everything we can to help prepare them to be successful when they get on the job and and I know that our business partners really appreciate that, you know, like Mr. Richard said, hey showing up to work on time that's a skill set and being able to manage your time that you know as adults we have it quite mastered so to have a student who's at least aware of that, and can really put in those, you know, those positive habits and those positive habits that you know that that that's the first step, once we can get, you know, to work on time and we're behaving on the job the way we should, you know, that's when the learning and the experience can really can really start and kind of kind of blossom so yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that mark. Tricia, I want to have you tell us a little bit about how being involved in the youth apprenticeship work has changed the way you market and recruit students into this program as a as a counselor and a person who works with counselors across the region. I'm wondering whether or not the strategies you've employed to engage students in this work have changed over time or that you're learning new ways to do things. You have some advice for those who are listening today about how, how to do this. And I'm also curious about the issue of parents, parents and student bias about what it means to be in an apprenticeship and frequently many of these manufacturing programs, you know, many of the trade programs have, you know, an image of that needs to be addressed so that people understand how high tech these fields really are now and they're not, they're not your grandfather shop program right. Yeah. Yeah, well, I was going to say I'll start with that last one first. Yeah, it is. It was, I should say was in the beginning, a very hard sell to some parents. Because they do see it as back in the, you know, in the day when Grandpa worked at a factory or and so they they had that picture of what a youth apprentice was. But I think we're fortunate in that we do individual graduation plans and like all the districts have been talking about this seamless transition from elementary middle to high. Working with our kids helping them identify, you know, what their, what their skill sets are and helping them identify potential careers and then when they hit the high schools and are here with us as counselors. We get that individual time with them to be able to talk about their, you know, what their career goals are have their parents and discuss the youth apprentice programs and so they those came about at a perfect time as we were kind of revamping and going back into those, looking at those trades. So it's easy to me as a counselor to work that into our conversations and as long as we can show the parent the connection between what their child wants to do and you know happiness in the future and their career goals and how it's right down the street and they're going to have, you know, a job with an employer in the local community. And they're going to get some of those skills that they need, even before leaving high school. In the beginning it was a hard sell but now we have parents that just come in and that's all they want to talk about. They want to see how the youth apprentice program can be connected to their child's goal. So, you know, I think, and Sonya was in the beginnings of this when we first started them in Berkeley County. And so we really focused hard on training all the school counselors, not just high school, we reached down to middle schools, making sure they understood what they are. So we can take our personal biases out of it, you know, we can take our personal opinion out of it and actually speak about youth apprentice programs from the benefits of the student. And so the counselors all receive training every year. We make sure that's part of our IGP process and what we talk about and then we, you know, try to detect as a great job educating our parents. They do yearly meetings with our parents we push that information out we have parents calling in August to know when is, you know, when is the youth apprentice meeting. So we can go down to try and visit with the employers and hear more about the programs directly from Trident. So do you, would you say that over time the strategies that you've used to do outreach to youth youth in this program, have you used some sort of non traditional resources to get to students and who are in communities as that may not necessarily have access to this program. Access to this effort or may not be as well informed. Do you find out a challenge. Yeah, well, yeah, I open that to everybody if anybody else can address this first but maybe everyone else can think about this a little bit. Yeah, I, we find it a challenge I know in Berkeley County we're such a large county and some of our high schools are so far from try to tech and transportation is an issue but you know we've been working through all of those issues and all those concerns to try to help, you know, get those students there. So I think just, you know, I think we've done. We've just honed in on the conversations with our parents and actually making our IGP meetings purposeful. More so and those are individual graduation plan meetings then just check in a box with a parent. So we make sure we have enough time, especially with 10th graders. Because that's the year we're really talking about them really recruiting and trying to get them in Accu place or and all the testing that required, you know that's required for it and laying out their coursework. So if, if you know the biggest challenge I know in Berkeley County we've had is the transportation issue. If we can jump that hurdle then then you know we do so much better with some of those kids. So can anyone in the group give some examples of ways in which you have jumped that hurdle or there's some avenues that you've used to try to provide whether transportation or other barriers that students might face to accessing the program how you address those. I would say in regards to transportation I think when the apprenticeship allowed students that were graduating to participate opened up doors for more students to live out in the rural areas to participate. My son is a youth apprentice. We live you know in a rural area St. Stephen which is a good little ways away and understanding that he would need to do high school and travel to try that. Even though he had transportation it would have been a bit of a challenge so we knew that if he had this opportunity you know when he graduated it probably would be a little bit easier for him. And also with the program and then reaching out to find employers even closer to some of our areas has been very beneficial. So students may not have to travel as far to work. If they live out in a rural area so that has been really beneficial trying to hone in on some additional lawyers that are closer to where those students live who are out in the rural area. Yes ma'am. I think number one, the messaging and getting the word out is still our number one obstacle. We have hundreds of school counselors throughout Charleston County School District. And one of the panelists just mentioned about the IGP process. All IGPs are not created equal. Some counselors are very CTE forward. Here are CTE courses, career readiness, internship, apprenticeship, they roll with it, they drink the Kool-Aid. And what we need to do is to take that and bottle that and mimic that so that all six, well about tens of thousands of CCSD students get a similar experience, similar message. I understand that it's not the only thing that has to be put out during an IGP conference. I understand that I've been in them as a parent and also as an educator at the school level. But like I said previously or earlier in this panel, every child has a future and a career, we hope, unless of course they're independently wealthy and maybe they don't have to work. But for most of us, we have a career, whatever that means, and it's hard to argue against an apprenticeship. It really gives the kid a competitive advantage. Can you imagine on your resume? You know, a two-year apprenticeship with Boeing or Bosch or Nywhip, Mercedes-Benz, I mean, and a recommendation from one of the supervisors at the corporation. That is worldwide, and it just opens up so many doors and puts them at an advantage compared to others. And so, again, it's that perception and getting that messaging out continues to be our two biggest obstacles in Charleston County. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when we talk about access, you mentioned this earlier, Richard, this notion of, you know, making sure that all students have access to programs. And it's more than anyone can enroll or, you know, you open the doors and say, y'all come, right? A lot of people can't even get to the threshold. And so part of your part of the responsibility here in terms of really looking at equity in these programs is how is it that I reach into my community in order to be able to bring students, you know, into this in whatever way it might be, whether it's addressing this from a cultural perspective, an image perspective, you know, a financial perspective, you know, trying to break down all those barriers so that students can have access. Mark, you wanted to add in, jump in here, please do. Well, yeah, our big initiative this year, and our district is smaller than Charleston and Berkeley County. But it doesn't mean that we offer anything less. So, you know, we don't have quite the student enrollment, but we still have and are proud of all of our programs.  Yeah, I was going to say the same thing as Mr Gordon, you know, getting the word out. Our initiative this year has been to really have CTE and our counseling department communicate more than they've ever had before. We've had some transition in our district and so we felt like this was a great time to kind of, you know, invigorate and reinforce that relationship between CTE and our counseling department.  And I just, I felt like it was really a good opportunity for us, while we look at all these opportunities, especially one like a youth apprenticeships that's so involved and requires, you know, a real commitment from the family to be able to explain that as best we could in that IGP because while I would love to be in all of them to push CTE, that's not possible. And especially for our neighboring counties with all the students they have, you know, we all face that same challenge but I think that's important to really, you know, take care of it on our side, as far as getting information to our folks, including our teachers I mean counselors but our teachers as well. We need to be as informed as they can, especially in their particular area and pathway and have conversations with their business partners in their pathway, you know, reach out talk talk to them with, if you don't have a business partner that, you know, is as engaged as you feel you know as a teacher and start those those conversations and that's what we're here for is to really help with those and to be able to, you know, answer any questions that they may have from that side as well. Robert, I wanted to ask you a little bit about and maybe you're, you know, all your secondary partners here can address this as well is the challenges around articulation across systems. You know, I have to, I'm looking back again at the title of today's panel, and I want to make sure that we at least address this question somewhere in this conversation, which I think we are in many ways, but this notion of alignment between all of the systems in this conversation is to, one, make sure that students have a seamless path through the program to employment, and you all have done some, what I consider to be some pretty amazing and creative things in order to make that happen. Robert, you know, maybe you can talk a bit about from the, from the college's perspective what's that, what does that look like how, how has that been for you and, and maybe some advice to folks about how to make that happen. In partnership with the three school districts, local school districts, we developed a workforce pathway from basically the high schools to the technical college. We came up with a advanced placement agreement. So students who took welding or machine tool at the high school will receive advanced placement into our programs at Trident Technical College, even if they're not, you know, they don't have to be in the apprenticeship, just taking and completing the welding and machine tool programs at the high school level, they transition right into the college and an advanced placement. And basically they'll, they can knock off almost maybe a semester worth of coursework. What we did is we aligned, we got with the instructors at the local school districts and exam both of us compared our course level outcomes and the competencies needed for those students and aligned basically our curriculum to meet those competencies. And once we did that, we figured out, okay, we can award credit for these particular classes once they take and complete their program. And I assume and you all can validate this that that is a great incentive for students to participate in this in the apprenticeship program. And do they see it that way. You have to sometimes you have to jump up and down and do tricks to show them that that you can get high school credit you can get college credit. You can get paid in certain situations. You know, so there are those extrinsic motivational factors that that that hooked some of them. For us, most of the interest comes from they self identify with the career cluster. You know, when I always wanted to be an engineer. I always wanted to work in the culinary field. You know, I always wanted to be a nurse, you know, and I'd like we talked about starting at an early age, you know, when they first learn about occupations maybe they thought their teacher was the only job that there was on planet Earth, but that's who they saw every day.  So at early ages they're learning those those that the career awareness that's what we call that. But for us, it's mostly, yes, that is a hub, but they have to kind of it's in the heart that really gets them to end their parents to the parents have to believe it. You have to hit their heart before you can hit their mind. So if you can convince the parents and the kids. It goes from there. Yeah, I was going to say I was going to follow up with you. I'm telling it to the parents. I know we as counselors that's been. That's been the probably one of the bigger hurdles was just helping those parents understand that because your child's choosing to go through youth apprentice doesn't mean that later on in life they may not change path and go somewhere else but getting the parents. If we can get the parents to believe in it, then, you know, it's an easy sell to me, or at least in this school to our kids. And usually the parent that gets the, you know, that has more questions and a little hesitant and, well, they were going to go to Clemson or they were going to go to, you know, and so it's that cell, it's that cell with parents. That's the hardest. Yeah. And you can still go to Clemson or USC of Georgia Tech, even with an apprenticeship. In fact, it makes your application a stronger application when you have those experiences. I agree. Anything in particular to encourage non traditional students to access the youth apprenticeship programs like, for example, young men in your health care programs or women in your advanced tech tech programs or the manufacturing areas. I mean, I've visited churches. I go to career day events before prior to code. But I'm just trying to get the word out, you know, and believe it or not, some parents and kids still aren't aware of it. But just trying to get that word out like say I, I sing the praises all the time on the program. Yeah. And maybe that's not the right term I should use. Have your students represent the program in whether it's your high school students go down in the elementary school and visit with with other kids and talk about what they're doing or show them what they're doing. Do you do you use the students who are in the program to represent and promote the programs as well. We typically have students that will serve on panels or do different activities will bring in students that are going straight through the CTE programs will bring in students are doing apprenticeship programs. And to really to speak to younger students they participate in career fairs or career days at the middle school, because we found that, you know, the younger students really look up to the students they're in high school and listen to what they're saying. So we have used those capacities. Yeah, you know, student voices and incredibly powerful thing, you know, peer peer to peer. I'm counseling almost can have big effects. But we're getting close to the end here and so what I'd like to do we have about three minutes left is for each of you to like we did at the start I asked you to tell me one thing you loved about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. I'm going to ask each of you if you would to share one thing one, one piece of advice out there to the folks who are joining us today or may watch this recording in the future about things keep in mind. If they're going to launch a youth apprenticeship program in their community or to join yours in the in your region. So I'll start with Robert will start with you. Um, if, if different regions wants to, you know, they're going to start a youth apprenticeship program. I would say, go to your industry, lean on your industry, find those skill skills gaps that are there. Tailor it around your industry and let that be the focus. It has to be industry led because at the end of the day, those students have to go into that workforce. So find what's needed in the community. Thanks Robert. So Mark, how about you and we have a little longer than I said I apologize I was jumping the gun a little bit so. Mark go ahead. I, of course I agree with Mr Elliott, you know you want to start with your industry partners but I want to go back to just keep working on getting the word out in the education of our program to our parents. Again, I think the quickest way is through an IGP. But you're only hitting one family at a time. So, you know, be creative and how you promote it. Again, we start as early as middle school talking about, you know, really our work based learning experiences that are very exploratory and this falls right in line. I mean, tried in tech last summer had a great opportunity for a pre apprenticeship program through culinary and I think that was a fantastic opportunity, because now you're hitting students in the eighth ninth grade.  So just be creative on how you get the word out. But yes, I agree with everybody, you know the selling of the program to parents and to students and getting that family buy in and then now the students have that support, not only, you know, the drive, but they have that support from their family is huge. I think our regional youth apprenticeship program is very successful from its inception. It has been successful since the inception because all the parties work together to make it happen. You have the employers, you have the K-12 partners and the post secondary partners. We all work together from the beginning to develop and to devise this program. So we're all at the at the table. It would have been different if it was developed by an outside source and the information was just given the K-12 for us to promote. We wouldn't have the buy-in. We wouldn't have the insight or the knowledge behind it. So I think that has been key to the success of the program that we have here. So that's the one piece of advice that I would give out to people who are interested in launching a program is to do that. And just as, you know, Mark and Robert has said also, you know, think about how you're going to create your brand and how you're going to promote it. Because again, that has been really successful for us as well. Thanks, Sonia. Richard, your words of advice. I would say find a champion of work-based learning in your school district. Maybe it's a principal, could be an associate superintendent or a director of instructional programs. Someone who believes in it and who can practice it at their level. So if it's a principal, maybe in their school and they start small with a small cohort. One of the reasons is it breeds success. When it works, everybody else wants to find out about it. Everybody else is hearing about it. And then you have to celebrate it. So, and that's a good way to get the word out. And that, so then this year you have 13 and next year you have 26 and then 52 and 104. And well, that's pretty much our reason and how that happened. It's a recruiting and a retention mindset. I tell people the best CTE teachers are ones that have a head coach mentality. They're good at finding kids, recruiting them, and they're good at retaining kids. And it starts at elementary middle school. We talked about how to get them more involved. It's bringing them to your career centers to CTE programs. And then, and then, you know, just putting out a little C. And then once we can get them in our career centers, once kids and parents see what CTE is in the classroom, I think that's where it makes a significant impact. But it starts with finding a champion and someone that really wants, that really knows the power of apprenticeship and then practices it and actually executes it. And then that's a great way to launch off of the platform. And Trisha, how about your words of advice? So you know what mine are going to be? Train your school counselors. Have them as a part of this from the beginning. Do really specific purposeful training with them so that they're comfortable talking about youth apprentice. They can be the champions you're looking for, for those programs. If they believe in it, they're going to sell it. They're going to sell it to the students and they're going to be able to sell it to the parents.  But we are, you know, we always say this, we're the boots on the ground, so we're the ones selling the programs specifically to the kids. So if you can get your school counselors involved, I would do it from day one. And I think that's the success of this region is because we were involved from day one. We made it a point to be involved from day one. Well, I want to thank all the panelists for your exceptional engagement here today. Clearly, you all have a tremendous passion for this work and it's about the students. You know, every time you all talk about something, it always landed in the end of the statement about making this work for students, making sure they have access to these programs, eliminating barriers to get them there and helping them be successful all the way through to their placement and employment. I can't thank you enough. I want to encourage everyone to consider youth apprenticeship as a significant investment in your youth and that the opportunities that I've seen in these programs are amazing. I was lucky enough to be able to come and visit Trident Tech when the Pathways to Youth Apprenticeship programs activities started with New America and I was amazingly impressed. I would also, I would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to go check out our website at NAPEquity.org. It's a great initiative we're doing around women in manufacturing. Lots of good resources for educators, recruitment videos and posters and all kinds of strategy documents. Check it out and and go for it. I think, you know, my sample of approval. Youth Apprenticeship rocks. Thanks everyone. I want to thank the representatives from Trident Technical College and the Parker School Districts for participating in this panel and to our moderator Mimi Lufkin for that insightful discussion. Join us at 340 Eastern Time for our final panel of the day, the Future of Youth Apprenticeship Policy Systems and Sustainability. It'll be moderated by Pia National Director Taylor White and we'll get a deeper dive into how we can continue this work after this event. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to our final panel of the day. Once again, I'm Taylor White, the National Director of the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship. Thank you for joining us for this final panel, the Future of Youth Apprenticeship Policy Systems and Sustainability. Over the course of the day today, we've had an opportunity to do a deep dive into the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships, a regional program that's experienced significant growth since its launch in 2014 and continues to serve as a resource and mentor to countless other partnerships looking to learn from their approach. But, well, there's been a lot of interest in youth apprenticeships from communities across the US, many of which are on the line with us now. Youth apprenticeship remains an underutilized strategy in the United States as you've heard a few times today from multiple different speakers. This afternoon on this final panel of the day, we're going to talk to three leaders to understand what it's going to take to make models like the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships more mainstream and how each of their organizations is playing a role in making that happen. So on the panel with me this afternoon, I am very excited to introduce John Ladd, who's the administrator of the Office of Apprenticeship within the Employment Training Administration at the US Department of Labor. John, thanks for being here today. I'm also happy to welcome Amy Firestone to the panel. Amy is the Vice President of Apprenticeship Carolina, which you've heard referenced by many folks on the call today, so she'll have an opportunity to tell us a little bit more about what Apprenticeship Carolina does and how they are supporting the growth and sustainability of youth apprenticeship across the state. Last but by no means least we have Melissa Stowasser, Assistant Vice President of Community Partnerships at Trident Tech. You've heard already from Melissa today, but we'll be asking her to put a slightly different hat on during this panel to think a little bit about what it's taken over the last several years not only to grow the program that Trident leads, but also to help other communities around the country learn from and replicate elements of their success. So, without further ado, Melissa, I'm going to kick our first question over to you. Help us understand a little bit about how the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship has grown since it launched in 2014. What steps specifically have you taken to grow the program locally? What's been critical to your growth and what have been some of the barriers that the program has experienced from in either practice or policy that makes it difficult for you to expand even further? Well, it's a simple question to start. Absolutely. Easy one. As we discussed earlier today, you know, we were fortunate to be approached by a company who wanted to start this and were able to start a sector partnership to make it sustainable over time and I think that that was a really critical decision early on. Another critical decision early on that enabled us to grow this was to get all of the partners and players at the table to create it together from the very beginning. So that everyone was engaged in what this could look like and they were buying into it because they were a part of the inception of it rather than having something thrust upon them that someone else created and then being told you need to manage this aspect of it. So I think those are two really critical pieces that enabled us to grow. Another thing that enabled us to grow was that we when we started having conversations with our industry leaders because of course they were leading this charge this is their program and we wanted to keep it that way. And they got excited when we got to the table and they immediately started saying, Oh, and we need this and we need this and we need this. And we were able to say, Oh, let's slow down and let's do one. And let's really work to craft one very well. Don't overdo when you start out and I think that was critical to so we started with one pathway and we had six companies that hired 13 students. And from that it's just grown exponentially. And I think it was partly in due to those pieces where we really collaborated together from the very get go to do something well with a small start, and then scale it from there. Something folks should take in mind. I know that when you start creating similar programs for little different programs within the region as these apprenticeships are going to look different from that. Your partners will look different your regions are different. We find that across our state and you'll talk about that. I'm sure a little bit in the future but just because your region is different from us and just because your partners are different from us and just because the group that you may stand up as your intermediary looks different from us doesn't mean you can't do apprenticeship. It just means it'll look different from others that can be equally successful and so I want to say that as well. So, that was the mindset we went into this with we also went into the mind with into this with the mindset that it was a collaborative regional program, not our program or your program it was collectively our program. And I think that that's a critical component to helping it grow as well. So, beyond that we began to reach out to more and we get the more employers should get on board the more sectors who want to do this work, the better off you're going to be so after the first year we strategically started at reaching out to other sector groups. After that it starts growing itself sector group start coming to you and saying can you do that for us. And I think that's a critical piece in the growth of it as well. Finding funds you know one of the barriers we had was that in the state of South Carolina dual enrollment was not covered by the state. And so it was up to the individual family to pay the cost of the educational expense. We wanted to level the playing field. So it was really critical for us to decide upfront that we were going to raise the revenues to cover those expenses. In our region we didn't want to put that cost on the employer. And one of the reasons we didn't want to put that cost on the employer was because we were approached by small companies. And we were asking them to pay the wage of the students who's not yet skilled. We were asking them to provide a mentor to train them on the job and so we felt like they had an investment. The community also needed to invest. And so we did not put that educational expense on them. So over the years we've really been lobbying for system change and we've got more assets coming from the state to help with the educational component, the funding of that piece. Dr. Firestone and her team work tirelessly to pull down federal dollars to assist us in making that slate clean so that all students can participate when it's equitable. I think you also asked about barriers that we've had. COVID was a barrier. Surprise, right? COVID sneaked in and kind of caught us by surprise just as we were really accelerating and so it slowed down the growth of our program but didn't stop it because we had all of the pieces in place to continue the work even through the worst of the pandemic. Another thing that has been a barrier for us is that we have a real mismatch. We find we have, for example, a tremendous number of students who want to apply for IT programs and yet we've not been able to get many employers to offer IT positions. So we've got to really work to make that so that there's a match between the number of students who want to apply for the programs and the jobs that are available. And I know, again, apprenticeship Carolina has been really helpful in trying to lead that more as a state initiative to get more employers from certain sectors on board and engage. So that's a problem and barrier for us. Transportation creates a barrier for some students and it's one we're still trying to solve. We do have philanthropic organizations who provided us dollars but now we've got to figure out how do those dollars that we have convey to the student in a way that helps them solve that and only to those students who really need that for the equity piece. And in staffing, you know, you're going to find that staffing is sometimes an issue. We started small with basically two people running the show. We've grown over time. We have more people participating. We've also gotten philanthropic organizations to fund staffing. So we have a group that is actually funding a youth apprenticeship specialist to work along with our coordinator to really oversee the support systems that are available for you. No, that was really helpful. That was great. Thank you, Melissa. So I hear I hear a whole bunch of actionable lessons for folks I think a couple of really interesting things that you said one was start small to go big sometimes there's a a tendency to say let's meet everybody's needs all at once as quickly as we can this thing moving and you all have taken a much more deliberate approach to start small do it right and expand over time. I also appreciate your pulling in ref the kind of balance of philanthropic funds with the state investment and I think that's one of the things that we see is really important to scale is finding ways that we can create funding models for these programs that leverage both existing funding within existing systems and where that funding you know can't cover things like for example additional flexible funding for staffing or sometimes these these really sticky transportation issues. We know that other sources of funds can be really really helpful and important for continuing and maintaining the momentum of program growth so thank you for touching on all sorts of things. One of the many things that you referenced. That's been I know very important to your work and has also allowed you to play a role in supporting the expansion of youth apprenticeship in South Carolina is the important role that the folks at apprenticeship Carolina play so I'd love to ask Dr firestone Amy a quick question for your part. So tell us a little bit for folks who are unfamiliar with your work in your organization, what apprenticeship Carolina does across the state as a statewide intermediary, and specifically also when and why you all have decided that you've apprenticeship is a priority for the state. Thank you so much for limitation to be part of this important panel. So apprenticeship Carolina is part of the South Carolina technical college system so China tech is one of the 16 technical colleges that's part of our system. Apprenticeship Carolina is actually a state agency so we are state government, but we support the 16 colleges with apprenticeships and that looks very different depending on the college there's 16 colleges I like to say 16 languages and 16 different countries because they all operate very differently in terms of apprenticeships but a lot of other things as well. So just to tell you a little bit more about us we've been in existence since 2007. And we were the main intermediary for the state with helping employers develop registered apprenticeships. And so our team helps develop all of the apprenticeship standards and we work collaboratively with the companies, and with the technical colleges and other providers whether they're K 12 or other vendors that the companies may wish to use we help them put it all together ship it off to our South Carolina DOL director, so that they get registered so the process is very seamless and that really been our bread and butter since 2007, however in the past few years, we really expanded beyond just helping work with the colleges and employers on that process to helping work with companies with implementation of their program after had been registered helping train them with rapids 2.0 which is the database may many of you may be familiar with, and also helping work with potential apprentices and current apprentices and that's a really new terrain for us. There's a lot of ground to cover there but we work collaboratively with tried and tech similar to the other colleges so when there's a company that is looking at apprenticeships as as a potential model. We will meet with them with tried and tech and then whatever their college it might be, help them design the standards and then the meet your Smith on our team he's the apprenticeship consultant working with tried and tech. Make sure all the programs are set up and get them shipped off to DOL so the process has been in place, you know, for many years and it's quite successful because companies don't have to worry about the paperwork we take care of all of that for them. And we have many different models and samples we work from so we really have a good system in place for getting registered apprenticeships established and I wanted to mention that in South Carolina all of our youth apprenticeships are registered with DOL. So that is something that we have worked really hard with employers whether it's in the Charleston area or other areas of the state on developing and we see, you know, more companies kind of looking at registered apprenticeship for youth as a model. But usually they'll start with an adult apprenticeship program kind of get their feet wet wet with an adult program and start like Melissa said very, very small. So that's a little bit about our role. We are statewide. So I think you can go any corner in South Carolina and find an apprenticeship Carolina staff member we really spread ourselves out throughout the state with the different roles we have. Thanks to funding from the US Department of Labor we have actually doubled in size and our team we have more apprenticeship consultants supporting rural areas. We have registered program specialists and I'm excited to announce that we'll have a bilingual registered program specialist working with Hispanic owned businesses. Finally we have youth apprenticeship coordinators I know that's a mouthful but whereas at China Tech they have some internal staff at the college. Most of the other colleges don't really have enough staff to support all the functions for youth apprenticeship so apprenticeship Carolina handles really all of that process so we are expanding and have a lot of great opportunities but Taylor was there anything else that could help me answer. No, I think you covered a lot I mean I guess one if maybe one quick follow up question I'm given that we're focusing on, I get policy and scale in the session if you had to name what you think apprenticeship Carolinas, most important kind of function for promoting scale or sustainability of youth apprenticeships in the state has been to date. What do you think it is what's that sort of secret sauce that you all have or or the kind of magic piece that you have that that you think is important for supporting the growth and scale. I think it's the one consistent approach and message for the whole state so no matter if you are, you know, let's just say a automotive supplier located in one part of the state or you are the parent company another part of the state and you want to do a youth apprenticeship or an adult apprenticeship you get the same approach from apprenticeship Carolina which is somebody from the team will sit down with you bring in the technical college and other partners, develop the process and get it squared away very quickly so that's one message one approach. We take away all the burden and we have funding to back it up so no one's really having to pad a pocket. That's great that's really helpful and I couldn't agree more that that consistent approach is important we've had panels all day today where folks have mentioned some of one piece that's important for promoting growth of youth apprenticeship is sort of helping folks understand what it is and not just sort of assuming that people see its value on its face in the way that many of us who worked in the space for a long time do, and that goes for educators that goes for employers that goes for youth parents etc. Having that consistent approach and that consistent message can really helpful in in sort of helping to raise awareness of what apprenticeship can be and can do for our communities. Well, thank you I am sure we'll come back and pick up on lots of things that you mentioned but before we do that. I want to pose a question to john who is on the line with us. Like apprenticeship Carolina the US Department of Labor has shown an increasing interest in supporting youth apprenticeship over the past several years. We heard this morning from your from your colleague. Thank you, Deputy Secretary Hanks who talked a little bit about recent investments from the US Department of Labor, for example in youth apprenticeship Amy has referenced one that South Carolina team received the youth apprenticeship readiness grants. So we've been very excited to see that and promote that across our networks. But I'd love to hear from you john as as you play out such as significant role in the federal government's actual activity to modernize the apprenticeship system. And for the Department of Labor to be interested in modernizing the system and how do you fit into it. Oh, sure. Thanks Taylor and thanks so much. Really want to extend my thanks to tried and technical college in New America for hosting this important event today and really excited to be on this panel with Amy and Melissa, who are doing such great work. That's a great question. And, you know, it's an important question for the system moving forward. There has been such an evolution in apprenticeship really and one of our former colleagues referred to as the apprenticeship Renaissance that's been happening here. It's been almost 10 years but really took up steam in about 2015 2016 when the federal government started making investments in apprenticeship for the first time. The Department of Labor made an investment in the American apprenticeship initiative, which was soon followed by congressional investments and apprenticeship so it's been an exciting time for for apprenticeship. With that increased funding has generally called for goals to expand the program and grow the program. And to do that, we really do also have to modernize certain elements of the program. But as well, I'm sure I'm going to talk a little bit later, we want to make sure that as we modernize the system that that doesn't mean any loss of quality or rigor that we're really want to hold true to the core elements of apprenticeship so you know there's a couple of things we could probably touch on here, but this is one of those important questions that we've actually asked our advisory committee on apprenticeship to also help think us think through this issue with us. But there's two really kind of big elements that that I certainly think of what is around flexibility. We want to make sure that our policies and regulations allow for different models and and approaches, but we want to hold to those core elements of what it means to be a registered apprenticeship program, which is employment, OJT, and classroom instruction, progressive wages, credentials, strong labor standards, including EEO. So, you know, we really want to balance that that rigor, and that consistency of what apprenticeship means, but recognizing that that apprenticeship can look different in the construction industry versus it that youth apprenticeship might look a little bit different than apprenticeship that's primarily serving adults so one of the things we really focused early on was kind of opening up the model to different approaches and and different models, different partnership structures. There's many different models, you know, Amy talked about the particular model in South Carolina, there are a whole range of models and we really want to support and encourage those those different approaches while holding, holding true to those core elements. I think another area and you know Amy talked about this as well is, you know, how do we leverage technology streamline processes provide the right kinds of financial supports to really make it easier for industry to start an apprenticeship program. It shouldn't take months and months to stand up an apprenticeship program, it should be easy. It should be an easy to understand process of how you get started with support available. You know it should be driven by by the industry for their particular needs. And we really want to make sure that, again, you know, we want that consistency we want that rigor, but we don't want it to feel like it's this overwhelming burden for for an employer or an industry group to stand up an apprenticeship This is an area that we've made a lot of investments to support, whether it's at the state level with the work that's like the work that South Carolina is doing but also industry intermediaries that could be that go between playing that role that the technical college system plays in South Carolina. We've set up TA centers this this summer in four critical areas to help on really some pain points in the system whether it's around data and information sharing whether it's around building equitable programs whether it's about the technical areas of the system we've we've invested in building competency based framework so we don't have to reinvent the wheel and we don't have to wait until someone develops a program we've got curriculum and designs ready to go off the shelf that people can use so that those are some of the things we we think about when we talk about modernization. Well, it's an awful lot of things so. I want to pick up on something that you reference kind of at the top of your comments john because I, I related to a question we get all the time, and the work in South Carolina is has committed itself to registering youth apprenticeships we don't see that everywhere so you said very early on in the comments that you the US Department of Labor is trying to think about how to offer flexibility while holding to core elements. This is a question first for you but I'm sort of curious to hear also from Amy and Melissa and apologies because I didn't prep you exactly for But what do you say to folks when they say you can't register a youth apprenticeship or how on earth, am I going to take this adult apprenticeship that has 2000 hours of on the job learning, sorry, OJT, and hundreds of hours of related instruction requirements how on earth do we adopt that for you to be done. What is the answer to that question that that you give john first but I'm also curious Amy and Melissa how you tackle that question. That's a great question, and I think there's some, you know, good policy discussion that needs to happen in that space. You know, as, as Congress is debating reauthorizing the National Apprenticeship Act. I think that that is an area that folks are looking at but but I would say that, you know, we see tremendous demand for youth apprenticeship and tremendous growth in youth apprenticeship and register and when we say that we mean registered apprenticeship. That's what we support that's what we provide funding to support. But the number of youth participating in registered apprenticeships have doubled over the past 10 years. Now, over 68,000 youth age 16 and 24 are in apprenticeship programs and represent 25% of all apprentices. That is some tremendous growth that's just happened here in the last 10 years, when we put out the, as you mentioned, the youth apprenticeship readiness grants. There's a tremendous demand for for for that funding opportunity. And, you know, this is clearly another area that we're going to look to invest more in in the future. But we know there is just tremendous, you know, huge demand for registered apprenticeship programs serving youth either high school or out of school youth as well. You heard it here and no uncertain terms you can indeed register youth programs. Melissa or Amy are there. And isn't there anything you'd like to add for that from your regional or state perspective when you get that question no we can't wait there's no way we can do this. I'd be happy to respond to that. You know, when we sat down with our employers and they wanted to register a youth program, we really let them leave the conversation with that and what that could look like. We had some employers who were in that initial group who had adult apprenticeship programs which were much much more extensive and took them much further. But they saw value in starting a youth program that would take them to a point where they had skills enough to be employed but maybe not as far as the adult program would take them. So when we designed the apprenticeship programs we designed them around those certificate programs that we offered at college in a career specific areas that did make them employable. The students go through their certificate but they're not going all the way through an associate degree. And so they're finished and they are employable at that point. But again we're building them with a ladder of progression so the particular company I was mentioning then ended up hiring students out of that program into the adult program and they were halfway through already. So students that they really liked from that particular program that they wanted to see progress were able to move on through the adult program. So once then we've had companies like McLeod you saw Debbie McLeod earlier if you were with us for the employer panel. And they have a really interesting structure because they're bringing in students as interns from their high school in the summer, and giving them exposure and that the student and the company feel that this is a good match. Then they're putting in them into a youth program that takes them through the certificate program, they're registered, they're employable at that point. And they're doing extremely well they go on into their adult apprenticeship program and they move on through an associate degree and they're looking to go on even to baccalaureate degrees in cybersecurity. So you can register youth programs and you can build them as a ladder of progression in conjunction with adult programs that exist. Amy would you like to add more to that. Yeah, and I'll say as we're in like a full expansion mode for youth apprenticeship in the state. COVID is extremely challenging right now to get new companies on board for apprenticeships in general, but specifically youth apprenticeship and just a lot more concerns about liability, but what I did want to say was looking at the individual area that you're in see which companies this is what we're doing are willing to hire 1617 18 year olds in general, and I'll say that right now a lot of manufacturing companies are kind of skittish about hiring people under 18 just because of the challenges that they face in general, but looking at some of the auto industry. A lot of dealerships are looking at youth apprenticeship hospitality and tourism here. That's where we've had a lot of new youth apprenticeship start in the past few months because of the gaps that this industry is facing they really need to get creative. Look at ways to grow from, you know, grow their own talent so I would say look at the industries right now because years ago it was a little bit different but now there are fewer companies that are ready to dive into youth apprenticeship, youth registered apprenticeship who don't already have an adult apprenticeship program, but consider those industries that are really hurting for employees and are looking at creative ways to build their own. So like I said we've had luck with hospitality and tourism recently because they have such tremendous gaps in employment so youth apprenticeship I had one company. Last week in the upstate area said sign me up for five occupations for you to apprenticeship I'm ready our hotel needs to bring in new talent. Other you know manufacturing companies they're just not quite ready because they're trying to deal with their own workforce right now and the covert challenges that it brought on. So I said I would highly suggest for registered apprenticeship. Look at those industries that are really facing the most immense challenges and they may not be the ones that, you know, a couple years ago you would have been looking at also the public sector we look at the public sector as well as a great place to engage in new organizations for youth apprenticeship so thinking kind of outside the box by looking at what companies are even willing to hire you in general is the best starting place that we've seen. So I want to play devil's advocate for a second and as we move to our next question on this last point. I think that there's a lot of wisdom in going to where there's demand from employers. And that there can be a risk at times and growing to grow so quickly that you lose sight of quality. And, you know at PIA we believe firmly that apprenticeship can be an engine for expanding economic opportunity and creating pathways to good careers for youth furthest from opportunity, but programs have to be designed really intentionally and occupations have to be selected to be sure that that the wages that young people are earning the sort of long term career opportunities that they can have following an apprenticeship are there for them at times, when employers say we need this talent now those jobs that they're trying to fill in the short term are not necessarily the sort of long term jumping off points for careers that we might like to see for young people not Amy I'm not saying that that's what's happening in South Carolina. I'm just naming it as a risk for really rapid growth in any sort of system. And John alluded to this I think in his open his first few sentences, but I'm curious for you all what you see is some of the greatest risks and expanding youth apprenticeship really quickly we want to see it grow we want to see it become a more mainstream opportunity but of course growth for growth's sake sometimes has its limits. So, what do you see as some of the risks in expanding youth apprenticeship really quickly and what steps steps have each of your organizations taken to ensure your support and growth in high quality equitable apprenticeships rather than just growing for the sake of growing. And anyone can dive into that easy question first. Start off Taylor if you'd like this to piggyback on. I think that with our model I just wanted to mention that by doing registered apprenticeship. We won't we don't really run that risk because no matter if it is the hotel associated with registered apprenticeship for 16 year olds or the maintenance mechanic they're all following the deal well standards of an approved occupation so they all have those high quality elements of the, you know, starting wage the wage increase. And really the whole process is the same for adults so I don't think if you follow the registered apprenticeship model you still have that standard quality, no matter if it's you third adult so I wanted to mention that just to help the audience understand that they're not going to be, you know, dipping into low quality if they if they do go rapidly and I would also say that the one thing is the mentorship we were just in on Friday with the Embassy of Switzerland we visited Swiss Krono which is a manufacturing company in the small rural area in South Carolina very impoverished area. They started out with two registered youth apprentices. I think this was last year, and they had tremendous success and they said you know what we're going to have nine, we're going to aim for nine we're going to look at different high schools that we normally don't engage with. And they said you know I don't think we can get a lot bigger because the mentorship, and I think that's the risk is that with youth apprentices they need to ensure that there's a really great mentor available to coach these students the mentor we met with at Krono. He mentioned that he even helps them learn life skills I mean they're in a small rural area he helps kind of be that great community figure for them so I think that's the biggest risk is making sure if it's a registered apprenticeship you need a mentor, making sure that mentor is is available to handle the volume of multiple, you know individuals who are who are under 18. Yeah that's an important an important part point and not one that I think folks think about when they just think of creating more opportunities. John I saw you and me you want to get in with an answer there. Yeah, I was going to say, Amy so my thunder there a little bit, the checks in the mail Amy appreciate the support there but yeah, exactly I think by focusing on on registering these programs you have a lot of protections in place. I would add though that I think we continue to emphasize and we're going to continue to emphasize probably even more strongly moving forward through our funding opportunities that you know there's really a strong emphasis on equity and quality and labor standards in the kinds of programs that we want to invest in moving forward so I think that's another place where there's some additional protections to make sure that folks are thinking through the kind of kind of questions that you're raising here. And Taylor I would say that you know for us we're really really fortunate in our region to have a chamber who's heavily engaged in talent development space. And one of the things that they do is a talent demand study. And so the talent demand study really looks at where are the jobs and where are the jobs projected to be in each of the industry sectors. And it also looks at where are we producing graduates from K 12 from any level of post secondary to fill those jobs and where is the gap. And so we're strategically looking at those programs that would be those that would lead students to a family sustaining wages that fall within the need for our region and where that gap exists where we know they're going to be high quality jobs available. So we use that as a guide. And I think any kind of resource like that that you can draw from in your region to figure that out really will help you guide and sort of alleviate that risk. And then of course we work with Amy and her team very closely to make sure they are registered to us DOL standards, so that they're getting that high quality. The other thing that we've done is, as we sit down with our industry leaders and we talk about what are what do you need them to achieve. We map out high school courses and college courses that help them achieve what they need academically, but also lead to a ladder of progression for the student. So that they are engaging in some side of sort of post secondary credit work as part of that apprenticeship that can lead them on an upward trajectory should they choose to embrace it. And so I think all of those things together really help to alleviate those risks. This is a perfect example I said in my opening remarks of how sometimes it's hard to see the PIA principles in action if you just read them but there is a perfect exemplar for folks on the line of the importance of portability this idea that students are earning credits that they can use after their apprenticeship concludes to earn additional credentials additional degrees and move upwards and onwards in their careers over time whether that's right away or 10 years later they have that sort of currency in the education marketplace that can be really important. So we are nearing the point on this panel where we will move to audience questions but before we hand it over to them I have a couple more things I'd love for this group to talk about. One of the things that's been really interesting and hearing you all talk is how often, and you have unwittingly or not helped prove my point that I wanted to make in this panel a little bit about the importance of connecting systems and so Melissa has referenced how the state intermediary apprenticeship Carolina has been very supportive to their work locally Amy has shared the work that apprenticeship Carolina does around the state to build and support other partnerships that are trying to launch and run and grow youth apprenticeship programming and john has made reference to a number of ways that the US Department of Labor has supported the growth of youth apprenticeship and will moving forward. So I think folks can see that there are ways, sort of different levels if we think about these folks in their organizations aligned vertically across the apprenticeship system that these different actors are working together to sort of reinforce one another's progress and opportunities. So it's really exciting to see here. I would love to hear from you all though that's I made that sound like it's really easy and it all works very smoothly. But I'm curious if we could do one sort of lightning round for all of the panelists if you had a magic wand that you could wave and make some sort of change whether it's in policy or practice or in mindsets around the country. What is one change that you would love to see that you think would be important for promoting the continued expansion of high quality apprenticeship opportunities in this country. And anyone can get in here no one seems to be chomping up. Who wants to take that first, you limit us to one change, and that just makes it so difficult to come up with fun to see everybody. Melissa, if you talk fast, you can get more in. I would say it's really, really critical to do relationship building, I think that we need a structure that really enables us to embrace partnerships across the different levels as you've discussed you know the local level to the state level to the federal level but also within our regions, and that supports the work of partnership development and intermediary. Intermediary action that enables these to take place, we need to be funding and standing up really strong intermediaries at the local level at the state level because they both are critical in making this work become a statewide system and at the federal level to ensure that all states are working together in a collaborative way to ensure a national level of high quality apprenticeship. I guess I would go for it. Yeah, I would build on that I mean I think this is such an important question around kind of the evolution of the national apprenticeship system right. The apprenticeship is different than we owe it's different than then secondary and post secondary education has a different structure, a different approach. It really requires that employer engagement and industry engagement to thrive. You can have an apprenticeship program with a single employer, and that can work right the employer could provide everything the employer could provide the classroom instruction the mentorship, but that's really hard right that's really challenging for any single employer or any industry group to be able to do that so so to Melissa's point, you know we we really are starting to move from the idea of the system being pretty much just the federal government state government and industry groups right that that sponsor these apprenticeship programs and we now have this much more rich complex ecosystem of partners stakeholders and players that have that really you know previously hadn't existed, but how do they all come together and form a coherent system. How do we, how do we clarify what roles, each entity is playing what roles they can play, allow for local and statewide, you know flexibility and customization to leverage the players that make the most sense but, but, but really articulating the this new vision of what the national apprenticeship system looks like and who's part of it right and and making that as inclusive as possible, including equity groups and CBOs that can that can provide a pipeline of talent into these programs. But I think that's some of the really exciting work that kind of lays ahead here of trying to better define what the national apprenticeship system can look like moving forward. Yeah, that's exciting to hear I think that's that's something that we really enjoyed seeing and learning about through our work in PIA is just the number of different organizations that make up these partnerships and the different roles and responsibilities they take on. It's been a huge area of learning for us and we're excited to be able to share some of that with the field to encourage new and different actors to take on new and different roles because they think you're right to really reach many of the industries and communities that really haven't been able to take advantage of the apprenticeship in the past, it will take some creativity and some different names and faces in the crowd but exciting to hear your change ideas Amy last but not least might sneak in a couple to Taylor. I would say the most critical part are the businesses. We have a lot of resources in South Carolina for funding right now for the apprenticeships. We have a lot of staff, but it's really the businesses and any incentives that the businesses can receive to help train their trainers I think with businesses being short staff, especially looking at youth apprenticeship that mentor piece I think any incentives for apprenticeships and then also we haven't really talked about pre apprenticeship and kind of the power that they can play and help increase equity and diversity and apprenticeships by there being you know more funding and more support for pre apprenticeships and having those count as kind of part of the overall system I think those would be critical elements. Okay, well, Amy, you didn't mean to but you walked right into our first audience question. I'm going to take, take your final comment as a segue. What is, as you see it the definition or the difference rather between a pre apprenticeship and a youth apprenticeship I know this varies in some places but from the South Carolina perspective please give us yours. I should get like $100 every day I answered this question because I get it every day from somebody, either in the state or outside the state but in South Carolina as I mentioned all of the youth apprenticeships are registered with DOL so that's anyone 16 and up and technically it's really for high school students but now we're working with a little bit older youth as well. Pre apprenticeships can be for anybody and this is where the technicality comes in. If they are working in a pre apprenticeship getting paid for work they have to be 16 and up but if they're just doing the classroom hands on they can be 14 and up and so we've done a lot of work to develop a pre apprenticeship process. So trying to attack was actually one of the first colleges in the state that went through our pre apprenticeship standards. Certification process. And so any entity in South Carolina can actually do that and we had the Urban League of Columbia developed their own pre apprenticeship and submitted to us we have