NSF Awards: 1763558
MAGNET's Early College, Early Career (ECEC) program is the nation's only holistic manufacturing pre-apprenticeship focused on connecting inner-city and rural high school students to long-term, high-wage, rewarding careers in manufacturing. By weaving together eight critical programmatic elements for the first time – including wrap-around services, parent and educator engagement, transportation, mentoring, and more – ECEC offers a replicable, scalable solution that will revitalize communities through expanding middle-class manufacturing employment.
ECEC is currently active in ten high schools across three counties. With inclusion as a central goal, over 80 percent of participating students are from minority or low-income communities. We've created an “earn, learn and return” model built for scaling nationally. Through leveraging technology, any community could replicate, building their talent pipelines, strengthening companies, and elevating families. Teh program innovates through focusing on often-overlooked but critical elements of training: company leadership, transportation, wrap-around support services, soft skills training, mentorship, long-term evaluation, clear college/career paths, and more.
For ECEC, over the past three years MAGNET has developed partnerships with Tri-C and Lorain County Community College for students’ college classes, where the students earn 15 college credits and certifications; with ten companies for training, with the companies paying $9-12 per hour, offering tuition reimbursement for employees, and considering their interns for full-time employment; with the State of Ohio, as ECEC is aligned with the Department of Education’s Alternative Pathway to Graduation standards; and ten high schools across six different school districts across Lake, Lorain, and Cuyahoga counties.
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Hi everyone - Autumn and I are excited to share the Early College, Early Career (ECEC) program with you. This holistic, groundbreaking approach to youth apprenticeship is revolutionizing STEM education for Cleveland's inner-city youth. Our first class of graduates has taken full advantage, with 100% on a clear college and/or career path. We're looking for more success as our second cohort graduates this month! Most importantly, we built ECEC so it is easily scalable to other communities, and financially sustainable through employer fees. Watch the video, feel free to comment or ask a question, and let us know if you'd like to hear more about our model!
Steven Greenstein
Associate Professor
Thank you so much for doing this work! I really appreciate how much you honor these students' expressed needs and intentions. No doubt they appreciate it, too. And thank you for being honest about the work you're doing in light of and in response to COVID-19.
How are students recruited to participate in this program? How do they understand the opportunity you're providing them? How do they navigate the decisions they have to make between choosing a career in manufacturing against other college and career opportunities?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
We spend a full two years - 9th and 10th grades - focusing on manufacturing awareness, so students in these high schools are well aware of the long-term, rewarding careers available to them through manufacturing. They take plant tours, hear from guest speakers, tour the manufacturing program at their local community college, and more. Then, interested applicants are evaluated based on important work-related factors like attendance, behavior, and interest. They even interview with the employers themselves, so they start building that relationship early. Parents and administrators are also engaged through Open Houses, tours, in-service days, and more. So we thoughtfully and methodically introduce them to all their options and get them thinking about their futures!
Steven Greenstein
Ann-Claire Anderson
Loved learning about your program! The matriculation to college rate is really impressive. Often "selling" manufacturing careers to parents is difficult. Have you been able to measure parent engagement and response? What percentage of project effort goes into this piece of the puzzle?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Hi Ann-Claire - you're exactly right about the challenges of getting parents engaged in manufacturing. You know about the 4 D's: people think manufactuing is dark, dirty, dangerous, and dying. We have to dispell those notions with the 4 C's: manufacturing is cool, challenging, creative, and commendable. We have one staff member devoted to career awareness activities across the 10 high schools, and I would say 25% of that program is parent engagement. (An important side note - once students are accepted to the program in 11th and 12th grades, communication with parents becomes even more important!) To date, our experience with the parents has been only anecdotal - we hear great stories and positive feedback from them. Occasionally, a parent will even apply for a manufacturing job as a result of seeing these plants firsthand! It's a good area for further research :-)
Steven Greenstein
Associate Professor
Scaling is typically complex, as you know. What makes this model easily scalable?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Hi Steven - Good question. We're building what we're calling, "ECEC in a Box." This will be a collection of materials that can easily be adapted to new communities. We've created employer guides, parent guides, marketing materials, templates for the Open Houses, assessments/quizzes/surveys, and more. Once we have some interested communities, we can package them up and make it easier for a new community to launch their own version of ECEC.
Steven Greenstein
Ed Robeck
Director
This is clearly an inspiring program for students. The students in the video really seemed to speak to the effect that you have not only on the students' identities, but also their access to resources and the systems that can make them successful in the future. You speak in the video in terms of some aggregate statistics--matriculation, for example. I wonder if you're also tracking individual data about self-efficacy and other factors that might undergird long-term success.
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Hi Ed - Yes, it was too much for this video, but through our ITEST grant we are collecting both qualitative and quantitative data. This includes the effect of the program on both ECEC students (and those students not accepted to the program). These include changes to the individual's feelings of self-efficacy, visions for themselves in the future, and understanding of STEM careers. Stay tuned as we're still gathering and crunching this data!
Ed Robeck
Director
At the end of the video you offer to talk to others who might want to apply what you've achieved in their communities. Is there anything that would make a community more or less likely to be able to implement this wonderful work?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
I'm glad you like the program! I can tell you that providing transportation is very expensive, as we're schlepping students from their schools to manufacturers throughout Northeast Ohio. A region that is dense with manufacturers would allow for more efficient transportation from school to work. Two strong community colleges (LCCC and Tri-C) willing to adapt to this ambitious program has been extremely helpful. Finally, this program is also heavily dependent upon philanthropy, so a generous community (like Cleveland) has allowed us to provide the holistic services low-income students need like transportation, mentorship, professional development, and more.
Betsy Stefany
The advantage of the Ohio location with the strong tradition of collaboration with community is striking. How do you advise states with smaller manufacturing businesses to apply what you have developed into an extension of the apprentice concept? Are there specific aspects that can be successful through virtual extensions?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Good questions!
A) We have lots of small manufacturing businesses involved. Probably the easiest adaptation of ECEC to a smaller community is to pair one company with one local high school, and encourage plant tours, guest speakers, etc all geared towards that one small manufacturer. If the term "apprenticeship" is scary for the employer, just call it a paid internship. Very few schools can set up a program like this on their own, so there's definitely a role for an intermediary to broker and oversee these partnerships.
B) Virtual is harder, but not impossible. There are online CNC simulators, ToolingU has tons of classes, and EdgeFactor has outstanding online manufacturing content. In this post-COVID world, everything is online...so it's definitely doable!
Ann-Claire Anderson
David Campbelll
Program Director (retired)
This program has great potential for replication and adoption by community colleges. LCCC has had awards from NSF’s ATE program; there may be other ATE awardees that would be interested in working with you.
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
We'd be very interested! Our local community colleges are familiar with the program and have their own ATEs. But if a community college from outside Northeast Ohio wants to partner with us on a future ATE application, please reach out to me!
David Campbelll
Program Director (retired)
Have you looked into dual enrollment with community colleges, so students could have some college credits when they graduate high school?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Yes, ECEC students start college classes in 11th grade (hence the "early college" part of the name!). Taking one class every semester, as well as labs and other credit opportunities, they graduate high school and ECEC with up to 15 college credits. This is paid for by the State of Ohio's College Credit Plus program. ECEC is so important because of students who utilize College Credit Plus in Ohio, fully 70 percent are Caucasian, while just 7.6 percent are African-American and 1.6 percent are Hispanic.
Ed Liu
I am struck by the attention you've paid to replication and sustainability, and the extent to which you've engaged local industry partners. Very exciting. Advanced manufacturing is a great area of focus. We're in Year 2 of an ITEST program and building similar pathways in Computer Science, Health and Life Science, and Engineering. The Engineering program will have a manufacturing emphasis. I'm excited to see other programs implementing pathways and balancing industry specific training with early college, so students have a broad set of options to pursue.
Dave Miller
Awesome project and thanks for sharing it, here. Impressive connectedness you've built and are building between K-12 and regional mfg in your area. Sounds like there might also be a framework for transferring credits into 2- and 4-year programs in your area. Curious to learn more and am going to share this vid with local collaborators in our area who are pioneering these efforts in the Upstate and Western NY region through our NYS BOCES programs.
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
You bet...thanks for the positive feedback! Sorry it doesn't come through in the video strongly enough, but ECEC students start community college in 11th grade and will take 4 classes before graduation. So they leave high school with up to 15 college credits, all paid for through Ohio's College Credit Plus program. The "Early College" part of ECEC is really important as it gets students thinking about their educational future, familiar with a college campus, and halfway towards that Associates Degree!