Roberto Gonzalez has been clamoring for a new career.
Gonzalez, 24, is a longtime kitchen worker, cooking as a sous chef and turning orders in a handful of restaurants on Madison’s Far West Side.
But last week, Gonzalez was at Madison Area Technical College’s new “Invitation to Manufacturing” night course, seeking a better life as a welder.
Gonzalez’s mother had found the class during a visit to the Latino Academy of Workforce Development but decided against enrolling herself this semester to leave a spot open for him.
With an eye toward owning his own business some day, Gonzalez hopes to find work at a company where he can learn on the job while pursuing a welding technical diploma.
“The sky’s the limit, just depending on if you want to go out there and grab it or not,” he said.
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MATC, also known as Madison College, this year launched a free eight-week program that teaches basic skills in common areas of Wisconsin’s manufacturing industry. Over the course of the program, students can learn how to weld, fabricate metal or operate automated machinery that can create a variety of household products.
The program is supported by a $2.9 million innovation grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, part of a larger $128 million state grant program meant to address pandemic-related workforce challenges.
MATC’s plans for the grant also include expanding child care access to address long waiting lists of student parents.
Like other states, Wisconsin is grappling with workforce shortages in the manufacturing sector. A 2022 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report found that finding and retaining quality employees were the top two concerns for large companies.
Nationwide, the manufacturing industry expects to be short 2.1 million workers by 2030.
Ron Olson, associate dean for MATC’s School of Technology and Trades, said workers often don’t know how modern manufacturing facilities work, which can limit the number of people who pursue that career.
“For some people, there’s a stigma that we need to erase, that manufacturing is a dark, dirty environment. It’s completely opposite of that ... it’s clean, it’s bright, it’s full of technology and opportunity,” Olson said.
“It’s about exposing them to what those opportunities are. And that’s what I tell the participants when they come into this program on the very first night — this is really about exploration, exploring your future opportunities.”
The program targets those who are unemployed or are considered to be underemployed, defined as people working part-time, low-wage or low-skill jobs that don’t tap into a worker’s skill set. It’s also marketed for people looking to change careers.
MATC markets the program through community partners, including Urban League of Greater Madison, Centro Hispano of Dane County and Badger Prairie Needs Network, to also pull in people of color who are underrepresented in the manufacturing industry.
Held on weeknights twice a week, most of the program is dedicated to hands-on training in the shop or the lab. Students cap off the program by preparing their resumes and sitting in mock interviews with companies. Some of those interviews could turn into real jobs, with MATC hoping those companies will in turn send their workers back for apprenticeship programs.
People who complete the program receive credits they can apply to future degree programs.
More on table
MATC is hoping to expand its offerings. While the college is running welding/metal fabrication and metal machining programs, it’s already advertising for a plastics processing class. In the coming years, Madison College hopes to copy the model for other careers such as transportation.
Students enroll for myriad reasons.
Some are like Indulecio Chavarria, 59, who is already a metal fabricator and is taking the class with his son, Alexander, 21, to improve his skills.
Gynarva Monroe, 33, a newly hired senior adviser at MATC, said he not only loves learning for himself but is using the classes to broaden his knowledge for his students.
“I want to be able to have experience to back up things I talk to students about,” Monroe said. “Use myself as an example, like, ‘Hey, I was taking the classes, too, and it’s OK to continue to develop your learning and develop skills ... and just explore. So hopefully that can serve as a form of motivation.”
Regional approaches
MATC’s sister colleges also are using millions in WEDC grants to solve workforce problems, many of them also in the area of manufacturing or the trades.
Sam Rikkers, deputy secretary and chief operating officer for WEDC, said each technical school that received state grant money is taking a regional approach to solving workforce issues.
Chippewa Valley Technical College, in Eau Claire, is partnering with high schools and local manufacturers to give students on-site training in manufacturing. At Mid-State Technical College in Stevens Point, construction is underway on an advanced manufacturing training center.
At Southwest Technical College in Fennimore, grant funds are being used to teach classes both in English and Spanish. Wisconsin’s Hispanic and Latino populations have grown rapidly since 2000. In Grant County, for example, the Hispanic population has grown from just under 300 in 2000 to more than 1,200 in 2020.
The workforce development programs are looking to combat what Rikkers calls “the silver tsunami” — labor shortages caused by high rates of retirement by Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964. Members of that generation were workhorses in the manufacturing field, Rikkers said.
“This is exactly why much of the $128 million that the governor invested into tackling our workforce challenges went to those tech schools, or at least partnerships with tech schools,” Rikkers said.
“Those are the partners that are really modernizing how we’re teaching manufacturing, and they’re the folks that are connected either to the students who are coming up or the incumbent workforce that knows that they need to reskill to really be competitive.”