NSF Awards: 1763558
Through adapting the best of European-style manufacturing apprenticeships to the American educational system, MAGNET is teaching roughly 80 students across seven Northeast Ohio high schools valuable STEM knowledge; work skills through a two-year paid internship; and soft skills like communication, teamwork, and financial acumen to ensure they have long, successful careers in any field. A recipient of an NSF ITEST grant, ECEC is currently launching research to understand the impact of this unique approach to STEM education.
MAGNET's ECEC program is the first manufacturing pre-apprenticeship of its kind in the country to weave together eight critical elements into one seamless high school-to-career pathway, then implement it at scale across three counties and nine employers. Those elements are: employer driven, with the goal of a job offer for participating students; career awareness in 9th and 10th grades; earn-and-learn paid apprenticeships during the school day in 11th and 12th grade; college credit and manufacturing certifications, also in 11th and 12th grade; parent and educator engagement; a debt-reduced path to college through employer tuition reimbursement programs; extracurricular support, such as mentorship, transportation, and social services; and creating a scalable, replicable, and sustainable model that can work anywhere in the country in a break-even way.
The goal of ECEC is simple: create career pathways for ECEC graduates to work full time in living-wage careers, attend two- or four-year college, or some combination that allows the student to earn a salary in the short-term while educating themselves for career advancement.
David Campbell
Program Officer (retired)
This looks like a nice, ambitious project. What data will you collect to demonstrate evidence of success?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Great question, thank you. Through our ITEST grant, we are tracking a wide range of short- and long-term outcomes. In the short-term, we're looking at graduation rates, attendance, and other academic measures of ECEC students vs. their non-ECEC peers. In the long-term, we'll be looking at wage and job progression, college achievement, additional certifications earned, and more. We're excited to announce that the first class of 27 students just graduated and - in a city where only 45 percent of students matriculate to college - 78 percent of our ECEC graduates are heading to college, and 12 will be continuing to work at their employers.
We are hoping to demonstrate that ECEC is an effective, replicable, and scalable strategy for revitalizing STEM education and improving career pathways for inner-city youth.
Mary Murphy
Instructor
What a great, comprehensive approach!! Your write-up mentions 80 students have been served. I can imagine the demand for this type of program would be much higher. Do you have a sense of how much growth over time you can expect? Have you received any feedback from companies about their willingness to pay as part of your future business model? What have been some of the bumps along the way and how are you adapting to address the bumps.
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Thank you for the kind words! Yes, demand from employers is very high, and the companies have indicated that they are willing to pay IF we can prove that these students become their future workforce. While the demand is there, we're trying scale smartly and support the students as much as possible. We're growing to 100 students next school year :-), and we're figure adding two schools per year is reasonable. Honestly, it comes down to funding, as this program is completely funded through philanthropy and government grants.
Throughout this process, we have solicited and received feedback from students, schools, and companies on how to improve the program. One essential goal is to fight attrition: through these efforts, like increasing mentoring, attrition has dropped from 27 percent in the first cohort to 8 percent in the second cohort. In addition, we have improved the selection process: we have revised the interview questions, tightened the application requirements, and formalized the orientation. We have also seen the potential of offering additional industry certifications, such as welding, CNC, and CAD. Expanding the number of educational options should increase student engagement in the educational component of ECEC. Finally, we determined that ninth-grade programming wasn't effective, as it was to far from the actual ECEC selection process. Instead, we are intensifying our 10th grade programming to get more students excited in the Fall, then they can go right into interviewing and selection in the Spring.
Using the results and feedback from the students, parents, employers, and schools, we will continue making tangible internal and external improvements in the program!
Stephanie Arthur
I am originally from Columbus. Now I work in Hillsborough County, Tampa which is the 9th largest school district in the U.S. Your outreach for connections between STEM fields for students who traditionally would not have access is inspiring. I am working on developing strategies for implementing more culturally responsive approaches for pedagogy while focusing on equity awareness in my own work as a university mentor/supervisor working with preservice teacher interns. Do you work with any of the local colleges/universities as well and do they also provide mentoring and coaching?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Yes! I wish we had more time to get into this in the video. Our students take classes at two local community colleges (based on the closest college): Lorain Community College and Cuyahoga Community College.
We don't use them for mentoring and coaching; instead, we take three approaches:
1. We have two full-time mentors on staff at MAGNET, one for the junior class and one for the senior class.
2. We partner with a local nonprofit, Youth Opportunities Unlimited, to support our students in several ways and connect them to valuable resources.
3. We partner with a private company that specializes in professional development for high school students. Juniors get an hour of professional development every week, and seniors get 6.5 hours every quarter.
We find that this diversified approach really plays to the strengths of all three organizations, instead of asking one organization to do everything.
Stephanie Arthur
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Quick update, everyone! For the 2018-2019 school year, 73 students (27 seniors, 46 juniors) worked in paid internships across nine companies. Most importantly, the senior class completed 12 credits at Tri-C and earned their NIMS Level One credential. Of the 27 seniors that graduated, 21 will be attending college (78%, vs the Cleveland average of 45%), with 12 continuing to work at their current companies and leveraging their tuition reimbursement programs. MAGNET is actively tracking all students and graduates, with the goal of improving the program based on the outcomes of this first class of ECEC graduates.
Susannah O'Shea
Jacob Grohs
Assistant Professor
Thanks for sharing! Collaborating with industry partners is likely challenging at times given the different context of each organization and that when students and industry work together, each likely has to learn a bit about how to work with the other. Any tips or best practices you have discovered as you work with so many different students and organizations? You mention playing to the strength of the organizations above which is great -- how did those strengths get identified and how have you balanced the pull that any collaborative effort often requires organizations/individuals to go above and beyond to meet regular organizational expectations as well as contribute to the partnership?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
Hi Jacob - collaboration is indeed challenging. I think our two best practices are
1) have a clear, written contract in place with tangible metrics that both parties agree to, and
2) as part of this contract, there has to be a clear win-win for both organizations. We have been able to use our funding to create a strong client-customer relationship, so we get great service from these nonprofit partners.
Quite honestly, the strengths were identified through trial and error. We also had to hire the right people, people who truly care and will go the extra mile for our students. Education, as you know, is really a "people" business, and we've been blessed to find the right people to make this program a success.
Thank you for your support!
Susannah O'Shea
This sounds like some successful work!
Do these students complete the program during their high school day or after school?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
During the high school day; we take them out one full day for their internship and one half-day for their community college classes. It takes a real partnership with each high school to ensure this works for the students, but it has worked well!
Mary Murphy
Instructor
Do you have a sense of how many students would like to be in the program and would be eligible but there isn't the capacity?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
So in every school, we tend to have double the number of students interested as we have spots from local companies. We want to be selecting the right students, so we're really focused on quality over quantity. Once we've strengthened the model a little bit more, we can recruit more companies to offer internships. But if I could wave a magic wand, we could double the size of the program overnight :-)
Kevin Fleming
Thanks for showcasing your program. It addresses many critical needs in K-12 and college-career readiness. Have you measured industry/job site partners' attitudes or changes in their practices with a more purposeful connection with students?
Matthew Fieldman
VP, External Affairs
This is a fascinating question! We don't have any hard data yet, but we've had lots of great anecdotes on how both executives and line workers have loved working with students. We've heard everything from, "We have workers specifically requesting to work alongside the ECEC students," and "We were really worried about these students negatively impacting our work culture, but they have done the complete opposite," to the students telling us, "We feel so supported by our co-workers. They will give us some tough love sometimes, but we really appreciate it." Through our ITEST grant and the research it is funding, we'll put some hard data to those positive stories!
Cynthia Crockett
Hi Matthew and Autumn,
this is a fantastic program! I am from the NE OH area and am now on the east coast. The region I am in is very rural and manufacturing is having a difficult time filling positions (we have a historically low unemployment rate). That said, when they are able to get younger employees, they frequently do not show up, don't show up on time, or generally are unable to follow the expectations of employment. This is a terrific opportunity to get high school students experience in the world or work, training, and reward for hard work. Have you explored 1)implementing this into rural areas and 2) implementing a mechanism where manufacturing businesses outside of your area could implement this program?
Thank you and congratulations!
Tom Yeh
Great work. I agree with several of the other posters had said about your program's ability to engage students in real work. The experiences with a real-world manufacturing shop is extremely valuable. In addition, I noticed in your project summary that financial acumen is a key skill your program aims to promote. I just thought it is rather unique. I wonder whether there's a good instrument you will use to measure effect on financial acumen.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.