By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Hanging with middle school students can be humbling.
Take an old reporter who is schooled by a rising sixth grader.
Anna Xie, from Perrysburg, explained to the reporter that what she and her peers were doing at the Wood County S.T.E.M Manufacturing Camp was not 3D printing. It was the opposite. Instead of adding material they were taking it away. Lesson learned.
Visiting Senator Sherrod Brown got his own taste of this.
He could not manage to keep a top spinning as long as the campers did. And one of them topped him in an algebra quiz.
All that’s fine with the senator. The students love algebra and math, and this camp aims to show them that they can find good paying jobs that use those skills in the manufacturing sector.
Since 2013, Brown’s office has been organizing camps like this across the state. This summer there will be 36 camps in 26 counties.
“There’s a lot of life in manufacturing,” Brown said during Monday’s visit to the camp at Owens Community College’s Dana Incorporated Advanced Manufacturing Center. “We buried the term ‘Rust Belt’ in this country. We finally have federal local partnerships to help train workers of the future, and most importantly we do manufacturing in Ohio better than in any other states. I want children young kids to learn the possibilities.”
Not every youngster, he said, wants t or should go to college. They can make good livings working with the brains and hands. That’s what many people in preceding generations did. But there haven’t been enough of these middle-class jobs.
“That’s why we finally have an industrial policy in this country. The biggest investment the government’s ever made in giving incentives for clean energy. That’s one reason First Solar is hiring more people because they know there’s a future,” Brown said. “They’re getting some government incentives. They’re expanding. They’re growing.” And other jobs in companies that supply First Solar will be coming to Northwest Ohio as well.
First Solar, along with Penta Career Center, Bowling Green City Schools, and Owens are the local sponsors of the Wood County camp.
Owens Community College President Dione D. Somerville said the path to technical education is no longer a strict division between those who attend college and those who don’t. The process is fluid.
“I would prefer to look at it as a continuum,” she said. Once someone completes high school, whether with a diploma or GED, “you look beyond that to short-term training certificates that lead to associate degrees” then to bachelor’s and master’s degrees and beyond.
That process is embodied in the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics launched in late 2021 by Bowling Green State University, Owens, and the University of Findlay.
Students coming from Penta and Owens know they need further training, Brown said. “They go through a union apprentice program as a carpenter, as a millwright, as an insulator, as a carpenter. Those are good middle-class jobs, and they’re not going to run up college debt. That’s the choice kids are going to make. … I want these kids to be interested in math and working with their hands and their brains earlier than they might otherwise.”
Brown said he’s optimistic about the future of manufacturing in Ohio. “I just look around the state. I see First Solar. Not far from where we stand is the largest solar manufacturer in the United States,” he said. “I see new investments in clean energy. We have the cleanest produced steel in the world in Cleveland. We’re seeing all kinds of opportunities with batteries, with all kinds of traditional manufacturing products. We’re making them cleaner. We’re making them address climate change with lower carbon emissions. All the things we need to do as a country.”
Manufacturing continues to be important, Brown said. “It means when you build something in this country. … Somebody machined these parts. Somebody used equipment like this,” he said gesturing the Owens manufacturing facility. These are “well-trained people, well-trained technicians, well-trained machinist who make parts to power our cars and computers.”
At the camp, Brown said, “they’re teaching these kids what goes into this. … I try to see it through the eager eyes of these fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh graders.”
For her part, Anna from Perrysburg said she loves making things. Earlier this summer she went to another camp at Penta where she made a candle holder. She’s missing swim team practice. She’d rather be at manufacturing camp.
Is this a possible future career? She doesn’t know. At this point, she’s more concerned with eating her turkey sub for lunch.
