FINDING THEIR PATH
Catholic school in Emsworth helps students decide on careers through ‘pre-apprenticeships’
In one wing of MSA Safety’s labyrinthine corporate campus in Cranberry, Alex Hernandez spends his days exploring new design concepts for a digital computer that controls manufacturing.
In another department, Paul Covington labors away at a gutted circuit board, bumping elbows with technicians and engineers.
Mr. Hernandez said his mom always saw him as a doctor. Mr. Covington thought he wanted to be a lawyer.
Instead, with a little help from a translated German manual, their school — Nazareth College and Career Prep, the independent Catholic high school in Emsworth formerly called Holy Family Academy — helped them get started on careers of a different sort.
The young men work as apprentices in a new mechatronics technician program at MSA Safety, a manufacturer of safety equipment such as gas detection devices, breathing apparatuses, hard hats and harnesses.
“You get to dip your toe in the water and see if you actually like it,” said Mr. Hernandez, 18, standing next to a simulated programmable logic controller. “My mom, she’s super ecstatic at the fact I’m working here,” he said, adding that he’s the first person in his family to pursue higher education.
Apprenticeships — an arrangement by which an employer pays
workers a salary as they take training courses, in addition to working shifts — are having a moment. They’ve garnered rare bipartisan agreement among workforce officials hoping to connect job seekers with employers amid a sea change in the demand for skills.
Last year, the Trump administration pledged $200 million in federal funds to support 5 million more apprenticeships nationwide. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has announced $7 million to help companies fund apprenticeships, with the goal of doubling the number of apprentices in the state to 30,000 by 2025.
Mr. Wolf has sent his deputies to the Pittsburgh region several times to raise awareness of the effort. Last Friday, it was Dennis Davin, secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development, who dropped by Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 12 in Harmar to tout a nearly $300,000 apprenticeship expansion.
Nazareth Prep’s program, launched this fall, is the first in the region, and second in the state, that reaches into high schools. Called a “preapprenticeship,” it is designed to get students halfway to an apprenticeship by the time they graduate.
It’s unusual to see a focus on apprenticeships at a prep school — reflecting an attitude that Lisa M. AbelPalmieri, head of school and chief learning officer at Nazareth Prep, is trying to change.
“Sometimes that’s a hard sell because so much has been put into funneling students to four-year colleges,” Ms. Abel-Palmieri said.
Parents often send their kids to Nazareth Prep as a steppingstone to a traditional four-year college or more, she said. Many are first-generation college students who end up as doctors and lawyers.
“There are other pathways to choose from,” she said.
Demand for mechatronics — a blend of mechanical and electrical engineering — emerged with the rise of oil and gas drilling and advanced manufacturing. MSA, which has hosted interns from Nazareth Prep for years, decided about a year ago to pursue a bigger partnership with the school.
The motivation was clear for MSA, which displays the evolution of its products down a long hallway. The company has found new ways to make safety equipment designed to be smaller, lighter and integrated with technology.
“We saw tremendous opportunities there because we have concerns for the future, finding the right skilled labor,” said Jerry Todd, manufacturing engineering manager for MSA.
For the program to get off the ground, the school and company leaned on a translation of a German apprenticeship manual.
Germany has integrated hands-on learning into its high schools for more than a century. Although Americans link apprenticeships to a skilled trade, Germany has 365 programs across virtually all professions, including banking, marketing and communications.
“Basically, the idea is the student never learns a theoretical skill without applying it,” said Rachel Mauer, president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the German American Chamber of Commerce. “Any time we talked to the German companies, they say, ‘I wish we had the German system here.’”
Ms. Mauer decided to bring the German manual to Pittsburgh. Mechatronics — a skill in high demand among German companies — was the first to launch at Nazareth Prep. The group has also launched a polymer technology program that focuses on the plastic industry.
MSA is one of eight regional companies — and the only one not based in Germany — to participate in mechatronics. Apprentices, including Mr. Covington and Mr. Hernandez, attend the Community College of Allegheny County one day a week to supplement their work experience.
Mr. Todd said MSA pays apprentices $13.75 an hour for the first 1,000 hours, then it jumps to $14 an hour for the next 1,000 hours, and then $15 an hour after that.
With an apprenticeship certificate, the employee can be a machinist or technician. MSA offers a tuition reimbursement program that pays 90 percent of college courses that apprentices can take part time once they are with the company for one year.
Mr. Covington, 19, said he’s considering that option, eyeing Point Park University for engineering so he can become a mechatronics engineer. For now, he’s learning the ropes with dismantled circuit boards.
“You’ll know how to do everything in mechatronics,” he said. “I can’t engineer unless I know how it physically works and is put together.”