German apprenticeship model is on full display
GNTC, Mohawk and voestalpine are hosting students for eight weeks.
Jan Gaertner, a German apprentice in electronics from Rosenheim, will spend the next eight weeks at GNTC helping with electrical systems.
If you had walked through the halls of Georgia Northwestern Technical College in Rome for the past two weeks, you might have picked up a little German. The school has hosted a trio of German apprentice students as part of a partnership with the Joachim Herz Foundation that will send the students out to work for the next eight weeks with U.S. companies.
This is the fifth year the Technical College System of Georgia has worked with the Herz Foundation, but the first time GNTC has hosted any of the apprentices. Statewide, 15 German students are in the U.S. participating in the 10-week program.
GNTC President Pete McDonald said the students are typically in the second year of a three- to four-year apprenticeship program in Germany
“The students go through a very elaborate vetting process,” McDonald said. “They are qualified through many layers of testing and it’s a high honor for them to be selected.”
The students being hosted by GNTC include Benjamin Berger, 21, from Erding, who is in his third year with BMW AG Standort Landshut. His specialty is a metal casting mechanic. Pete McDonald
Benjamin Berger, a German apprentice student from Erding, checks over a control panel in a classroom at GNTC. Berger did classroom work in Rome for two weeks and will do an apprenticeship at voestalpine in Bartow County for the next eight weeks.
Jan Gaertner, 19, from Rosenheim, is a secondyear apprentice with Hans Sporer GmBH. He is a young electronics technician specializing in energy and building technology.
Christoph Gurok is a 19-year-old second-year apprentice from Schwarzenbek, who is a specialist in computer systems Doug Walker / RN-T
Christoph Gurok, a German apprentice in the United States on a 10-week work-study program, will be working in information technology for the next eight weeks at Mohawk in Dalton.
integration with Fiege Logistick Stiftung & Co. KG.
“They’re very industrious and have a great work ethic,” McDonald said. “I think they are pleasant, their English is very good.”
Gaertner spent four months teaching himself English before coming to the U.S. in mid-March. He wrote down English Doug Walker / RN-T
words on index cards along with the German translation and memorized them religiously night after night.
Their two-week classroom stint at GNTC ended Friday. Monday morning they will report to work, Berger at voestalpine, an Austrian auto parts supplier in Bartow County; Gurok at Mohawk in Dalton, where he will work in the IT department; and Gaertner will remain in Rome on the GNTC campus doing electrical systems work on a number of big construction projects underway on campus.
The students are living with host families in Bartow, Gordon and Floyd counties.
“Two of our host families this year are actually college employees. Dick Tanner, who teaches Instrumentation and Controls, as well as Brad Cooper, who is one of our data specialists,” McDonald said.
Tanner is hosting Gaertner, and Cooper is hosting Berger, while Gurok is being hosted by a family in Calhoun.
The college is responsible for transporting the students to their work sites and home daily, however, all of the costs are picked up by the Herz Foundation.
“There’s no cost to the state of Georgia,” McDonald said. “The foundation pays the host families for their expenses while they’re here for the food, transportation, the basic kind of things.”
Berger said he is excited about the opportunity to work for an auto parts supplier in the U.S.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for apprentices like us to have this experience and to have a view about this country, not in a tourism view, but we also have a view about real living and the working world,” Berger said.
He also explained he believes the companies which are hosting the German students will learn more about the German apprenticeship model.
Gurok said he applied to participate in the program to see what the companies and technical colleges are like in the U.S. His specialty is in systems integration, which focuses primarily on computer software.
“My English skills will be much better than before,” Gurok said. He believes that will ultimately make him even more valuable to his company in Germany.
The link to the future at home is important because, Berger explained, many companies who invest in apprentices also get them to sign contracts stipulating that they will remain with the company after their apprenticeship is completed.
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