The Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) has given an effective boost to vocational training and education in technology in Pennsylvania, thanks to invaluable support from the Chevron Corp.
The international oil-and-gas colossus has provided guidance in developing the comprehensive API program, which provides technical training to prepare students in West Virginia and Ohio as well as Pennsylvania for careers in the energy industry and in the high-end manufacturing sector as well. Chevron also came forward with an ante of $20 million that lifted the API initiative off the ground in 2014.
The API has since blossomed into a focused and high-functioning program that brings up-to-date training to students, including those with special needs or kids who are more inclined to hands-on, project-based training as opposed to what Jim Denova, vice president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation called, “lecturing, memorizing, testing and forgetting.”
The generous presence of Chevron also enabled the API to expand beyond state and county boundaries and forge a truly regional program that might not be possible if it were to be organized by disparate state and local district education departments. After its launch five years ago, the API program has touched around 80,000 students and provided updated training for some 1,000 teachers in 27 counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.
“Having a consortium and funding partner led by corporate responsibility was a really powerful asset,” Denova said during a recent webinar on the status of the API. “I have to underscore the value of a corporate lead.”
The Benedum Foundation is one of the regional non-profit organizations that make up the API, providing support for educational programs in the Pittsburgh area and parts of West Virginia.
Denova noted that the Benedum Foundation is somewhat unique in the area because it not only covers more than one state, but also works in rural counties rather than being limited to urban centers. Denova said the territory is also part of the “footprint” that Chevron has occupied since it began producing gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Those operations require a steady supply of skilled workers in the various trades that keep the gas flowing.
Trip Oliver, corporate affairs manager at Chevron, said the company was looking at the labor pool in Appalachia back in 2012 and determined the region’s schools and job-training programs were not producing enough students with the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) acumen needed to keep its operations humming. “We had a significant skills gap in the workforce,” he said.
Because it had a vested interest in the tri-state region, Chevron was all in. Because of its ability to operate beyond state lines, the company played a key role in getting a wide range of school districts and state education officials on the same page in terms of the program’s objectives. “We focus on improving instruction in those areas,” Oliver said. “Our approach went well beyond funding.”
The API, however, is not exclusively a farm system for Chevron and its Marcellus operations. The skills being honed through the program are also applicable to manufacturing, a $15 billion sector in Pennsylvania that has been chronically short of skilled labor for years and is happy to hire API alumni.
“There is a very common skill set used by both energy and manufacturing,” said Linda Topoleski, vice president of workforce operations and programs at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. “We needed to establish the skill sets that are needed now and also 10 years from now.”
The outreach efforts of API begin at the middle-school level by raising awareness of manufacturing as an eventual career path. The process continues into high school where students learn hands-on in well-equipped FabLab classrooms. Further training is available to grads at the community college level where API has also provided input. “We need to get all students focused on the associate’s degree,” Denova said.
By providing a level of leadership on a multi-state level – not to mention writing a check for $20 million – Chevron was a true white knight for the Appalachia region.
Chevron’s Oliver summed it up: “This has been a labor of love for all of us for the past five years.”