On Tuesday, Nov. 15, during National Apprenticeship Week, over forty students from Waupun High School and Fond du Lac High School ACE Academy attended an event in the MPTC Conference Center to learn about apprenticeship and career opportunities in the trades.

To help share this information, Jessica Williams from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development was eager to explain all things apprenticeship, and Jon Hirsch from Auer Steel spoke about careers in the trades and HVAC. During the experience, students also toured Culinary Arts, the Automotive Lab, and the Electricity Lab, learning about careers in each area from instructors James Simmers, Frank Corrente, Gus Gustavus, and Josh Cohn. In addition, the high school students got to hear first-hand from four current apprentices in the electrician and maintenance technician fields to learn what motivated each of them to pursue an apprenticeship.  

Another great chance to share information about apprenticeships and careers in the trades took place on Thursday, Dec. 8, on Moraine Park’s West Bend campus. During this event, 13 students from West Bend High School took a break from their project constructing a mini-home in the Building-in-a-Building to get hands-on experience as novice plumbers. This activity, led by Jon Hirsch (Auer Steel), had teams of students construct a sealed copper tube assembly complete with an air valve to test pressure. Bending the copper, proper fitting of joints, and making soldered connections were all part of the activity.

MPTC HVAC instructor, Kevin Niedfeld, and his program students then held a Q&A to share a bit about what drew them to careers in HVAC. Steve Horvath, Associate Dean of Trades shared information on how to become an apprentice as an entry to a career.

“Giving young people a hands-on feel for experiencing a trade is one of the best recruitment tools there is,” Hirsch said.

Taken together, these two events were very successful and proved a great opportunity to share information with high school students who will soon be making decisions about their futures.

Submitted by Stephen Horvath, Associate Dean of Trades

On Friday, February 22^nd, 2019 on a beautiful late-winter day, 9 ABC Carpentry Apprentices, under the guidance of their instructor, Gary Roehrig, installed custom-made, heavy-duty cabinets into two of the houses in the Gas Utility Construction Training Neighborhood on the Beaver Dam campus. The carpenter apprentices built the cabinets in the woodshop on the West Bend campus, where they attend school, as part of their Advanced Cabinetmaking course. This course was developed and is being taught by Mr. Roehrig, a long-time instructor for the apprenticeship at Moraine Park.

The partnership between the apprenticeship program and the Gas Utility Construction program began unwittingly two years ago when, as part of their formal instruction, the carpenter apprentices built six 8×12 foot ‘sheds’ to gain practice designing and building small wooden structures. The original intent of this effort was to sell the sheds to local business or homeowners for use as brat-fry stands or for personal use. During the same time, planning was well underway to create the new gas program on the Beaver Dam campus, when the idea arose to use the 6 sheds—now called ‘houses’—to form a training neighborhood that gas program students could use for their own training.

The idea took hold, and even expanded to include two additional houses that were configured to be able to store tools and small equipment, thus making a training neighborhood of 8 houses. In late April, 2018, the 8 houses were transported from the West Bend woodshop and placed on concrete pads at the Beaver Dam campus, in time for the new program to start in June. Business and industry partners who contributed to the gas program capital campaign had plaques attached to the sides of the houses in recognition of their generosity.

As this phase of the partnership was reaching its’ end, a collaborative idea between Steve Horvath, Associate Dean of Trades, and Gary Roehrig came up, which was to have this year’s carpenter apprentices build the cabinets for the 2 extra houses. The intent in installing the heavy-duty cabinets is that in the future, the gas program students and instructor will be able to store supplies and small equipment out ‘in the field’, where it will be handy to access, rather than have to go back into the main lab for what is needed. For their part, the carpenter apprentices gained valuable skills in designing and building top-quality cabinets from scratch.

When the task was completed in the early afternoon of Feb. 22^nd, Associate Dean Horvath thanked the carpentry apprentices and their instructor, telling them they had accomplished a task that is much appreciated and one which will have a long-lasting positive impact on another program in the college.