In a recent interview with APPA, Robin Schoettlin, Recruiting and Outreach Senior Specialist at Nebraska public power utility Lincoln Electric System, details a new LES initiative that aims to provide high school students with a structured opportunity to observe, learn from, and interact with professionals in a real work environment.
She discussed the Power Pathways program in an APPA Public Power Now podcast episode.
LES is hosting the Power Pathway days and each will be a half-day session designed for high school students who want to explore careers in energy.
The first session took place on Feb. 25 and focused on engineering. The March session will focus on technology and April will focus on skilled trades.
“During each event, we'll welcome students and give a general overview of Lincoln Electric System. Talk about safety -- what and why it's important to our industry. And then we're going to break out the students into groups to explore different stations,” Schoettlin said.
For the engineering pathway day, there were stations for asset management and planning, substation, system operations, transmission and asset planning, and projects engineering.
Each engineering department designed a presentation or a hands-on activity to present to the students so they could have a firsthand experience of what it's like to work as an engineer in a power company.
After the exploration stations, students had the opportunity to listen to and ask questions at a career panel during lunch.
The last piece of the program provides students with the opportunity to talk with local colleges that have engineering programs.
Schoettlin detailed what prompted LES to develop the program.
“It was probably a couple of things happening at the same time. Our public school system here in Lincoln has a curriculum for 11th graders that require those students to complete a job shadow program experience as part of their curriculum so every student has to find a job shadow,” she noted.
Over the course of the semester, “we typically would get these requests from students and pair them with experts based on their interest area, so that was something that we had been doing on an ongoing basis,” but LES was only able to accommodate a small group of students.
Each student request took up three to four hours per student “as they would come and be on site for that job shadow experience, so this program was designed to streamline those requests and connect more students at one time.”
At about the same time, LES was “thinking, okay, how could we streamline this process? We had an inquiry from one of our executive team members who happened to have a high school student, and he was asking if there was any opportunity for his son to come and explore careers in energy.”
That request “landed on the desk of our creative learning and development team -- she dreamed up the framework of the model of Power Pathways Day,” Schoettlin said. “And so when she presented it to the recruiting and outreach team, we got really, really excited.”
Schoettlin noted that “when you look at the data, and you think about the forecast for our workforce into the future, this is something that we really need to explore as an industry.”
Often students “decide what they want to be when they grow up as early as middle school or elementary school or the other extreme, students don't have the opportunity to explore a variety of careers. And they don't really feel like they have much direction after graduation.”
LES is hoping this program meets both needs. “If a student can be inspired early on and be shown the pathway to get there, it just jumpstarts that process. I believe it will bring what they're learning in the classroom to life, and then they get to interact with industry professionals,” Schoettlin said.
“So perhaps they can see themselves doing the same work in the future. We're just really excited for the next generation of students to know how cool our industry is, how it works, and who makes it happen. Because they're using their phone every day, they're turning on the light switch, they're using Wi-Fi, and this just really brings to life what is happening behind all of that.”
In the interview, she also detailed the ways in which the utility is getting the word out to the Lincoln, Nebraska, community with respect to the new program.
“I think engagement with our community is really a core value for us and we have really leveraged those relationships that we've built over the years to launch this. We partner with Lincoln Public Schools for a variety of events. Our education team is in their classrooms and helping build curriculum and things like that.”
LES had the opportunity to engage the curriculum director “and so we were able to give our ideas and give feedback back and forth to say, okay, what could this program look like and how do we meet the requirements that you as a school district are also requiring of your students?”
LES wanted to make sure that “we were incorporating everything, so we've pushed that out to Lincoln Public Schools initially, but then we've also extended the invitation to parochial schools and neighboring school districts here in the area as well.”
The utility is also sharing details about the program on social media “so parents can also be aware and possibly nudge their students to participate if they feel like maybe their student would be a good fit for this type of career, or they've expressed interest in one of these career paths.”
Schoettlin also described what she sees as the key steps another public power utility would need to take to successfully develop a similar program.
“I think for us, just involving our industry experts that perform and do these jobs every day is really the key for us to making this work,” she said.
“Asking them to step away from their regular work responsibilities and create presentations and hands-on activities for high school students is a little bit out of their normal day-to-day, but I truly believe that was the secret sauce to kind of get this going,” she said.
“As recruiters, we can talk all day about jobs and have those conversations with students but hearing firsthand and seeing the jobs come to life is something that we can't do.”
Each industry expert “really has their own story to tell, how they chose their career path, what challenges that they have experienced and overcome, and then them being able to share what they love about their jobs today is really what we want to provide students the opportunity to engage with as many industry experts as possible,” Schoettlin said.
“I think getting their buy-in initially and kind of presenting to them that there would be value in them taking the time to do this with us would be important. And then once we have that buy-in from folks here at LES, I think it was really mapping out the program.”
