The Future of Trades Education Is Changing

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Unknown
Oh.

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Speaker 1
Welcome, everyone, to Blue Collar Startup. I’m on to your host, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media.

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Speaker 3
And I’m here with our host, Derek Foster of Daigle Cleaning Systems. How are we doing, Mike?

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Speaker 1
We’re doing fantastic. We’re back on campus at Doctor Brody. You may not know this, but we refer to HVC as the blue collar college. All right. Because of your amazing trades program, we’ll take it. So, you know, it’s, Yeah, we’re excited to be here. And thanks for joining us.

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Speaker 2
Welcome. And, yeah, it’s a great time to be at the college for lots of reasons, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, before we get to talking about the college, though, let’s talk a little bit about you. Maybe just kind of introduce yourself to our audience.

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Speaker 2
Super m Michael Brophy.

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Speaker 2
My wife and I are from the Capital District, more or less. She grew up in one set of mountains up in Tupper Lake. Yeah, I grew up down at Greenville. Down in the other side of mountains down there. And, we got married in 93, moved away, raised our family in Los Angeles, Chicago, Long Island and Buffalo.

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Speaker 2
Oh, wow. And came back 32 years later. And, for this position, this is my fourth, happily, my fourth presidency. And, we we went away as newlyweds and newlyweds and we came back as grandparents.

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Speaker 1
So that’s.

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Speaker 2
Amazing. Great story. So yeah. All good, all good.

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Speaker 1
So

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Speaker 1
you moved back to the region. What kind of other colleges or organizations were you president of? Throughout your, your career?

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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
you moved back to the region. What kind of other colleges or organizations were you president of? Throughout your, your career?

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Speaker 2
Yeah, I think, you know, I won’t take 30, you know, I won’t take it every two years. Tell you a story. I’ll just a bit. You know what? I worked here, I was a young man, and, I worked in college admissions at Saint Rose, which is where I had gone to school and at Russell Sage. And during that period, because I was working in admissions and because of those two colleges programs, which were very much education and health sciences, I worked with tons of Hudson Valley students.

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Speaker 2
And so during that time, I really I really learned a lot about two year education. So I went on I worked at Suny canton, up north. Yeah. And at that point I was a two year college. I went on at one point to work at the University of Wisconsin two year college system. I was a consultant to the community college systems on it for enrollment in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky.

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Speaker 2
So I you know, I had a really strong background to your education. And then the second half of my career, I spent as a college president at Catholic colleges, which was another part of my background. And so I served in Los Angeles, Chicago and Buffalo at minor colleges over 20 years. And then, the board asked me to come here and serve.

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Speaker 2
So, you know, I had kind of get those muscles back in shape. But I certainly was grounded into your education and was happy to be back, for sure. Yeah, yeah, you’ve been.

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Speaker 1
Around, man.

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Speaker 2
I have, you know, our kids, you know, they they they spent a lot of their life in California. So I think I said between our toes. Yeah. Even now, but, yeah, we were blessed. You know, when you serve the president, you’re going to move at some point. And, I, I was, I became president of a young age.

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Speaker 2
I was, I think I was 41, 42. So, that’s all that’s all they knew going and, it all worked out for the good. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
So, you know, obviously we, you know, blue collar start up, we want to talk about the trades program. But, you know, every time we we can’t we end up down here about once a year doing a podcast with somebody on campus. Right. And so and so every time we’re down here, I always want to mention that trades programs are only a piece of what UCF right, right.

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Speaker 1
You know, we want to talk about the trades programs. But there’s a lot of programs here. And and it’s very diverse. So I, I hate to I mean we love you guys as the blue collar college, but, you know, we always want to pay a little, you know, oh, my gosh, to the rest of what you do.

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Speaker 1
So, before we get into the trade stuff outside of trades, what kind of programs are you guys running?

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Speaker 2
Yeah, this this is kind of a snapshot of who we are. You know, we first of all, we we have a responsibility for serving three counties. Saratoga, Albany and Red Sawyer. We have campuses or sites in all three counties, up north, we have a campus of Malta. You may know, which is a great campus, fairly new, in Albany County.

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Speaker 2
We’re at a bunch of sites where at the, Albany International Airport. You may know we do aircraft maintenance.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, we talked about that the last time. That was that was wild.

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Speaker 2
Super successful. Up in Malta. We do all sorts of stuff, but it’s it’s it was built, for essentially global foundries to train their people and, and now, coming. So it’ll be rich at Oran at the old car graphics building up high up in Saratoga, then again, Albany County, we have, now three sites.

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Speaker 2
We have the airport. We do have a training site in the south end of Albany. And you may know that our foundation has bought a building at Saint Rose, to serve as another site there on this and this side of the river. We have three sites as well. We have, of course, the main campus here, and we have an EOC Educational Opportunities Center program, which is a non-degree program on River Street.

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Speaker 2
And and then you may know, we serve hundreds, probably thousands of, allied health students at the RPI tech park. There’s a, on Jordan Road. We have a facility. So we throw all that together. We are serving about 20,000 students a year. Half of them are in degree programs. Half of them are in workforce development or community ed.

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Speaker 2
Now, as you may know, in New York State, we do not have a separate technical college system. Many states do. But there are certainly campuses like us that are called community colleges. And you have them in Onondaga, Monroe, Erie as well. Essentially, we’re both where what the country thinks of this community college is where students come here to transfer learn to to Rensselaer or whatever.

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Speaker 2
And then a significant number of students who come, you know, for a year long apprenticeships to to year to year law degrees in all different technical, fields.

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Speaker 1
It’s in the technical at like I’m really interested in talking about what’s changed in the last year because it sounds like there’s been some changes going on. Right. And one of the things I was thinking about as we were driving down here, though, is the last time we did this interview, with someone here. There was just the idea of what the trades is now compared to what it was 20 years ago.

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Speaker 1
Right. Like, I mean, we’re looking at robotic things in the air that, you know, on the other side of campus here. And, can you talk a little bit about that, about how technical the trades programs are now compared to where they were?

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Speaker 2
Sure. I’ll I’ll give it my best, but but essentially, you know, the, the, the technical education programs don’t I, operate in isolation to the culture. So whether it’s the internet, whether it’s connectivity, whether it’s I all these things have to kind of be put into place. And so the faculty are always kind of, kind of keep on top of things.

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Speaker 2
Now for us with a tech which is our new facility, it opens in about, 12, 15 months. You know, we’re making sure that, you know, certainly. Well, technology it’s going in is up to date, but also we’re making sure that the spaces are modular enough so that in the next 50 years, God willing, it, you know, it will serve students that we can adapt and change, training as well.

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Speaker 2
I think what we learned last year was, because the Aztec, building, the Applied Technology Educational Center building will, is a catalyzing event. It is certainly a space. It’s going to be gorgeous. It’s going to be high tech, but it also you have a responsibility with that kind of investment. And we’re talking about a $64 million facility.

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Speaker 2
It’s huge. And a lot of that is public money that you want to make sure you’re responsive to the region. And so we did a, most likely the most, the deepest qualitative research study of the region’s employers. We found out three things. Number one was, although there’s huge demand for people, who have these technical skills in different areas, there are still a lot of students coming out of high school into the programs.

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Speaker 2
Now we’re booming. We have lots of, waiting lists and all those things. But as we expand, we’re going to add more room. And so the first thing we learned was that the region believes, as a group, that we need more immersive experiences for, for our kids in grades five through 12 y. Well, essentially, although the, you know, the big news in five through 12 now is the region’s degree, as you know, you may know is being retired is going away.

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Speaker 2
So that’s going to bring a lot of opportunity. But that you’re talking about two generations babies. I mean, it’s been around since I think the 50s essentially that that Regis degree approach, things definitely tracked a lot of kids. And so many kids would get tracked into non-technical education as early as seventh or eighth grade. And that’s going to kind of dissolve, students, every district has to figure out what they want to do, but it’s going to be more of a cart now, for lack of a better word.

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Speaker 2
So what does that mean? It means that we need to use this new facility for any immersive experiences, whether it’s one day or a month, where those students, even if they decide I want to be an attorney for whatever reason, they want to study certain courses that in fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade, they can come here and understand what it means to be a close to hands on learning, because, as you know, that’s what inspires people.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, the second thing we found out was that while we’re very proud of our, programs in terms of what we deliver, industries are not just hiring people straight out of high school or college. Many industries are hiring people who are coming out of different, you know, for lack of a better word, traumatic life experiences, you know, layoffs, diverse divorces, recovery, incarceration.

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Speaker 2
So all those things that we know, and many of those students and their employers can’t afford two years. And so we’re we’re going to have to really work harder on understanding what kind of short term training programs can we deliver at the college that meet the needs of the region? The third and final thing we learned was, probably to no surprise is that, all that being said, employers still say that while technical skills are very important, there’s a there’s a dual competency that they need of their employees.

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Speaker 2
And, it’s what you might call in this day and age, foundational skills. Maybe a couple of decades here. You might have said soft skills.

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Speaker 1
I as I say, soft skills.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s what we call them.

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Speaker 1
Maybe I’m that I’m that old. I still I still say soft skills. My kids probably say foundational skills. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s everything in between. But we know what it means. It means teamwork. It means leadership. It means discernment. So, we like to think we hire faculty who role model those things. However, we may have to be more intentional about how it’s integrated into the curriculum. Because we do, you know, we want to be if GlobalFoundries is building a second plant, which we think they are, we want our employees to compete for those jobs very successfully.

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Speaker 2
And we all know from hiring that when you hire you, you’re hiring in part on character and, discernment, judgment. And those are things that are not, you know, you may not always learn those in a welding booth when you’re learning welding. So I share those three things with you because those are really, inspiring for us as we kind of, go into this next phase of learning.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because it makes me think of Max story when he came on the show and he was talking about hiring on character and because what he was saying. So he’s like, listen, a lot of people hire because of technical skills. He’s like, but when they fire most people, it’s not because of their skills, it’s because of their character and working on the character stuff up front and hiring for character, which in turn means we need a workforce that understands what character is when integrity is.

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Speaker 1
Discernment is an amazing word. It’s one of my favorite words we we don’t use enough, I think. But it’s yeah, it’s huge. That’s amazing that you guys are going to be incorporating that into your program.

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Speaker 3
I think his exact words were hire for or character train for competency.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s a theme of his book. Intuitive, right? Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s amazing. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, obviously you’ve got a bunch of amazing programs. When we were here last year and we were I’m so sorry. I can’t remember the gentleman that we interviewed last year. There was a there was actually I think there’s three people or maybe four people from PCC that we interviewed last year.

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Speaker 1
But one of the things that we were talking about, especially with the aircraft technician program, was that 100% placement. And so I was thinking about that on the way down here. And, you know, it’s one of the stats that I read last year, and I keep throwing it around because if you’re not in the trades, it should scare the hell out of you.

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Speaker 1
And if you’re in the trades, you’re probably licking your chops. But, the the statistic is that we’re losing 2.2 million skilled workers every single year from the trades. And for every five that we lose, we’re only getting two back.

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
And, which again, if you don’t know how to fix stuff, that should be scary. If you do know how to fix stuff, then like you’re in a great spot. Congrats.

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Speaker 1
But I wanted to bring that around to the demand for this labor force and trying to help young people understand how much opportunity it is for them, whether like the airplane technician stuff, harps and placement, those guys are making great money.

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Speaker 1
Can you speak a little bit about that with some of the programs? And,

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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
But I wanted to bring that around to the demand for this labor force and trying to help young people understand how much opportunity it is for them, whether like the airplane technician stuff, harps and placement, those guys are making great money.

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Speaker 1
Can you speak a little bit about that with some of the programs? And,

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Speaker 1
sure.

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Speaker 2
You know, to be two things. One is you have an environment where the wind is at your back in a certain way. The these programs are no longer less, the poor cousins or second class citizens, students coming out of high school want these jobs, and they want they want to devote time to story for them.

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Speaker 2
But the other thing you have to embrace that, you know, to to your point about people, transitioning, there are lots of folks who will be 18 who will be looking for new jobs because of what’s happening in the culture. And, we got to make sure we’re ready for them. And, Sonia’s done a great job with financial aid and scholarships.

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Speaker 2
But again, we’ve got to make sure that we’re able to serve students who are in our cases, between 25 to 55, because there’s a special scholarship program. Yeah. If we don’t change what we do, we will not meet the region’s needs. What’s happening with the region is just massive growth with technology and science, as you know, nanoscience, drug manufacturing, at Regeneron, chip manufacturing in Saratoga and so on.

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Speaker 2
And, if you take a tour of the Nanoscience Center up there up for road and you get a tour, it you listen a bit, you find that 75% of the jobs at that site require no more, but they require a Hudson Valley degree. HVAC makes sense, right? Yeah. And electrical in particular. So three out of four jobs now in the region are very often, things that require this, this tactical training.

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Speaker 2
So, you know that the odds are that we’ll be running the catch up forever, because of the way the region is, what we what we learned was when these new, projects happen. So, so for for just your audience is sake. Something is happening on route 90 between Boston and Syracuse. Okay? Boston essentially has become, an east coast Palo Alto, you know, Silicon Valley.

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Speaker 2
And, you may know Syracuse is where the big micron event is going to happen. All that might quite work. And we’re in the middle of all that. So essentially what’s happening is there’s a five hour band, with technology research and production that’s pumping. And, schools like RPI and Hudson Valley have to play a role in it.

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Speaker 2
And so, what we want to do is produce enough workers from the native workforce, because what we found is across the country, very often they have to bring people in to build the facilities, but then they moved back to North Carolina, or they moved back to this place at that place. So I don’t know if we’re going to buck that trend.

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Speaker 2
But very often when you have these massive projects, people come in and then they leave. And then, of course, the major months of this day, you know, I’ll close by, say that puts a real pressure on the region for affordable housing. That’s the whole other story.

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Speaker 1
And so, yeah, I well, you know, these things are all in tandem. Right? So it’s they’re all connected. They all play into each other. But what do you think the big challenges right now as far as finding that native workforce, is it that I mean, is it are you looking at that 25, that 55 age workforce to help fill that need?

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Speaker 1
Because we know we’re not going to be able to fill it from the 18 to 25 year olds.

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Speaker 2
That’s the thesis. The thesis is that there are people who are displaced now, and I may accelerate that. And so what can we do to, get people back into the into the workforce, the education? And then, you know, going back to my earlier findings, that second point about, it might have to be more bite size, you know, employers and, and, their employees may not have two full time years to devote to education.

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Speaker 2
So how do we how do we meet that need as well?

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Speaker 1
So I if I’m not mistaken, you have some certificate programs now we do it. Will those shorter programs be more of a certificate program based where like you get let’s say there it’s an HVAC certificate and you can do multiple smaller bites to be able to get up to that full.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. I think, you know, just yesterday we, I met with National Grid and, they, they have a need, and, you know, they’re massive. And they hired a lot of our graduates. And National Grid is a good example because the interaction we have with them is important, because students may come here thinking that there’s a job climbing poles.

00;19;48;04 – 00;20;09;29
Speaker 2
You know, that’s what you think. Oh, you national grid, someone’s climbing a pole and helping repair. But there’s actually a 150 jobs at National Grid, and we have to help them with that. But, I guess the point I was trying to make was that, they just here just yesterday at this table, they suggested that there’s another course that we need to add, and it’s just a reminder that, and I think it has to do with robotics, to be honest with you.

00;20;10;02 – 00;20;30;04
Speaker 2
So essentially, we’re going to have to keep making sure that even with our degree programs, we’re adding courses to them. But more than likely we want we want Regeneron, National Grid, GlobalFoundries to know that we can do that more like a la carte work. And what we’re finding to our research is they may not really need to be credit based.

00;20;30;07 – 00;20;40;20
Speaker 2
And so our faculty always have to get used to the idea that the credit based work is what we were trained on and what we deliver. But people may not need credits. They may just need speed. Speed to scale, basically.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;20;43;13 – 00;21;01;16
Speaker 1
You know, something that’s come up a lot. So we, you know, we’re very, ingrained, helpful, passionate about, I don’t know, with the the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, Pam star, Doug Ford, those guys running that thing, they’ve got their annual dinners coming up. Sugar.

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Speaker 2
Excellent. Yeah. No. Well,

00;21;03;17 – 00;21;06;17
Speaker 1
I will make sure you will get we’ll get you, we’ll get an invitation.

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Speaker 3
And they just completed their girls construction.

00;21;09;14 – 00;21;33;24
Speaker 1
Summer day, summer calendar. There. That’s so. Yeah, they do this program every year. It’s amazing. With, you know, shout out to Matt Webb back from with that construction as well. Who helps, who helps put that on and oversee it. You know, for them and, and I promise there’s a tie in with our conversation, but they’re looking at younger kids and trying to get younger kids in, you know, interested in the trades.

00;21;33;24 – 00;21;53;29
Speaker 1
That’s one of the big drivers behind what they do. And you were just mentioning a couple of minutes ago about, you know, not going to that fifth grade through 12th grade and trying to get that immersive experiences, things like that. And I’m just curious, you know, a big part of the driver that we talk about is the parents.

00;21;54;02 – 00;22;08;03
Speaker 1
And kids moving into the trades or not moving in the trades often has to do with the parents. I’m just I’m curious from, from your perspective, do you see that. Like how do you see that conversation going these days. Is are the winds changing or.

00;22;08;11 – 00;22;17;27
Speaker 2
Yeah this you know, I, I share the number only because it’s been a long time. I’ve been in higher ed for 40 years. The culture has never been more supportive of technical education ever. In my same time.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
And, I share that because, last year, for example, in my first year as president here at Hudson Valley, I visited all the superintendents in the region, the K-12 superintendents, and they were all doing capacity building with technical education, adding faculty, adding facilities, doing more coordination with us. So I just I assume that comes from, you know, if nothing else, the pressure from the parents, which is to have the more diverse curriculum for their students to choose from.

00;22;48;22 – 00;23;10;22
Speaker 2
You know, we just spent, again, 40 or 50 years in the Regents Diploma program. So I think it’s going to take time to work out of that culture, for lack of a better word. But, you know, since I think since March of 2020, we’ve had this chat, GPT three, right? And, I mean, it seems like it’s accelerating every day, the pressure around it.

00;23;10;25 – 00;23;34;00
Speaker 2
And so I think more and more families will be very open to, supporting their sons and daughters and technical education, for sure. It’s definitely different than it was even five years ago. But but it hasn’t been like this. Probably you have to think about schools like Cobleskill, Kent, Morrisville, Alfred. Those were again, tech schools, 100 years ago.

00;23;34;02 – 00;23;55;02
Speaker 2
So you have to remember that, up until about 1960, only 10% of the, American population went to colleges. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t going to ag and tech programs and this and that all around the country. So those cultures out there, and this is just a real time of Renaissance for a lot of money.

00;23;55;07 – 00;24;13;17
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, you know, I know a lot of plumbers and they’re all making a lot of money, you know, to me, like, there’s a lot of millionaire plumbers. And, I mean, we have interviewed, you know, even just like last week, we interviewed Pete and Alicia. No, it was just a couple of days ago. You interviewed Pete and Alicia from Go Green Plumbing and Heating.

00;24;13;17 – 00;24;31;12
Speaker 1
I mean, heating and, you know, first year in business. They broke $1 million in revenue, and I’m like, they’ve won one van. One van every time I talked to a plumber or an HVAC company and they’re like, oh, yeah, we did two millions in the first, like 2 million. And so I said to these guys, I’m like 4% of all businesses break $1 million.

00;24;31;12 – 00;24;50;24
Speaker 1
4%. Yeah. But every time I talked to an HVAC and or plumbing company, these guys are doing it in the first year. And I’m just, I just I keep thinking about this, like, number one, I made a bad decision going into marketing. But number two, you know, just there’s just so much opportunity for these young kids and for kids that want to own their own business someday.

00;24;50;24 – 00;24;53;17
Speaker 1
And if they’re going into the trades like it’s different.

00;24;53;20 – 00;25;28;20
Speaker 2
It’s different the, the, the higher ed sector, basically had for it for, I guess, what we call nowadays inflection points in the last half century, half, quarter century. In 2000, colleges were even though it was that uncommon bubble, it was all about making investments in infrastructure. And so colleges, many, many colleges made the mistake of building too many buildings and financing too many buildings.

00;25;28;23 – 00;25;53;05
Speaker 2
In oh eight we had the Great Recession, which essentially put the whole system apart. Number one, sometimes you couldn’t make your mortgage payments on these big buildings you built in. A lot of colleges across the country had to close, mostly because of debt. But number two was, you know, eight families were no more. They were no longer willing to spend the extra dollar to send their kids to private schools.

00;25;53;11 – 00;26;00;12
Speaker 2
And they wanted the pricing to be the same as state schools. So that changed all of the essentially the shopping.

00;26;00;14 – 00;26;21;26
Speaker 2
You know, what happened in 2020? Everyone went online. And the biggest sector to grow is since the pandemic has been the online sector. But then the real doozy was 23 because we thought we were in the information acquisition business. And, that’s what I’m sure both of you use ChatGPT all day long, right? Or was someone.

00;26;21;26 – 00;26;26;00
Speaker 1
All of them for ChatGPT? I mean, I’m, I’m in all of these.

00;26;26;00 – 00;26;46;03
Speaker 2
So we kind of have to, like, really embrace the lifelong learning philosophy and just trust that people understand that, appreciate that, and know they’ll to spend their life, adapting every ten, 15 years and have further training. So that’s kind of the the four markers that I see is really haven’t changed the college. Yeah. Dynamic.

00;26;46;05 – 00;27;09;01
Speaker 1
And so again, to bring back that 25 to 55 year old programs that you have, I mean, that’s that adult learning aspect because there are I mean, whether it’s a or I mean, I assume it’s I mean, we’ve watched our business change just in the last six months and, you know, like specific things like graphic design, you know, there’s a lot of kids in graphic design school right now, and they’re going to leave graphic design school, and it’s going to be tough out there for them.

00;27;09;01 – 00;27;11;05
Speaker 1
Right? You know, it is.

00;27;11;07 – 00;27;31;18
Speaker 2
It is I think it’s you know, I think I think kids, you know, let’s just say people who are born in this century, they already know this. They just know things are more dynamic for all of the reasons they can. Maybe us older folks who don’t quite, appreciate how much things will change, but they’re pretty much, you know, if they were born in this century, they watched a lot of changes.

00;27;31;23 – 00;27;34;01
Speaker 2
Very fast paced.

00;27;34;03 – 00;27;34;25
Speaker 1
Moving quick.

00;27;34;25 – 00;27;36;12
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00;27;36;14 – 00;27;37;03
Speaker 1
Real fast.

00;27;37;08 – 00;27;37;17
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;27;37;22 – 00;27;59;10
Speaker 1
Well, just the changes with I, you know, like the adoption rate, the consumer behavior pattern with I in the last six months where six months ago people were still Google, Google, Google. And now like, I mean Google sliding. And you know, most people I know are using ChatGPT or clod or whatever it is, but, you know, I mean.

00;27;59;15 – 00;28;01;20
Speaker 3
You can talk to it. You don’t even have to type it anymore.

00;28;01;22 – 00;28;03;01
Speaker 1
I know.

00;28;03;04 – 00;28;03;29
Speaker 2
And it talks right back.

00;28;04;03 – 00;28;20;22
Speaker 1
And gives you an answer. Yeah, a scary it is scary. I use it all the time like, like I’m I’ll craft emails like, hey Claude, I need to put an email together, blah blah blah. Okay, Michael, you know, that’s like it’s like having Jarvis in my ear from Iron Man, but it’s. But to your point, though, all that thing is, is changing so fast.

00;28;20;24 – 00;28;30;21
Speaker 1
Yeah. And a lot of the traditional white collar jobs are changing because of it. Absolutely. But one thing that is strong and steady, man, is the traits. Yeah. Right.

00;28;30;22 – 00;28;59;18
Speaker 2
And that’s things will have to be built. Things will have to be maintained. Humans want to create things. So but it’s the things that are happening online. You just have to ask yourself, you know, how many more jobs will come from that world versus the real world? You know, our our son, just for example, he, he’s 28 and he, was hired, at a university at 20 in the in 2021 as a computer programmer.

00;28;59;20 – 00;29;02;28
Speaker 2
He is now an AI curator.

00;29;03;00 – 00;29;03;19
Speaker 1
Yes.

00;29;03;22 – 00;29;09;10
Speaker 2
So he’s very he’s very successful, but he never he hasn’t he hasn’t programed in many, many ways.

00;29;09;11 – 00;29;11;22
Speaker 1
Doesn’t need to. He’s run an agents to do it for him.

00;29;11;22 – 00;29;15;17
Speaker 2
They the company trust him to manage all that.

00;29;15;20 – 00;29;17;00
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s amazing. Incredible.

00;29;17;01 – 00;29;38;17
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. That whole industry has change I mean we, we run ads for technical specialists for marketing because marketing has become so technical compared to what it was even just a couple of years ago. And like I get a ton of software engineers applying for that job because they, they especially, you know, a lot of them are young kids that can’t find a job out of college because junior junior software engineers are just they’re not needed.

00;29;38;17 – 00;29;51;02
Speaker 1
The agents are doing it right, and senior engineers are using the agents to do it, as opposed to hiring the, junior engineers. And but even a lot of the older already into their career engineers that, you know.

00;29;51;09 – 00;29;59;13
Speaker 2
So just imagine if you were that, you know, you went to school, maybe you want to do it because you were told, be a programmer. Yeah. Guaranteed job.

00;29;59;13 – 00;30;01;19
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. That’s what you’re 100% completely.

00;30;01;19 – 00;30;12;21
Speaker 2
Knocked off their feet now. And, yeah, they’re gonna have to be retrained and they’re, you know, come into the trade. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next century. Exactly. But it’s hard to imagine a trades ever going away.

00;30;12;21 – 00;30;16;09
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, I mean, even the robots people gotta fix the robots on the robots growing.

00;30;16;09 – 00;30;16;22
Speaker 2
Right?

00;30;16;25 – 00;30;33;19
Speaker 3
So we started incorporating them into building, cleaning and facilities maintenance budget. You still it doesn’t eliminate a position. It just it it allows you to do it more efficiently. So the people that are operating the robots can focus on some of the more detailed things. So it’s actually created another position to service maintain.

00;30;33;25 – 00;30;36;23
Speaker 2
And yeah, that makes sense right. Yeah yeah yeah.

00;30;36;27 – 00;30;40;26
Speaker 1
Automate and automate in the elevate. So are you.

00;30;40;26 – 00;30;46;01
Speaker 3
Guys currently working with some of the local high schools to, I guess, promote those programs.

00;30;46;01 – 00;31;08;09
Speaker 2
And you know, we have been for it’s part of our DNA. It got deeper in the last decade because the college did a great job in what’s called college in the high school programs, which is a way of saying that we now grant, you know, there’s a process we go through, but we grant college level credit for some of the instruction helping at high schools, including in technical areas.

00;31;08;11 – 00;31;32;29
Speaker 2
So the next level work that we have now and that ability that I mentioned earlier to think about a Mercer program is one opportunity just for conversation sake is, a tech will open, and if we do nothing at all, it’ll be very busy 26 weeks of the year. So that’s not good enough. So, you may you may recall from your own high school days that there’s a period of time basically between May 15th and the end of school.

00;31;33;01 – 00;31;53;04
Speaker 2
We’re not a heck of a lot kids doing right study halls and all that. So we’re completely quiet then. And so that’ll be an opportunity for us to work with local school districts. I won’t name them, but I can tell you a lot of them, locally who, want to make better use of their time, especially if they can help students appreciate fields they haven’t yet thought about.

00;31;53;06 – 00;32;14;29
Speaker 2
And so that’s going to be a big window for us. The second and final thing on that topic will be, we’re on the hunt, to fundraise in different ways to help support, students who we are, a sense we don’t want them to make a choice between a summer job and immersive education. And so that just made me that essentially paid internships on campus, a paid experience as well.

00;32;14;29 – 00;32;18;14
Speaker 2
So, we have a couple of great foundations that are interested in supporting network.

00;32;18;19 – 00;32;24;19
Speaker 1
Some of that learn while you earn or earn while you learn not know which one’s supposed to come first. But we love it either. Either way.

00;32;24;23 – 00;32;40;18
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, you know, when I, when I stop at Stewarts, I mean, Hudson Valley kids are there that, you know, we talk at all that. So everyone’s got to work one way or the other. But, you know, if they can take us summer or part of summer through a support like this, at the the changes their life, that’s a good thing.

00;32;40;21 – 00;32;49;01
Speaker 1
Shout out to stewards. By the way, if you’re in the trades locally, you spend a lot of time there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love their coffee.

00;32;49;03 – 00;32;50;22
Speaker 3
That’s convenient. They’re right across the street.

00;32;50;29 – 00;32;52;25
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00;32;52;28 – 00;32;54;15
Speaker 1
I spent so much money there every year.

00;32;54;15 – 00;32;56;05
Speaker 2
It’s institution. Real institution.

00;32;56;05 – 00;32;57;03
Speaker 1
Yeah it is. Yeah.

00;32;57;04 – 00;33;04;10
Speaker 2
They didn’t get to which I, they were here when we left in 93. But they’re everywhere and everywhere everywhere everywhere, everywhere I turn.

00;33;04;11 – 00;33;14;20
Speaker 1
They’re on the second wave to their turn down the old ones and putting up brand new. They were like, oh my God, everywhere I turn like up by us. Anyway, it’s every time I turn around there’s one, an old one getting torn down and a new one. Yeah.

00;33;14;22 – 00;33;15;23
Speaker 2
Doing something right. I’m just.

00;33;15;23 – 00;33;42;05
Speaker 1
Yeah, they that’s for sure. They got an amazing model. They got an amazing product. So, and so as far as the high schools, you know, one of the the questions that I wanted to ask you was, you know, there’s a lot of employers in the area looking for skilled labor, right? A lot of blue collar companies. I know some of the ones that there are some currently that already work with HPC and NC in some capacity.

00;33;42;05 – 00;33;46;03
Speaker 1
As far as trying to get those students out of those programs and the minute they graduate. Right.

00;33;46;06 – 00;33;54;29
Speaker 1
If there’s other local employers that are looking to have that relationship as well or get involved in some capacity, how do they do that?

00;33;55;01 – 00;34;17;12
Speaker 1
Hey, everybody, quick break to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Martin Electric. You probably don’t think about the electrical contractors behind the places you work, shop, manufacture or do business, and that’s kind of the point. For more than 87 years, Martin Electric has had boots on the ground across the Capital Region, with over 100 IBEW trained electricians in the field.

00;34;17;15 – 00;34;30;20
Speaker 1
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00;34;30;23 – 00;34;37;26
Speaker 1
If there’s other local employers that are looking to have that relationship as well or get involved in some capacity, how do they do that?

00;34;37;29 – 00;35;03;23
Speaker 2
Well, I will say we’re pretty far into the community, but they simply either reach out to the college or we reach out to them on a regular basis. And then we have career fairs here, and they put their best show forward because they’re competing for great talent. Yeah. So I don’t know if you are with McDonough, I believe a huge fieldhouse and every it’s every year we do 2 or 3 different type of programs and all the big guys come out nice.

00;35;03;24 – 00;35;24;23
Speaker 2
And it’s you know, the distinction here also is between, union jobs and otherwise. And so the unions of course, want to build their membership. And so they’re very involved with the college as well in terms of, you know, being aware of what’s going on, recruiting of our students as well. But you know, it, there’s all sorts of employers who make time for the college.

00;35;24;26 – 00;35;41;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s not like it’s shooting fish in a barrel, but you’re pretty secure if you come to Hudson Valley as an employer, that the students who want to be in these fields are here being trained. You know, it’s not a question. You know, it’s happening. Yeah. So, you know, you can never promote yourself enough, but, people know.

00;35;41;06 – 00;36;07;25
Speaker 2
Then, you know, what I share with, with alums is that, you know, the community knows us because of you. What you what you’ve done. They trust you because the quality of what you do. But for our alums to know that we’re still we know that the community relies on us to be looking forward. And, I, I share that because a lot of alums serve on programmatic advisory councils to kind of give us the best feedback on improving programs, things like that.

00;36;07;28 – 00;36;08;20
Speaker 1
It’s amazing. Yeah.

00;36;08;27 – 00;36;10;12
Speaker 2
How often are your career fairs?

00;36;10;14 – 00;36;12;04
Speaker 3
What time, what the ends of the year?

00;36;12;08 – 00;36;24;22
Speaker 2
There’s a couple a couple times, a couple times in the spring. We sponsor them. Then there’s something massive called a career jam. And if you’ve heard that. But, they have they have, their base that they can serve Polk County. The company.

00;36;24;24 – 00;36;27;05
Speaker 1
Yeah. You’re talking about Erica van. Amber. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;36;27;10 – 00;36;42;14
Speaker 2
So she does a great job. They’re here next. They’re in Troy next Thursday, but I know they do a program up at, Malta as well. They turn people out. So there’s a combination of different things, employers. But then the career jams, you know, they get people out.

00;36;42;16 – 00;36;43;13
Speaker 1
They get people out. Yeah.

00;36;43;19 – 00;36;55;25
Speaker 2
If you come next week to McDonough, next Thursday, you’ll see like full blown them delivering the kids, the the faculty, the high school being with the kids and then our faculty really, you know, really promoting the program.

00;36;55;25 – 00;37;06;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, I know we did, one of the career fairs a couple of years ago, didn’t we? Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah. It was in Williams Hall. Yeah. It was one. The kids were funny.

00;37;06;27 – 00;37;23;16
Speaker 2
We have big, we have small. We all sort of things. Yeah. Because again the community knows this is where the students are. Yeah. Now Schenectady does a great job in some small number of areas. Adirondack does as well. But essentially Hudson Valley is just this big gorilla, you know. Yeah, you do a lot. We don’t all we try to we do our best certainly.

00;37;23;18 – 00;37;36;20
Speaker 2
But people know where we are and and my, you know, by being in the three counties, we’re also we kind of get over the hump that people might have other carriers by coming over to Troy, you know, they can come to Malta or they can come to Albany County sites to learn more as well.

00;37;36;23 – 00;37;51;23
Speaker 1
Yeah, I know we’re getting close on time, but I, I wanted to, I wanted to just ask because I think you had mentioned the earlier that your trades programs are pretty full, like, they’re pretty sought after. Is there did you say there was a waitlist or, like, people don’t like?

00;37;51;25 – 00;38;11;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, there are programs that have waitlist like, electrical construction management, and there’s programs like that that we, we deliver on a two year basis, but also on a three year basis to three year being for people who are working. All the programs are full, but we’re not meeting the community’s needs and larger.

00;38;11;02 – 00;38;17;05
Speaker 2
So that’s why this next two years so important to meet to to take that next step forward in, training more.

00;38;17;05 – 00;38;18;07
Speaker 1
People and training more.

00;38;18;07 – 00;38;19;09
Speaker 2
People and bottom line, and.

00;38;19;09 – 00;38;21;15
Speaker 1
That’s where those shorter programs come in.

00;38;21;22 – 00;38;47;27
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we do have some now. But what the breakthrough, the breakthrough with a tech is we’ll have enough, space because let’s just take, well, any of them, one of the other programs, but aircraft maintenance? No, it’s not going to be an eight tech, but, it’s not different in that it’s a program that specifically there are FFA requirements on the amount of space that you provide for instruction and for safety and teaching reasons.

00;38;47;27 – 00;39;10;17
Speaker 2
And, and so you think about the ripple effect of all of our programs. These are programs that need space and need to be safe. Yeah. And so that’s why your best bet is to make it, the best facility you can on those two levels in terms of safety in particular. But you got to think beyond 26 weeks of fall spring semesters and fill the place up in different ways and hire more faculty and essentially, yeah.

00;39;10;19 – 00;39;11;03
Speaker 1
Keep on.

00;39;11;03 – 00;39;12;29
Speaker 2
Growing. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.

00;39;13;02 – 00;39;16;16
Speaker 1
We we buy in properties next door. And, you know.

00;39;16;16 – 00;39;35;16
Speaker 2
I think we’re I think we’re done. But we, we want to kind of you kind of want to kick it out in a good way with, the mall, the site that has been that has just become a branch campus, which is just a fancy way of saying that we can offer entire degrees up there, things that relate to mechatronics and, even nursing.

00;39;35;18 – 00;39;54;02
Speaker 2
So we, we can probably grow there by a couple, you know, a couple, three or 4 or 500 easily. This campus can grow, when they take open sort of the 2 or 3000. And we know that because at one point in time, this campus served 14,000 students. And I wasn’t working at that point in time.

00;39;54;02 – 00;40;16;09
Speaker 2
But I guess, parking was just bonkers. But, we serve about 10,000 students now, the majority at the site. However, a significant number of them are never come to try. They’re online or they’re at high school learning. So we have we have the ability with the square feet we have here and the parking, to serve many more students.

00;40;16;11 – 00;40;23;15
Speaker 1
I may get if people want to learn more about HVAC or, learn more about the programs, how do they find you guys?

00;40;23;22 – 00;40;45;12
Speaker 2
I will say that the website’s very friendly. Come to the website. It’s organized pretty well. You can find out where where campuses are, where programs are. But nothing beats, you know, just take 3 or 4 hours, set aside, come to campus, you know, be inspired. See the see the, manufacturing, see the robotics, see the welding.

00;40;45;12 – 00;40;47;16
Speaker 2
You know, that always gets people excited.

00;40;47;19 – 00;40;49;27
Speaker 1
Amazing. Yep. Thanks for coming out.

00;40;49;27 – 00;40;56;16
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thanks, doctor Brophy. Yeah. You’re welcome. Thanks for coming out, fellas. And anything we can do, beyond this, let me know. Yeah.

00;40;56;17 – 00;41;22;20
Speaker 1
Likewise. Okay. And thanks, everybody. Of course, for listening. You can hear this episode. All episodes at Blue Collar Startup Audio, of course, Apple Spotify, Rumble, YouTube. And, you know, quick thanks to our sponsors. Again, I always want to make sure that we’re saying thank you to everybody. So thanks to our sponsors that allow us not only to do the show, but also help us to donate money for tools and tuition, HVC and and Boces, great programs, great people and, yeah.

00;41;22;21 – 00;41;24;10
Speaker 1
Thanks, everybody. Hear from us next week you

00;41;24;14 – 00;41;52;12
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Audio or email us at Hardhat Derby CSU at gmail.com.

00;41;52;12 – 00;42;05;12
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building, keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;42;05;15 – 00;42;06;13
Unknown
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