Building tomorrow’s manufacturing workforce

This year’s Advanced Manufacturing and High Technology Summit kicked off with a topic universal to all employers: how to build the workforce of tomorrow.

The 24^th annual event organized by the New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership on Oct. 9 featured a keynote panel discussion featuring representatives from the state’s university and community college systems.

Tony Fernandez, president of the NH MEP, speaks during the Advanced Manufacturing and High Technology Summit on Oct. 9 in Concord. (Photo by Mike Cote)

The speakers noted the connections they share through their own educational journeys to underscore how those relationships work to provide pathways for students.

Chuck Lloyd, who was named chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire in July, was raised in Franklin and graduated from Keene State College. First, he took classes at NHTI in Concord before transferring to a four-year program, he said.

Lloyd oversees a system of seven colleges and three academic centers across the state that serves more than 25,000 students.

“I love saying about 95% of our state is within a 25- or 30-minute commute,” Lloyd told about 150 people at the Grappone Center in Concord. “What that means for us and within the state is that we are a well-coordinated system of community colleges, so if we have a program at one of our colleges and it is not somewhere else, we partner closely to find a way to rotate that around.”

Patrick Cate, president of Lakes Region Community College, is also a product of the system he’s is trying to promote. Like Lloyd, Cate graduated from Keene State College, and they worked together as undergraduates. Cate is also a graduate and former employee of Plymouth State University.

“I grew up in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, so I’ve been here my whole life,” Cate said. “I love what we do with the two-year system, as I joke, but I mean very seriously as the students that come to us, these are my people. I grew up in a rural environment.”

Cate went to a vo-tech when it was still called that, he said. While he learned he wasn’t good at welding, that step led him into higher education.

“We really do have a great interconnectedness among the colleges,” Cate said. “I just was talking with a fellow president on the phone on my drive down here. And those conversations happen all the time. It’s those informal relationships that are out of the formal structure that really give Lakes Region Community College the resources of the entire state, of our community college system.”

Catherine Provencher, chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire, touted the research internships available through the university system. Out-of-state students who enter internship programs with New Hampshire companies are twice as likely to remain here after graduation and work in the state, she said.

Provencher noted that businesses have requested to have a single way to access to students.

“We’ve heard employers say that one of the problems is there’s not one door in … we have side doors and garage doors and we come in through the window, and the business community wants one door in,” she said.

Provencher noted the statewide reach the system has through its institutions and the UNH Cooperative Extension Service.

“We have relationships with thousands of employers across the state through research opportunities, and co-location,” Provencher said, noting that the NH MEP is now headquartered at the John Olsen Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Like the 51 MEPs working in every state and Puerto Rico, the New Hampshire organization has battled funding cuts and threats to its existence by the Trump administration. New Hampshire’s congressional delegation lobbied last year to keep the program intact.

While the higher education officials addressed the group in a meeting room, dozens more attendees networked in the lobby. The event gathered manufacturing companies, vendors, educators and other service providers.

Democrats Rep. Chris Pappas, who is running for Senate, and Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who is running for re-election, both addressed the group as did Peter Steele, regional administrator of New England for the Small Business Administration.

The summit also included a primer by Seth Greenblott of ACRES Business Brokerage, an M&A Advisory firm, on how to navigate the sale of a business.

To close the summit, Tony Fernandez, center director of the NH MEP, gathered on stage with his four staff members — several fewer than the MEP employed two years ago but more than last year — and thanked them for organizing the event.

“I want to thank these four people for doing a job that is beyond belief,” Fernandez said. “They were here last night at 10:30 and this morning at 5:30.”