PBN 2023 Manufacturing Awards
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT & PRODUCTIVITY: Community College of Rhode Island
FOR THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF RHODE ISLAND, workforce development is a key part of its mission.
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Jennie Johnson, CCRI’s vice president of workforce partnerships, said workforce development is a two-fold endeavor for the college. First, CCRI wants to provide Rhode Islanders of all ages with opportunities that lead to a family-sustaining career. Second, CCRI wants to help Rhode Island develop a statewide workforce that can meet its needs, now and in the future.
Johnson said Rhode Island companies have come to CCRI “in droves” to help meet their staffing needs. “All of our programs are based on the needs of our employer partners,” she said. “They tell us what they need, and we try to come up with tailored plans for them.”
That can include everything from dealing with staffing shortages in the health care industry due to post-COVID-19 burnout to preparing Rhode Island’s building trades for new opportunities in the offshore wind industry.
One of CCRI’s most ambitious partnerships is with submarine builder General Dynamics Electric Boat in North Kingstown and Groton, Conn. The company is in the process of building the new Virginia class of subs, whose capabilities include coastal operations, while also replacing the older Ohio class of ballistic missile vessels with the Columbia class.
Meanwhile, Electric Boat’s highly skilled workforce isn’t getting any younger. So, the company is looking to hire.
Cody Fino, executive director of workforce partnerships at CCRI, said Electric Boat approached CCRI about workforce training in 2015-16. Since then, CCRI has trained a total of about 4,000 Electric Boat employees.
The numbers have ramped up every year since 2017. CCRI will provide between 1,250 and 1,300 new employees for Electric Boat this year, and Fino said that figure should remain constant for the next several years.
CCRI utilizes the Westerly Education Center as a training facility that handles new employees for both North Kingstown and Groton. The center has about a dozen classrooms and even a reduced-sized version of a submarine hull for students to work on. The instructors are mostly retired Electric Boat employees who now work for CCRI.
“They have the passion, they have the skills. They want to do something positive and pass along the skills and knowledge they have to the next generation,” Fino said.
Part of CCRI’s job is to turn the retired workers, who have been building submarines for 30 or 40 years, into teachers. In turn, CCRI has “train the trainers” sessions to ensure that its Westerly instructors are ready to teach.
Teaching is also a skill, Fino said, and some catch on more easily than others. Therefore, CCRI might assign a new instructor to serve as a teaching assistant to one of its established staffers until they’re ready to teach on their own.
The Electric Boat trainees are CCRI students, Johnson said, although they are not enrolled in the academic departments and do not receive an associate degree.
Johnson said CCRI is working to bridge its academic and workforce development departments.
“Some jobs don’t require a degree, some do. Why shouldn’t a young person get a good job and still be able to earn a degree at the same time, which will give them more options in the future?” she said.
Safety is a paramount concern at Electric Boat, not only for the new workers but for everyone. CCRI worked with more than 400 Electric Boat managers to provide Occupational Safety and Health Administration Maritime Training, which encompassed everyone from top leadership to entry-level supervisors.
Jessica Key, manager of workforce development for Electric Boat, said the submarine builder works with several educational institutions in the region, and CCRI has been particularly effective. Key said Electric Boat anticipates hiring about 5,000 workers each year for the next three to five years, and CCRI will “absolutely” be a part of meeting that demand.
Aside from Electric Boat, there is a long list of Rhode Island companies that work with CCRI to train employees and increase productivity, including Pfizer Inc., Amgen Rhode Island, Eaton Corp., Bradford Soap Works Inc. and many more.
(CORRECTION: The Community College of Rhode Island utilizes the Westerly Education Center, which is operated by the R.I. Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, as a training facility for new employees recently hired by General Dynamics Electric Boat. A previous version of this story said the Westerly Education Center is operated by CCRI.)
