Issue #161, October, 2024
IN THIS ISSUE:
CEWD Exposes Ag Students to Energy Careers
CEWD hosted a booth at the national FFA show last week to expose students and their instructors to energy careers. Outfitted with our new Virtual Reality glasses that encouraged students to explore a variety of career connections such as solar technicians, electricians, line workers, construction laborers, EV battery manufacturing technicians, welders and a host of others in both English and Spanish. CEWD is grateful to AES and Duke Energy for providing volunteers to help bring the booth to life for hundreds of information seekers.
Check out this video montage of the Get Into Energy Booth at the 2024 FFA Convention.
ICYMI: National Energy and Natural Career Cluster is Announced
On October 21 Advance CTE announced the approval of the modernized National Career Clusters Framework, which includes a new, national Energy and Natural Resources Career Cluster. This is one of the most significant developments the industry has ever experienced in our quest to build a skilled and diverse energy workforce as the new cluster will allow students to more readily connect with energy and its career opportunities. Read more about this development here. Please see here for information you can share with local schools, school boards, and state boards of education to let them know about the new cluster.
2024 Wordforce Summit Action Items
Reminder: Sign Up for Energy Workforce Hill Visits
Join the Center for Energy Workforce Development and the National Skills Coalition for the Energy Workforce Capitol Hill Visits on November 21, in conjunction with the Workforce Development Summit. This day is for those who know their way around the Hill and first timers, eager to share perspective and voice to help educate those who want to better understand the industry’s people needs and priorities. The visits will advance a strategic, cohesive national workforce focused agenda to Members of Congress that are instrumental in enabling workforce preparedness within the sector. Deadline to sign up is November 11.
Registration Reminder: Summit General Registration Expires October 31!
If you haven’t heard, this year’s Workforce Development Summit promises to be the most informative, most important, and most insightful of any such event we have ever offered, as the discipline of workforce development has never been more significant in building our talent pipeline than it is right now.
General Registration Rates expire on October 31st, then rates will increase.
Forget to book your hotel room? Contact [email protected].
CEWD Seeks Leadership Nominations
CEWD’s Governance and Nominating Committee will begin its slating process in January for individuals to serve as directors and officers. They are looking for C-Suite level leaders eager to drive workforce development initiatives that support the development of a skilled, diverse energy workforce. The diversity of the Board is important, including diversity of professional backgrounds and experiences. We are especially eager to identify those who work outside the Human Resources space, including those in operations, community engagement, and training and development. If you or leaders from your company are interested in the possibility of serving on CEWD’s Board for a three-year term, please contact Missy Henriksen to learn more.
OCTOBER 30 WEBINAR REMINDER
Expanding Diversity in the Skilled Trades: The Why, How, and What Driving Success for the Berkshire Hathaway Energy-IBEW Stronger Together Program
Careers in Energy Week Recap
Observations and celebrations of Careers in Energy Week could be felt with force last week. We saw proclamations, events, videos, and challenges. We also saw that about 1900 industry practitioners utilized the CEWD created CIEW Toolkit. Remember, many of the new assets created are evergreen, so feel free to use them throughout the year. In addition to the resources CEWD created, we also were busy in some other areas:
- Our CIEW Outbrain content syndication campaign promoting energy careers to students, parents, and educators has already earned 2.2M impressions.
- Our CIEW Meta and LinkedIn campaigns connected with about 20,000 viewers, encouraging them to spend time with our online career chat.
What’s Up? News Updates
CEWD is reporting important news and updates through the CEWD Connection to keep readers abreast of energy workforce headlines. If you have any article suggestions, please email [email protected].
New workforce center for veterans opens in Pittsburgh
October 27, 2024
Duquesne Light Company contributed $325,000 to renovate a two-story storage unit at 945 Washington Boulevard into a facility that offers activity areas, meeting rooms and virtual training programs to help veterans find jobs.
Wisconsin Public Service hosts energy career fair at NWTC for area high school students
October 17, 2024
Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) hosted about 200 high school students from northeast and north central Wisconsin for an energy career fair in Green Bay featuring hands-on activities. Some of the activities included:
- Solar energy installation challenge
- Electric vehicle demonstration
- Interactive solar panel and energy storage lab
- Heating, ventilation and air conditioning demonstrations
- Home weatherization testing using infrared cameras
- Thermal imaging tests with drones
Entergy awards $2M grant to Jackson State University for Power Grid Security Lab
October 8, 2024
Jackson State University is the recipient of a $2 million grant from the Entergy Charitable Foundation to help fund the creation of the Critical Power Grid Network Security Lab. This advanced initiative between Jackson State and Entergy will create an innovation hub to help train a highly skilled cybersecurity workforce to meet the growing needs of nuclear, electric and natural gas companies, and electrical cooperatives.
Training center in Oregon teaches wind technicians from around the US
October 6, 2024
Juan Flores started as a wind technician nearly 14 years ago, and now he is teaching aspiring technicians and sharing helpful tips and tricks he wishes he was taught. He’s helping train them at Avangrid’s newly built National Training Center in Sherman County, Oregon. The facility was built this summer and just worked with its first set of technicians.
22 states want to employ 1 million people in climate apprenticeships by 2035
September 24, 2024
The U.S. Climate Alliance, the coalition of mostly Democrat governors, announced in late September the launch of the Governors’ Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative. Governors of 22 states and two U.S. territories say they want to get 1 million people to complete apprenticeships related to low-carbon energy or other climate-friendly jobs by 2035.
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