WESTFIELD – Advance Manufacturing is generally a noisey place, as the high-precision manufacturing company located on Turnpike Industrial Road produces all manner of parts for the defense and aerospace industries, with machines whirring and humming all around the building.
But Friday the building was buzzing for a different reason, as Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick dropped by to tour the facility, one of many around the Commonwealth who will benefit from a recent Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education initiative being put forth by his administration.
Version 2.0 of “Expanding the Pipeline for All: Massachusetts’ Plan for Excellence in STEM Education” was announced on November 13 at the state’s annual STEM summit in Foxborough, and is designed to breed a brighter future for manufacturing in Massachusetts by increasing student interest in STEM fields, student achievement among all Pre-K-12 students, the percentage of skilled educators who teach Pre-K-12 STEM classes, and the percent of students completing post-secondary degrees or certificates in STEM subjects.
It also seeks to align STEM degree and certificate attainment with corresponding opportunity in STEM-related fields to “match the state’s workforce needs for a STEM talent pipeline”, which is music to the ears of Advance Manufacturing Production Manager Jeffrey Amanti, who said that finding employees has become a challenge.
“It’s becoming difficult to find skilled employees,” he said. “We need more kids to go through the vocational high schools. Right now, kids are opting into computer fields, but the actual number of kids who are turning parts, cutting metal, is dwindling. It’s a very technical field and it’s not something you’re going to go to a couple hours of school and learn.”
Amanti’s company is turning out such parts as periscopes, latches for submarines, landing gear, jet engine assembly and disassembly components, as well as parts for spacesuits and the oxygen system on the International Space Station.
“We’re glad to see he (Patrick) has focused on vocational education and trying to get people into these trades, it’s huge for us,” he said. “We hope that he focuses on some of the lower level high school trade schools, as well as the community colleges, as most of our employees come out of the high school level.”
Clement “Clem” Fucci, the head of the Manufacturing Technology Department at Westfield Vocational Technical High School, who personally taught many of the 200 people employed by Advance, was also on hand for Patrick’s tour and spoke about the value of the initiative.
“We’re looking for the funding to keep up with the latest technology so we can support companies like Advance Manufacturing,” Fucci said. “Our graduates at WVTHS have a 100 percent placement for our co-op program and 100 percent of our kids are going into manufacturing, precision manufacturing, and engineering careers.”
Fucci said that he, too, hopes Patrick puts a greater emphasis on vocational high school funding in the STEM initiative.
“Not to forget where all these students get their start,” he said was his message to Patrick. “The Voc-Tech schools have been put in communities to serve the industries that are there. They have been a vital part of not only manufacturing but other career paths and providing the new workforce for the state.”
Jeremy Blackwelder, a Westfield Voc-Tech graduate who has been working at Advance for two years, and said that his experience having a co-op with the company was invaluable.
“I started junior year as just an after-school job, as I wasn’t old enough to do a co-op,” he said. “The following year I went on a co-op, so every other week I came in and worked full-time, as well as schooling.”
Blackwelder, who is currently attending Springfield Technical Community College for Engineering with the financial help of Advance, says that the STEM initiative is key to the survival of the industry and the country.
“I think it’s great. This country really needs the manufacturing because we need to make our own money,” he said. “There’s just not a lot of people who know what manufacturing is all about. It’s great to get people introduced to it so they say ‘woah, I can make a career out of this.'”
Patrick walked around the facility, shaking hands and posing for photographs with employees and management before addressing with the media on the importance of, and the future of, STEM in the Commonwealth.
“This is a company named Advance Manufacturing but the whole category of advanced manufacturing is enormously important economically in this region and beyond,” Patrick said. “We’ve had about a 40 or 50 percent faster rate of growth in manufacturing than the national growth rate. One of the things we hear a lot about is ‘how do we ready people for the jobs that are being created in these fields?’, and we’ve been working on that at the community college level and at the vocational level.”
“I’m excited about what Westfield Voc-Tech does everyday under terrific leadership,” he said. “The point is not lost on me or my team that we’ve got to be thinking hard about having alternatives to traditional classrooms and academic paths that are just as successful as our traditional classrooms and paths.”
