Photos by Ella Manthey
On Oct. 2, at the Sam Wolf Granite City Campus of Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC), students got a glimpse of an industry that is central to the region’s economic future — and a workforce challenge that could shape it.
The college’s annual Manufacturing Day event offered high school students a close-up look at multiple technical industries and the careers that can connect them to the region’s industrial economy.
Vendor booths lined the walls of the university’s large commons area, spanning the aerospace sector such as Boeing and Seyer Industries to machining and tooling companies like HTS Coatings, Haas, and many more.
“Manufacturing is much more than just machines and production lines,” said Travis Jumper, Ph.D., SWIC’s Dean of Technical Education, at the event. “Manufacturing is about the people who are in those industries.”
A manufacturing economy needs more than factories and machines. It needs machinists who can produce precision components, electricians who understand increasingly automated systems, maintenance technicians who can prevent costly shutdowns, and welders who can work with advanced materials and equipment, Jumper said.
It needs a talent pipeline. And SWIC is positioned to prepare the workforce of tomorrow for that pipeline.
“For many years, people have told you, ‘You need to go to high school, get a four-year degree, and then go get a job,’ but that’s only one pathway,” Jumper told the students. “There are many others.”
The event, which included an immersive tour of the Granite City campus, showcased SWIC programs in industrial maintenance, welding, precision machining, industrial electricity, aviation maintenance, avionics, and heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAR).
Together, those programs represent the people and skills required to keep modern industry moving.
“They’re all about solving problems,” Jumper said. “They require people to think critically; they require people to work with their hands and their minds.”
Building Up a Workforce
Throughout Manufacturing Day, SWIC instructors echoed a similar message: employers need skilled workers, and the demand is growing.
One industrial maintenance instructor told students that the U.S. is short hundreds of thousands of skilled craft workers and that retirements are widening the gap. The instructor said companies in the area regularly contact SWIC looking for qualified workers. That makes technical education more than a career-training issue: It becomes an economic-development issue.
When industrial employers cannot find the people needed to operate, maintain, and expand their facilities, workforce availability becomes part of the equation for the region’s industrial future.
SWIC’s role, as illustrated throughout Manufacturing Day, is to help close that gap by giving students the skills employers need in their companies immediately.
The industrial maintenance program is deliberately broad. Students learn welding, machining, pipe fitting, blueprint reading, mechanics, hydraulics, and precision instruments, a combination intended to prepare them to work across the systems that keep plants operating.
The message to students was equally direct: There are employers looking for these skills, and the number of jobs in these fields are only growing.
“The question isn’t whether manufacturing will continue to need people,” Jumper told students. “The question is, will we have enough people to fill the positions that manufacturing requires?”
A New Era of Manufacturing
The economic importance of these skills extends beyond the factory floor, a theme that was shared by instructor after instructor.
Modern manufacturing increasingly depends on automation, computerized controls, and sophisticated electrical systems. Industrial electricians work with motors, sensors, power distribution, and programmable logic controllers. Precision machinists combine mathematics and computer programming with physical production. Aviation maintenance and avionics bring together mechanical, electrical, and digital technologies.
In other words, the manufacturing workforce is becoming a technology workforce.
“The more technology we put into manufacturing, the more important technology-skilled people become,” Jumper told the students. “Someone has to install it, program it, and maintain it.
That creates an opportunity for a region with established industrial employers and a college training people for those jobs. It also changes the conversation about what a manufacturing career looks like today and in the future.
“Today’s manufacturing environment is increasingly automated, computerized, precise, interconnected, and technologically sophisticated,” Jumper said.
More Than a Job
One of the most significant aspects of the SWIC approach is its emphasis on practical, hands-on education.
Students don’t simply hear about manufacturing careers. They see the equipment and learn how systems work. They handle tools and observe processes.
In the SWIC machine shop, for example, students were introduced to multi-axis machining and the progression from manual machining to computer-controlled production
For SWIC instructors, however, the argument for skilled trades isn’t only about wages or employer demand: It’s about the value of being able to make, repair, and solve.
“There’s dignity in skilled work,” Jumper told students. “There’s dignity in building something. There’s dignity in repairing something. There’s dignity in solving problems that nobody else can solve.”
Jumper reminded students that today’s equipment will eventually be replaced, and industries will continue to evolve. But the underlying abilities of critical thinking, communication, mathematics, technology, safety, collaboration, and learning will remain valuable.
That’s the workforce SWIC is trying to build. And for the St. Louis region, it’s a workforce with implications well beyond the classroom.
“The United States doesn’t simply need more products. It needs more people who will know how to build those products,” Jumper said. “You don’t have to wait for the future. You can build it now.”
Travis Jumper, Ph.D., SWIC’s Dean of Technical Education, addresses students at the Manufacturing Day event.