business backgrounder | education & workforce
from internship to employment
The program began in 2011 as a partnership between Vancouver silicon wafer manufacturer SEH America and Evergreen Public Schools. The company, one of Clark County’ s largest employers, wanted to increase its pool of machine operators and the 26,000-student school
“ We have this history of thinking of those jobs as bad jobs. They’ re actually good jobs.”
— Scott Culbertson, math instructor, Hayes Freedom High School in the Camas School District
district wanted to make sure it was offering options for students not going to college, says Natalie Pacholl, Training Program Specialist at SEH America.
The need for skilled manufacturing employees has only grown since then. Clark County was home to 13,500 manufacturing jobs in 2016, an increase of 2,000 from the recession’ s low point in 2010, according to the Washington Employment Security Department. And with the Clark County unemployment rate hovering at 5 percent, competition for workers is tight.
SEH remains one of the largest partners in the program, hosting about 40 interns per year.“ I try to find things that will be value-added and not too difficult to manage,” Pacholl says. Those include using Google Tools and learning how to gather and organize data. The students earn a half-credit from their high school and three from Clark College, a two-year college that offers dozens of technical training programs.
SEH America has hired about one-third of the approximately 200 students who have gone through the internship program. Breanna Reeves, 21, was an intern there as a student at the Evergreen district’ s Heritage High School. She’ s now a production operator at SEH.
“ They offered me the job two weeks before I graduated,” Reeves said.“ I had the orientation at 6 a. m. the day of my graduation, and the graduation was at 8 p. m. that night.”
In her three years there, Reeves has earned four promotions. She earns enough to live on her own and has good benefits, including an opportunity for tuition funding if she decides to go to school.
“ SEH will constantly move you up,” said Reeves, who’ s disappointed that she’ s one of just a few women machine operators.“ They will train you for every job you want.” Feller encourages school districts to try to achieve a balance of boys and girls that matches the school’ s demographic and to make sure the program doesn’ t fill up only with college-bound students. But college-bound interns also find their internships valuable for their future careers.
Owen Stuber, a graduating senior at Hayes Freedom High School in Camas, is headed to Washington State University in Pullman next fall. But he said his internship at WaferTech gives him a backup plan, particularly since WaferTech would help pay for his college in some fields if he agreed to work for the company after graduation.
In her internship at Columbia Machine, Lovato worked with other interns on improving efficiencies at the heavy manufacturing company. They created a“ spaghetti diagram” of worker movements and came up with ways ideas for reorganizing a materials storage area to improve efficiency.
This summer she and the other former interns will work primarily on plant maintenance. But they’ ll also look for ways to improve one small area of the production plant as a model work area using Lean principles, said Kris Langdon, Continuous Improvement Manager at Columbia Machine.
Before her internship, Lovato thought she would work in an office or as a barista, but her experience at Columbia Machine now has her considering manufacturing.
“ I had never thought about it for myself, but I’ m definitely thinking about it now,” she said.
40 association of washington business