The German-American Chamber of Commerce and Turbine Workforce have convened a consortium of stakeholders to enhance and expand participation in the GACC Pre-Apprenticeship and upskill more people in the Greater Pittsburgh Region with a range of job-ready tech skills – from basic tech skills required for a good job1 to a working command of one or more advanced technology used in high-income jobs today and sought after by Industry 4.02 employers.
Great question. All Consortium members recognize that great workforce development resources exist but are disparate and unconnected. The Consortium seeks to drive optimization and innovation through a technology-based ecosystem (the Turbine Workforce platform) to cultivate alignment, interoperability and innovation.
GACC’s expertise and institutional knowledge of delivering effective pre-apprenticeships and Registered Apprenticeships is amplified by Turbine Workforce. Turbine delivers efficiencies and interoperability as a single platform for all stakeholders activities, alignment, and limitless scalability. All program functions are to be entirely facilitated on Turbine Workforce - stakeholder coordination, pre-/apprenticeship administrative forms, job book automation, OJT scheduling, delivery of intro courses and workshops, related technical instruction, mentorship, career guidance, skills gap analysis, evaluation and reporting.
The GACC Pre-Apprenticeship is enhanced by:
Consortium Design
The Consortium is mindful of the workforce development professionals who show up every day to work ‘in the trenches’, and the multidisciplinary researchers who’ve together produced a trove of data3 on job training systems and career pathways design. The Consortium intends to look to the data and the trenches for tactics and insights so to add value the work, and not repeat what has been proven ineffective or not viable at scalable.
Range of job-ready tech skills:
At the root of it, upskilling is about more income and therefore must connect to a job profile created by a local employer. Consortium employers will be welcomed to create or refine curriculum so to align the Related Technical Instruction more directly to the Turbine Job Profiles they build and the job positions they are actively hiring to fill. As a way to maintain real-time relevance, and not many months lag like most hiring data, the RTI is to be elastic to skills sought in active job postings by consortium employers.
RTI and Consortium-member guided curricula:
PAs will have more enriching job experiences through OJT rotations compared to the traditional OJT model typically with one employer. Rotational OJT will provide rigorous hands-on job experiences embedded onto existing teams, working on real-world workflows on real product and customer problems or services. Beyond this call for rigor - and meet state registered pre-apprenticeship requirements - Consortium OJT employers will design entirely their OJT experiences.
Similar to an internship, OJT should be considered viable pre-employment pipelines for identifying workforce talent, assess cultural fit, and develop skill sets to meet their future workforce needs.
There will be no restrictions or consortium fees for employers who wish to hire pre-apprentices for full-time jobs.
Pre-apprentices (PAs) will benefit more young people from the GACC dual enrollment agreements with industry-, employer- and degree-recognized credentials and certificates, some that receive up to 6 college credits from CCAC. All PAs will draw on the GACC’s incomparable Ausbildungszertifikat (German Apprenticeship Certificate).
PAs who are confident of a career in advanced manufacturing will have option to prepare for the industry-recognized certifications & credits:
Each PA will be paired with a Career Path Co-pilot who will work with the PA to create an Actionable Career Pathway and personalized Skills Mobility Map.
Turbine-generated Actionable Pathways connect directly to employer-created job profiles and employer-currated courses and RTI. Pathways highlight the recognized credentials along one’s pathway, and the career mobility that one’s unique skills and credentials bundle provide to them.
Participating employers will be introduced to GACC & CCAC Apprenticeships and PAs will chart their own pathway to a good job.
This is an innovative consortium model into which our pre-apprenticeship will fit well. The range of nationally recognized certifications and on-the-job experiences will produce job-ready students with advanced tech and manufacturing skills, starting on day one.
The current skills gap in manufacturing and computer science is projected to lead to hundreds of thousands of unfilled job. Businesses and governments are planning on spending billions of dollars to help fill this gap, as these unfilled jobs constitute a significant barrier to growth and the adoption of new technologies. This unique offering will attract students into robotics and CS careers while providing curriculum, resources, and hands-on problem-solving skills.
Not all of our roles require an engineering license, but all do require basic tech skills, and many interface with AutoCAD, REVIT, and finite-element analysis tools. Turbine has enabled us to scale skills training internally as an investment in our workforce with measurable ROI and so much more.
Turbine has been great for our Train-the-Trainer workshops and our pre-apprenticeship will scale well within this innovative framework.
The current educational landscape struggles with the connection between the theory of the classroom and the practice of the workplace. An apprenticeship program creates a very tangible bridge enabling students to experience the direct application of knowledge, skills and understanding to purposeful outcomes.
A good job needs to meet people’s basic needs and offer conditions for engagement and motivation. Simply providing basic needs such as a living wage and predictable schedules will not, in itself, create a motivated workforce. But failing to provide those needs is often the source of employee stress and turnover in low-wage settings. Our framework for good jobs consists of nine essential factors related to these needs. The Good Jobs Strategy enables companies to meet each of these needs. Good Jobs Institute ↩
The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. World Econonic Forum ↩
Some of this research that we’ve found helpful is: > Digital Literacy & Technology Integration in Adult Basic Skills Education Review of the Research > Evidence on Career Pathways Strategies > Apprenticeship Evidence-Building Portfolio > Building Career Pathways Programs & Systems: Insights from TAACCCT > Building Career Pathways Programs & Systems: Insights from TAACCCT, Round 4 ↩
An Advanced Technology is still immature but promises to deliver significant value, or that has some technical maturity but still has relatively few users. Among current examples: artificial intelligence, agents, speech and handwriting recognition, virtual reality and 3D visualization, smart cards, real-time collaboration, enhanced user authentication, data mining, and knowledge management. Gartner ↩