About 15 minutes into the Careers in Composites webinar, Knoxville attorney Bill Mason’s 16-year-old grandson had an Aha! moment. It came as he watched a two-minute video interview with a current Utah State engineering student who, as a high school student, enrolled in Davis Technical College’s Composite Materials Technology program and wound up graduating from Davis Tech, finishing high school and earning an associate’s degree, all in the same year.
Mason was watching the webinar alongside his grandson when he picked up on the teen’s attitude shift.
“It’s not always easy to get teenagers to sit still a few minutes to be exposed to new ideas and opportunities, but I saw a light bulb go off as he watched stories of what actual people do on their jobs in the composites industry,” Mason said. “And once the young lady (in the video) started talking about her education from high school to technical college to studying engineering, he was hooked for the rest of the webinar.”
Mason’s grandson was one of 340 individuals age 16 and up who registered for the Nov. 10 Careers in Composites: Building Today for the Future of Manufacturing webinar that IACMI Workforce Development Director Joannie Harmon presented along with James Jones, lead technical support sales manager at Composites One; Wes Hobbs, Composites Pathways national director at Utah’s Davis Tech; and American Composites Manufacturers Association’s certification director Andrew Pokelwaldt.
The fast-paced, hour-long webinar targeted high school and college students exploring future career options, composites industry veterans looking to expand their expertise and advance their employment opportunities, currently employed individuals considering a career change and adults who work with youth, and it apparently reached those groups. An age-group survey conducted during the webinar showed 32 percent of participants were 16- to 29-year-olds, 20 percent 30-39, 21 percent 40 to 49 and 27 percent 50-plus.
The online seminar delivered on its careers focus, with Hobbs pointing to the diverse careers Davis Tech graduates have pursued as designers, builders and engineers of composites products ranging from rockets and military drones to prosthetic devices and Disney characters and Pokelwaldt recounting the career paths of two current industry employees after they became certified in one or more of ACMA’s eight areas of certification.
Jones, meanwhile, shared his atypical path to a career in composites, which included working for a composites company as a teen, getting a college degree in mechanical engineering and, a short while later, receiving a Juris Doctorate degree from law school.
“I passed the bar exam on my first try, too, but I never practiced law, because composites was still really exciting to me,” he said. “This is what I am passionate about, and when you have a passion for what you’re doing, that’s what makes a job enjoyable.”
Watch the Careers in Composites webinar here.