High school students in the National Park Technology Center met with representatives in the local aerospace industry Tuesday as part of Aerospace Day.
The representatives provided information to students regarding career opportunities in the industry.
"The goal of today is we've brought out all five of the bigger aerospace companies in Hot Springs and Garland County, and it's to raise awareness," said Kelli Albrecht, vice president for workforce and strategic initiatives for NPC. "They are all currently hiring, looking for good people to come to work."
Albrecht said it was important to have students involved in NPTC in various fields of study participate because all skill sets are needed in the industry.
"The reason we wanted to include all of the programs in the high school tech is because these industries hire marketing, accounting, business majors," she said. "They have health and safety people so someone in medical professions might decide to go be a health and safety officer or something in the company. So we want to make sure they know it's not just about machining parts. There's such a wide variety of opportunities in aerospace."
Participating employers included Triumph Airborne Structures, Triumph Precision Components, Cobalt Aero Services, CMT Inc., and Airtech Supply Inc. National Park College provides manufacturing training needed in the industry, Albrecht said.
"So the students from our high school technical programs are all coming through, and they're just getting to meet these companies and see what it's all about, what they do in the aerospace industry," she said. "We also have one of our instructors here, and he's telling them all about our class, what they're learning in class and what to expect in class, things like that. It's very hands on."
Albrecht said one of the challenges her program has had is getting younger workers to be aware that these industries are here and offer great opportunities available right out of high school or with training at NPC. Aerospace, she said, is one of the largest industries in Garland County.
"It's one of the biggest (industries) of course, you know, we have education and health care, tourism and hospitality are the biggest ones, but I would say probably as an industry cluster, manufacturing and aerospace are next," she said. "So some of them have maybe 30 employees and others have 300, so whether you want to work with a small company or a large company, whether you want to do new manufacturing of new parts or repair aircraft parts that come in from like FedEx or any of the commercial airlines, all of that's represented here today."
Tracey White of Cobalt Aero Services said meeting with students Tuesday was a great experience, adding that one of the company's top mechanics was a student in NPC's Aerospace program.
White said many of their mechanics travel to all areas of the globe, including the Netherlands, Japan, France, and Yemen, as it is often more economical to bring the mechanics to the parts rather than shipping parts to the mechanics' location.
Albrecht said one of the primary things CMT does is computer numeric controls, or CNC, machining.
"That's one of the programs that we just started offering last year," she said. "They machine a lot of the parts that they create. Then you have others, for example, Airtech, they're a sheet metal shop, so they'll take a flat piece of sheet metal and form it into a part that goes inside of an airplane. You wouldn't necessarily see that part, on the airplane, but it would be a component inside of the plane."
Adam Friedl, engineering manager for Airtech Supply, is a former Aerospace Manufacturing and Repair student from NPC, who said his background was in bartending. He emphasized to students that this is an industry "everybody can get into."
"There's entry-level positions, especially since we've got kids here, and coming right out of school you can start work," he said. You don't have to take four years of school just to get into it. Six months got my foot in the door. A lot of these people want experience, some kind of mechanical background. I didn't have it, but there's other avenues to get there."
Coursework for the Aerospace Manufacturing and Repair program can be completed in less than a year, and classes begin in September.
Local on 04/18/2018