Hartford Business Journal

12 Hartford Business Journal • May 27, 2019 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Gregory Seay gseay@hartfordbusiness.com F or Wallingford Public School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo, it was the answer to a simple question. How could he expose his nearly 6,000 elementary-secondary school pupils, Menzo asked, to career options and training that don't require a college degree, yet coax them into honing their analytical and critical- thinking skills that could be applied to their future career or trade? In polling local businesses, Menzo says he came to fully realize how great the need was, particularly among manufacturers, for trainees with exactly those basic skills whom companies could employ and fortify with science, technology, engineering and math-related (STEM) training to create a new generation of skilled tool- makers, machinists, engineers, quality inspectors, among other positions. What he and others helped develop — with ardent support from manufac- turers, town government, schoolkids and their parents, and various local nonprofits and support groups — was a townwide STEM initiative that aims to expose more students, as well as un- and underemployed residents, to instruction and activities that hone their thinking skills while also exposing them to sci- ence, technology, engineering and math careers and trades. The so-called "STEM Town'' initiative is a public-private partnership of sorts that officially launched last May and may be one of the most ambitious and outside-the-box concepts for confronting the state's manufacturing jobs shortage. In fact, some state lawmakers say Wallingford's STEM Town may serve as a model for a statewide program, though it could take years to measure its true, longer-term impact. So, what exactly is STEM Town? Sim- ply put, supporters say it's an ambitious collection of instructional goals, curricula and classes centered on making students — youth and adults — more adept at framing problems and designing solu- tions using their STEM-based learning and critical-thinking skills. Occasional district-wide design challenges promote development of those skills, Menzo said. It also involves participation in in- ternships and apprenticeships. Students even hold seats, alongside local employers, on Wallingford's STEM Town Steering Committee, which has a hand in STEM curricula, he said. The initiative also goes beyond the traditional grade-school classroom. For example, it incorporates workforce- development organizations that retrain Wall- ingford's un- or underemployed adult residents to work at dozens of the town's manufacturing employers. Meantime, local support groups, such as the Boys & Girls Club and YMCA, promote STEM in their before and after- school programs and their vaca- tion and summer camps. "The challenge is,'' said Menzo, a West Hartford resident who has led Wallingford's school system since 2009, "we're trying to address the challenge of workforce development at various levels. We need to make sure our students have an understanding of careers, not just in manufacturing.'' "We view it as an ecosystem within our community,'' he added. "We have to identify the strengths and weak- nesses of that ecosystem." STEM Town's birth occurred against the backdrop of a projected need among Connecticut manufacturers, including East Hartford's Pratt & Whitney and Groton's Electric Boat, for thousands of younger workers to replace ones retiring in coming years. The Connecticut Business & Industry Association estimates some 13,000 manufacturing jobs in this state are unfilled; nationally, there are about 500,000 manufacturing-job vacancies. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Wallingford is among Connecticut's top production hubs, churning out $1.2 billion in manufactured goods in 2012, the latest year that data was available — ahead of Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury. All or parts of the STEM Town con- cept could eventually be replicated in other communities statewide con- fronting similar issues of educating a 21st-century workforce, according to Menzo and state Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, whose 34th Dis- trict includes Wallingford. Fasano says he is impressed with Menzo's passion for STEM Town, and he isn't alone. A Wallingford busi- nessman, whom Fasano and Menzo declined to identify, is in talks with the superintendent about ongoing finan- cial support for the program. "I believe in the program,'' Fasano said. "I believe it should go statewide.'' So does State Rep. Elizabeth Linehan, a Democrat whose district includes Cheshire, Southington and Wallingford. Linehan, chair of the General Assem- bly's Committee on Children, said she will press for legislation allowing other Connecticut school systems to deploy versions of STEM Town. Linehan and Fasano both say a statewide STEM Town initiative would require a realloca- tion of resources — not more money — to be effective. The prize would be a Con- necticut education system better aligned with the STEM needs of today's employers, they said. Wallingford's STEM Town and related initiatives were a primary reason that Linehan said she invited Menzo and his pupils to participate in her day-long Student-Manufacturer Connection Fair in April that drew some 500 grade-school students and a smaller number of manu- facturing employers to the state Capitol. The fair, Linehan said, was a response to pleas from her manufacturing con- stituents "to get them in front of young people.'' The persistent stereotype of fac- tory floors as dirty, smelly and danger- ous, rather than bright, clean and sterile places of today, is one manufacturing employers are eager to break, she said. Townwide buy-in Wallingford attorney and City Council chair Vincent Cervoni says he supports the school system's STEM Town initiative. "We don't see any downside to it,'' said Cervoni, who worked for a New Haven die-cast maker while in college. "It's good for Wallingford because we have a lot of skilled-manufacturing in town.'' The initiative, he said, serves a dual role of providing pre-apprenticeship and pre-skills training to a fresh cadre STEM Town Wallingford program could hold the key to filling vacant manufacturing jobs in CT Len Fasano, Senate Republican Leader Wallingford schools Superintendent Salvatore Menzo. Wallingford resident Thomas Nichols underwent skills retraining that enabled him to swap his job as an apartment maintenance worker to working for German manufacturer BYK Corp.'s factory in town. Nichols is a beneficiary of Wallingford's "STEM Town'' initiative. HBJ PHOTO | BILL MORGAN HBJ PHOTO | GREGORY SEAY

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